 Hello you lovebirds! Welcome back to another episode of the Dating Autistic series. Dating and Autistic series. In this series of videos I will be covering the common pitfalls that come with dating an autistic individual, the problems, the good things, the bad things, the good things, the bad things to help you understand autistic individuals and all the oddities that come with us. Today we are talking about physical contact and affection, which I know is going to be a very hot topic of interest, especially in neurotypical autistic relationships. Maybe you're dating an autistic person or an autistic person is showing interest in you because you're so amazing and beautiful. Or maybe you're just trying to understand what went wrong in a relationship, post breakup. Or maybe you just have a very strange interest in what it would be like to date an autistic person. Yes because we are so attractive in our social misunderstandings and our general aura of being a little bit out of tune in the world. Oh so sexy and mysterious. Is my partner actually attracted to me? Why don't they like French kisses? Why don't they want to cuddle with me as much as I do? If you've ever asked yourself any of these questions then this video is for you. So for the first part of this video I'm going to be talking about sensory profiles. Autism is very often correlated with a different sensory profile and this basically means that we are either hyper or hyposensitive to the various sensory-like experiences that humans can have. One of those aspects is touch and depending on whether they're hyper or hypersensitivity, sensory seeking or sensory defensive it differs greatly from person to person. When you first meet an autistic person for a date they may struggle to either hold your hands, you know put your hand over your shoulder in the movie theater and they may not necessarily go in for a kiss. But when you get into a longer term relationship with them these things are not likely to be a problem. It might also be worth mentioning that if you are currently dating an autistic person and they haven't gone in for a kiss it does not mean that they don't like you. It's just a very potent combination of hypersensitivity and social anxiety. Having hypersensitivity to touch and being very sensory defensive so wanting to avoid it is obviously going to cause a lot of complications when it comes to relationships. It's not like we hate or want to avoid all physical contact all the time it just means that we struggle a lot with either prolonged contact or certain types of contact. This can be anything from long periods of cuddling on the sofa to french kisses and of course everything's sex related. The next topic of conversation the reasons why this area of physical contact might be quite difficult is social anxiety. For most people social anxiety occurs when they're in a new situation or with a new person and yes autistic people are going struggle with that a little bit more than average but for an autistic person sometimes this social anxiety can stick around for a long long long time even after the first date. We especially struggle in situations where there's no set social code or way of behaving that is normalized or accepted. Displays of affection is one of those areas that everybody has their own idea of what's acceptable and what's normal. Some people feel very strongly about not displaying any public displays of affection whilst other people actively encourage it and get upset if you don't. Because autistic people struggle a lot with ambiguity and not having a concrete way of behaving not having a social code that's generally accepted and normalized it can make situations like being around your partner in public or especially sex quite difficult. Sex is a mind field with lots of different taboos lots of different likes and dislikes and one of the problems with it is that not everybody is comfortable with speaking openly about it. Openly enough to have a solid idea of what to do when and how to do it. Basically it is the epitome of anxiety and ambiguity and depending on the person everyone has a different level of experience in that kind of arena so if they don't have a lot of experience with it and there's all that ambiguity it's gonna be hard not in that way oh god didn't mean to do that didn't mean to do it I promise. So what does all of this mean for your relationship? One of the difficult and most notable things is that a lot of neurotypicals and neurotypical aspie relationships may feel like their partner doesn't want them physically or that they're just no longer interested in you. It's important to recognize that for a lot of autistic people this really isn't the case. Some prolonged contact and the intensity of certain activities can be extremely emotionally draining for autistic people especially if it's expected every day and on a very regular basis our capacity to show that physical affection may also be lowered by bad spells of anxiety or depression which is oh so common in autistic people or if they have been exposed to intense sensory or social environments the previous day this can make it especially difficult if your ideal for a nighttime ritual is to snuggle up before bed and sleep together in each other's arms until you both slip into an unconscious state together it's a bit weird when you break it down like that but it can make it difficult sometimes we just need that physical space in order to relax after a hard day and if we're not in the right frame of mind or we can't cope with that level of physical contact we won't go to sleep we all have certain levels of emotional and physical expression and contacts that we need to meet in order to feel satisfied in a relationship even with the knowledge that we can find physical contact in certain situations very stressful and draining it may not mitigate the feelings of rejection or the feeling of being unwanted by a partner sometimes you'll just forget that your partner's on the spectrum and especially when you're in the midst of an argument or if you're having a particularly emotional or stressful day so how do we solve this how can how can we help how can i help you to improve your relationship in this manner sometimes that combination of lack of contact avoidance of certain intimate activities can leave you feeling a bit numb and dull inside