 Good afternoon, you mysterious, sexy, attractive human being. Welcome to the Asperger's Grave YouTube channel. Today we're going to be addressing another one of the episodes of the dating and autistic series. The series for you who are in neurodiverse relationships wanting some advice and wanting some understanding of your autistic partner. Of course, all of the things mentioned in this video would be very key and very important to understand and be aware of if you're an autistic person, but this is going to be primarily focused towards the neurotypicals in this relationship. So, we're going to be talking about ways to keep autistic people in relationships happy. To fill up their world, you know, they've gone their life, they've had really bad experiences with people in relationships and friendships and possibly family, the medical system, the school system, the workplace. But you've come along this shining beacon of attractiveness and communication and love and understanding when you are into their life and they are so grateful that you are there and you're grateful for them and everything's lovely and jubbly. But there are some things that perhaps you're maybe not doing to maximise the chance of you attracting the person that you like, an autistic person that you're possibly friends with or you had communications with. You thought, they're a good couch, I want them, they're going to be mine. Or it could be if you're in a relationship and it doesn't seem that they're very involved, it doesn't seem that they're very happy with it and you want to try and put in a little bit more effort in order to get into their world, understand them and make the relationship a whole lot better. We're going to be addressing five different things that you can expect, one of which will be coming after I do my little spiel at the end of the video. So you can look forward to that. But the first one, number one, establish an open dialogue for communication, for emotional communication. One of the things that I've noticed between autistic and neurotypical people, especially in intimate relationships, is that there is a lot more focus on verbal stuff, a lot more focus on direct methods of communication. Now I know it's not always verbal, it could be texting, it could be signing, all those different types of things, but it's all direct communication, it's all words in different forms. And verbal communication of emotions is our primary way of connecting with people, expressing emotions through words and description and basically trying to get into how someone works, how they feel in a certain situation, why they feel that way, what their thoughts on it, what contributors are there to that situation. We like the detail of that put into words. And that's not always the way that neurotypicals work. It tends to be a lot more, what's the word? It tends to be a lot more below the surface, it tends to be a lot of the way that you two interact, the expressions, the body language, the fun, the humour, all of that seems to be very implicit. One of the things that perhaps you may not know is that we are in a constant state, well a lot of us especially if we have anxiety, of not really knowing much about how the relationship's going, how you feel about us. The thing is that due to our difficulties with Kong's event fee, our past experiences with perhaps bullies and people who were really toxic and bad for us, this can lead us to be very unsure of ourselves in relationships. A lot of the time we have that lingering thought over our head that maybe we're missing something, maybe there's something there that we're really not aware of and it's going to have an impact on our relationship. From the autistic side of things, having that open dialogue to communicate and that the safe space and the non-reactivity to voice our opinions and thoughts is a very useful thing to help connect us with other people and validate that we are doing some things right and that you do like us in some way. And that can be a really useful thing for us and make us feel a lot more comfortable, a lot more stable in the relationship. And if you know things about autism, we don't like the unknown. We like to know what we're doing, how to do things, what way to do them. We like to know what's going to happen. The more that you talk about things, the more that you have an idea of what's happening in a relationship. On the neurotypical side of things, it may be that you are wanting that emotional connection. You're not really feeling like they care for you and they're not really thinking about you. You don't really feel like they give you the attention that you need and they don't particularly react in a way that's favourable for you if you were to tell them something important. And you know, there's a lot of factors that come into play with that like alexophymia and cognitive empathy and all of that stuff that I've addressed in, I believe in my neurodiverse video, perhaps a video on alexophymic. Autistic alexophymia rather. And there's a really big key players but the most important thing is to establish that safe environment, that non-reactive environment so that you both can more things over. You can balance off each other and think about aspects of the relationship and also share things that you like about the other person and that you appreciate. It does sound a bit like it's a lot of effort and that you can't have to put yourself through. It's kind of like a cancelling office, like relationship therapist kind of feel to it. But in practice, if you do it consistently, it just becomes a part of your relationship and the more that you maintain it and the more that you keep it consistent, the more likely that you're both going to share things and have that open communication which is also great in any single relationship. More important, autistic, neurotypical relationship. Number two. Evolve their special interests, their sensory stints, their likes and dislikes into date ideas. Yes, of course. So, for example, myself, if you wanted to create the best date header, it would be a combination of getting a massage, that deep pressure sensory stimulation that calms me down for days on end and also a bit of flashing lights so maybe like a disco or a really disco or, you know, somewhere that's maybe not a bustling, loud, horrible club that you have to excessively consume recreational legal highs like alcohol to cope and to stand in their environment. Going off with a bit of a tangent here. Basically, I like bright colourful flashing lights so obviously the disco is going to, a really disco or an ice skating place where they have a disco light is probably going to be very, very attractive to me. So, in context of you and your relationship, do you know what they like sensory-wise? Do you know what they don't