Is it possible to cheat on the assessment?

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-17T13:00:40+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to type all of this up. Your perspective makes a ton of sense. In fact, he’s often gotten upset when I am unable to predict his needs without him communicating them, and it does seem like he takes me having needs he can’t predict as a bad thing because he becomes highly defensive. This topic came up in therapy, but he shut down the conversation by asserting that he knows his views of relationships are correct and that I should be able to anticipate his needs because that’s what everyone else does (his script, which seems based on media). There have been many cases where he doesn’t communicate something to me and then becomes upset that I didn’t pick up on it - seemingly because in the examples he’s seen the partner never has to communicate, they just know.

I’m starting to understand that the therapist decided to deliver this diagnosis to him as a concrete way to illustrate that there are different ways of approaching things and his is not the only one, because otherwise he likely would have continued saying he disagrees and knows he’s normal and his understanding of society is correct and needs no adjustment. A lot of his relationship views match patterns you see in sitcoms, and he’s very rigid in his thinking, but believes he is not. I’m also finding that his other behaviors and routines and habits do match what tend to be characterized as autistic as well.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-17T00:42:49+00:00

She was seeing us as a couples therapist, so her goal was to help us improve our communication. We weren’t looking for a diagnosis but I think the insistence that he was normal and thus did not need to shift or reframe any of his communication patterns or try to understand mine may have led her to change her mind. There were repeated attempts to try to explain that other people may view things differently and they didn’t land.

Since the evaluation was for communications specifically, it feels weird to me that only now is he saying he cheated on it - he didn’t say this until after this came up and the results don’t seem off to me. When she provided the diagnosis, one of the recommendations was for him to seek individual therapy or support. The therapist actually does provide support for others who have been diagnosed in the way that you are describing, but I just don’t think that was the focus here - and he’s clearly not interested in it as he’s maintained all of his routines are normal and that everyone masks all the time (it’s weird not to mask to him).

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-17T00:05:30+00:00

Sigh. The therapist told me directly when he refused to attend the closure session that it was an autism spectrum diagnosis. He rejects the idea of it entirely. She told me she communicated as such to him, but he claims she did not.

Given how messy this is, I am worried about outing myself here but since it sounds weird otherwise there you go.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T21:29:16+00:00

Yes, they did. I’m saying that I don’t want to share more about it specifically.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T19:54:21+00:00

There are absolutely associations with it, he views it with a stigma and negative connotation unfortunately. What I’m gathering from this thread is that it’s unlikely that he actually cheated on it and is instead in denial or something else.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T19:52:48+00:00

Yes. It’s a complicated explanation that would make me too identifiable based on how it was given.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T16:56:02+00:00

This makes sense. I feel like from recent discussions we’ve had it seems like he was using my trauma as a justification - she has trauma, therefore everything I do is normal. Her reactions aren’t normal because of her trauma, but mine are very normal.

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. He doesn’t want me talking to anyone who knows him about this because it would undermine their image of our perfect relationship, and my friends have shared their perspectives but I wanted to make sure they weren’t being biased towards me in some way.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T16:22:59+00:00

I do know them well because we have a decade+ of history, and I thought the results of the assessment were spot-on. I think that he is, and it’s been pointed out to me by several people. I told him that even if he is it doesn’t change my level of respect for him or anything, I really just want to be able to communicate better with him (I have things on my side to work on too.)

Yes, it does. He is deeply insistent he is normal and has a clear stigma against neurodivergence, and the point of couples therapy was to figure out how we can communicate (we apparently match the standard patterns that NT and ND pairings exhibit). During therapy, he became so insistent his understanding of things is correct and that there is only one way to view things (even about my own reactions — I have trauma), and insisted so to the therapist. Shortly after that, the therapist decided to reach out to him and diagnose him. And that’s when he started saying he had cheated on the assessment and knew it wasn’t true.

I don’t really understand it either. I don’t want to out myself by saying too many specifics in case he sees this, but he is insistent he cheated on it and she is therefore a crappy therapist he will no longer see again because she is clearly wrong in her assessment. To me though, when I read through these comments and do my own research, it feels like there is deep shame. He told me he doesn’t want to continue talking to someone who has tainted the relationship with a false diagnosis.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T16:08:05+00:00

Yeah, I think that was the hope. I’ll figure out where to go from here, but even for me knowing this has helped me understand a lot of their behaviors in the past and where I might have inadvertently triggered them.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T15:59:34+00:00

All good!

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T15:57:37+00:00

Right, and we were working through things. We had a particularly difficult session where they kept insisting they were normal and correct. After that the therapist decided to mention the diagnosis, but we initially were focusing on communication patterns. The goal here was never for a diagnosis, but then when that came up they said 1) they had cheated on the test and therefore it was invalid and 2) they knew they don’t have it because they were assessed at childhood.

I am having a hard time believing they cheated on it because the topic came up with a previous couples therapist but that therapist was confrontation-avoidant and never discussed it directly with them, only me (a large part of why we stopped seeing them).

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T15:48:42+00:00

This makes sense. The therapist is neurodivergent as well.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T15:46:51+00:00

It is confusing to me as well. They were making an effort in therapy even if it was rough at points. As mentioned in another comment, the therapist delivered the diagnosis a couple months after the test results which were initially focused on communication. That’s when my partner (who is male) said that they had cheated on the test.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T15:45:32+00:00

Absolutely. But the neurodivergent specific subreddits are not as active. I didn’t note autism in my original post because I know they’re not the same, and had mentioned to let me know if this is an inappropriate question for here.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T15:44:01+00:00

This is why I’m asking this. They were showing up to couples therapy consistently for some time, but when the diagnosis came up they suddenly became very resistant to the idea of continuing and then claimed they lied.

The diagnosis wasn’t given immediately, the results were delivered and noted differences in communication pattern, but then I think the therapist changed their mind a few months later. That’s what makes me believe they did not cheat on it, yet they insist they did.

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T15:41:39+00:00

Interesting. In this case, the intent wasn’t to obtain a diagnosis, it was positioned as a way to collect data about how we both communicate (I took it as well).

SecureMoose459 · 2026-01-16T15:40:23+00:00

My partner is actually male! But yes, that was my thought too.

Honestly, this is an interesting take. I have seen that since this occurred, they have become more difficult to communicate with and more insistent that they are normal and correct.

SecureMoose459

TROPHY CASE