Published on 12, July, 2020
My fiancé is autistic but he went a long time not knowing.
It was my knowledge and work with children with autism that made me pick up on his very autistic traits. He got diagnosed 4 years ago.
We work nornally very well together he tells me often that he's grateful that I'm educated and know how best to support him.
The one thing i just don't know how to move forward with is our sex life. We've been together for 6 years and we've both been through so much. I dont want to be too graffic here so im going to try and be straight to the point. In 6 years we've only successfully made love once. We both want to have children but i don't know if we can. Sex used to be painful for my partner until he had a circumcision. He wanted it done so that we could try for children. Since then he's no longer in pain which is good but whenever we try he looses his errection and always has done. Bar one time after his circumcision, every time since then we've failed. When we've sat down and spoken about it, he tells me that he wants it and he tries to think of all the things that make him aroused but then his brain fogs out and he goes down and takes him ages to get back into it. If intercourse isn't involved he will stay errect and ejaculate with no problems at all. For a long time i thought it was me. Until he tried to tell me what goes on in his head. I feel really alone in this and i wondered if anyone else with autism and a partner struggles with this too and if there is any advice anyone can give me or to even guide me in a way that could best help him. He tells me all the time that he'd love nothing more than to have his own child with me. But unless we move past this we never will and it breaks my heart, I'd love nothing more than to become a parent with the love of my life. It hurts every day thinking that i Will never become a mom, never know what it feels like to feel a mothers love and the same emotions for my partner. Neither of us know what to do to make this better. So if any of you lovely human beings can even just relate even a little, you'd be helping us so much
Hi. I was diagnosed last year at age 44. We have a 15 year old and we sort of went through the same thing. Masturbation, while difficult at first, was not a problem. Orgasming with my wife definitely was. This is how it goes: my issue is I'm physically under-stimulated so things like touch need to be pretty firm for me to feel anything. Paradoxically, during intercourse sensations (breathing, skin, the sheets, noises) are all happening on a conscious level and have to be actively managed to prevent being overwhelmed. Along side this I'm running intimacy/reciprocation routines (I'm aware that this sounds mechanical) in order to respond to what my wife is feeling and doing. Along side this I'm entirely conscious of what my erection is doing/feeling and fighting to stay in the sexual mindset. What I'm trying to say is that nothing nothing nothing happens automatically and as you can imagine with all this stuff floating around I'm my head it all gets to much and everything goes sort of numb. Anxiety about this feeds back into the loop and it gets harder and harder to stay in the moment eventually leading to reluctance to initiate or want sex (with anyone other than myself) entirely.
The solution i can up with that allowed us to conceive was to:
Stop trying to think of thing to keep me aroused and instead focus on aspects of my wife's body that excite me. If I start feeling numb, I slow down and focus on kissing and touching. This generally "distracts" me enough to allow my erection to return in a more unforced way.
We got a bit kinky. Different materials feel different and different clothing exposes different parts of the body. By playing around and exploring this we started to figure out what my buttons were and how to push them. Foreplay foreplay and more foreplay and get creative.
Practice makes perfect. Pre and post child sexual intimacy was something that had to be practiced. Schedule it if you need to. Ours is Tuesday afternoons. I know what to expect and it takes the whole misreading of cues stuff out of the equation. Drop any ideas you might have about spontaneity. I personally find it annoying and the worst thing you could do to me is surprise me.
Laugh. take breaks. If nobody has an orgasm, its Ok because it's still fun to do and we're closer afterwards.
When I first me my wife 20 years ago I thought that I would never orgasm with another person. My first sexual partner put so much pressure on me to *** that I started to fake it (Yes, men can and do fake orgasms). Masking isn't just about pretending to be socially NT. It pervades all levels of human interaction. I honestly believe that it was only when I stopped performing and started experiencing that things finally fell into place. I hope this helps.
Exactly - there's a million things that can distract the mind in a bad way and take the fun out of it - so it's all about controlling what's going on in your head to re-focus the attention. Luckily, these days, there's an entire industry providing all sorts of fun materials & toys to help things along.
Personally, I'm hyper-sensitive to everything - temperature, texture, noise, touch etc. and there are some very effective ways to get control of it all. If you have an open mind.
I could write so much here but I suspect it would contravene the site rules.