like? Do you know what their intense interests are? If so, why are you using them? Why are you incorporating that into things that you do together? I'll all the time it can feel a little bit like it's a, um, like it's a mind field and maybe you haven't even had that conversation. You haven't even talked about it, the things that they do like. Maybe they're not really aware of the sensory differences between autistic and neurotypical individuals and maybe that's something that you need to explore together. But the point is, is that you are going to make us feel a lot more comfortable and happy and euphoric and, you know, just stable in your relationship if you incorporate things that they enjoy, incorporate things that calm them down. You know, if you know that they don't like bustling loud atmospheres, maybe don't take them into an echo chamber of a bar and chat to them there and have dinner there. Maybe go to somewhere quieter if you want them to be head of heels in love with you and just absolutely appreciate that goddamn soul that resides within your lovely cranium. That is probably one of the best pieces of advice you can do in terms of having fun together, in terms of exploring and trying new things. Number three! Possibly one of the best tips that I could give you and the most important tip, you need to understand autism. Plain and simple. Just now getting around it. If you want to have the most intimate connection that you can with your partner, you need to understand what autism means. You need to understand possibly the science behind it, why it happens, possibly a bit about the social causes that are going on around it, the social things that are happening, neurodiversity and medical models and social models and all that. But you also need to listen to autistic people, talk about their experience, talk about how they feel. You need to delve into that world a little bit just to understand. You can have all the training in the world working with autistic adults, perhaps more classically classical autistic people in a sort of supported living situation, maybe a care worker, and you can have all the experience in that but actually having an intimate relationship with someone who's autistic is very different to caring for them. It's a lot more intense, it's a lot more confusing. You have a lot of expectations on them and they have a lot of expectations on you and there's a lot of emotions going about there. So it's really important to understand. It may also be that the other person doesn't understand themselves, they maybe haven't delved into it, they may just have got the diagnosis when they're younger, they struggle with these things, it doesn't make them who they are debatable. But that's a mindset that many autistic people do have if they haven't researched further into it and tried to understand themselves more. Having the awareness of these differences is not a bad thing. People say, why put a label? Why make someone different and give them a label? Why else would you give someone a label? If something's different, it doesn't mean that it's bad, it just means it's different. Although you may not have the same experiences of life, you can also talk about it. You can also compare and contrast. You know, I talk a lot about crossed wires or maybe if you understood certain aspects of it it would be a lot more clearer that the path to getting out those crossed wires and getting over it and moving on with your life and sort in your relationship out, you need to untangle those wires, you need to understand them. Going on to your part, M.S., it may also be that you really don't understand what being a neurotypical is like. Maybe you need to research into psychology, maybe you need to listen to people who are talking about relationships and feelings and intimacy and psychology. You know, there's so much content on YouTube that, you know, if you substituted a 20 minute video into your day and then maybe you're watching Emmerdale on the TV or watching a cartoon at the end of your day, why don't you just sneak in a little bit of relationship stuff on YouTube? There's so many great creators out there who are doctors, who are relationship specialists and I'm sure if you just give it a chance you'd be able to learn a lot more about yourself, how you work in relationships and also how to, you know, to best express those needs that you have, those feelings that you have in words, you know, with the verbal communication style. It's going to help a lot, a lot, if you understand where you're coming from and you understand a little bit more about where they're coming from as well. It makes finding that middle ground of understanding a lot easier. So, there's going to everybody's favourite topic to talk about, my favourite topic to talk about. That's sarcasm, by the way. Talking about intimacy, yes, the whole thing that people do together which is very strange and animalistic but important to a long healthy relationship. You may find in your relationship with an autistic person they are either very, very under stimulated all the time and they don't really want to engage intimately or you may find that they're completely the opposite and they want it all the time, whenever they can and they just keep pushing for it all the time. You may find yourself in one of these two situations. Obviously not everyone's like that but just what I've heard from my friends and what I've experienced, it seems to be that way. Under turned on all the time or over turned on all the time. As I said in one of the previous points differing sensory systems is very common in autistic people. That's not just in general. That can be situational. It's important to know what types of sensory stimulation your partner does and doesn't like. Perhaps a more tame example would be light pressure versus deep pressure. I find deep pressure highly, highly relaxing whereas the small touchy unwarranted just sort of brushing sensations of light pressure it just irks me. I don't like it at all. So if you were to go into having an intimate relationship if you're going to be intimate in an instance where you didn't know about that stuff there's going to be a lot of things that you're doing that they don't like. This may be just an issue of communication around intimacy. I think most relationships could do a bit of talking around it looking at their dislikes and likes. If you were to generally do stuff on a constant basis that they don't like and they don't feel comfortable talking about it then that's going to be a part of the relationship for a long time and they're not going to want it as much. So just having that conversation about what they like and what they don't like and trying to incorporate and try different things together the whole exploring as a couple is quite important