 Good day everybody and welcome back to the Thomas Hanley YouTube channel, your home for autism, mental health, fitness, self-improvement related content, neurodiversity. Today we're going to be covering a very interesting topic, dating autistic people as an autistic person. Now if you've been a part of my channel for a while you'll know that I've done quite a few videos when it comes to dating across neurotypes, so neurotypicals dating autistic people, but I haven't really covered the experience of dating an autistic person when you're autistic as well. So let's go into some caveats. There is very little content about neurotypical, neurodivergent relationships anyway, and even less so when it comes to two autistic people dating each other. Personally I have not dated anyone who has been diagnosed or self-diagnosed, although I have had experiences in the past where my partners had quite a few autistic traits in my own view. It's not something that they wanted to delve into but it was something that I saw a lot. Each autistic person has their own profile, their own attachment style, personality traits, preferences, and much much more of course. And each person may be at varying stages in their autism journey. Some people might just not be aware of it at all, they might have been diagnosed when they're in anger and they haven't really thought about it much since, other than perhaps the difficulties of getting into employment and you know all those horrible things that we have to deal with. And so everyone can have their own personal level of understanding about themselves, the things that make them different, the ways that relationships might be harder for them, everyone's at their own specific place on their autism journey, their journey through life, their self-improvement. Obviously if someone is just starting off that journey it might be a little bit more difficult when it comes to relationships, whereas if they're kind of a little bit further down the line they may be done a bit of unmasking, understand themselves, understand how to integrate better with other people. That's definitely going to be a really big factor when it comes to talking about autistic, autistic relationships as someone's level of personal understandings insight into their own life as well as knowledge on the topic of autism can all be really really big factors when it comes to long-term relationship success. Also really big thing to highlight, many autistic people are LGBTQIA plus so I do have to be a little bit more broad but this will be a lot to do with kind of like the heterosexual perspective. This is the direction which I'm coming in my own personal perspective. I'm sure that there might be some different nuances perhaps dating you know the same gender, the same sex. So those are all the caveats that I wanted to cover before we get into this. Let's talk about probably one of the biggest ones when it comes to relationships and the way that autism can manifest and change those interactions that we have, the communication that we have. Both of you tend to prefer direct communication so a lot of the difficulties that autistic people can have when it comes to social interaction is that we can often find indirect communication quite difficult to understand or quite difficult to understand when we're in highly pressured social environments. So things like facial expressions, tonality, body language, all those types of things have very large impacts in the world of dating in general but when it comes to autistic people we tend to prefer to talk about things, say things directly, be a little bit more open when it comes to our thoughts and feelings and verbalizing them rather than shifting the way that we say things or the way that we look in order to give things a different meaning. So in general this makes autistic-autistic relationships really really great because neither of you are trying to communicate with this very sort of abstract subjective form of communication, you're both being direct, which is good, that's what we like. This also means that there are a lot of verbal affirmations involved hopefully, hopefully you guys are affirming each other verbally. When I mean verbal affirmations, for me particularly compliments, any time that someone tells me how much they value me or they're basically verbalizing how they feel about me rather than letting it show through the way that they interact with me, the amount of time that we spend together, all of those are the metrics. I don't necessarily as an autistic person assume anything, so until it is said directly to me, it's verbalized directly to me, I don't necessarily assume that if that makes sense. In an autistic-autistic relationship, both people giving each other verbal affirmations and liking that and liking the whole emotional explanation aspect of it rather than emotional expression, I feel like can be very very good. We also have this very sort of core concept when it comes to autistic interactions, you might have heard of it before, these are monologues where you get an autistic person going, it might be a little bit hard at the start to kind of keep the conversation flowing, but once they're on a roll with it, you mention something about their special interests that they really want to talk about, or you mention something that they can talk about, they might go on for two, three, four, five minutes speaking about something, which actually in most relationships it is not really well understood and perhaps it might just be ignored, or at least the person may find it difficult to concentrate on what you're saying, especially if it's not something that they're interested in. But in autistic-autistic relationships, I find that just in general talking to friends, talking to anyone autistic really, it tends to be that we take turns when it comes to speaking, so with my experience with talking to neurotypicals, it tends to be kind of a very quick sort of back and forth kind of discussion that sort of, it's like a game of table tennis, whereas talking to an autistic person, it's more like, you know, you play those games in primary school and secondary school, you get the talking ball, you