Autism, ADHD and Sex

H • You can call me Elio. My pronouns are she/they. The reason why I don’t share my real name here is that I don’t want people I know in real life find me here lol.

So me and my boyfriend we’re both autistic, but I also have adhd, and our autistic features are different. For example, he doesn’t like being touched, or he struggles with his senses (lack of smell, touch, taste etc.) and his emotions (he doesn’t know what he’s feeling, or he just can’t explain it, or he literally doesn’t feel much emotions). On the other hand, keeping the adhd in mind, I need to be touched, in a way that if I don’t get touched, I feel like I’ve upset him or he hates me or he’s avoiding me; I feel my emotions and senses at extreme levels, there’s no in between, I’m either too depressed or too excited, too stressed or too anxious, smell things when no one else does etc.

We’ve been managing these things very well so far, but there is one issue with me that I haven’t been able to fix. Often when I’m too sad or stressed I sort of lose the ability to speak. Sometimes it’s because I can’t explain what I’m feeling or why I’m feeling that way, and sometimes I just can’t say the words. One of my problems is when we haven’t been intimate for a while (like a week or more). Im fully aware and understanding of his preferences and I always take them into consideration when we do get intimate (for example, most of the time he doesn’t want anything back because he gets joy and pleasure from pleasing me, and also because of his sensory issues). I always ask if he wants anything or not, and I usually wait for him to initiate the sexual stuff, so that I don’t feel like he feels pressured by me or anything. Now, all is good in that regard, but my problem is myself. I am for many reasons more sexual than him, and he’s asked me to tell him in “words” whenever I want anything to happen. That is my struggle. I have tried many many times to put it into words but every time I just cannot say the words out loud. It’s like my lips get stuck on each other. And so this leads to frustration in me and then I can’t even explain why I’m sad/frustrated when he has no idea what I was “expecting” to happen. He is always very supportive and understanding when I become “nonverbal”, but I can’t help the frustration in myself. I’ve tried to give signals but I’m pretty bad at that too.

Do you have any advice on that? How do I get myself to feel more comfortable and confident to ask him to be intimate with me? We’ve been together for 6 months and I’m still struggling to improve myself in that regard:( and I can’t be mad at him for not reading my “signs” because I’m never obvious enough, and I can’t tell him what I wanted after getting frustrated/sad that we didn’t do sexual stuff because I’m already too upset with myself to enjoy anything. Help?