 Good day my lovely listeners. You are listening to The Forty Autie Podcast. Tune in every week to explore inspiring stories and insightful information that dive headfirst into the world of autism and mental health. With all those tantalizing tongue twisters out of the way, let's get into the show. Hello lovely people and welcome back to The Forty Autie Podcast. How are you doing today? It is still a very bright sunny day in the lovely area of North Yorkshire. We're still within the COVID isolation currently and although the new guidelines have come out, I'm still out of work but we've got a lot of more opportunities to do things like this. Do a few more podcasts, do a few more YouTube videos and stuff and today we're going to be talking about autism and demisexuality and I'm sure that many people out there will be a little bit confused about the term demisexuality. It is sort of a sexuality that's covered by a broad spectrum of asexuality. There's a big sort of ace community around this. That's what they call themselves the aces. But today I'm joined with Yo Samdi Sam from the very popular YouTube channel. She does a lot of videos on autism and she's in the video on demisexuality as well. So how are you today Sam? Hi I'm doing alright thank you. Yeah we're still sort of partially in lockdown over here in the Netherlands so yeah probably about the same as you guys over in the UK just getting a bit sick of it now. I understand that. Whereabouts are you from in the Netherlands then? Well I'm British but about seven years ago now we moved over to the Netherlands to, that sounds cliche, start a new life, not really. We moved over because we didn't like living in London anymore for various reasons and we thought we'd make a go of it and here we are seven years later. That's very cool. I've always thought about moving over to the Netherlands because one of my good friends from university sort of did one of her years abroad in England. We sort of met at Manchester Uni and she lives in Amsterdam. Me and my friend went over to visit her. It sort of stayed and saw the sights and the museums and stuff and it was just such a nice place. It was so quiet, everywhere it was clean, it was really nice. I wouldn't say that Amsterdam is the most quiet city, it's rather touristy and certain parts of the Netherlands are very densely populated but it's always kind of a short drive out, you can get to nature which is really nice. Well I guess my experience with the Netherlands has been Amsterdam and Rotterdam but the place that my friend lives is sort of on the outskirts of the city so it wasn't around the sort of touristy places which was quite nice. Yeah it's a very chill country I have to say. Yeah and the people are very nice as well I've found. Maybe that's just the the tourist mindset that I had on but did you seem to be quite chilled? Yeah I think so. I think the Dutch are a very kind of a pragmatic people you know sort of no nonsense, very direct which it can be good, it can be bad, it can come off a little bit abrupt when you are British and you kind of been brought up. Well I wouldn't say mincing your words but there's a certain way to sound polite in the UK right and that's not how you do it in the Netherlands. We don't have any of our delicate sensibilities. Exactly it's just get right to the point you know say what you think which is refreshing but you know as an autistic person I grew up with one set of rules the UK way of doing things so it's been quite hard for me to adjust even though I appreciate the directness it's still a bit like are you sure they're not being rude to me? I can understand that. I spent a little bit of time abroad in Thailand and they're sort of known to be the land of smiles and the very sort of they take politeness to a new level which I think because I'm from like the north of England obviously there's sort of social rules and stuff for a little bit more I guess I guess more direct and more to the point and all that whereas in Thailand you're not supposed to talk about certain types of things and you know it's you know like anything to do with talking about like the Kings or the Royalty or they've got a very big culture of respect over there and I find that quite hard to adjust to I think. Yeah I mean any kind of cultural difference is I don't know on one hand I've traveled quite a lot and so I find that I'm quite sort of open-minded in some ways but it's very hard to actually adjust your own mindset it's one thing being open-minded and respecting people but then living there or sort of being told to adjust your mindset like that is something else and it's actually quite a bit harder than I thought. I suppose there's a difference between sort of going about and being a tourist as opposed to actually sort of being a part of a community and a new culture I guess. Absolutely yeah and I mean there are lots of people who live here who just they stay in the expat community and that's kind of like their bubble especially in Amsterdam because English is an official second language of Amsterdam the city so you know I think 60% of residents are not much. 60%? Yeah so exactly so as you can imagine there's a very big expat community and it's sort of like an expat bubble in some ways which is sort of good and bad in a variety of ways. Would you like to give us a little bit of a background into who you are and what you do as a job and a little bit about your YouTube channel? Absolutely yep my name is Sam, 34 years old every year it takes me a little bit longer to do the maths on that one and yeah I'm British and moved over to the Netherlands and so about just over a year ago I decided to start up a YouTube channel after I was diagnosed with autism when I was 33 and so basically I started my YouTube channel kind of as a way to process my diagnosis because when you get diagnosed later in life you sort of have to go back over every memory you've had and you see it in a different light so I was kind of the first video that I uploaded was about my diagnosis and kind of like it was very stream of consciousness just me kind of thinking about all the ways that autism has impacted my life and I didn't even realise it and then so I was doing I always just wanted to do a YouTube channel because I thought it would be fun to be honest and so I was doing a few videos here and there and then a few months in I was just getting a really great response to the videos that I did on autism so I kind of doubled down on that and so it took about like six