know, someone passes you the talking ball and why you've got the talking ball, no one else is allowed to speak but you are, you have the power. It's kind of like that, it's kind of like you just pass the ball to each other after two or three minutes of talking, and I find that quite relaxed and I found it quite easy, I can sit back and listen when I need to and I can talk for as much as I like when it's my turn to speak. So that might be something that's quite good as well, another really good thing. As I said, the lack of indirect communication can make things a lot more chill. You're not trying to constantly monitor the other person to try and figure out what they're feeling, how they're trying to say something. It's all a little bit more straightforward, but big, big, but this does not mean that the person is honest and that the person addressing those problems that they may have with a relationship will happen. It might just not happen at all. It might even bleed out into indirect communication as it does for pretty much anyone. If you're not feeling quite angry, irritable, upset, it doesn't matter if you're autistic or not, people are going to notice to some degree that sort of rising frustration. I think this is a big thing that people get wrong about autistic people is that we are always sort of paragons of truth and honesty. When we say something, it tends to be the truth, but we don't always give the whole truth, if that makes sense. It doesn't always mean that they're going to be directs and honest about everything. When it comes to looking at things in a bit of a zoomed out perspective, perhaps you're dating someone and you don't live together and you see each other on the weekends or you see each other during the week and you take turns sort of staying in each of his house. I find that with neurotypicals, you do definitely have to what I describe water the plant a little bit more, meaning that my natural state of being is that I don't necessarily need a lot of interaction, one, two, three days of in-person interactions enough, but also when it comes to texting as well. I find that my friendships and relationships with autistic people, they tend to be a little bit more as and when, meaning that I don't necessarily have to continue sort of checking in with them every couple of days to make sure that there's still my friend and make them feel like I want to talk to them and sort of watering that kind of friendship plant with autistic people. It just doesn't tend to be as much of that. We don't necessarily need that constant attention, those constant kind of check-ins and things like that, which is cool and some people do. For me in particular, I feel like that takes away some of the stress of communicating like throughout a relationship, throughout a dating situation. You don't really need to water the plant. You can just meet up when you're both free. You can just talk when you're both free. There's no necessary kind of interaction that you definitely need to have with each other. In the same vein, both of you understand the need for space. So your social batteries might be a little bit more similar than an autistic and neurotypical person, meaning that perhaps the amount of interaction that you have together, the amount of time that you spend together, is a little bit shorter than average. And that's okay. And that's good. And you both understand your social batteries. There's no need to try and explain it. There's a lot of different ways that you can kind of get over that in the long time as well. And of course, parallel play, which has another hallmark of autism-autism interactions, whereby you engage in different things, different hobbies, watch different things whilst being in the company of another person. This is quite a good thing about autistic relationships, because you can both value being in each other's company, but also have your own interests, have the things that you want to do, the things that you want to spend your time on. It doesn't necessarily have to always align in, you always have to be doing the same thing all the time. You can do your own thing in each other's company. So let's go into flitting. Hey, you know, you've set the lights dimmed. You've turned on the romantic piano music that you just searched for on Spotify. You're ready to to to riz up the person that you're seeing. It's autistic riz. Autistic flitting. Different and irresistible flirting. Well, I think it definitely definitely is a lot different. Usually, flirting tends to be very indirect. As we talked about in the previous slide when we're talking about interaction, we tend to prefer the direct kind of methods of communication. And I found that flirting, when it comes to autistic people, tends to be a lot more overt. It tends to be a lot more apparent, a lot more kind of grand, you know, there might be some grand gestures involved in weaving another person or very, very clear compliments and flirting. My own personal experience is when neurotypicals have started flirting with me. I haven't necessarily picked up on it. In fact, the sort of the negging kind of poking strategy that some people use to flirt. I just take it as the other person just not liking me as not, you know, sometimes I might take it even as an insult and be like, why are you talking to me like this? And I don't find that that tends to happen as much with autistic people. Just because we like to be clear and we like to be direct, using that kind of witty banterish flirty sarcasm to poke fun at somebody can go wrong sometimes with autistic people. I don't feel like we do it as much as neurotypicals might. Eye contact is a big one for neurotypicals. And the thing is, it does impact attraction in autistic people. It may not be as needed. Meaning that I've found that no matter someone's neurotype, making eye contact with them, especially sort of in a romantic setting, is preferred. But I suppose with autistic people, it tends to be a lot less intense, like there tends to be a lot of breaks between eye contact that you have with somebody. It's not necessarily this kind of staring match of the entire time, you know, you have the what is it, the 70-30 rule, 70% of