(upbeat music) - Welcome back to a Sluts Guide to Happiness where your body is perfectly imperfect and it is safe to be a sexual, kinky, queer, or slutty as you want. I wanna start by sharing a message we recently received from a listener. They said, "I have always been bi. "I am known since I was seven "and was sucking my best friends dif in my tree house, "but I was beaten severely by both of my parents "when I was caught doing so "and told that I was dirty, immoral, asin, and wrong. "I spent the next 30 plus years fighting with myself, "hiding my true self. "I have always loved a slutty girlfriend, "enjoyed when a girlfriend would cheat on me "and then come over and let me go down on her "and she thought I didn't know, "but I didn't loved every part of it, "but I always had to keep it a secret "because men don't do these things. "I watched your podcast pursuing loving relationships "with slutty women and everything you and Iran said "with spot on. "I was like, yes, finally I'm not alone. "This isn't weird or an isolated thing. "I'm not dirty wrong or a sinner. "Thank you so much for reaffirming. "I'm not broken or weird or defective. "Thank you for making me feel like I am part of a community." And honestly, I cried a little when I heard this because I love hearing from people who are listening, knowing that we're not just sitting alone in a house talking but that we are connecting with you, listeners and viewers. I really appreciate you being here. And this is why I do this because I want to feel, I want to be building a community in person and online of people saying, "I see you, I love you, "we can release shame, we can be ourselves, "we can be who we are in the world, "we can have desires and be our soft animal bodies." And all of that is beautiful. So thank you so much for sharing this. And I hope you'll join us in this community. So today I am so excited to be talking with my friend, a fellow content creator and a lead emotional support slut with Cliff Media, our female and queer lead porn production company. Steph is gender queer, kinky, slutty and polyamorous and beautifully unafraid to be themselves and support others in doing the same. Steph also has a big squishy heart. Secret, not so secret. They trained in mental health aid, which I think is a super cool way of preparing to support people. And also they just kind of radiate love. Like I've seen that happen during group shoots when people are having emotional moments or growing and they just like reach over and offer words or affection cuddles if that's what the person wants. Like really appreciate that. Steph also has two other superpowers that I wanna share with you and one which we're gonna dig into today. One is they grew up in a biracial family and have the experience of multiple languages and cultures, which I think is incredible. And they have also learned later in life that they have autism or they're an autistic person. If you read about some of the common traits of autism, which are not necessarily applicable to everyone but tend to happen among autistic people, highly empathetic, strong moral compass, comfortable with direct communication. So in my opinion, there's a pretty powerful way of being in the world. And today we get the fabulous privilege of talking with Steph about how their autism has influenced and relates to their sexuality, relationships and interest in kink. And I think this is a look into a part of sexuality that often isn't discussed. And Steph has some beautiful insights for anyone who is themselves autistic, for autistic folks out there in community and someone who loves someone on the autistic spectrum. So Steph, thank you so much for being here. - Oh my lord, that was so touching. My God, flattery will get you everywhere. - But it's true. And I appreciate you being willing to share your personal stories. You know, that sometimes it sticks deep in sexuality and kink and relationships. So you were telling me before and I honestly have had this experience. I think this experience is pretty common at certain points in people's lives that a while back you started to find sex boring, a chore repetitive. If any of you has seen Steph in their spicy content, both in cliff media and their independent content creators. So there are lots of stuff out there. You know that their relationship to sex these days is anything but boring. But we're going back many years ago as Steph was figuring out their sexuality and desires. And I think it's really important to name that continuing to grow and explore sexuality is a beautiful thing. - So I want to start in the background. - Okay. - How it was during your time before. And then also what your first experiences with kink were in particular as it related to the times that you were figuring out your autism. - Wow, let me give you some background to the background. So I had what a lot of people would call, I had the perfect life. I had a beautiful life, 2.5 kids, a dog, a house, white picket fence. I had two cars and RV. I was in the military. Everything was just what people want and