months before my channel just really started growing and then last year I mean last December it was just it was it was insane you know I think I got like 8,000 subscribers in a month or something and so it's just kind of kept on climbing since then which is great but I mean I can imagine and your YouTube channel is currently at 31.3 thousand subscribers and 1.66 million views in total how many 1.6 yeah yeah it's um yeah it's sort of like I really like analytics I'm a kind of numbers and patterns person but sometimes you get very disconnected from from what that means in terms of because I'm still just doing exactly the same thing I did when I started you know I make my video every week I put it online it's like nothing's changed but all of a sudden I have you know stadiums of people watching which is a crazy isn't it right I mean I can't I can't emphasize massively with that I think my I think I think it does get to a point where you you get to a certain level of numbers and it just becomes normalized I guess yeah and it's also meaningless it's like you know I would get a thousand views and I'm like okay but what is that what is that so it's it's a very kind of strange place to be you know it's not like if you have I don't know if you're an actor or something and you have a TV show that as well and then people recognize you on the streets it's it's kind of different because your life doesn't change that much and yet maybe sometime like so I post in Facebook groups or something even unrelated to autism and sometimes someone be like oh my gosh I love your channel I'm like oh shoot I guess I should have a fake Facebook profile so yeah it's it's weird and it's also kind of weird because I never really set out for fame fame is not something that I'm aggressively pursuing necessarily but it does give me an opportunity to make a difference and it gives me an opportunity to change the narrative around autism which I think is the work that's keeping me going because there's only there's only so much I can keep talking about myself and my experiences and my diaries from when I was a teenager you know it it's gonna get boring and it's it's not what's important is is my journey my journey is a part of it it's part of the the reason why I got here but but now that I'm here it's more like you know there are so many things that I want to change in the way that the wider public sees autism and autistic people and that's not just it's not just about me that's about the autistic community or not just the community but autistic people autistic adults and children yeah I completely I completely get that like I think I think one of the sort of the motives of me starting the podcast is I'm trying to like compile all these and sort of amazing amazing people like yourself to be honest and and get everyone together and have a little bit of a discussion on that stuff it's it's very hard to break into the mainstream media about these things as I've experienced recently about sort of promoting my recent documentary yeah I mean I think people think that autism is just such a minority and not many people are interested in it actually but you know I talked to when I talked to people well you know before lockdown out and about or something and they're so oh what do you do and then I explain about the YouTube channel everybody I talked to are like oh well my little brother's autistic or I have a cousin who's autistic like everybody knows somebody really who's autistic and so you think well why isn't this being shown on on mainstream media what is it about autism that makes people think that you know we should just be ignored when autistic people are some of the strongest most interesting people around I think there is sort of a rhetoric in the media that autism is all about children and people in care and stuff like that and I think a lot of the stuff that's on TV and a lot of the sort of newscasts are sort of like either either from a sympathy angle or from a sort of feel-good story angle it's never about like just getting people down and chatting about some of some of the many issues that face the autistic community and I think the problem with people like me and I'll make an assumption people like you who are vocal about autism is that we don't fit there they're preconceived ideas about autistic people so that's like we can't be real autistic people they want to meet real autistic people you know like the ones in care homes and it's like okay we are different for sure but me talking about autistic experiences that's not in validating that's including and sure they have they have struggles that I don't have for example you know being less able to talk maybe fluently maybe at all but the their autistic identity is still it's still that and they have needs which are similar if not exactly the same so really I think it's just it's a way of silencing autistic voices because well you're too high functioning we don't we don't want to talk to someone like you because you don't have any problems it's diminishing my autism which as I'm starting to the more I talk about it the more I realize how much it has impacted my life my ability to get a job my ability to maintain friendships and and things like that so it makes me it makes me pretty angry when when they try to separate into well you are one of the the high functioning autistics and these people that they're in they're in a home because it's like okay well what if I hadn't had my husband around to support me in my 20s when I had you know my mental health wasn't good in my 20s if I hadn't had someone like that I I don't know I could have ended up in an institution it's sort of like well you know I'm an atheist but like but for the grace of God there but for the grace of God go I you know like I I could have ended up in different situations and I really think it was luck and the support of the people around me and privilege in a lot of ways that's meant that I'm able now to be seen as high functioning but that's not my autism isn't high functioning it's it's just I'm lucky I guess I guess that's the root of it I think there is definitely a a large aspect of sort of growing up in the in the right environment having supportive people around you whether it's at home or at school and also like I think because because of the statistics around sort of workplaces and pretty much every single sort of social environment it can be hard for autistic people to sort of go through go through those systems without any support I suppose