the time you're supposed to look at someone in the eyes, 30% of the time you're looking away and doing all this stuff. I'd say you could probably knock it down to about 50-50 or even lower to be honest for autistic people. But eye contact still is like a really big driver of attraction for anybody, for most people. It can be an area of difficulty for a lot of autistic people, this flirting. This is inherently because it's a lot more indirect based. But also because a lot of the advice that we get, a lot of the dating, flirting, relationship advice that we get, is not necessarily geared towards autistic people. We do tend to experience a lot of social anxiety. We just on average have worse experiences with people. And so when it comes to social interaction, especially when it's very high pressure, if it's like your first date in a while, or your first kind of relationship, which I imagine would be quite common for a lot of autistic people, it can be difficult to know what to do, to know how to flirt. I find most of the time, not all the time that I have seen autistic people, it tends to be a little bit less convoluted, a little bit kind of more direct. And it's not always like the most fiery intense kind of passionate conversation. It's very much like a conversation that I would have with anybody else, just perhaps with a few sort of compliments and things sort of mixed in in the pot. And the last thing, being direct can take some of the excitement out of the process. For a lot of people, the exciting thing about dating someone new, being in a relationship with someone new is that there is a lot of gray areas. There's a lot of mystery, there's a lot of, ooh, do they like me this much? Or do I like them more than they like me? And, you know, how do we interplay all these dynamics? There's a lot of excitement in that and a lot of passion. And some people might describe that as being like a spark, although it is good to have that kind of excitement to it and that mystery. Being direct as well with someone else who really enjoys direct communication is probably the most ideal way of going about it. Doesn't necessarily always lead to those feelings of sparks and just instant kind of infatuation with each other, but it's definitely a good way to get to know somebody. And it'll definitely be a lot more kind of calm, perhaps a little bit less complicated, a bit more simple, to just meet someone, see if you get on and just talk to them for a while and then, you know, perhaps go out and do something else. So, we've talked about flirting, we've talked a little bit about interaction. What about mutual support? What do I mean by mutual support? Supporting each other. Mutually, of course. Mutual understanding and a team mindset is very important to pretty much every relationship that you can think of, no matter what neurotype they are. When it comes to autistic-autistic relationships, both of you sort of relate to each other's experiences, difficulties, needs, a lot more of a deeper level than perhaps it would be if you were dating a neurotypical person. Things like the logistics of going out on a date, if you can imagine. Perhaps both of you are very hypersensitive to noise and particularly like being in busy places. That can be a great thing because both of you want to go somewhere which is a bit calmer. You can also, when you're out on a date and it, you know, perhaps you've noticed yourself that the lights are a little bit too bright or the music's too loud or they're starting to become a lot more people and it's difficult to sort of concentrate on the conversation and the anxieties rising. You can also somewhat relate to each other in that circumstance as well, so you might be a little bit more forthcoming in saying like, oh it's actually a bit too busy, are you okay? You know, checking in with each other, which can be a really, really nice thing to have in a relationship. It's not something that autistic people like necessarily always can do and having a lot of neurotypicals can as well. It just tends to be a little bit more heightened for us and the impact that it has on our nervous system is a lot more apparent to us and we can relate to that to that other person a lot better, which is always great. It's always good. You can support each other at social events. Yes, those things seem to take up. A large amount of our energy supplies is not something that a lot of us can do every weekend, you know, go out and party or meet friends and go in a group of people and talk and converse. It's not something that I personally can manage on a weekly basis, but it is something that I like now and again. One of the great things about being an autistic relationship is that you both understand the difficulties of these social events. So you can better plan, you can plan breaks, you can monitor each other and make sure both of you are okay, you can advocate for each other if needed. You can also help each other sort of communicate if one of you is a little bit more introverted than the other person and more or less have this sense of mutual understanding about things that you perhaps might not get with neurotypicals or at least to the same extent. Meltdown, shutdown, support, of course, really, really big things. I think you can probably get this in any relationship so long as the other person really understands what to do and also takes it seriously. Executive function is going to be our first negative for this slide. Executive dysfunction can often be difficult for autistic people. If you're with someone who is autistic, it's likely that they're also going to have some level of his executive dysfunction, which can make organization getting out the house on time. It can make staying hydrated, eating, cleaning, sorting out all sorts of different life skills quite difficult. And when both of you find it quite difficult, things just tend not to get done. It takes a long time for them to get done, which can be an issue because you don't necessarily have this one person, this neurotypical person who can kind of go about and just do these things on the fly and it's just very natural to them. You both struggle with it. You both got to kind of have