stability and life. And I was miserable. I couldn't figure out why I was miserable. All I know is that I didn't like where I was. And I didn't like where I was going. This whole, it didn't fit. So I had a lot of questions I had to ask myself. And it started back in 2016 with the only New Year's resolution I've ever kept. Which is, I'm not gonna be an asshole anymore. Lot to unpack out of that little statement. Lot of self-challenging, lot of self-reflection. And through, back when Tumblr was cool. I had Tumblr and I was seeing all these wonderful images that were just turning me on. The porn I was watching, one of the first flags was lesbian porn. Doesn't really do it for me. I have to have a dick in it. (laughing) I gotta have a dick in the porn. And that's when I started questioning, why do I like seeing cocks? Oh, it's, I like cocks. (laughing) Now, all this comes from when I was a child, I would have same gender relations with other, like the person who submitted the message, right? When I was young, five, six, seven years old, there were dicks in the mouth. Consensual, you know, children exploring that. Children exploring sexuality, perfectly healthy. And so your email from the viewer really touched because I've had similar experiences. Growing up in a Latino household, in a Catholic Latino household, that was verbatim. You just didn't do that stuff. So I had a lot of shame. And was it a secret for you in your life at that time? Oh, yes, absolutely. Absolutely, it was a secret. Like, because of the shame piece. I'm not supposed to be feeling this. I have a beautiful family. What are they gonna think? What are the people in the, I was in the Navy. So what are they gonna think, you know? Oh, when they come to typical sailor. Oh, he's, I can't do that. But it wasn't 'til I was older. I started to challenge and things that didn't make sense. So while you were in your marriage, I know you described that there was a while where you were starting to feel like sex was not exciting for you anymore. Sex was becoming a chore. And what it was was that there was a dynamic imbalance. What I mean by dynamic was I did a lot of the giving during sex, right? And it was super vanilla. If there is such thing, you know, super vanilla, right? And I didn't have the communication skills nor the knowledge at the time to express what I needed. And that became resentment. And then resentment became angst. And angst became repulsion. And once you get to the angst stage in a relationship, it's over. - Yeah. - And I feel bad about it. I have a lot of, I wish I could have come back and change it different. But until I learned these skills, until people learn the skills of communication and learning their feelings, you can't ask for what you want properly. - Yeah, uncovering who we are and what we want. And also feeling that it's okay to have desires and talk about and ask them is a process, is a journey. So what was it that started happening in your life? When did you discover that you had autism? How did that happen in the timeline of when you were discovering new aspects of your sexuality? - I got all this kind of habit all at the same time. Everything blew up around what I turned 40. The autism piece was we were having a get together at the house and I had some friends over and they go, man, you act like your kids. And I'm like, my kids act like me. And so that was the spark and I was like, I need to figure this out. And plus I was struggling and I had gone to college after I retired and I was struggling so bad. That's ADHD piece. I have ADHD and autism so they're constantly pulling at each other, trying to, for whatever. - And so when you discovered that you were like your kids, your kids are autistic as well. - Yes, my two youngest ones are, yes. And they are, I call them beautifully autistic because they are 22 and 20, sorry, 23 and 20. And they are starting to flourish in the society and that makes me so happy. It's been a slog, but a beautiful slog. Now, as for the sexuality piece, all this happened tumbler, right? And I was having questions about my own sexuality in regards to, am I good enough in sex? I feel like because everything had become routine and I hate it, I was starting to have a reptile dysfunction problems, I didn't want to go to bed with my wife, I would stay up and watch the news and become angry and become a social justice warrior on Facebook. It was challenging and then I discovered tumbler. And I was like, oh, this is a place where people were expressing themselves. This is a place where people were open. This is a place where it was. I went to see a sex worker. - Uh-huh. - To, am I good enough, right, good enough? - It's interesting that you were asking yourself, am I good enough as opposed to, am I getting what I want? And I feel like, you know, those kind of questions are both pretty common and maybe intersect, uh-huh. - Yeah, and it was through the sex worker that I was seeing that I learned about polyamory. - Oh, interesting that the sex worker wasn't just teaching about kink and sex, but also exploring