and I think one of the the main things that I've seen from from doing YouTube in and podcasting and all that kind of stuff is that there are a very significant amount of people who don't have that and have grown up in in quite toxic and difficult environments and I think that those those are the people that need the sort of things that we're trying to push I mean policies and stuff that we're trying to push into society the most it's not for for example I mean some it's not it could be for me and you and for everybody in the autistic community but I feel it's mostly for those people who don't really have a voice and don't really have like the confidence and and all of that it really breaks my heart to see comments you know from people who are really finding it tough so yeah you said that you were diagnosed quite late in your life and that you sort of look back on your memories and sort of delved into that a little bit and tried to process them could you give us some examples of the type of thing that you did want once you got a diagnosis well it wasn't really sort of an active process my brain just I am probably I'm on the fence about getting a diagnosis but I most likely have ADHD is sort of inattentive type and so my brain would just be like hey remember that time in school when you went absolutely and you swear on the show or well you know when I you can use light you can use light words you know hell and down I will use them but you know basically I had a meltdown but I didn't know it was a meltdown so it's just like remember when you were in school and you were in the queue for or you were trying to get into lunch early and that that you know the teacher wouldn't let you in and you basically just had a complete meltdown and got into trouble that was a meltdown that was an autistic meltdown and so instead of thinking why did I act that way why am I like this I don't understand myself I just I just snapped out of nowhere that's how it seemed to me at the time but looking back on it I can see okay well I was hungry and my blood sugar level was probably low at the time and I was in the cafeteria which had fluorescent lights and lots of noise and so it's that's just one example of the way that you know my brain throws me up a memory from my past and goes hey what about this memory that you didn't understand at the time what do you think about that now and I go hmm okay well through the lens of autism these things make sense they didn't make sense back then and that was why it was so hard growing up undiagnosed because life didn't make sense to me I didn't make sense to me and it's only now that I can put things together and and and look back and and see that I acted completely in some ways completely rationally in every situation as to how you would expect an autistic person an autistic person to react in those situations I think like my my obviously my experience is a little bit different because I was diagnosed about ten years sorry I mean it was wasn't early per se and in comparison to some of the people that I know who sort of diagnosed when they were like four five or six but throughout secondary school I guess knowing that I was autistic gave a little bit of a understanding to sort of my anxiety and meltdowns and stuff I think most of the other windows gonna say you torturing a cat or something it's going crazy that doesn't go on for too much too long what was it gonna say yeah I think most of the the things that I sort of reflected back on was the sort of nuanced sort of differences that I had during school so like in social interactions and situations where I was relatively quite confused and and and all that it was I think a lot of the sort of looking back on things and reflecting was after I learnt more about autism in my adult life and then obviously look back on my past and dissected the issues that I had yeah well that's the thing if just because you get a diagnosis as a child or as a teenager doesn't necessarily mean that you will understand or learn much or much good information about autism and that's something that you kind of have your left left to your end of ices almost don't you yeah well it's it's like it's hard to learn about autism when you when you've got when you're in school because it's like for out school you you're constantly trying to analyse situations and make sure that you're safe and you've got a study and you've got the whole routine of school and then after school you're sort of drained and your batteries empty so it's it's like it gives no time for you to actually look back on things and reflect but you know in adulthood I guess when I started going to uni and stuff I had a little bit more time to think about stuff and so reflect on things which was quite helpful I think so from our previous emails you told me that you identified as being a demisexual as I said a lot of listeners maybe you know that may be quite a new term for them could you explain what it is and how you came to realise that you were demisexual it's only something that I've heard about relatively recently and I think I probably I probably came across a YouTube video I find YouTube has been very the algorithm has been very helpful in offering me interesting videos related to my own life but basically Demi Demi sexual Demi means half so you can think of it as kind of like halfway onto the asexual spectrum although I wouldn't say that I am asexual so what it essentially means is that it takes you a long time to develop sexual attract sexual attraction to a person you might not do it very often it might be just a handful of people in your life that you've ever been sexually attracted to and it's usually after having a very close bond developing a very close bond or friendship with someone so the whole kind of dating setup is not very conducive to allowing demisexual people to really develop good relationships because it's not that's not the right situation you know a lot of people will go out on dates with someone go oh yeah I found I found them pretty attractive and they were and and for me I just I didn't have that experience so it was actually quite difficult not knowing this part about me growing up because I basically spent I don't know 15 years thinking that there was something wrong with me and I might have heard about asexuality but that seemed like something very different from from what I was feeling which was just it just was the very had to be very particular and very right for me to to feel that kind of sexual attraction