a bit of a team mindset and tackle the difficult things together. Transitions can also be difficult, as I was saying, getting out the house. If you're both kind of relaxed in bed in the morning and you both struggle transitioning into your working day more than most people would, can make that a lot more difficult. Doing stuff after work, you might say to each other, we should go to the gym. And both of you, you really don't want to go to the gym, both of you, but you know that it's going to be good for you. It might be a little more difficult to transition out of after work cuddles and snacks to go into the gym. The last thing that I put is advocating for each other. And this can take many, many different forms. It can be related to communication. You know, someone's kind of speaking over you and not giving you time to process and think, perhaps someone's being a bit more confrontational. You can advocate for each other for things around sensory requirements. You know, perhaps if someone has aphid and the food that you get from a restaurant is an ideal for you, you can't eat it. Then the other person can help advocate for you in that circumstance. It seems to be a lot easier for us to advocate for other people, especially since we understand, we can understand the autistic experience so well, just from our own personal experience. But actually advocating for yourself can be very difficult at times. So having someone there to kind of, you know, push you to get your needs met, I think is a great thing. What about emotional connection? Very important part of relationships, weirdly. Who would have thought? Emotions, feelings, quite an integral part of relationships. You hammer in this joke a little bit too far, Tom. Alexofinia is very, very common for autistic people. If you don't know what it is, it is a difficulty identifying, categorizing your own emotions. So you might find it very difficult to identify that you're anxious, or that you're angry, until it gets to a point where it's intense enough for you to notice it. It's kind of like this strange threshold condition whereby those kind of background emotions that kind of sit and sort of build up throughout the day or throughout a conversation can be pretty much ignored. You pretty much ignorant of it, up until the point that it gets intense enough for you to be like, oh, hey, I am actually feeling this. Can make a lot of things very difficult. One of the reasons why it might be difficult is that love is a very, very complex emotion. It means a lot of different things to lots of different people. I found that particularly when it comes to autistic people, it can take us a little bit more time to really understand our feelings. We might spend a lot of time on our own kind of thinking about the other person. How do I feel about the other person? That process of understanding how we feel towards someone can usually take a little bit longer than usual. So in the initial stages of you're both dating each other and meeting each other, it can become a little bit stagnant, as in both you are not really sure about the other person, the relationship that you could have together, meaning that you're a little bit kind of fence sitting on whether this is a good thing or not. This can obviously be avoided if one person takes a bit of initiative and puts in the effort and really tries to kind of push the dating or the relationship forward a little bit. But it can become a little bit stagnant if both people are not really sure about how you feel, which is very common if you're autistic. Self-advocacy in the moment is difficult. What do I mean by this? ElixifyMia makes it difficult to identify and categorize your emotions. It also makes it quite difficult to identify, categorize them, and then tie that to something that someone said, tie that to an event that's happened. This means that in a lot of circumstances, the person may react immediately, not necessarily knowing how they feel about something or whether they want to do something by saying yes or saying it's okay and saying that it doesn't bother them. Whereas, you know, a little bit of introspection after a little bit of hindsight might not be something that you're actually okay with and that you might be in a situation where you would have put a boundary in place even. So this leads to kind of conversations, you know, something that you might think that is very serious and has the potential of being quite sort of emotionally intense, perhaps confrontational in some respects. It actually goes quite easy and you're quite surprised, but then a few days after, a week after, you get a text, you get a long line of text explaining why their feelings, what they said to you has changed, which can bring up old baggage kind of over and over again as the person is processing what this means to them, how they feel about it. This can make small hiccups, small misunderstandings, small kind of events, small things that someone's said into a lot more of a long process requiring space from both ends, as well as a lot of introspection and trying to come to an agreement on something that you might have thought is okay, well, or was okay in the instant, but it turns out it's not. And that can happen from both sides, because you're both autistic, you're both likely are alexovimic too. So this can make the relationship a little bit rocky in some respects, although this is sort of seen as a very neurotypical thing. A lot of autistic people, because we are humans, we like to think that our partner has the capability to mind read. I do sometimes. It doesn't make any sense. Why not just say something directly if you're feeling something, you don't have to try and communicate indirectly in all of these very subtle ways in order to get them to notice that something's wrong and ask you what's wrong. And you say, oh, nothing's wrong. Everything's good. What are you talking about? And they go like, okay, and you're like, really wanted you to press me a little bit more on this. This is something that autistic people do as well. It is, it can actually be a lot harder for us because of the those difficulties with cognitive empathy, cognitive empathy being the