especially when that's combined with not really being on the same wavelength and the fact that your autistic partner may not show the extent of the emotions that they feel but thankfully we tend to be very blunt and truthful so if you ask us about any aspect of this it's likely that we're going to be upfront and honest about it when in doubt just ask an aspect personally i feel that short bursts of physical contact is a lot better than long prolonged stints of physical contact when you're both finished up with work and you come home and you relaxing try to give them a little bit of physical space just to sort of stretch out and get comfortable before you ask if they want to cuddle if they are stressed a good way of combating that is to offer them a massage i may i understand that you don't want to be massaging your autistic partner every night but if they are feeling particularly stressed or anxious giving that massage is a good way of calming them down and they'll be more likely to be more physical with you verbalizing that need for physical contact will be a good idea our needs and our desire for physical contact may be a lot lower than average so just making them aware that you need a bit more of that physical attention would be a good idea it might be a good idea to experiment with different ways of sleeping for example i'm a lot more comfortable with like spooning or something like that rather than you know like holding people up it looks like i'm going to do some kind of jiu jitsu maneuver find things that are a little bit less overstimulating for your autistic partner another good one would be replacing french kissing with normal mouth kisses might be a small thing and it might make you a bit sad to say goodbye to those frenchies but if it improves your relationship and it makes them more likely to kiss you it might be a good idea when it comes to sex yes it might be a good idea to try and relax them put on some calming music have a massage give them a massage go it again with a massage thing but god damn does it work one of the difficulties around sex is that a lot of autistic people tend to be alexophymic so it means that we struggle to notice our emotions or bodily sensations so you may need to take a little bit of the driver's seat to try and put them in the mood of course if you don't know if they want to be intimate in that way the best surefire thing to do is just to ask them i know there's a lot of emotions with feeling rejected or shut down if you ask them if they want to and they say no but even asking if they want to be intimate beforehand might put them more in the mood it might make them more likely to do it so that wraps up just about all of the tips that i have for you guys let's think about some of the considerations and round up the video so yes autistic people as i say in pretty much every single video are different in their own way not every autistic person has an aversion to physical intimacy and sometimes your autistic partner may be so intimate that you just don't know what to do with them especially if they are hypersensitive and sensory seeking you may struggle to keep up with them oh my back hurts sitting like this one of the best ways to facilitate that physical connection that physical contact is to make them feel safe and relaxed so maybe offer to help with that stress and anxiety a little bit more often i know i've said this in the video but aversion to physical contact hypersensitivity all of that malarkey it doesn't mean that they don't find you attractive they aren't attracted to you anymore they don't want to do all of that stuff it may just mean that they don't want to do it as often or not as much when they're feeling particularly stressed it's hard to describe why it's so overwhelming for us but if you take into consideration what i've said i believe that it will improve the satisfaction in your relationship a whole lot more and lastly it's important for your partner to meet you halfway relationship is a two-way thing it's not just you trying to look after them they've got to make sure to meet your needs as well you have needs emotional and physical needs and if they're not meeting that then you're going to be resentful of them and that's not healthy for a long-term relationship so work out what works have an honest conversation open up the communicative channels adopt new ways of sleeping changing french kissing to kissing all of that good stuff offering massages of course having that open communication can do wonders for a relationship any relationship but even more so in a neurotypical autistic relationship so thank you very much for watching ze video i hope you got something out of this it's been a very difficult video for me to make i don't particularly like talking about intimate things it's not something that i particularly enjoy but i think it's important i am happy to unpack every aspect of the neurotypical autistic relationship for your viewing pleasure as i said in the last video this video series is is very much centered around my personal experiences and reading so it doesn't always carry fully to another autistic person everyone is different and every autistic person is different as you've probably heard many times on my channel a relationship can always be worked on and improved with the willful participation of both parties so with that in mind make sure to stay subscribed to the asperger scroll channel click that little notification bell and therefore you will be able to get notified when another episode of the dating autistic series comes out you can expect to see one of these episodes every two weeks and in between those i'm going to be doing videos on autism and mental health for your viewing pleasure i'm saying that a lot i don't know why many hurts it's not good to sit like this maybe i need to rethink where i should shoot videos i hope you can agree it looks a lot nicer even though the sun is very much going down it's very much going away come back son oh he's coming tomorrow oh no in the next episode i'm going to be talking about how to tell if an autistic person likes you so stay tuned for that episode stay cool stay attractive stay oh so lovey dovey in that wonderful little relationship that you got there and um yeah stay hydrated stay cool stay fresh what is that that cut down see you next video oh my leg my leg