and the thing about demisexuality is it doesn't it's got nothing to do with whether you're attracted to men or women you can be gay lesbian bisexual or straight and be demisexual and you know it's also not got anything to do with your gender identity so it's kind of something that that is more about how you experience sexual attraction to anyone more than about who it's who it's to and I know and obviously demisexuals vary you know we're not we're not all the same I'm not deeply embedded I don't think there is I don't know if there's much of a demi community but I've met a lot of autistic people who are also demisexual I guess we kind of express the same is bafflement a word bafflement we're all a bit yeah confused at how people you know because society especially these days the culture is very much like you know this well tinder culture or like reality shows like everybody's kind of sleeping with everybody and getting in their pants immediately and and the thing is though like I spent a long time like I wanted to do that it wasn't that I had a moral objection that's the thing that people often don't understand this isn't about like oh you're just a classy lady or something like I'm really not a classy lady this isn't about that it's just I don't I don't feel that until something much more profound has happened and that's not saying that I'm kind of like better than anyone or anything like that it's just something that I don't feel until a particular point and I may never feel that towards most people I mean I could probably count on I don't know one or two hands the amount of people that I've actually been really genuinely attracted to and that's including celebrities you know like people when I was especially when I was young actually no Leonardo DiCaprio was my very first crush but like I still don't think I felt sexual attraction towards him I just thought I really liked him you know but so and and I think most teenage girls especially they will feel a level of sexual attraction towards actors celebrities or something and I just sort of didn't with with a few exceptions and I mean now I'm going on to my mid 30s and I still I'm not racking up the number of men that I'm that I've ever been attracted to it's kind of still a very very small number luckily one of those is my husband luckily family's I the reason why I got in contact contact with you and wanted to talk about them these sexualities because when I was in in Thailand I saw I was introduced to asexuality because I think that there was a point of which because when we're in Thailand obviously we were doing research and we were doing work and stuff but sort of on the the off weeks you know when we had some time a lot of my friends were sort of very much into like the party kind of side to life I guess so it so it I did sort of go out quite a lot and I was just confused because I've had this this thing that that has happened a few times sort of going on so I'm nice out and stuff and I really don't feel any any need or want to don't engage with anybody in that way or at least you know I didn't at those times and it's and my friends sort of made quite a lot of comments about it as like why are you doing anything with this this girl like she's attracted to you in this way or whatever and I don't know it just it just sort of puzzled me a bit so I sort of did a little bit more reading into it into asexuality and stuff and I thought hey you know maybe I'm asexual and then obviously I read sort of the ace spectrum and had a look at what that was about and demisexuality seemed to be quite sort of congruent with with my mindset on these types of things I guess it sort of goes up and down I guess like and I never feel the need to just you know have any sort of relations in that way with with strangers but you know that the sort of baseline attraction that I could have was somebody it was up to a limit you know like I needed to have some sort of talk I needed to talk to them and develop some form of bond or connection with them before having any any types of those feelings I mean for me it's it it was very much like that but I think to the extreme I mean this isn't just about not wanting to I don't know be with strangers because I can completely understand that majority of the people probably aren't like that but but it's even you know you dated someone for a few months and maybe you've even been intimate with them but you still don't feel anything and they they're the ones one of the few people that you can stand then it starts to be like okay well is there a part of me that I'm not understanding fully because I think that's the difficult bit is is you're kind of viewing things through society's lens of how appropriate your feelings are and how appropriate your your dating world is and you get a lot of mixed messages from society especially as a woman you know it's like you know be available but not too available and that that's a that's a fine line but in terms of you know your feelings it's like okay well you date someone you get to know them a little bit you date them for a few months and and then at that point you know you can you can move forward with your relationship but what happens if you just never feel that way it really starts to make you think even though you want a relationship it makes you feel very different and some of the comments I did do a video on this last year and and I thought I explained it quite well because I notice a big difference between the way that me and my peers were I mean I had some friends and they they would go from relationship to relationship kind of thing you know the serial what are they called serial monogamous and I just thought where are you finding all these people that you like this much you know how can you be attracted to all these people I just I couldn't get I I don't understand it and even though the people I liked it was never like never really super attracted to them until and it wasn't really just like oh you have to get to know them a little bit it's it's more than that it was like I have to have a really deep you know what's the opposite of superficial like a profound connection like we we had to have delved into the intricacies of our own minds and connected in that way and have be completely understood and have these sort of experiences and as you can imagine that comes across a little bit intense when you are on the dating scene so I probably probably scared some people off in my time I guess it is it is very much like a generational