My wife had this realization as well. She’s autistic, and was complaining about some of her dad’s habits. I mentioned that her dad was probably autistic too. She seemed confused.

I pointed out that what she had just complained about were some behaviors that were basically the textbook definition of autism. But he was an Irish Catholic boomer. He grew up in a world where authority figures tried to beat the demons out of him instead of getting him diagnosed. So he probably developed a lot of coping techniques to try and mask. And half of the things she was complaining about were his coping techniques, the other half were the autistic behaviors he was trying to mask.

For her, the realization was like shattering an illusion. Suddenly, she started recognizing all of the traits and behaviors that she never clued into before. Because when she was growing up, all of the behaviors were normalized. And as an autistic person herself, she didn’t even think to question a lot of his peculiarities because they didn’t seem peculiar to her.