Dr. Gwynette: Hello and welcome to the Autism News NetWORK. My name is Dr. Gwynette and we are joined today by our very special guests, Chris Mai, along with his wife, Katie. Hi, guys.
That we good and we are so happy that they’ve joined us today and I think they have a furry visitor there too. Is that?

Katie: This is Chloe.

Dr. Gwynette: Hey Chloe.

Katie: Say hi.

Dr. Gwynette: She’s adorable. So we’re going to talk with Chris and Katie today. Chris is going to talk to us about his experience with autism and his life journey. And we are going to be joined by, of course, our Autism News NetWORK participants.

Ainsley Knight: So a common misconception is that people with autism cannot own their own business. How do you feel about that and how did you come to have your own business?

Chris: My autism diagnosis came later in life, actually, after I had a business of my own. And when I look back on it, I’ve always had some business, rather. I can remember being about five and doing a neighborhood car wash or being in high school and I did typing for a while. People that weren’t good at typing, I would take their handwritten notes and type them out for them and things like that. So I’ve always done something like that. And I got into IT related stuff in junior high, so it was just a natural progression.
I found that it’s easier for me to run my own business than it is to work for somebody else’s because I just tend to have difficulty with some of the social issues that surround, particularly, very rigid corporate structures. And I find that it’s a little bit easier for me to run my own business than it is to work for somebody else. So I would say it’s easier in some senses and harder than others. When you are working for somebody else, you have like you’re going to make X amount of dollars, when you have your own business there’s no minimum that you can make. So there is a little bit of extra stress with that sometimes, but there’s also no upper limit. So you trade a little bit of stability for a lot of freedom, I feel like, and for me, that’s been a good fit for the last 14 years or so that I’ve done it.

Speaker 5: Excellent. David, you’ve got the second question.

David: How do feel being married?

Chris: Okay. So we met doing karaoke at a bar many years ago and we just hit it off right away. I hung out with her that night and I called her up the next day and asked her for a date that same night, which she tells me is out of the ordinary but to me, I wanted to see her, so why wouldn’t it be for that day? So there’s a couple of things like that, again, that stuff predates my autism diagnosis by a few years. So there’s just some peculiar things like that about the dating process that probably, was very different for Katie versus what she was used to. So it was a little bit of getting used to each other in the beginning, I think.
I had been in a relationship or two before that lasted for a year or two, but nothing being beyond that. So we met each other and went out on a date the next day and we’ve basically been together since then. So the way we got into a relationship was we just went out on one date and we’ve been together ever since, basically.
As far as what it’s like being married, it’s a lot of work, but it’s not like a lot of work in the sense of it’s bad work or anything like that, it’s more sort of like if you’ve ever done any outdoor work or farming, you’ve got to till the soil and plant the seeds and all that so that you can get a good harvest, but it’s not bad work, but it does take consistent work.
One of the most difficult things for me, I find is because I’m a very concrete thinker, especially as a guy it’s difficult because when Katie comes to me with a problem, being a guy in particular, I’m being presented with a problem. So naturally I want to present a solution and it’s very counterintuitive for me personally, to have somebody tell me a problem that they don’t really want to fix to. And I don’t know how much of that is all men versus how much is an autism thing, but I have a hard time sometimes just listening to what she’s telling me and trying to feel empathy from feelings that she’s feeling. Because a lot of times that’s what she wants, is just for me to listen to her and hear what she’s saying. So I would say my advice to you would be to listen to your wife as much as possible and try and resist the urge to fix things.
Also, I’m lucky that she understands me well enough to where I can say, I don’t know what it is you’re looking for here. I can tell when she’s upset, I don’t always know why. And if I say to her, “Hey, I want to help, but I don’t know what you’re looking for here.” She’s really good that she’ll tell me, “Okay, in this kind of situation, what I’m looking for is this.” Sometimes we’ll watch a movie together with a particular scene that I had to identify a lot.
We watched a James Bond movie and the female character had like a traumatic event happened and she was in the shower with all of her clothes on really upset and rather than trying to comfort her, fix her, the James Bond character got in the shower with her, with all of his clothes on. So it’s been a metaphor for the two of us to use, in that, she’ll see a situation and say, “What that person wanted there was for somebody to get it in the shower with them.” When I looked at it, I was like, well, we need to get this person out of the shower and get them in some dry clothes.
So it’s a good metaphor for there are some things that I see that don’t make sense to me that I can say to her, “I don’t know what this means. Can you explain it to me?” And so I think that’s one of the big differences in our relationship versus other ones I’ve had is, people expect a certain reaction out of you in certain situations that you’re blind to a little bit with autism. And so I would say communication with your partner is really important, because I can also say-