thing you know with the sort of cultures and stuff because I'm I'm 23 so I'm a little bit I'm a little bit younger and I think you know as as more generations are coming up it's it feels very much like everything's getting a lot more sexualized I guess it is it is difficult especially with dating I wouldn't I don't think I'd class class myself as a as a demisexual I think there are aspects of me that would lead me to you know maybe not engage with the norm I guess with dating but then that's kind of you reach the intersection of sort of sexuality and autism in a way because so much of dating behavior and social norms ties into into autism or or asperges I don't actually know how you refer to yourself I'm sorry I should have asked no it's fine I usually refer to myself as being autistic really but you know that that intersection of how you relate to people that you're attracted to and the kind of the socially appropriate way to go about that I think that that that sexuality and autism overlap so much and and I think possibly that's why you see so many autistic people who are LGBT plus or you know gender non-conforming or something like that because what other people do isn't as important to us doing things the set that certain way isn't as important yes yeah I definitely think we're more of the type to figure out the social rules and what we're comfortable with rather than sort of trying to push ourselves to adjust to something that we don't understand or don't believe in I think there is a lot of aspects to that just to give give everybody idea of what the sort of the asexuality spectrum is about it's Pete someone can be asexual but still want a romantic relationship with somebody and someone can be sexual but not want a romantic relationship with somebody and that's it's sort of like a from what I've seen it's sort of like a grid so like you've got one line sort of an XY axis kind of thing so you've got you've got these terms a romantic and asexual and depending on what what you feel and what you want to do and you can sort of fall anywhere on that sort of spectrum there's there's a lot of terms and I think if I was to properly sort of go through all of them there are like there are things like gray sexual, lift sexual, ace flux or recipro sexual yeah from from the statistics and stuff that I've looked at it does seem that there is quite a high link between sort of falling somewhere on the asexuality spectrum and autism from what I've seen and why do you think that is I think that a part of it might also be to do with your preference for touch and physical contact you know autistic people famously don't like hugs I actually do like hugs but they've got to be really tight ones I hate these sort of like little what are they called well you know like the wet fish yeah that sort of thing and and so if you are autistic and like let's say I don't know picky about the way that you touch that's that's going to have an impact on on your sexuality and and all that and and so it's kind of it's very hard to in your own mind sort through okay well is this a preference that I don't like being touched is this sort of neurological or is it cultural or is it just my sort of hardwired sexuality is sexuality hardwired I don't I don't necessarily think so for me to to enjoy being touched by someone I have to be close to the person so not just in a sort of sexual way but just you know you know how some people are just when they talk to you they touch your arm or something I really don't like that it really you can't imagine anybody doing that to like a tall muscular man I think but they do it to me they do it to me yeah I'm six foot three and but they still they still do it especially when they know that I'm autistic which is a little bit of a difficulty I think like a lot of people just sort of something that I came across on Instagram and saying that when autistic people are younger people view them as being very mature a further age but as we get older people for some reason viewers has been immature no that's no that's totally it and I was exactly the same like around my peers at school I was just like why you guys being so immature like this like why do you need to act like this and now baboons exactly and now when I spend time with people my age I'm like oh my god guys like how have you managed to age so much like mentally age because I still sort of now I feel more like a teenager than I did when I was a teenager it's sort of like a psychological Benjamin Button or something my dad makes a lot of jokes about Benjamin Button so that's just tickled me yeah do you know what it actually said in my I find it really funny how this was in my diagnostic report you know that they give you when they say congratulations you're autistic it was just like she looks somewhat younger than her than her age I'm like why is that relevant it's not like I was wearing I don't know I don't even know what young people wear these days but like you know I was I felt like I was dressing pretty normally I don't know what warranted and this was before I even had pink hair yeah so yeah I think there is something about autistic people seeming young but I think it's also like we we don't we're not bound by social confines in in what's appropriate to act and oh now you're now you're a mother you need to cut your hair a certain way and and look like the rest of the mums so yeah it's kind of like a bit more free I suppose free to do whatever because I'm not gonna fit in anyway so why not have pink hair I get that I get that I do I never feel a need to dress for my age I just if I see something that I like or a look that I like then I'll I'll try and achieve that look or I'll try and buy those clothes that suit my personality the most it's never ooh should I really be wearing this and a little bit too you know too old or too young to all of the 23 oh my goodness just you wait mr oh but back to your original question about talking about like why do you think that there is an intersection between sort of the asexuality and and autism I think also I don't know if you've heard the term alexa alexa thymia yeah which is the difficulty understanding the motion exactly so it's kind of like you don't recognize or understand your own emotions like you if you know you're feeling something but you can't quite label it like you don't know who you're feeling sad or whatever and then that's pretty common for autistic people and I think that that that contributes that contributes if you're used