In this episode, Ash and Dusty explore the intriguing intersection of kink and ADHD, discussing how neurodivergent individuals may be drawn to unconventional sexual interests. They emphasize the importance of curiosity and communication in navigating the complexities of kink, particularly for those who may struggle with societal norms or personal inhibitions. Through personal anecdotes and insights, they highlight the potential for self-discovery and growth within the kink community, advocating for a safe and open-minded approach to exploring one’s sexuality.
The conversation also delves into the significance of establishing trust and safety in power dynamics, particularly for individuals with ADHD who may face unique challenges in relationships. Ash and Dusty discuss red flags to watch out for in potential partners, emphasizing the critical role of consent and ongoing communication. Ultimately, they encourage listeners to embrace curiosity in their sexual journeys, fostering an environment where both partners can express their desires freely and explore new experiences together.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Ash: Hi, I’m Ash, [00:00:02] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:00:03] Ash: And this is Translating ADHD. Now, last week we said our episode might get a little spicy and it really didn’t get too spicy, but this week we’re definitely going to get a little spicier. So if you are sex repulsed or otherwise don’t want to hear an episode on sex or kink, you might want to skip this one because that is exactly what we’re going to be talking about for the bulk of today’s episode is kink and ADHD. [00:00:32] Dusty: This is the “hot ones” of Translating ADHD. [00:00:35] Ash: I love that.So I think it would be helpful to start with why we are specifically talking about kink. When we were brainstorming this episode, the working title was finding a sex life that works for you. And so I’m going to back it up a little bit and just talk about my journey in the last year. So at the time that I got out of my monogamous relationship about a year and a half ago, I was also a year into transition and kind of facing two things at once.
Number one, up until that point in my life, I was missing a huge piece of information about myself in terms of sex, dating, and attraction. Not knowing I was a man had a lot of impacts on how I was showing up when it came to dating, when it came to sex. And so, there was a really big opportunity there to be curious and to learn what was true for me.
And I also, as a trans guy, didn’t know, like, in terms of finding other partners, in terms of dating or finding sexual experiences, what that was going to look like for me. And so, I kind of stumbled into kink by accident, which is a long story that I won’t tell here. But, something that a year later, I really appreciate about kink.
And for me the leather scene, which is primarily, although not entirely gay men and certainly has its history in gay men, is really another opportunity to do the same type of work that you and I do with our clients. If you approach it from that perspective, if you approach it as a journey, if you approach it with curiosity, if you approach things and experiences just to have the experience and see what it’s like for you. And so there’s just incredible opportunity for self learning and growth in the area of sex, attraction and interest. If that is something that is appealing to you, there’s just a massive opportunity to learn what’s true for you.
[00:02:40] Dusty: I agree. I think part of the reason we also brought it up, or at least part of the reason that I brought it up, I don’t have hard data on this, but just, I’ve heard often from various sources that neurodivergent people do tend to skew more towards some of these you know, kinky or more unusual, like, not status quo, models of sexual interest.And it makes sense, if you think about it in the context of, you know, novelty, right? And find, like being curious and interested in any, and stimulated by, ba dum bum anything that’s novel, right? And so, we, you know. Also gamification, right? What are we doing when we engage in any kind of kinky play?
It’s really creating like a little game, you know, it could be a little role play, right? And like, I don’t know about you, Ash, but just when I’m trying to get myself to do anything that I need to do, sometimes role playing is like a productivity tool for me. Pretending I’m somebody who wants to be doing the thing that I’m doing.
Pretending that I’m Martha Stewart when I’m cleaning the house. Pretending that I’m Julia Child when I’m cooking a meal, right? And that kind of imaginative play often, you know, can bypass those issues with motivation for people with ADHD because it gets into the fun aspect of whatever you’re doing.
And so I think very much the same is probably true for sex. Which, if you think about it, can be in sort of standard situations, pretty repetitive, like the same thing over and over. I think it’s like a common complaint in bedrooms, right, of people that are married, who’ve been together a long time, that it gets old if you’re just doing the same thing over and over.