Speaker 5: And a key-

Chris: What’s that?

Speaker 5: And a key too.

Chris: Yeah. So, just being able to say to them, “Hey, I don’t understand what you’re expecting here.” And rather than her getting mad at me, her just being able to say, “Okay, I get that you don’t understand what I’m looking for here, here’s what I’m looking for.” So it takes some effort on both people’s part to understand that, “Hey, it’s not that I’m refusing to give you the response that you’re looking for. It’s just that I have a blind spot there and I don’t know exactly what it is that you need.”

Dr. Gwynette: Awesome, David.

Speaker 5: Yeah, that was good, David. And thank you so much for being vulnerable, Chris. That was really good. Our next question comes from Patrick. The floor is yours Patrick.

Patrick: You said you like nuclear power and space travel. Can you tell us about that?

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So in elementary school, this was, for me, before the days of [inaudible 00:08:19] and all that good stuff. I was very interested in anything to do with nuclear power. I read all the books at the elementary school library about it that I could. And it was just something that I was very interested in. I grew up in Texas, not too far from Johnson space center. So I was very into space travel. When I was a kid was when the space shuttle was new and everything was space age, this and that. So it just was something that I got very narrow focused in and just learned everything that I could about it.

Speaker 5: Excellent.

Chris: I enjoy both of those things. I don’t get as into it as I used to, but if I see an article about either of those things, I’ll generally read it.

Speaker 5: That’s really cool. I haven’t seen any, recently, on space travel.

Chris: There was a SpaceX launch on Sunday from Florida and I watched it with Katie’s parents and we went outside and I was actually able to see the spacecraft outside. It was just like a glowing red dot moving across the sky, but it was really cool because I’d be interested in many years. I’d never seen a launch or anything, so it wasn’t close enough to see anything but that dot, but it was still pretty neat to think that that dot was headed into space.

Speaker 5: Wow. That’s pretty impressive.

Dr. Gwynette: It really is.

Speaker 5: Yeah. DQ, it’s your turn. The floor is yours.

DQ: You didn’t find out that you had ASD until later in life, what was the clues?

Chris: So I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was in elementary school. And I don’t know if it’s because it was just back then that that’s how they did things or what, but they didn’t look for any other things besides that. They just assumed that all of my problems were related to that. And I came across a book called The Journal of Best Practices, that was about a man that was married and diagnosed later on in life with autism. And I just was reading about it. And as I reading the book, I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting. I do things just like that.” And more and more stuff started to be like, “Wow, this book could have been written by me. I didn’t know that this was a thing.” And I was in treatment at the time for anxiety. And I said to my therapist, I said, “Hey, is it possible that in addition to these other things that I have autism?” And he gave me a series of tests and questions like that about it.
So for me, I wouldn’t say there was so much in the way of clues that specifically, it was more like just a couple of things clicked that made me look into it more. And then it was like, “Oh, wow, this is me.” There was a lot of things that I just thought were particular to my personality that ended up being more common. I’m trying to think of background but pretty much anybody that knows me knows that I’m different in some way. They just don’t necessarily think that it’s that.
So the way that I like to put it is, in a social setting, I can wear the mask of someone without that for an hour or two but beyond that, it gets uncomfortable and difficult to do. And apparently, that’s a fairly common thing too, is that, fitting in a social setting for a long period of time can be exhausting. Like when I go to something like a party, I just want to go home and take a nap. It’s just mentally and physically exhausting for me. So that was one.
A lot of this stuff to do with preferring activities solo versus with groups, pretty much everything I enjoy doing is solo activities for the most part. So that was one clue. And then it was just, like I said, reading that book, I can’t think of a lot of the specifics, but just some things especially when I talk with Katie, she’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I could see that.” Rigidity is definitely a thing for me. I like to do the same things the same way. I like the same foods all the time.