to kind of an overly analytical look at your own feelings something like sexual attraction to somebody it's very hard to analyze that one isn't it I guess yeah as well even even more so in the first instant yeah I you have to feel it even now it's not something that you have to feel it to an intensity yeah like it has to be I found that I don't I find it very difficult to sort of pick up those background emotions it has to be extremely sort of intense and and strong for me to notice them I guess but this is the thing even though when I first met my husband I barely noticed him because I'm sure he'll appreciate this but you know it was in a crowded a crowded place there were lots of people that it was noisy there was so much going on so I met him but it was like I I didn't have enough concentration maybe it's the right words you know it's like yeah because I'm so sensitive to my surroundings in that way to noise and to visual visual noise as well you know like I'm noticing the details on people shirts or buttons or the way that they've done their hair or something like that like my attention is all over the place in in these situations so I mean gosh when did I meet I met my husband in in October and we didn't start going out until the following July I think so you you're sort of quite good friends for a while yeah I mean well it was mostly it was mostly kind of online because we weren't living in the same city but you know but but in that point we we had got to know each other to quite a deep level you know we had been talking on you probably don't remember this I don't know but MSN messenger was the thing back in the day you know before before I didn't even know what people do on these days snapchat yeah well that's yeah exactly so we you know we'd been talking pretty much every day and and so we we knew each other quite well and we became very very close and and so actually our first date we went on holiday together which sounds ridiculous it's just like hey should we just go on holiday together okay it was so it was basically just like we got to the point we we saw who the other person really was and then we went on holiday and I was like well don't try any funny business you know let's we need a twin room for sure but yeah it was only on that holiday that and you know I it was just just the two of us there wasn't a lot of distraction and then I was like oh I really like him and everyone was like yeah didn't you know no I didn't I really didn't I I thought I thought he was really really cool but then it was only after I'd had that experience being on a holiday it was just the two of us and and it was like it was like something just clicked in my head and I was like I really like him it's almost like a trigger moment you know that helps you realize and I think a lot of that is related to alexa thymia not understanding the relationship between you know your feelings and then being able to put a put a label on yeah I get that I've tried to explain sort of the emotions and stuff and I find it quite difficult to there's no sort of standard in my head to what point you know what level of intimacy I'm I mean it just it seems to my level of intimacy seems to progress very very very cautiously and slowly because it's like I'm not sure what I feel and then I'm not sure you know I have to sort of analytically analyze and think about all the good good characteristics and the the bonding moments that we have and then sort of sort of approach it in a little bit of like a scientific method kind of definitely I totally do that as well and it does make me feel a little bit like a little bit like sort of like a robot I guess yeah but it's it's not like I don't feel those things it's just that and I can't perceive them in an enough clarity to act on them in sort of like an instant I guess well I guess that that sort of links into sort of like the next question and because of that sort of snap snap decisions and sort of being romantically impulsive what are the the most common problems that face people who are demisexual in the dating arena well I mean I think number one problem is that it's not a very widely heard of or commonly used term and I think not knowing that about me was the hardest thing because I was trying to make myself be normal as as to what I thought it would be and of course this ties in so much with with my feelings about not knowing I was autistic as well but not knowing that demisexuality ended as a teenager I probably I don't think I knew anything about asexuality and so looking for explanations of why you're not like everybody else this is from a sort of dating perspective and I had I had some friends at school who were gay and they were kind of going through that and I was like am I am I a lesbian because I don't feel attracted to to most men and of course it never occurred to me that to be a lesbian you have to be attracted to women instead but it was like but I'm not attracted to men does that make me gay it was a very well you know the 90s was like there's still quite a lot of homophobia even if it's not quite so overt but definitely growing up with with like you know you're so gay was an insult and of course now that insult is you're so autistic which is great isn't it you know we've really moved on as a society but sorry what's the question the the things that demisexuality struggle with I think dating arena dating in general I mean like even if you know that you're that you're demi it's it's very hard for people to other people to understand that I mean the comments that I get on that video are just like you're completely normal this is just what women are like and I wonder if it's like maybe like in cells making some of these comments this is what women are like no women want sex and you know it's like well maybe not if you like that but it's amazing the amount of people who don't believe me when I'm like this is the term that has described to me it's described why I'm completely different to everybody else and people turn around and go well you're just like everybody else and I'm going no no no I'm I'm not this is what I'm trying to tell you you know so it's it's very frustrating because people don't think it's a real thing and it's just like you know there is there's no with sexuality it's an identity thing so so people have to take your word for it and people have to believe you and people find that very hard even with an autism diagnosis I still got people telling me I'm not autistic and I'm like okay but so so how