relationships, structures. - I call her my signpost, and I will always have a dear place in my heart for her because as my signpost, 'cause she showed me that there were alternatives with consenting adults that I don't have to go up the escalator of relationships, right, with that monogamy escalator. And so between seeing the sex worker, learning about polyamory, finding out about my ADHD, and my autism, learning about, hey, I'm not straight. My 40th year was just, it has taken me, and here we are eight years later, and I'm finally at a place where I feel like I'm starting to fill the space that I deserve. - I love that. So you were learning all these things about yourself that required a process of acceptance, of expanding your mind. - I know you mentioned that was it in that time or a little bit later that you were starting to experience exploration with kink as well? - Okay, kink, okay, it's a sensory issue, which I know we're gonna get to in a bit. In the Navy, I like to handle lines, mooring lines, and rope, and we would do things with shot line and parachute cord and 50 cord, and that really gave me something. - Tectile? - Tectile, thank you very much. And I got into this Zen state where it was. That's how I start. Hey, I kinda like the Shabari thing, tumbler, seeing these gorgeous people tied up in rope, and I was like, oh, I can do this. And that was my entry into, I bought my first rope kit from Twisted Monk. And-- - Yep. (laughs) - Plug for Monk. And I loved how it felt and how it smelled and the hemp and the oil. And it's just, I get goosebumps just thinking about it because it's so therapeutic for me. I am definitely a rope top, I kinda rope bottom, but when it comes, that was my entry right there. And then I started seeing impact, and I started doing a little reading about how impact, play, flogging, canning, stuff like that, releases the same endorphins that I'm looking for in my meds. Ah-ha, interesting. So that's one of the things I wanted to ask you about that there's, I think, some underlying assumptions about autistic people and that real experiences of autistic people are sometimes different. We know that people with autism, autistic people are as diverse as any other group, but there are like both stereotypes and common experiences. And so, you know, at least currently in my life, you know, haven't been identified as a person with autism, so please correct me as I'm going here. But one thing I have heard is that people with autism may experience touch differently than non-autistic people. - Absolutely. - Sometimes it looks like wanting more touch or avoiding touch. So you talked about this a little bit, but can you describe more about what you have experienced and what you know or have seen about how touch and autism really? - Absolutely. So I'm gonna bring up a metaphor that I believe has worked for a lot of people, which is our brains are like computers, right? You've only got so much random access memory to use at a time. So when this RAM starts to run out, you start to skip, you start to shut down. Now, for people on the spectrum, I'm gonna go from autism to spectrum, right? Because it's all over the place. The RAM, the apps that are running overwhelm what's happening. So if you have an anxiety app, the anxiety app takes up a lot of frickin' space, just like Facebook. And you can't get rid of it. You can't shut it down. All you can do is learn how to mitigate it, put it in background mode and work with that. Some people, when it comes to touch, touch overwhelms, right? So they stay away. So those are people that tend to be on the asexual, stuff like that. Hey, you know, I wanna be in a relationship but touch is overwhelming. Then you've got people that are like me that I forget how much I like touch and I need to be flooded with sensation. - I have seen that in like the aftercare, aftercliff media shoots that you want. You wanna do the puddles and that's-- - That's one of the things I ask for. It's like, can I just stim? Can I just stim? - I love that word, stimming. Can you help define that word? - Oh, yes, I can. So stimming is the act of self-soothing to help you deal with things that are overwhelming, right? After a shoot, I am overwhelmed. I am really overwhelmed and I am so fortunate that I have found people at Cliff Media that are really accepting of, oh, please, you can come cuddle, you can come stim over here, right? After the shoot, I'll be driving home and I'll text my partner, can I get cuddles? - Yeah, I like that. - I need the skin. But the background apps get so overwhelming, I forget that I need that. And so I just carry on my day and I get more and more miserable. Then you get burnout and autistic burnout is a thing. But it all depends on how the computer is rigged and how many apps are running in background mode. The best example I have for a process, people have chronic pain. If you have chronic pain that eats away all the RAM, if you're running four gig and three gig is caught up on pain, how do you be mindful? How can you stay emotionally calm? How can you do all those