Open Letter To My 20 Year Old Self Who Doesn't Know She Just Stepped Into a Neurodiverse Marriage

⚠️🚨 TRIGGER WARNING 🚨⚠️

This letter includes raw reflections on:

– Marital neglect

– Emotional abandonment

– Miscarriage & infertility

– Mental health collapse

– Identity Loss

– Trauma & healing

Please read with care. It’s real, it’s emotional, and it may stir things you’ve buried to survive. You are not alone. Take breaks if needed. 💛

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Dear 20-Year-Old Me,

I just reread your journal. I sobbed as I remembered, I’m sorry I forgot how hard it was for you. I don’t think about it anymore. It’s only 9.5 weeks into your marriage. You are not asking too much to want your husband in your arms at 1 AM. You are not asking too much, period. I know it hurts to see him prioritize everything but you. You have every right to be confused, hurt… and even though it will be a few years before you write about your resentment, I know you are already starting to feel it.

You’re right—something did shift after the wedding. You’re not imagining it. It wasn’t a bait-and-switch on purpose, but it was a switch. And it hit hard. It was neurological. But you won’t know that yet—not for a long time. You’re not broken for wanting intimacy. You’re not needy for aching to be seen.

You’re not ridiculous for craving connection, presence, and partnership.

I know you feel it. That feeling that he was just finding someone to fill this role. And now that the role’s been filled, he’s content to continue on living life like you’re an accessory, not a living breathing whole being. I know you’re questioning if this is just what marriages are like, but I know you have already compared stories.

I know you are desperate to be seen. I know you just want someone, anyone to see your pain. And I know you don’t have anyone safe to truly talk to.  I know it’s not that bad yet. I know you aren’t trying to make excuses for him, you are trying to find a reason. A reason for his behavior that hurts so much. You create a buffer. You hide the truth when people ask. It’s embarrassing. I know. I know the emotional burden that comes with both dealing with this rejection and also trying to conceal and protect his image to others. I know you see the good in him. I know you don’t have the words to explain his behaviors.  I know in your dark moments you question if you made the right choice. I know that you rely on the answer you got from God every time things confuse you. I know you are clinging to all the good moments like it’s your oxygen.

I am sorry to be the one to break it to you, but he doesn’t ever catch on that he’s hurting you. And when you tell him, he doesn’t know how to handle it… It breaks his brain. It hurts to watch him retype the Bible while you lie in bed crying—wondering if he even cares. To be on a "affection allowance” like it’s a limited currency.

And sweet girl, I need you to know—

You’re already pregnant when you wrote this journal entry. You'll find out in 4 days. That little boy will be your light in the darkness. I know you thought you’d have girls, but you get little boys. And they will adore you. You’ll cling to their love like oxygen. They will fill the holes that are left by your marriage.

Pregnancy will be really hard on your body and change it irreversibly. You will also have about 8 miscarriages in the next 10 years. He won’t be able to greive with you. He can’t see them. It’s not concrete. I’m sorry he doesn’t understand when you cry. I know you pictured their entire lives the moment that test turned pink.

The truth is, sweetheart—you’re going to suffer. There are years ahead that are brutal in ways I can’t sugarcoat.

You’ll continue to step on invisible landmines, it will disorient you. You will lose your footing. You’ll learn you can’t show disappointment, because that just causes explotions. You’re going to try SO hard. You’ll fold yourself into a pretzel to make him happy. You’ll dim your light cause he says it’s too bright. You’ll pray, journal, fast, read every marriage book you can get your hands on. You’ll memorize his love languages, track every anger/stonewall cycle, practice all the communication. It still won’t bridge the gap between you.

The next 8 years are hard—but manageable. By 2009, you’ll both be back in college, alternating schedules to balance the kids. There’s structure. Purpose. A schedule. His meltdowns only come every three months or so—usually around finals.

He’ll get diagnosed with ASD in 2012, and it feels like the answer you’ve been waiting for. And for a little while, it helps. You’ll feel more comfortable talking about the struggles. But the disappointment comes when he doesn’t change.

In 2013, you’ll graduate college and you’ll move to California to have your 4th baby near family. The plan is to go to Law School on his scholarship in a year.

I cannot prepare you for what comes next.

In 2014, Law School is no longer the plan. The man you love will spiral. His mental health will crash.

The structure, the purpose, the identity he built his life on will disappear— He becomes untethered and lost. The darkest he’s ever been.  2014 through 2019 will break you repeatedly. They are the darkest. The coldest. The most confusing. You’ll deal with the police, therapists, doctors, meds.

You and the kids will feel like fellow soldiers—in the trenches every day. You will fight so hard. You are bound and determined to fight for a man so deep underwater he’s practically hallucinating. There’s months he cycles several times a week. Weeks he crashes multiple times a day. Each time it kills more and more of you.

You start a business, you are strong, talented, and doing amazing things. You both won’t get sleep, the stress, the lack of finances, the weight of it all will crush you. You’ll feel abandoned—emotionally, spiritually, sexually. You’ll question your own reality.

You’ll become someone you don’t recognize, physically, emotionally, and mentally. You’ll gain weight. Your body will rebel with pain. You’ll stop taking care of yourself. You’ll become the caretaker of everyone else but yourself. You will lose the vibrant girl you once were and become hardened and bitter at times.

