I’ve been with my partner for 5 years now and sex is becoming more and more infrequent.
We’re both somewhere on the spectrum and we find it hard to communicate about having sex and when it does happen it tends to be an awkward interaction. I’m all in for making noise and doing anything but my partner really struggles and gets self conscious in most cases when I try and initiate anything. This has been consistent throughout but I feel like our sex drives were just better early on and it was the period where we were doing more exciting things, trying new toys/equipment etc.
My partner doesn’t really like being touched and there’s a lot of sensory things that ruin the mood.
I’m always trying to communicate to see what they want or how they want it or anything like that but most of the time when we do it it ends up being a ‘just do whatever’ and its really taking a toll on my self confidence even though I’m assured its not me.
I’ve always defaulted as a top in my relationships but I really want to explore being submissive which is even harder to negotiate as it makes them even more self conscious being in charge even with assurance or guidance,
Just wondering if there’s others who have been through the same thing and have any advice to share to help us revitalise our sex life and open the door to trying new things.
My wife and I are both neurodiverse. I’ve got ADHD and she’s autistic. The way she described things is needing to have all of the right things in life in the right boxes. As soon as things are in the wrong boxes then she really struggles to feel sexual in any way.
I’m not suggesting I only pull my weight when I was sex, but for sex to be ok the table I also need to make sure that we are sharing the mental load of a relationship and parenting, and it isn’t disproportionately on her shoulders. Sometimes this also means me picking up extra things in life where I have capacity, and this isn’t just about us having sex but in general I know it helps her overall.
We also found that we just needed to find our way to communicate about sex and our needs. She really struggles to actually talk during any kind of sexy time, and she feels it ruins the mood. What we’ve found helps is talking in the car. She’s doesn’t then feel like I’m wanting it to lead to sex so it takes that pressure off, and we’re in the car anyway so it’s not like we have an excuse to run away from the conversation. You just need to find a way to communicate that works for you.
My husband and I are both ND. Sometimes things don’t line up between us in the bedroom, especially if we are feeling bad, or tired or distracted. Talking to each other and communicating what you want and need helps a lot.
Hey @_Johnny, I’m AuDHDi and my OH is NT so we’ve had some mismatches over the decades.
RSD made it very difficult for me to initiate or communicate my needs/desires.
Fear of being percieved meant it was hard to express myself, make noises, acknowledge I was enjoying myself, that I liked something.
The need for novelty to maintain interest resulted in me getting bored very easily, sometimes within a minute or less of anything we’d done before, or even of repetative actions.
I could go on.
I was late diagnosed and our improvement really came about becasue of it. We both began to understand, accept and even use it to our advantage.
The difficulties haven’t gone away and they’re still hard to overcome, especially the RSD and perception, but key for us has been talking away from the bedroom and making a concerted effort to change our mindset to kindness and curiosity, rather than frustration and judgement. We both wanted things to improve and learned we both had our own unseen hurdles to over come. So now we can laugh about it. Not at things or at each other, but together. Sex is utterly ridiculous if you think about it so we try not to take it too seriously.
Novelty is one we use to our advantage. So we understand that I need variety in place, time, actions, positions, toys etc. and my OH realised she really enjoyed the result of that. We’ll often go to hotels to vary location. We’ll try to get it on outdoors when we can and privacy allows. We’ve loads of toys and keep them handy so we can use what ever grabs us in the moment.
So yeah. For us, the biggest thing initially was my diagnosis. That was a lightbulb moment. Then it was learning to talk. Acknowledging we weren’t were we wanted to be and had no idea what to do about it, but that we wanted to and could work it out together.
I’ve actually just been diagnosed with autism and given a list of support services, one being for relationships… maybe it could be beneficial for you to look into and see if there’s any relationship support available in your area or online for helping
Hi @_Johnny I’m also neurodivergent and I can relate to a lot of your experiences. I don’t have all the answers because we’re still working on it ourselves but a few things came to mind:
I think you’ve identified the biggest thing that you need to work on here. We also struggle to talk about sex but those conversations really need to happen if you want to improve things. Have a think about where and when you are trying to have conversations about sex. Maybe mention to your partner that you would like to talk about sex and how you can both get more enjoyment from it and find out where and when would be best for them? I prefer to talk about things outside the house, either a quiet walk in the countryside or a busy restaurant over a glass of wine where no-one is listening.
We have also found speaking to a relationship counsellor helpful. The counsellor was very ‘matter of fact’ about sex and didn’t seem at all embarrassed which helped to normalise the conversation and made it less awkward. The more you talk about sex the easier it gets.
Are you sure that they don’t like being touched at all or are there certain types of touch that are ok? There is some touch that I can’t tolerate and some that I like. Just to be confusing, these preferences can change depending on my mood. Again, understanding this will need more conversations and some experimenting. There are a lot of sensory things going on during sex which can be a nightmare! I haven’t overcome this myself yet but I’d say that the first step would be finding out what your partner really dislikes. You can the start experimenting with things that they might be ok with. Touch through clothes or other materials might be an option too, this creates a barrier and avoids direct rubbing or contact with things like lube that might be unpleasant.
I would probably leave this alone for now. Work on building their confidence and your own. Once you are able to talk freely and have confidence in what you both enjoy, then you might be able to talk about this a bit more easily.
I hope that helps a little and I’ll be following this thread with interest.
I’m AuDHD (my wife is NT) and sensory sensitivity can definitely get in the way sometimes, but I just try to communicate how I’m feeling so that she understands what’s going on.
She knows me very well though, so she knows that sometimes things like the temperature and noise levels can bug me and take me out of the mood. We just try to control those things the best we can. She also knows that if I’ve been really stressed out, I’m probably not going to be in the mood. And I’m always very honest with her, to the point that I opened up about being bicurious recently
I can relate to so much of this. Opening up about my kinks and the need for novelty has definitely helped my relationship with my wife. I was also late diagnosed and my wife was pretty vanilla before I opened up to her about a lot of stuff, but she’s been very open minded and trying a lot of new things has helped us to be closer.