things that the brain just isn't, if the body isn't cooperating? - It sounds like learning about your autism, learning about the experience of being an autistic person has been really helpful for you to figure out how you're happy in the world, how you connect them really to people and ways that work for you personally. - Yeah, dig. What are emotions? I had to learn what emotions were. When I started, I mean, all I did, I experienced everything through anger or sarcasm, right? And I was an asshole. I didn't want to be an asshole anymore, 2016. I'm done being an asshole. I had to learn what emotions were. I had to find tools. Here's a tool that I have, right? This is the emotions wheel. Everybody should know about the emotions wheel. - For folks that are listening on Spotify not seeing us on YouTube with the visual, this is a really colorful chart here in the middle of the two things like happy, meh, fearful, and then as it goes out, it gives us more complex words to define those different emotions. - Everybody, I think, should figure out what the emotion wheel is, and when you're having a time of crisis, what am I feeling? You'll find out that when you're angry, you're actually fearful, or you're actually something else. And the first time I did this exercise was when I was learning about jealousy, learning about jealousy from tumbler. - Which is, it comes up both in monogamous relationships and maybe especially in polyrelationship where there's that communication piece. - Exactly. We are taught that jealousy is good. If you're a jealousy believer, you must love them. - Right, right. - But we can't talk about jealousy. Jealousy is so difficult. I'm sure we have all had in our relationships. How difficult. What is jealousy? Jealousy is anger. Jealousy is fear of loss. Jealousy is sadness. Jealousy is all the, those are way easier to talk about than jealousy. What'd you figure out? Oh, that was mind blowing for me. And then I worked on anger. What is anger? Anger is, you know, all these other emotions. And then once you start breaking it down for the wheel, you start breaking out. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, I'm feeling this. I should do this. - I recently had an experience with jealousy where one of my partners, I refer to him as daddy, and another partner was planning on using the same language. And that was tough for me. So I actually expressed to her, I'm feeling insecurity about this. And can like, would you be interested in him writing daddy in your chest? Because I want to lean into getting passes in security to believe and know that actually my partner loves me no matter what their other connections are. But yeah, that it was really tough to unpack that. And I think one of the things that I really admire about people who are autistic, that I see in this, you know, as I interact with autistic people recently, that willingness and capacity to identify those emotions and then directly communicate about that. - Exactly. It comes from not knowing what they are in the beginning. All we know is that in the beginning, like I said, I don't speak for all of us. But we have to learn what they are. What is anger? What am I feeling right now? And that we dive into it. And what I have noticed from my unscientific anecdotal experience, people on the spectrum are highly empathetic. We're really good at feeling things that are wrong. But if we don't have the language to describe what's happening, we get squicked out, right? Another trait on the other side of that is we don't have a lot of sympathy. There's a lot of emotional empathy like absorbing the feelings of other people but not sympathy. Can you help me understand that? So you're having a bad day, okay? And you had a shitty day at work. And all you want to do is just talk about your day to get it off your chest. You tell me that and be like, okay, cool, you have a bad day. I am so sorry. And then you keep talking. But I'm like, because I know everything that caused that bad day. And that isn't attached to me. It's not attached to me. I'm just kind of, and it's not that I don't care. It's just that it doesn't resonate. And it's a, luckily I have found partners that understand when that happens. - Yeah, uh-huh. - It's really hard. So I'm like, as it comes off as a loop. And people that are a loop are just the, I don't know, they're a loop, they're not carrying, they're not, I have a difficult time reading the room because I'm trying to sort out the emotions that are happening. - Yeah. Are you getting a lot of information at once? - Yes. - So, and that goes to the computer reference, right? If I go into, clubs are great, I can't be there very well. The constant lights and people moving, it's sensory over. There's a great video on YouTube. What's it like to be autistic? And it's his kid just at the mall. And he's going, the kid's going ain't shit, right? But then it flashes to what the kid is experiencing. All these flashes, noises, it gets overwhelming. I have learned that is, I used to get angry. I used to get just pissed and I would stay