7

Sexual Relationships

Unless you are engaging the services of a sex worker (prostitute – male/female/transsexual – or rent boy – male), sex is free and it can be fun, pleasurable and help to build intimacy and connections between two people. For some people on the autism spectrum, sex can enable them to connect to themselves and their partner in a way that nothing else does. For other people on the autism spectrum, sexual activities can be very overwhelming or distressing. You may not know how you will react to a sexual activity until you are in a sexual relationship. You do not need to engage in any kind of sexual activity that you do not want to, no matter what anyone says to you. If it doesn’t feel right to you, don’t do it.

Someone who has never had sex before is often called a virgin, and when you have sex for the first time it is called losing your virginity. In some cultures it is very important that this occurs on your wedding night. For many individuals it occurs some time between the ages of 16 and 25. If you are older than this it is OK to still be a virgin. If you do not want to engage in a sexual relationship that is OK. If you do want to, that is OK too. If you live in supported accommodation you have the right to engage in sexual relationships if you want to. It is important that you only engage in sexual activity with people who are above the legal age of consent. This varies between states and countries and can be different for heterosexual, lesbian and gay sexual acts.

If you are underage (younger than the legal age of consent), then it is important that you understand that some people will try to persuade you to have a sexual relationship with them. If someone a year older than you asks you to have sex with them this is different from if someone a lot older than you asks. A much older person who wants to have sex with an underage person is known as a paedophile, and they will often tell you to keep anything they do to you secret. Even if you think it will upset them, you must tell your parents and the police as the much older person is breaking the law. However, if you are under the legal age of consent, anyone that has sex with you of any kind is breaking the law, even if they are only a few months older than you and over the age of consent. An exception is in France, where they have a specific law concerning sex between two people who are between 15 and 18 being legal, but if a person is over 18 then their sexual partners must also be over 18.

Sexual relationships should involve both (or all) people feeling good about themselves and the other person/people. They usually involve kissing and touching of mouths and bodies including the sexual parts. How this touching and kissing is done varies between different people. Because sexual parts are involved it is important that you know where they are and what they are commonly called (see Figure 7.1). It is OK to ask if you can touch somewhere on someone with whom you are engaged in a sexual relationship. It is not OK to ask to touch someone with whom you are not in a relationship.

Figure 7.1 Male and female external reproductive anatomy

Feeling anxious about embarking on a sexual relationship is quite normal, so is a sense of excitement. If, however, you are very scared or feel threatened or coerced into sexual activity, it is important to know that you can say no. You never have to do anything sexual with anyone or for anyone, even if you are married to them.

The physical and emotional sensations that accompany sexual activity are different for different people. It is fine to prefer certain sexual activities to other ones, although it is important that you do not force anyone to do what you want either.

If you are very worried about what sexual activity will feel like, you can try touching yourself before letting a partner touch you. This could be as simple as working out what kind of hand movements feel nice on your arm to more complex sensations and actions like masturbation. This will be covered further in Chapter 16.

For many people the goal of sex is often orgasm but this does not have to be the case and is not the case for all people. How people experience an orgasm is individual, as is how they arrive at that orgasm. For males, an orgasm is when they ejaculate fluid (containing sperm) from their penis and is usually combined with feelings of intense pleasure. Women can get pregnant from sperm entering their vagina so it is important that condoms (male and/or female) are used to prevent pregnancy as well as protect against sexually transmitted diseases. If a couple is trying to have a baby, then they will need to have sexual intercourse without a condom to enable the sperm to enter into the vagina and travel up to the woman’s fallopian tubes.

For a female, an orgasm is quite different and follows on from a huge amount of nerve and muscle tension, which builds up in the genitals, pelvis, buttocks and thighs of women when they are sexually stimulated. This tension is released through intensely pleasurable contractions, known as orgasm. A female orgasm is the intense simultaneous and repeated contraction of the uterus, vagina and anus. Some women feel this as one orgasm and others as different in the different places. Other women find it difficult or impossible to orgasm. Often when a woman orgasms her vagina releases more secretions and some people describe this as female ejaculation.

Some men and women climax or orgasm very easily, while others find it more difficult. Some people prefer to have one orgasm and others like to engage in more sexual activity following on from an orgasm in order to have another orgasm. Having multiple orgasms is where a person has two or more orgasms during a session of sexual activity. Sexual activity is covered further in Chapter 15.

Sexual relationships can be monogamous/closed, which means that the people involved agree to only engage in sexual activity with each other and no one else. The other form of sexual relationship is open, which means that the people involved agree that it is OK to engage in sexual activity with other people. However, some people assume that their sexual relationship is closed, but they have not actually discussed it and they find out that their lover (another name for someone you are having a sexual relationship with) is engaging in sexual activity with other people because they had assumed the relationship was open.

Polygamous relationships that have three or more members may also be closed or open. People engaged in polygamous relationships are often more upfront about sexual issues, although this is not always the case. For many open relationships there are a number of unspoken/unwritten rules which can be difficult for autistics to work out. Some of these can be:

No sexual activity with other people is to take place in the main home.

Sexual relationships with other people should be based on sex and not emotional connections.

Be open about your primary relationship when meeting possible new sexual partners.

Although honesty is vital, sharing details of your other sexual activities is usually not wanted (in some relationships the sharing of details is part of their relationship, whereas it can destroy other relationships).

All sexual activity with other people must be done safely – using condoms and/or other barriers as relevant.

No sex with mutual friends or co-workers.

However, it is up to those in each relationship to work out the rules for themselves. How this is done may change over time as well, what works when people are in their 20s or just at the beginning of a relationship may not work for them five or ten years later. Some examples of how this operated for two couples are given below.

Lucy: I thought I was bisexual and my husband was bisexual. We got married and it never occurred to me that we would have a monogamous relationship. In fact we never did. He used to drop me at my girlfriend’s house and then go over to his boyfriend’s house. We never brought anyone else to our home, but we did socialize with some of his boyfriends and their partners. I even got a job working for one of his boyfriend’s partners once. It worked fine until I got emotionally involved with this woman and started to spend time with her that was supposed to be time with my husband. He talked to me about it and finally gave me an ultimatum ‘her or me’; being an aspie, I thought he meant it and chose her. He explained later he just wanted me to see her less, which I would have done if he had said that. It can be quite hard being in open relationships if you are not really clear about the rules. I hadn’t really understood that we were only supposed to be off with other people for three nights a week maximum.

Charlotte: My husband is gay, but we really get on well and both want to have children so we got married. He has a long-term boyfriend who is also married. This makes it easy for the guys as their families don’t know anything except that they are ‘certainly not gay as they are married’. However, over the years I have started to realize I got a bad deal: he goes off and has sex and I thought this meant I could have relationships too. But, because I am straight he said I can’t because it would hurt him too much and it was different him seeing a guy than me seeing one. If I had known he was thinking like this I would have talked to him right at the beginning to say ‘either we can both see other men or neither of us can’.

T.J.: I like open relationships because for me sex and love are two different things. I tell each new potential partner that I am only looking for a no-strings relationship and, if we do have sex, then I remind them after that I am not wanting a relationship, because I have one, but I am interested in having sex with them again. Of course if the sex wasn’t good, then I don’t bother with that! I just say goodbye.