Speaker 5: Thank you for sharing that, Chris. It looks like Godfather is up. Are you ready, Scott?

Scott: Yep. Hang on a second. What was your reaction like when you were diag

Chris: I was relieved, honestly. I know of other people personally, that have been diagnosed that rejected or resisted or whatever. For me, it was so nice to be like, “Oh, that’s what this is.” Because there was so many times in life, either at work or in dating relationships or in friendship relationships where I was just like, “Wow, this makes so much more sense.” Because before that it was just, “Oh, I’m not popular because I’m not a good person. Or I have trouble fitting in in this environment because there’s something wrong with my personality or I’m just not cool or whatever.” But then when I see like, “Oh, you have trouble in these social situations because you have trouble reading people’s reaction to X.
So for me, I was definitely relieved to have a thing, to be able to say I’m like this because of this. And how do I want to put it? I don’t want to say it’s an excuse, but it makes it easier when I tell somebody that I’m becoming friends with, “Hey, if I’m a little bit weird or if I act a little bit different in this scenario, it’s because of this. So if you see me doing something that seems out of the ordinary, that’s why, cut me some slack or let me know if I’m saying something that’s out of line, et cetera.? Like one of my issues is the way that I interact on social media definitely puts people off and gets me like kicked out of groups and things like that.
So if I find a group, I really like, for instance, I’m in a group for local people who are into riding jet skis and they were really cool group of people. I’m like, I don’t want to get kicked out of this group. It gave me the foresight to be able to do something like I messaged one of the admins of the group and I was like, “Hey, just so you know, I’m on the autism spectrum, sometimes I see things joking around that come off really wrong and just do me a favor and if you see me do something like that, just take the comment down and let me know rather than booting me out of it. So stuff like that, before it would just be like, “Oh, okay. I got booted out of the group.” Now I can say, “Okay, cut me a little slack because I have this issue.”

Dr. Gwynette: A great strategy.

Speaker 5: That is a great strategy. How’d you learn that strategy?

Chris: I don’t know if they covered it directly in Rex, but just more so being aware about how my behavior affects others. Katie has been around it enough to where she’s pretty immune to most of the things I say or do that are out of the ordinary. But it has just taught me to think from other people’s viewpoint. There’s some people that definitely don’t get my sense of humor or that I’m joking and they think I’m saying something and being serious. And it was just kind of like, “Okay, I don’t want to get kicked out of this group. So what can I do to avoid that?” And for me, I try to manage my behaviors well as possible in those kinds of situations, but they’re always ends up being something that I just end up not being able to resist saying that is taken the wrong way. So that’s helped a lot.

Ainsley Knight: Are you a picky eater? Because I am and for me, certain textures, certain smells, here, I’ll give you an example, smoked food drives me up the wall, I cannot eat it, I despise it. And I just wish it didn’t exist. So are you a picky eater or not?

Chris: I am an extremely picky eater and I realized how much, so Katie’s mom actually posted something once that was like, it was the questionnaire of, are you a picky eater? How many of these foods would you eat? And she would eat 46 out of 50 of them. And I think I would eat four out of 50 of them. I’m not even kidding. It was a lot of foods that I don’t like. For me, I like raw broccoli, but I don’t like typical cook broccoli, if I cook it broccoli and I just steam it and it’s still crunchy, I like it. But the way most people cook broccoli, I don’t like. The exception of that is, there’s a restaurant downtown called Husk. And if you read the ingredients, it’s a bunch of stuff that I would never eat. And a lot of them don’t even know what they are, but that particular restaurant, whoever they prepare their food, like I just eat it without reading what the ingredients are and it tastes amazing.
So sometimes, I challenge myself a bit to try something different. But most of the time, I can eat burgers and fried chicken every day without a problem.