in this space because we're going to have fun, damn it. We're going to have fun, we're going to dance. I have learned to, you know what? I'm overwhelmed, I'm going to go step outside. - Yeah, uh-huh. - One of the hardest things for me to learn is that this is on me, this is nobody else's fault. So I have to take the responsibility for my actions and okay, I'm overwhelmed, I'm going to step away. And then having people understand that this is not about you, you haven't done anything wrong, I just need to step out. - Yeah. - Such a long journey for that realization. - It reminds me of my experience learning about bipolar that sometimes I get agitated and I just need to put myself down and take a nap and sometimes that's, you know, stepping away from a social situation. - So the journey that you have done to recognize when you're manic, you know, when you're getting into depressed state, you know, stay away from mixed state, right? We, that's similar to the journeys that we have to do, right? And not everybody has the resources to do this. - Yeah. - And that's the hard part, how can we tell people to get to find the resources they need? - Yeah. One of the things that I'm seeing is the ability to be self-aware and to know that like, there are differences and experiences that you may have. And I have heard, and I experienced this kind of anecdotally as we're organizing with queer leaders, that there's a disproportionate number of the folks who show up to clip me get shoots who are autistic, which I think is amazing. And I've heard that, you know, reading articles that there's a higher proportion of, higher frequency of queerness and polyamory among people who are autistic. And I'm wondering if you can help us understand, is that your experience and why might that be? - Absolutely, I have a firm belief, there is a study that's out there that, it wasn't LGBT as a whole, it was just trans individuals about how, and how spectrum works and how trans individuals, it's almost a circle, it's almost, it's not much of a Venn diagram, but there are tons of us out there, and it's so happy to see them come out of the woodwork. We got people like Dan Aykroyd, Albert Einstein, Darryl Hanna, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, Bill Gates, Sir Isaac Newton, we think was freaking autistic, Tim Burton, all those cool spooky movies, he's autistic as fuck, he's a, right? All these people. - Lots of creative people, leaders. - It is my humble opinion, that the reason why we are advancing at the society is because someone who was on the spectrum had the focus, that weird autistic focus, hyper focus on a subject to get things done. - Yeah, yeah. - And that is all artists. We think DaVinci was, was spectrum, you know? The billionaire that shall not be named is spectrum. - So these, like, we know that autism, as you're describing, is through a lot of different people and expressing themselves in all kinds of ways. The incidence of crunus and polyamory, you mentioned that folks who are trans are more likely to be autistic. What, why is that? As someone who is not in the community or needs to help understand it? - We don't know the official answer. I have my opinions, and my opinion is, because we see things through the non-standard lens. We see things as, we tend to challenge things that don't make sense, you know? We have to follow the rules, until the rules don't make sense. And when they start making a statement, wait a minute, why do I have to say, excuse me when I burp? (laughs) - Right? - Why do I have to be straight? Actually, that's a very narrow part of sexuality in the world. - It is, why am I being told that liking a person that looks like the gender I am, why am I supposed to be repulsed by that? It was only, or only three, four generations away from when it was okay for men to still go to men's only bathhouses as a whole, right? Something happened, I think it was World War I, World War II, where that became verbot and weren't supposed to do that anymore, so challenging the status quo. Well, that's a social norm, well, who created that? That's the big one, what's a social norm is that your kids are supposed to do X. Oh, here's a blend, when you're at the holiday meeting, your kids are supposed to hug grandma and grandpa and that creepy aunt that smells funny, right? And what do kids do? Kids are like, I don't want to hug Aunt Matilda, you know? And what do we do as a society? Oh, go hug, it's just a hug. We have just taught them that they don't matter, their opinion doesn't matter, them speaking up doesn't matter. And those social norms, we question all the time. - Right, I relate to that in that when I was 14, I came out as bisexual, and I think that, even though that's very different from slutting, I think that that actually helped me feel okay with stepping outside the norms of monogamous relationships or because once you're realizing that you don't have to follow one of the social norms, the next step, so maybe once you're realizing that you don't have to follow neurotypicality in the world, oh, maybe I also