on earth should I prove this to you how would you even prove that you are demisexual to someone I don't I don't even know but but it's me telling you my experience and rather than saying oh I just want to be special I want a special word for what I am it's like well okay it's maybe not very widely understood but this is a term that is the closest that I've come to explaining how I feel and my experience with with dating and with you know sexual attraction and stuff like that so it's it's very I think society makes makes it very hard and it would have been really helpful to have understood this when I was single and when I was sort of dating or trying to because dating never went well for me as you can imagine being undiagnosed autistic and of course I didn't know why which made it so much harder because you know dating culture these days even in the last well pretty much since the advent of online dating things have really changed to be much more fast-paced and kind of like throwaway yeah yeah people have got a lot more opportunities to talk to people and to date people so it's like if if they don't reach this impossible impossibly high threshold of what they need to be a connection or a spark or something in the first date them they're just gonna look for someone else they're not gonna sort of give you the time to get to know you rather than exactly making a snap decision yeah and I think this is obviously this this impacts autistic people as well because I mean I'm unless I meet someone that I have an absolute immediate connection and spark with and those are usually actually also autistic and ADHD people it really it takes me a long time to open up to people and and so for a lot of my my well especially early 20s you know I was masking so heavily so I was kind of like okay who do you want me to be you know spending all my energy trying to mask trying to be the person that I thought I was supposed to be to be liked and to be accepted and it just got it got me nowhere you know I didn't I wouldn't even say I had failed relationships I failure to launch was really the the problem I had I never got anywhere with with anyone really apart from my husband so it's just as well I did I suppose looking back on it bit depressing in any situation where you are the minority in a certain mindset it's gonna be more difficult to find people who are like minded and or at least at least open minded enough to listen to you because I think like well one of the questions that I did want to ask you was as we said like people don't think some people don't think demisexuality should be a thing because I mean one of the arguments that I've seen a lot is that it's not too dissimilar to having a low sex drive which I don't agree with obviously no but what are your thoughts on these comments well having a low sex drive is completely different to being to only being sexually attracted to a small amount of people because if you're with that right person you can have a very high sex drive because you are attracted to them I mean you could also have a low sex drive and be demisexual but the two things are completely separate and so yeah I don't know I mean obviously I spend a lot of time kind of analyzing and thinking about things and there are some people who may not have even thought that being sexually attracted to people in some way is kind of distinct from having a sex drive of your own but I think that's the same with with asexual people is that they do have sex sometimes you know and so people find that very difficult to kind of understand and so I think maybe just to understand it people need to stop trying to make everything fit neatly and just listen to people about their own experiences you know because like I said I well I cannot possibly speak for every demisexuals preferences or anything like that we're all different we might have things in common but at the end of the day we're all going to experience demisexuality slightly differently so you can get an idea of what it's about but there might be some demisexuals with a low sex drive for sure or with a high sex drive and so it's yeah it's difficult to talk about I don't I don't normally talk about sexuality a lot because I'm so busy talking about autism you know but it's it's definitely interesting and it's and it's to be autistic you go through a diagnosis process and you get that kind of stamp of approval which isn't enough for somebody some people but it's still there and yeah everything to do with sexuality is completely self-reported there is no there's no test for sexuality is there apart from maybe self tests on the internet or so it's it's very much like you just have to listen to people and when people tell you that this is the way they feel or this is the term that that describes how they feel the best then I don't know believe them I guess well I suppose it's I think a lot a lot of people are very quick to assume that these types of things are you know for example just for sort of saying oh look at me like I'm part of this small minority of people just just trying to trying too hard to try and describe yourself with a term but it's not it's not about that from what I've seen it's just about clarity I guess yeah and understanding understanding yourself and having having a term or a label you know some people are so opposed to labels but learning just learning about the word demisexuality was so empowering for me because it was like oh it's a thing it's not just something that's wrong with me and I never knew how to describe it it's a thing and that's important and that's the same with autism actually because all this time I've been internalizing all of these traits and thinking well I'm desperately bad at this and I'm this and this and this and I'm a horrible person and I'm terrible at this and why can't I do this and that is not good for your mental health but the minute I realized wait a minute this this is autism things started getting better and it's not like things are easy but having exactly you know why and having a term that you can use to describe that to other people is powerful cool just sort of round up what we've talked about would you like to give us sort of three main points or or things that you want people to take away from the podcast right three main points so demisexuality is is really a term for having a limited amount of sexual attraction to people and something that only develops as as we've we've said after going through a significant bonding or after becoming extremely