to building that sense of trust. So yes, knowing the likes and dislikes, very important also you need to let them know what you like and dislike just as a reciprocal thing as with all of these points but it's also I think it's quite important to realise the importance of low anxiety and comfort and being relaxed for physical intimacy if someone's anxious, if someone doesn't feel comfortable then probably not going to be that open to being intimate. In some of my past videos I've suggested things like giving a massage perhaps doing some exercise, anything that reduces anxiety and makes them feel more comfortable is going to help with being more intimate on a more regular basis. It may require a bit more effort from you to make them feel fully comfortable and fully into it and fully intimate but it's going to work if you put that effort in and if that's something that you want from that long term neurodiverse relationship then you kind of need to put the effort in. They need to put the effort in of course to understand themselves a bit better what they like it may not have ever thought about it setting that environment right and getting the right build up to it is just as important as the actual acts it can't just be something that you expect and that you like we need to do this or why haven't you done this we haven't done it in such a long time that's the best way to close someone off to enjoying that situation because they're going to feel a lot of expectation and things like intimacy it takes a while to learn what someone likes it takes a while to learn how to do things right and if you have all that expectation on yourself it's not going to make the experience enjoyable but yes, intimacy, safe comfort talking about it very important for all relationships specifically for autistic neurotypical relationships so that covers the four points that I was going to give you but don't worry there is another one firing its way on the way it's on the train right now I'm just getting a telephone call next topic coming very soon maybe in a couple of minutes I hear this lovely image that I have in the background that keeps coming up off and on now in a game while I'm recording which is very annoying you can see a picture of me acting fairly provocatively you can expect lots of pictures like this when I should know this is a very... I don't know why I've got this one up to be honest I don't feel that comfortable with it if you want to stay up to date with my life the kind of work that I'm doing I do a lot of work that doesn't really get put on YouTube doesn't really get put on my podcasting for Teotie a lot of the stuff that I'm doing at the moment is working with other people on their podcasts on their videos on public speaks speeches I'm trying to learn presentation skills to try and deliver training to workplaces and there's a lot going on behind the scenes and not all of that is accurately fully expressed in my YouTube videos because it does take me a long time to get around to recording them and editing them and putting them out and doing all the social media stuff around them and all that jazz if you want to stay more up to date my social medias are the place to go a lot of good content on that similar to this video I'm doing today there is going to be a post that's coming out which is the written form of it so if you want to go check that out and if you want to get in contact with me you can find my contact stuff on my website thomashenley.co.uk so there's a lot of exciting things that are coming down the line strong and fast and intimate click that join button click the subscribe and the like and all that jazz the thing that every single YouTuber asks you to do and it's very annoying I find it annoying but once you subscribe I'm going to to like I'm going to it's not swayed by what you're saying but there is some research behind it so I'm just going to chuck it in anyway so the last point oh where the ends Tom you bloody hate these god damn speeches that you do these rants about your social media and your website just get into the point there is no getting away from it those auties tend to be a bit deficient inherently deficient just from birth in social ability in emotional ability you know obviously we can work on them over time and if there's skills and you can flex them and you can even get better than most neurotypical people if you try hard enough but inherently our baseline it is a difficulty and I've seen a lot of a lot of cases where people sort of report feelings of infantilization and report feelings of that sort of carer carer autistic person dynamic that is not good I think that anything that you do for someone anything that you you know plan on doing consistently over a long time or just in the moment it's always good to have a conversation about it or at least some acknowledgement at least some do you want me to do this for you the thing is that we tend to be a lot slower with things and we also tend to be pretty anxious when it comes to socializing even though we want it and even though it will help our mental health specifically for me I'm fairly extroverted as crazy as that may sound being an autistic person I'm about 50-50 the way to really help them is to encourage them to develop that side of them I'm not talking about forcing them to making them feel bad about not doing it I'm talking about offering support and encouragement if they say that they're going to join a club you should encourage them to do it definitely you should try anywhere that you can to help them do that and you should also keep an open dialogue about things that they find hard or ways to notice if you're finding a situation hard specifically in a social group setting just having those little extra bits of support just that little awareness that maybe they may find this harder than most people would very important, lovely thing that you can find as an autistic person in a partner so when he understands that yes you are an independent person and you deserve the respect but you also struggle in these areas and if it's something that you want the autistic person wants then you can help them and it's definitely going to intensify the relationship that you have in a good way of course make you feel more connected more one more supportive of each other and you know maybe the things that you struggle with that they find pretty easy and pretty straightforward even around social situations in hindsight and analyzing in you telling them about your experiences there's a lot of ways that you can have that very reciprocal relationship and also support each other in the process so I'll let you go now thank you very much for tuning in to another dating and autistic episode I really hope you've enjoyed it and I'll see you in another episode very very soon take care