don't have to follow straightness or monogamy, right? - Oh god, it was too, and that opened up so many things because I started seeing people not for what they presented at the time, but as human beings to have, there are some people that you have a clip media that I absolutely adore and we do not fit the norms, and it is so wonderful just to sit and interact with these people and we go out to dinner, we have all kinds of fun things, and I'm attracted to humans, I'm attracted to humans, I don't care what body shape you are, I don't care what color you are, I don't care what generals you have, I just want them in my mouth. (laughing) - All these things, and I am so much happier because I don't have these restrictions placed upon me. - Yeah, so one of the things that I've heard about, like a stereotype that's out there about autistic people is less interested in sexuality or on the other end of the spectrum, hypersexual, and I think maybe there's some truth in that, maybe that's a stereotype, and so one of the things is that I know that not all autistic people are disinterested in sex because I've seen a lot of amazing autistic people fuck their brains out of the media, but I want to ask you, like, what have you seen as the range of sexuality and why do you think, do you think these stereotypes are just like assumptions that are discriminatory about the community or do you think that there's some degree to which they're helpful? - The main stereotype I get is dust and Hoffman and rain man. Everybody thinks we're like that, or they have the non-verbal one, right? And people, it's a spectrum for a reason, right? And this, why some are asexual and why some are hypersexual, that goes back to how the brain works with background things, right? If you're highly sensitive to touch, right? Or if you've got a repulsion of body fluids, right? Why would I want to have sex? Oh, right, but there are some people who's like, you pee on me, you, right? Because it's the cessation of the warm. And how it goes, yes, that's my kick. And it comes over, right? So it's how they experience the world depends. Are you gonna be an asexual type person? You just not care, but I like the cuddles, I like the connection all the time, I never run language, run language. Or do I just want to fuck your brains out, right? Do I want a connection? So it's, I think, I hope that explains it in a way. - It does, yeah, and I think one of the things that I'm hearing is that there's not one story, but it may be different from the assumptions about a neurotypical person. And so asking questions to find out what are the things that you need is probably pretty helpful. - The thing about asking direct questions, be direct. One of the hardest things that I have noticed from my experience, people in the spectrum, nuance, woo, inferring things, woo. It's really difficult to pick up on those things. It's, my prime example is flirting. Oh, I'm everyone in every relationship has said, argument over flirting at some time in their lives, right? Because we're afraid of this. I wasn't afraid of this. Was this autistic dude? I go to the definition, this is what flirting is, right? Flirting is no intent. If you have no intent, then all of a sudden flirting becomes fun, right? But unless you're explicit with me that say, hey, I would like to have sex with you. I will say, hey, have a nice day. I will see you tomorrow and all of a sudden, and you're like, what did I do wrong? What, I was giving all this vibe that I wanted to have sex with this person, and they just walked out the door. Now you feel bad, and I'm completely oblivious. It is, this is why from what I have found, again, personal experience, people on the neurodivergent spectrum, we're comfortable in dungeons. We're comfortable making porn. We're comfortable in sex clubs, because consent is explicit, and people ask for what they want. - Yes, I love the may I verb you noun and click me to share it's way. - May I verb you're noun? (laughing) - May I lick your knee? Because I think that that's so useful to be direct about what you want, and it goes back to another thing where autism is a superpower, where you're practicing those things that actually could be helpful for lots of people. - So you talked about how you have been poly as part of your experience, coming out as kinky, and queer, and autistic, and all these different pieces, and I know that that can be challenging, and I'm curious about the experience of navigating that as an autistic person, and how other people relate to you. Actually, we have the pleasure of one of your partners is watching us today. Do you want to introduce yourself? - Hi, I'm Miss Elena. (laughing) I love that they're here to support you as you're doing this, and I am interested if you can describe how people who have loved you, who have been in relationships with you, have been effective in giving you what you need as a person who has ought to take your time to present. - Oh my Lord, it's been a journey to try to fill my circle with people who understand who I am, and are able to accept