Autistic young people create guide to relationships and intimacy
This Valentine’s Day, autistic young people are sharing their advice on how to navigate dating, sex and relationships.
Dating can be complicated for anyone, but for autistic people who often find it harder to read body language or understand unspoken social rules, it can make navigating relationships even more challenging.
To support their peers, a group of autistic young people from Ambitious about Autism’s Ambitious Youth Network have developed a set of blogs and audio recordings about relationships and intimacy, with support from Sex Ed Matters. The guide aims to help other autistic young people navigate issues like consent and intimacy.
Young people were inspired to create the resources due to their own experiences of inadequate sex and relationship education at school. The Higher Education Policy Institute found only 6% of students leave school feeling “confident” navigating the reality of sex and relationships.
Susannah Carter, an autistic young person who took part in the project, said:
Us autistic people live and experience life differently to non-autistic people and because of this, the way we can view relationships and dating is completely unique.
A lot of autistic people don’t receive any relationship and sex education because society views us as too childlike to ever need to know this stuff. I want autistic young people to have access to what I needed: accessible information and be unafraid of the taboo of sex education.
The resources explore themes such as flirting, reading body language and communicating with potential partners, as well as exploring challenges around intimacy in relationships.
One autistic young person, Frankie, said:
Intimacy is such a tricky subject for many autistic people because it’s something many of us don’t really know how to do. In society, intimacy is often shown as sex, kissing, cuddling, and holding hands. For many autistic people, this is simply not realistic. In some situations, relationships may end due to a difference in what each person wants and needs, and this can be hard to deal with for autistic people.
The resources also include relationship advice from autistic young people, including how to tell partners about sensory needs and maintain healthy boundaries.
The Ambitious Youth Network is a UK wide platform for autistic young people. The network offers autistic young people aged 13 to 25 a safe online space to help them understand their autistic identity and connect with others.
Check out the Relationships and intimacy resources.