Dr. Gwynette: Our next question’s going to come from Miles. Miles, you ready? Okay, go ahead.

Miles: What were the struggles that led to your diagnosis of autism?

Chris: So for me, I touched on some of it earlier, a lot of social issues. I had a very hard time and still do in a lot of situations fitting in in corporate/work type environments. It’s very difficult, for instance, they’ll announce some new policy or have some group question and answer session, when they ask for feedback, I would typically give honest feedback. I’ve now learned that when they say that, they don’t really want feedback, they just want you to say it’s a good idea. And that was something that still is very hard for me. In dating relationships, trying to be diplomatic about this. But I guess I don’t have to, I don’t know if this is an autism thing or a guy thing, but the way that people but women in particular behave sometimes makes no sense to me.
So trying to figure out why people do certain things or why the way that they act in certain situations, in dating situations like, well, if you’re telling me that this is the problem, why don’t you want a solution? Or a good example, early on in dating is, we were coming out of something that no longer exists called a Blockbuster Video.
I had taken Katie out for a very expensive, nice dinner. And we went to get a video after, because this was before Netflix. And on the way out of the video store, I thought that she had the door and I let the door slam in her face. Now obviously, the correct thing to do was to hold the door, but then the recovery from that would’ve been to apologize for letting the door slam in her face. And instead, we began to argue about whether or not someone is responsible for keeping the door from hitting themselves or not. And it was very early on in dating.
So, 16 years later, what the resolution of the argument was hours later was that I was supposed to say, sorry, I’ll be more careful next time. And so that’s still a running joke with things like I can say, “Sorry, I’ll be more careful next time.” Or the time she’s let the hit me. I’ll say, “Just be more careful next time,” we both laugh because that’s a shared experience that we’ve gotten over. But at the time, that was something that, I would suspect, caused me problems in other relationships would be that type of reaction, “Well, it’s not my problem that you let the door slam in your face.”
So there’s things like that that just permeate a lot of social interactions, both at work and in relationships, with family, with friends, that kind of thing, that you don’t really mean to come off a certain way, but she probably took it as, he doesn’t even care that the door hit me or he doesn’t respect me enough to hold the door or whatever, something called implicit communication, which is something that I struggle with. So implicit communication is all the things that you don’t say, which apparently is about 90% of communication. I didn’t even know implicit communication existed until, I’d say, within the last year or two. So that’s one of those things where I don’t always get the things somebody isn’t saying versus the things that they are saying. So that would be probably my biggest struggle that led to that is, just, “Hey, why do I have these problems and work situations and relationships?”

Katie: So, the neurotypicals that I’ve dated knew better, but didn’t care enough to change their behavior. Chris here, who is on the autism spectrum doesn’t know better, but cares enough to change once he is informed in an appropriate way of what is going on with me. So really, all we had to work on was our communication. And that was something that we worked on consistently over the course of many years. One of the things that I’ve always done with him is watched TV and movies. So, like he was saying before, if there’s a part during the movie where these two characters that are looking at each other or exchanging a lot of implicit meaning, Chris doesn’t know what’s going on in the movie. So I explained that to him and he is usually surprised. He’s like, “Wow, you know all that?”

Dr. Gwynette: How do you know all that?

Katie: Yeah. So when I explain it to him, it’s like a teachable moment. So he can then take that information and apply it to our relationship, or he can apply it into the outside world and that’s been successful for us.