who I am, but not take my shit, right, to own my shit. And I have always been polyamorous, but I didn't know there was an ethical way of doing it. I was non-ethical in it, you know? I remember in high school I had, I actually had a picture we found of me in high school with all the girls I was dating at the time. - Did they know about each other? - No, no, I was completely unethical. You know, I cheated on my wife, all these things. Unethical, but I always felt like I could, I have, my heart isn't pie, right? Heart, you know, love isn't pie. You know, that's how my autistic, at the time, 16 year old figured out polyamory. So, trying to find people that are willing to learn with me, willing to have the uncomfortable conversations. There's a lot of uncomfortable conversations. And most of it is around linguistics. You know, what does this word mean? What does that word mean? When you say that, how does it, you know, we talked about flirt earlier, right? Everyone knows the definition of flirt, but nobody does. And I have found that Ms. Laina here, she's super curious. She's highly empathetic to what is happening. And we allow each other to sit in our own uncomfortability to let the other person tell us what they need. That is hard, because when you see someone who's sad, we want to go fix that. We're uncomfortable with sad. Being able to let them be sad and have them come to you when they need you. Oh my God, that is so nice. One thing I love is she'll have a bad day, she'll be crying, right? And I'm like, are you okay? She's like, I've had a bad day. I'll let you know what I'm done. She goes and has her cry. She comes and when she's able to talk, we go through it and we can deal with whatever she needs to deal with. But it's letting not forcing the emotions. That is huge work. Just let them happen, sit in it. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be angry. It's okay to do those things as long as you have a way to deal with it in a healthy way. Emotions are not bad. One part of that that is really nice from my end is that so often people are so uncomfortable. I'm very emotive. I'm okay with the vulnerability of feelings. I actually don't have much choice about it when the feelings are there. Everybody knows what I'm feeling, 'cause it's just right out there. It's really difficult for me to mask when things are not okay. And if I tell him you didn't do anything wrong, I will be okay in a minute. I need A, I need A, B and C. Or I just, I need you to not take responsibility for this, it's not yours. He believes me. - Oh yes. - And how big that is. It's so important. I want to say I have responsibility for my own feelings. They don't need to be fixed. I need to process them. I need to deal with them. And when I need to talk about them, if you'd like to share that with me, okay. So it's nice to be believed. - Yes. - And that I'm not trying to care for everyone else's discomfort for my tears. It sounds like kind of undoing the very common experience of codependents that you're trying to take care of each other's emotions as opposed to being responsible for your own. - And that brings back into the polyamory piece because it's like in a monogamous society, I have to be codependent on you for all of my wants, all of my needs, all of my fantasies, everything else, you're my therapist, you're my counselor, you're my, all these things. - You're all my friends wrapped into one. - Yes. - And that is so unfair. And I thought this for a very long time before I realized what polyamory was, is that it is not fair to have my spouse know everything I need. What if she doesn't like water sports? Am I supposed to go without something that fulfills me? Just because she's, no, it's okay to go find somebody else. And as long as everything's consensual, grown adults, oh my lord, adulting. And that's the beautiful piece, is to be able to openly communicate and believe what your partner says. - Right, right, some of that literalism actually is really useful. - Oh my gosh. And that is hard too to unpack because when you are immersed in a society that has innuendo and double meaning, and also there's so many connections being made about a couple of words, it's difficult to hear someone be direct because the impulse is to like, what do they mean by that? And I have to remind myself, what exactly did he say? - What they mean is what they said. - What they mean by he said is what they meant. And then if I am feeling something about that, my job and one that is still hard for me is to say, okay, hold on, I'm having feelings about that word or this conversation that is not about this conversation. - Yes. - And so I need to take a minute because I can't hear you anymore. I'm not listening to you, I'm listening to this internal connections that are not about the conversation. And so what I used to do was try to, like, oh, I'm having some feelings, okay, I'm gonna try to set those aside and focus, but I couldn't. And that's where I have to speak up and be responsible. Like, wait a minute, I have a feeling you're saying something that