ability to understand, notice when someone is feeling a certain thing without them directly telling you. And so this whole attitude to relationships where you're both trying to get each other to read each other's minds can make things a lot more difficult. It makes it difficult for any relationship doing all this indirect kind of, oh, you should know how I feel kind of stuff. Generally not the best thing to do in autistic autistic relationships 100% now that should not be happening. You should not be using that as a way to communicate with your autistic partner. And you probably won't like it if they did it towards you as well. So next thing and my mouse is on the floor. I need my mouse. That's how I switch between my slides magic. The next thing physical intimacy. Getting busy with it physical intimacy of course covers a whole whole range of different things not necessarily that you're thinking one thing I've noticed just from talking to other autistic people is that like the libido that someone has can vary drastically from person to person. I know some people who are pretty much well I know some people who are asexual. Some people just don't really like it very much at all and only do it very rarely. And then other people who just want it all the time constantly they're always like it didn't to get out you know. So if you have a mismatch when it comes to libido obviously that is going to be a really big hurdle in the relationship. One person is going to not feel like they need to be met. One person is going to feel like they're overstretching a little bit into something that they don't necessarily want to make things a little bit more difficult. Initiation can also be difficult to gauge unless directly communicated. And this is what I was saying before about being honest and direct. It may not even be that you you know you may not use that indirect communication but you may not use the direct communication either and that can also be very very difficult. So you imagine situation two neurotypical people dating each other a lot of indirect flirting communication going on a lot of eyes a lot of eye contacts you know little little signs that someone might be a little bit more open to physical intimacy of of any form that's not necessarily easily gauged from from both ends for autistic people dating autistic people meaning that one person might not be able to gauge whether the other person is interested in them and vice versa. Leaving you both in a little bit of a limbo world one person is not initiating the other person isn't you don't know if you both want to do something intimate or physical or not unless you communicate so that can be a difficulty. Sensory needs from both sides can be difficult again unless communicated about meaning that certain acts not necessarily just those acts you know things like cuddling friendships you know any kind of center experience might not be the best for somebody it might overstimulate them quite a bit it might be quite painful it might be quite uncomfortable as well and so not every single person is like okay I get you know everything is all golden good often you have to have a conversation about you know the sensitivities that each of you have some of the things that you're happy with doing some of the things that you're not happy with doing and it can vary a lot person to person and it can also contrast as well between both of you so that has to be some communication about it some kind of reaching an agreement on things when it comes to physical intimacy or else you'll leave both parties you know one feeling resentment you know in not getting their physical needs the other person feeling pressured to meet that partner's physical needs the overall idea with this slide is that yes it can be a little bit more difficult it can be a little bit more nuanced there might be some other things that you need to take into account might be a little bit harder to initiate but a lot of this stress goes away it melts away when you start communicating about it when you directly like say what do you like what do you not like when you directly like say oh i've had enough now or oh i would like some more all of that kind of thing very very important in any relationship i would say when it comes to physical intimacy especially with autistic autistic relationships today's episode today's presentation is sponsored by me indeed if you are enjoying the presentation style videos that i do or the live streams or the podcasts please consider becoming a member for as little as 99p it's a random about it's a similar similar price to like one dollar a month you get a little badge next next to your name and in the future i will be putting out some member only content you know perhaps i do one of these presentation videos and i cut out a few of the slides and i put it into the the members area and that's something that's going to happen at some point so if you're wanting to support me in my self-employed journey get me to do more of these videos get me to do more of these live streams and podcasts becoming a member is definitely the best place to go to do become a member let's talk about something a little bit perhaps more intense negative and that is trauma yes autistic people are in general a lot more likely to be victimized in a number of different ways and it's not something that i'm going to go into heavily when it or specifically you can search up a lot of statistics around this it tends to be that we we do experience a lot of disproportionate victimization throughout our life not everyone of course everyone's very different everyone has different upbringings different experiences but this trauma these experiences that we have that put a negative spin on our view of people and relationships can definitely impact a current relationship if not worked through properly so this means one person might have a little bit more of an avoidant or anxious attachment style you might have a little bit more defensiveness around certain things you might perhaps not really work too much as a team and you perhaps you're both a little bit too independent and you don't really lean on each other when needed you can have a lot of