You’ll print out divorce papers sometime in 2017.  He’ll leave for a little while, and you’ll run the house, the business, and the kids all by yourself. You’ll be refined in the refiner’s fire. You’ll learn to walk with God. Angels will hold you up when you collapse on the laundry room floor.

He comes back and you both limp along. Pushing forward. Mostly bleeding out on the battlefield.

And still… you’ll stay.

And then—

In late 2018, you’ll feel prompted to try for a baby.

But after three more miscarriages, you’ll begin to doubt whether you even hear God. It will shake you to your core. You will sink lower than you ever have before. It feels like your body betrayed you. It won’t hold the babies you desperately crave.

But sweet girl, those dark months lead you to healing. You pull yourself up by the bootstraps. You always do.

I know you can’t look at yourself in the mirror and see the beautiful, strong, resilient, talented, sexy woman that I see. I know you feel uncomfortable staring in the mirror and beliving you are beautiful. A lifetime of insecurity and low self esteem was the worst baseline for entering a marriage like this.

But you will get yourself back. You won’t just get yourself back either, you’ll become something better than you ever were.

I promise.

In your healing journey, you’ll start loving yourself like never before.

Finally. Fiercely. Boldly.

You’ll stop begging for breadcrumbs. Your body will respond to the love YOU feed it. You’ll become radiant. Unstoppable. You’ll reclaim your worth.

And that is what shifts everything.

He couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t give you what you finally had the confidence to demand, and he crumbles.

It’s no coincidence that your healing journey—

the one that begins in April 2019—

sets off a chain reaction you won’t fully understand until much later. Nine months after it begins, on January 5th, 2020, something is born—not a child, but something just as life-altering. A breakthrough. A revelation. A map of the mind and heart that changes it all. It gave you language for what you’d been living. It revealed his mind.

Suddenly, you’ll see his brain. And everything you experienced, every behavior makes sense. And it alters him at a root level.  For the first time ever, something sticks.

You’ll test it. Explore it. Share it with the world—because it’s too powerful to keep to yourself.

So much relief comes very quickly. And over the next 5 years, the man who once didn’t know how to hold your heart… Begins to hold it like it’s holy. He becomes the father you always believed he could be. He respects you. He shows your boys how to treat women.

As I write this letter to you, he walks in the room.

He brings you a glass of water. He sees your stress and kisses the side of your neck to activate your parasympathetic nervous system cause he knows how to anchor you.

He thinks of you when you’re not with him. He wants to go with you on mundane errands. He sends you memes that remind him of you and your love. He helps you when your brain and emotions are scattered. And the first time he slow dances with you in the middle of the grocery store-simply because he heard one of our songs- you’ll pinch yourself to see if it’s real.

He’s in awe of your talents. You’ll giggle together before you go to bed and wake up smiling at each other. And when you cry in the middle of the night from a bad dream, he lovingly hugs and kisses you and brings you back to reality. He doesn’t just say he’s grateful for you. He shows you every single day.

You turn 40 this year, in 2025. The world has changed a lot, it’s really crazy now. But your home is a santuary. You have four beautiful sons. They love each other. They love their father. They’re confident, joyful, thriving, and handsome. You’ll still be healing what they lost, but you do it together with him—and they’re stronger because of it. Your children are finally being raised in that home of love that you always wanted. You get the marriage you always craved. Both you and him live and apply what you learned in your breakthroughs. Every. Day. It’s what makes your dream sustainable.

It’s coming.

I promise.

And no, regular life doesn’t get easier.

The house is a mess. You just lost a pet.

Last week your oldest got in a fender bender. There's mold in your HVAC. You’re moving again. You’re dealing with a lot. But I know you never asked for easy. You asked for a partner. And now, it’s you and him— against the world, ride or die.

You’ll use every scar to build something sacred—a roadmap, a framework, a lifeline. And you’ll hand it to the women who need it most: The ones standing where you stand in 2006... and the ones barely surviving the next 14 years alongside you.

Women who feel like they’re going crazy.Confused. Isolated. Starved for connection.Drowning quietly in “good” marriages. Told to lower their expectations, pray harder, or just wait it out. You’ll give them what you never had— the blueprint you were desperate for. The one that could’ve saved you sooner.

I wish I could’ve sent it to you. Tucked it into your journal. Delivered it in a dream. Slid it under your door. But you weren’t meant to be saved then. That wasn’t in the cards for you. You had to be in the dark. It was the dark that prepared you for this.

You were meant to rise.

You didn’t go through hell for nothing. You needed the mess to map the way out.

You were destined to be a cartographer of the mind and heart, a map maker of the soul.

Without the breaking, there’d be no blueprint— no way to reach the woman still lying awake at 1 AM,staring at the ceiling, whispering, “Is this really what marriage is supposed to feel like?” But that’s why you had to go through it. So you could turn back one day and hand her the map you never had.

Love,

Future You

To the woman reading this now—

You don’t have to stay lost. There is a way through. From the girl who didn’t understand in 2006, and the woman who finally does in 2025— we’re both handing it to you. The blueprint we never had. The lifeline we had to build from scratch. And it starts right here.

👇 Click here to grab the free Trojan Horse Blueprint.

https://www.bridgingthegapinrelationships.com/trojanhorsemethod

💛🕊️🌱 Healing Warning 🌱🕊️💛

After you grab the free printable, I invite you to hear a special video message from my husband about those years.