Chris: But anyway, being willing to listen to your wife when she’s trying to tell you and teach you something, sometimes the way I say it to Katie is, I say, I got to find a non-autistic way to phrase this. Meaning just a more polite or more socially acceptable way. And women instincts get that better than men, I think. Definitely, better than autistic men and it’s just one of those things that I’ve had to learn to trust her instinct because I know in certain situations, my instincts aren’t good.

Speaker 5: Well, moving right along, Lee, it looks like you have the next question. Are you ready?

Lee: Yes. I’m ready.

Speaker 5: Go ahead.

Lee: What are Katie’s feelings about the diagnosis?

Katie: So for me, it was a relief too, because we knew then what was it about Chris that was different and what were the reasons for his struggles. Because like I said before, it’s clearly evident to me that, and it’s obvious, that Chris is a good person and that he cares a whole lot more so than anyone else that I have met, but he had a lot of struggles, particularly, with offending people, myself included at times.
So when we learned what autism was and how it applied to Chris, then I started to realize, “Oh, it’s not that Chris … it’s not a moral failing, he’s just has a different brain. And that’s it. He was born with his brain and his brain is a good brain and it’s a valid brain and there’s things that we can do to help him just fit into the world a little bit easier.” So I was happy to learn what it was. I was very interested in it too. It’s just something that I think is interesting in general. So it was a positive experience for both of us.

Lee: Okay.

Chris: Her answer initially was, “Well, I knew you had something now we know what it’s called.”

Oli: You had difficulty in middle school and high school or just school in general?

Chris: I had a lot of trouble in junior high, specifically. I was four foot seven in third grade. I was four foot 11 in seventh grade. I got picked on a lot, both because of my size and because of the ADHD and autism type issues. I was relentlessly bullied in middle school. I moved schools twice in high school, which seemed to alleviate that because I got away from the crew of people that were responsible for that. But yes, it was very difficult for me. At some points, I ended up having academic problems, not because I didn’t understand the material, but I tended to do things like not do homework or I was having so many social issues that prevented me from doing the school work that I needed to do. So I would say, I definitely had quite a bit of difficulty in school.

Speaker 13: How did people treated you after you got your autism diagnosis?

Chris: So friends of mine, most of my friends are friends through Facebook that [inaudible 00:26:15] people I play Xbox with or that kind of thing. People that have known me for years are just like, “Oh yeah, I could see that. That makes sense.” And didn’t really think of it any differently. My dad to this day, doesn’t accept that I have autism spectrum disorder. He thinks I just did some quiz on the internet and made it up. And I’m like, “No, I got diagnosed by an actual doctor. And he’s like, “Well, what kind of doctor?” And I’m like, “Well, he was a double doctorate in he was a medical doctor as well as a psychiatrist. Like, trust me, he has the credentials to diagnose me.”
Katie and I strongly suspect that my dad is also on the autism spectrum, but he presents a little bit differently. I talk to both my brothers pretty much daily via text message. They don’t really think any different. They grew up with me and it’s just like, “Oh yeah, I could see that. That makes sense.” So for most people, it’s a non-event. I think my dad, if I had to guess, probably sees it as some sort of defective as that he would have a kid with autism. So he rejects it because he would, in some way, see that as either a slight against him or he sees it as me trying to make an excuse for things or something like that. But he’s very rigid in his thinking and nobody can tell in anything, kind of thing.

Dr. Gwynette: Well, we’ve been joined today by Chris and Katie Mai and we wanted to thank you both for joining us and sharing the details of your relationship. Again, 16 years together, 10 years married. And it’s a very poignant discussion today, especially because our friend David, is getting married this Sunday to his fiancee Vel. And so this was just perfect timing, not only for the information, but also for the support and the encouragement that you provided to David, our ANN participants and our audience. So let’s give them all a big round of applause guys. Unmute, and we’re going to do a big round of applause. Ready? 1, 2, 3. This was really special. And we thank you guys. And I hope, Chris, you’ll come back and see us again soon. There’s David’s mom, the mother of the groom.

Katie: Congratulations David.

Speaker 14: I’m very proud of him.