feelings of you know what i've characterized before as rejection and sensitive dysphoria you can find the whole dating process relationship process quite difficult you know filled with potentials to fail or be rejected within that relationship and it tends to be if there are two autistic people dating each other there is a high likelihood that one of you's going to have experienced some negative things and it is on yourself if you have the experience those negative things to kind of work through them and spot some unhealthy mechanisms that might be going on in the relationship to make sure they don't manifest as much anymore all of these things very very important obviously not completely put aside completely focused on autistic people a lot of people can can have these difficulties but as autistic people we are a lot more likely to be victimized and this can have some real effects on relationships let's talk about unmasking and improvement what am i talking about you're on your own separate autism journeys you know you're learning about yourself you're unmasking you making all these adjustments you're understanding more about the difference between you and neurotypicals you're doing all of this this crazy self-improvement stuff you're in that sort of time in your life sometimes when you get into a relationship with another autistic person you can help each other through that journey so if you think about something as superficial as stimming perhaps you know for myself i do sometimes get a little bit self-conscious when i'm stimming with a neurotypical partner but when i'm around autistic people it's a it's a little bit less on my mind i feel a little bit more comfortable being accepted in in this environment with this other person because it's something that they also are trying to do more of there can be a little bit less stigma when it comes to stimming in public stimming with each other unmasking can also be a very big team effort so you know you can call each other out for masking too much or you know you can you can support each other in unmasking around each of your respective families or friends or co-workers can definitely be a really really good kind of team effort team play kind of attitude towards autism unmasking autism improvement can be really really positive for both and also the idea of unmasking as well a lot of people when they hear about unmasking and and they see people who have become unmasks and they once were masked very heavily they can kind of characterize us as regressing a little bit you know we're doing all of these behaviors that had kind of been learned out of us in childhood we're acting certain ways we're communicating and we're in the way that's good for us and the way that we like to communicate to other people that can look at look like regressing having a partner who is also going through that and also is wanting to be themselves more uh if you're both trying to do that and you both support each other in that and you try to reassure each other and you try to encourage each other to to continue down this passage of self-improvement it can be like a very needed thing you know just having someone in your physical environment in your life that is wanting that for you can be really really impactful there can be less social expectations perhaps your partner might be a bit more encouraging around getting support or taking steps to make their life or your life your collective life uh more suited for an autistic brain and that might be something that is mutually sort of agreed upon you might say oh this this this light that we have in our room it's a little bit too bright we should get rid of it it could be okay you're extending yourself a lot of work your boss is taking advantage of you they're not giving you enough time they're not um bullet pointing things for you like they said they would these these types of things and you know having a partner that you can go to and you can tell them about these experiences and they can you know think about themselves in the same situation understand your situation a bit better um they might encourage you or motivate you to just sort of self-advocating in those circumstances you will also both value special interests uh special interests are quite a large thing when it comes to autism also to ADHD as well but a lot of people can view our special interests as weird as age inappropriate as a whole list of different things that you know people make judgments on but when you're with an autistic person and you know that they really really enjoy a certain thing and it's something that they like doing a lot of you can really really sort of value that in each other and I feel like this is um something very great about autistic-autistic relationships because you both understand just how much these interests mean to you and so you know whenever it comes to giving gifts or going out and doing things if it's related to one of each other's one of each of the partners sort of special interests it's obviously going to be a lot better and you know so encouraging each other sharing interests um you know hearing their monologues about certain aspects of their interest and sharing that with each other I think can be a really really great thing but the last thing on this slide which is a negative thing you could have mismatch sensory profiles meaning one person might be very hypersensitive to noise other person not so much not so much they might be hyposensitive perhaps and so when it comes to stimming you know some people like to verbal stim some people like to flap and move around and and do all that kind of stuff if you find the verbal stimming to be a lot and that it actually impacts you and stimulates you a lot um it's it's a difficult one to it's difficult path to walk path to understand and sort of dissect and you know figure out how to how to deal with it one person is becoming overstimulated by another person who is trying to self-stimulate by stimming difficult situation might be something that that occurs you know it can be subtle things like one person might not have as much of a sense of smell another person might be very hypersensitive and so one person's always