Amber, from Brook (brook.org.uk/), is here all week to share ideas and answer any questions you have about relationships, sex, bodies, online safety and much more.:
healthunlocked.com/mencap/p...
We'd love to hear from you, but you are welcome just to have a look around.
cheers
Sarah
Hi Sarah, I have a question,but it is a bit long....I have mild LD,and classic autism,I’m also FtM transgender,totally non sexual and non romantic (I find aromantic and asexual hard to understand and when I see people describe them on forums they always say it doesn’t mean fully asexual so I prefer the term non sexual as I don’t have a sexuality at all).
My question is around when I’m eventually back at the services I go to,like the day centre,the club night for adults with LD etc,how do I tell people If they think I want to be their boyfriend that I just want to be friends?
while in the night club I asked one lady,“ do you want to be friends?” using my AAC app- Proloquo2go, she thought I was asking to be her boyfriend,and said she’s not interested,she ran off and left soon after-I still feel gutted that I had made her feel bad and leave.
It turned out that the club night that time was a Valentine’s Day special, being non sexual I had no idea,is there anything wrong with asking if we coud be friends or am I getting the words wrong?
Thankyou and sorry for the length of the post.
Hi may I suggest you ask your question on the Ask the expert event about relationships and sexual health by Amber which is near the top of page. Hope you don’t mind I just dont want you to miss out on getting a reply.
Hello there,
Thank you very much for your question and I completely understand where you are coming from with labels and making them your own. Language is here to serve us as people and we should be able to own the terms that best describe us.
Friendships and relationships are tricky to navigate for pretty much everybody. It is a shame the person in the night club misunderstood what you were saying but it doesn’t sound like you were being unclear.
I think the best thing to do is be honest and clear about what you want. Which sounds like what you are doing already!
Some ideas for how you could do this is
“I am not interested in any romantic or sexual relationships with anybody, I identify as non romantic and non sexual”
“I would really like to be friends”
If you wanted to hang out with somebody perhaps consider suggesting a group meet up so it is clear the meeting is not romantic. Of course only up to 6 people at the moment! Or consider a group video call.
Clear communication is really all anyone can ask from you and if you get something wrong try not to panic too much, you can always apologise and then move on.
I hope that you can eventually go back to the day centre and club nights, because they sound great!
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