you're not intending to say and now I have to figure out where I'm coming from. So I can continue to listen when I'm done. Like my turn to process, okay, now your turn to process. And that's a very difficult habit to break. - Yeah. There was a study where I'm trying to remember now and I'm, well, let me put it in the comments if you find the study is only 7% of what people say. Only 7% of the words that come out are actually, or the words that we listen to, right? The majority, again, my experience of people that are spectrum live in that 7%, right? The other 93% we're watching body language, listen for inflection, we're trying to, all these other things in my brain's like, why are you working so hard? - Yeah. - Just listen to the words they're saying. - Right, right. And it sounds like one of the things that has been effective for you all, if I can attempt to hear back, is that you are understanding how they're expressing and learning to take what they're saying at face value, while also in your experience of being neurotypical or allistic, accepting that you process emotions differently. And so you're respecting that you have those differences and allowing yourselves to explore that. - Absolutely. - And for my part, not being defensive, unnecessary, that is huge, huge piece for me. - Yeah. - One of the things for relationships that I put out to the people that I've coached, I've mentored, is you need to trust your partners in intent and what they say. If they say something mean, were they saying it to be mean if the thesis or did they not have the language to express what they really meant? Like, it's like, you look really fat in that shirt, right? Instead of saying, you know, that shirt, if it's not fitting you real well, it can be, you know? - Or reclaiming that fat is also the same. - Right, right. But using that as an example, right, is trying to find the language, the intent should be the same. - As soon as you think that your partner's intent is, has some sort of a level-ence to it, there's the angst piece. - Right. - Bring it back to where I talk about it. Once you have angst in your marriage, it's important in your relationship. - I love this. I love, you know, allowing yourself to explore the kinks, the water sports of the rope or all the other things, allowing yourself to explore different relationship dynamics and have those conversations. And so I want to end it with a love note as we do. And particularly this podcast is ending with a love note to other autistic people who are pursuing their authentic sexual desires, or relationship desires in the world. And particularly that moment that's maybe like you in 2016 of stepping their foot in and beginning this journey of self-explosion. So what would be your love note to these books? - Listen to yourself. And if you don't know what you're hearing, ask questions. It is so difficult to start this journey because it doesn't make any sense. You hear people were telling you, you're like, but that doesn't make any sense. And it is so difficult to stick with it. I have been on this path for eight years and I'm still not done. I'm gonna be in therapy the rest of my life. And stick with it and listen to yourself. Learn how to listen to what your body is telling you, how your body is feeling. It is worth it because once you figure out what is causing the discomfort and the anger and the sadness, everything else, those are easier to deal with than just saying, I can't do it. Life, I am by no means, you know, the autistic guru. But what I can offer is tools to help navigate between mental and somatic, which is my whole thing. How can I connect mine to body? Which is why I do this work because that's how I can stick with it. Please, please for your loved ones and for the love of yourself, just stick with it. - Yeah, loving yourself, listening to yourself, being self-reflective, even when in a neurotypical world, in a vanilla world, in a monogamous world, that often feels scary, but allowing for those possibilities. And just, I love the way that you have accepted yourself and accepted that this is a beautiful thing and that you're connected to other people who are autistic and finding ways to make that a source of connection and freedom and happiness. So Steph, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your experiences. And thank you all for listening today. This has been another edition of a Sluts Guide to Happiness with your host, Vanessa Cliff. And our beautiful guests today, Steph Takaya, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple and Spotify and YouTube, as well as on VanessaClip.com. Please help us out by liking and sharing this podcast and stay tuned for more deep dives and of beautiful messy waters. If you're over the age of 18, you can also check out our video content, including some of this gorgeous one on our website, VanessaClip.com. And most of all, I invite you to join us in the pleasure of being awkwardly human, naked and without pretense. Let's get free. (laughing) Blue! (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