trying to like scent scent the rooms and clean the rooms and make sure that it smells nice and the other person's like I didn't even realize um so there are there are those differences I think and it is important to be aware of those things too and lastly let's talk about relationship progression what do I mean by this I mean the progression of someone's relationship of course god damn it like yeah no no no shit this is the way that your relationship progresses from the dating stage to being in a relationship to being in a long-term relationship to moving and move each other to having starting a family or doing whatever you guys have in mind um most neurotypicals in my experience do have a very similar kind of life in mind sort of path for relationship in mind you know you you go out on dates you get into a relationship you move in together you get like a pet or or something like that and you have children if you both want to have them you get married a lot of people have this very straightforward idea of what they want in terms of a relationship with autistic people we do tend to we do tend to deviate a little bit from those social norms meaning that there are less socially normative expectations to things because of the way that we are we might be a lot more um wanting to adopt living situations which are outside of the norm so you might think of situations where you are living with somebody but you have separate rooms that you can do your own thing in that you can recharge your battery away sort of in isolation uh you could also just have separate houses you you know i know a few people who don't live together who have been in marriages been in long-term relationships it's not necessarily something that has to happen even in the even in the longest relationships it might not just be ideal for for either of you independence is respected a lot um i found autistic people we like our independence some of us might have pda of you know pathological demand avoidance or persistent drive for autonomy as some people call it we tend to like our independence and we also tend to respect that independence and other people as well which can be a good thing um when it comes to giving each other space and letting each other do their own thing when it comes to working together as a team and being being like willfully dependent on the other person in some areas working together on certain things can sometimes be a little bit more difficult and lastly the environmental sensory adjustments you know i i very much have a very quirky sort of sense of style sense of like housing that i like sense of rooms styles of things um i also really hate white fluorescent lights and so a lot of my lighting in my house tends to be dimmable tends to be very warm huge don't have a lot of led flashing lights everywhere those are things that make me happy those are things that um help me avoid over stimulation in a relationship when you're both moving into each other moving into each other i mean that but um moving in with each other you might be a little bit more um diligent in sort of looking at your central environment and making changes to to better suit each other so that is the last slide let's go on to the conclusion what are some takeaway things from this autistic autistic relationships although touted by many people you know um idolize as many people as the best thing to do that you can do as an autistic person is to get a relationship with another autistic person these relationships still face the same issues faced by all narratives you still have miss miscommunications um you still have different needs that you have to advocate for and um talk about and communicate about and as with other relationships as well the success of that relationship still requires a deep understanding of your partner's needs difficulties and personality so there are there are a lot of ways it's kind of similar to just your bog standard relationship but also in other ways it's it can be a little bit different direct communication is preferred by most autistic people that have come across they do prefer to explain things rather than express things just in general but we we can use expression some of us if we if we want to but even then just having a preference for direct communication doesn't mean that you're always going to communicate it full stop you know autism can of course come with various co-occurring conditions anxiety depression you know all of those things a lot of different of a of a kind of neurodiversities that cross over with autism they can all present different difficulties different positives different you know problems different miscommunications person to person all of those things need to be um understood in order to make the relationship good stable happy both getting your needs met i hope i've had in this point home enough but communication is really really key to this even with direct communication um communicating about things is really really important i think a lot of autistic people who do find that they have quite a bit of social anxiety bad experiences with people we might be a little bit a little bit less likely to sort of be open about that stuff for fear of confrontation but it definitely is a really important aspect of it obviously putting an effort with the other person um making changes for the other person in a way to improve the relationship is also really important and respecting each other um mutual respects definitely like a really big key thing that uh let me know what do you think about this episode down in the comments do you have experiences dating autistic people as an autistic person yourself i would love to hear about that and is there any difference in your mind your experiences from dating neurotypicals to dating other autistic people i would really like to hear about that too and if you have enjoyed it and make sure to like subscribe do all of that stuff obviously you want to support my work memberships are always great the best and um yeah i hope you found this useful and i will see you very very soon for another episode see you later guys oh and one thing this video here it's a good one i highly recommend clicking on it