Couple Lives With Autism, Comfort of Each Other

Love Bloomed After Socializing Was Learned
By THEA TRACHTENBERG and LINDSAY GOLDWERT
Feb. 25, 2009

David Hamrick, 29, and Lindsey Nebeker, 27, look like a typical couple in love, but what's not apparent is how hard they've worked to be together.
A couple finds a connection despite both having autism.

Hamrick and Nebeker live together in a Jackson, Miss., apartment, yet they have separate bedrooms, eat meals apart and spend most of their time focused on their own interests.

This unusual setup is how Hamrick and Nebeker, who are both autistic, make their relationship work.

About 1.5 million people in the United States have autism, with varying degrees of severity. Many people with autism struggle with the most basic social interactions, so finding love may seem like an impossibility.

Hamrick and Nebeker are high-functioning but, since childhood, both have found it difficult to make friends and even harder to keep them.

"All of her socialization had to be learned, usually by hard experience," said Nebeker's father, Gordon Nebeker.