close to them it's a thing it's a real thing and you can tell me that this is how all people are but this is not how people are otherwise they would behave differently so it is it's a real thing yes this is my lived experience um that's two things um and I guess just you know if if you think oh my gosh this sounds like you just you know go down the research rabbit hole and and look into the the ace spectrum and maybe look into aromantic if that if you think that sounds like you um you know research demisexuality just read about it until you find something that that fits because if you've always felt like everybody else is kind of different and you don't know why there's there's probably a term for it on the internet somewhere these days yes that's the joy of living in 2020 there aren't many joys to 2020 but seriously everything's on the internet now have you got a uh last point for us um check out my youtube channel oh yes of course yeah I don't talk much about demisexuality I've done I've done one video but it's mostly about autism uh neurodiversity uh I'll be doing a little bit more on executive functioning in the next few months I've got a little mini series planned for that and I'm also sort of well I I I I constantly tell people it's okay to self identify as autistic and and I'm sort of on the fence about whether it's okay for me to do that with ADHD so I'm kind of in the middle of deciding whether I want to pursue a diagnosis of ADHD as well so I'm hoping to do some content about that in the future because that's a very interesting one that the intersection of autism and ADHD so your your youtube channel is yo samdi sam sam yes you can probably type in a misspelling of it and it will will still come up on youtube um yeah that's actually it's a a childhood nickname of mine I like it and you have your social medias as well uh yeah I'm on instagram at yo samdi sam and I kind of do twitter but um not so much there's I don't pay much interesting stuff on there so I'm just like don't follow me on twitter it's boring but yeah I definitely think you should go check out um sam's uh youtube channel it's it's it's grown it's grown very very quickly and it's there's a lot of good videos on uh about all sorts of different topics and as uh as you said sam like put one out every week yep yeah I try to I try to get one out weekly and then I do live streams every month or so and uh and yeah it's a it's a really nice little community of of viewers I mean people say that youtube can be very toxic and that is the case you know on the comments on on my larger videos but but the core the core community is just uh really great um so I I just I just love like chatting to chatting to viewers and and stuff like that so yeah I hope that your listeners will become my my listeners um yeah you steal them over exactly well they can listen to listen to both of us exactly yeah okay let's let's go for the last question which is always a an interesting one um what does autism mean to you sam to me autism is about having a different perspective on the world from from the majority and that comes from a neurological difference but your perceptions of the world inform everything we we are all you know meets brains encased in meat sacks uh trying to sense our way through life aren't we and some of us the autistic ones are just sensing things a little bit differently and and I think from a very basic level our perception through our senses informs a lot of our social behaviors and and everything else so for me it's it's like very autism is like the the very basic layer of of who I am and and all of my other behavior comes out of that and being autistic in a majority neurotypical world sort of you develop coping mechanisms um and and so on so I hope that was meat sack I like that term to describe my body yeah yeah me too you seem to you seem to um to like a lot of uh those sort of um terms I picked up on something on your demisexuality video which is um monkey lust monkey lust yeah that's how it feels yeah for everyone else I absolutely I love that it's great monkey lust but this is the thing you know growing up as a teenager in my in my 20s that's that's how it seemed like everyone was to me until I understood that I was actually different you've got it you've got to sort of take those um um those things and make me a little bit humorous don't you or else you'd sort of get caught up when um sort of the more negative aspects of it I guess oh definitely yeah you can you can really feel sorry for yourself being autistic and demisexual like there is room for that but um I think humor humor is a coping mechanism to me so uh that's been the way that I've made sense of it all has been through humor well thank you for listening to us you meat sacks brainy brainy meat sacks you wonderful meat sacks with a lovely little neurological difference or just a general uh neurology um if you want to check out the 40 other podcasts you can find it on Spotify Enka and Apple podcasts uh we think I've got about I think up up until this point I've done about 18 episodes so we've got a lot more to come out and this is probably going to be going out a little bit later but um you can also check out my youtube channel Aspergers growth on youtube of course and some of my social medias which is twitter facebook and instagram at Aspergers growth and of course the Aspergers society documentary which has recently got quite quite a lot of views and I'm very happy with the support and the feedback that the autistic community is is giving me and it's got a website www.aspergersinsight.com go check it out if you were fancy looking at some behind the scenes footage thank you very much for coming onto the podcast Sam thank you for having me appreciate it no it's been fun have you enjoyed have you enjoyed it yeah yeah it's always uh it's always nice to chat with people because you know it's it's gets a little lonely doing youtube to be honest just talking to a camera so it's it's always nice to to talk to other people who kind of do other creative things with regards to with regards to autism looking forward to watching the documentary I actually didn't uh didn't get a chance to see it yet so yeah I'd be very um eager to see what your your thoughts of it is thank you everybody for listening to us ramble about autism it's always a very therapeutic for myself and I hope that you've got something out of this episode have a great day and I'll see you later meet sacks yeah bye meet sacks love you guys ready bye