So I do think that neurodivergent people may have more of a proclivity for the novelty and the switching things up and the playfulness and the imagination aspects of this.
[00:04:23] Ash: That’s spot on Dusty. And what I will add to that, particularly for ADHD brains that want to know the context that often questions the rules of society as a whole. We are more likely to step outside of what’s considered normal or acceptable if we feel safe doing so. And I think that’s often such a huge barrier, particularly for cishet people with ADHD, because in a cishet situation, most of the time, most people consider sex to be a man giving sex and a woman receiving sex.And so there’s already sort of these rules and this structure around it and these expectations that this is the way that that’s supposed to go. And that’s one thing that I really actually enjoy about being queer is you, you can’t make assumptions. Two people of the same gender, transgender people, have different relationships with their natal anatomy and what is okay or is not okay.
You cannot look at a gay man and guess whether he wants to give sex or receive sex. There’s no way to know that. And so there is some amount of negotiating and curiosity and conversation that needs to happen entering almost any queer sexual situation because you can’t make assumptions.
And the thing that I like about kink is that it’s that same thing, right? It adds a framework where you can’t make assumptions about what somebody likes or doesn’t like, what’s okay or not okay for someone and you should never enter into a situation without having had some amount of discussion about what’s on the table, what’s not on the table, what I know about what I like, what I don’t know about what I like, what I might want to try because that’s how you can find yourself in a potentially dangerous situation, and nobody should be inviting you into a situation like that where there isn’t conversation upfront.
Like you talk to anybody who has experience in kink and the number one rule is you always talk first and then you talk again. Because that’s the only way that you figure out between these two or more people. What is, what does mutual pleasure look like in this circumstance?
[00:06:40] Dusty: You were talking about, like, how gender norms can be, like, restrictive in terms of what people feel like is possible in the bedroom. And we were talking about this a little bit in the context of what I called cringe, right? So, I think something like that, and this is just my theory, again, I’m not basing this on any hard data, but you know, some people with ADHD and certainly, you know, some autistic people do have more social challenges in having awareness of how they’re being perceived by others, right?So some neurodivergent people might find that they might be perceived as kind of cringy by others because they’re just like doing whatever they want to or whatever they think is, you know, like cool. And they’re not either tapped into or aware of what those social norms are that they may be violating, right?
So when we hear about, say, like autistic people who have special interests that are more childlike, say, like Disney or something. And you know if you’re that person who has a very childlike interest, you know, growing up maybe you experienced some bullying or social rejection, which you may or may not even have been aware of by, you know, other people around you for like, not adhering to these like nuanced social norms that nobody talks about, right?
So here’s how this all connects together. If you’re being involved in any sort of kinky play necessitates like, totally being vulnerable and letting go and being willing to kind of be in the scene or whatever, maybe that’s a little easier for people who are neurodivergent.
They’re less worried about that in the first place, you know, I wonder, if people who are like cishet neurotypicals may find it harder to like, “let go” to that level where they’re not afraid of being perceived as cringy, right?
Whether it’s putting on like a ball gag or, you know, like being put in a really compromising position or you know, any of the many kinky things that require you to do something that you might perceive as cringy or embarrassing, right? But if you can get into it, you could really enjoy it.
[00:08:45] Ash: Based on my experience, Dusty, I definitely think you’re onto something. I certainly think that within the spaces that I spend time, I run into more neurodivergent people than not so much. I don’t tell people what I do for a living in those spaces because the last thing I want to talk about when I’m having a night out and socializing is ADHD and being an ADHD coach, as much as I love this work, because everyone I talk to is some flavor of neurodivergent.So I think that that’s in the mix, but I also think for cishet people, particularly like a monogamous cishet couple you know, patriarchy stuff is in the mix there, particularly for men, right? Men feel so restricted in what is okay, what’s not okay, what, you know, the idea that receiving sex might be gay or might emasculate them in some way.
And so we can put these boundaries around things without even realizing that we’ve done that, which is by the way, something that ADHD people struggle with anyway, right? What is so much of the coaching work that you and I do with any given client on any given topic? A lot of times it is unearthing those limiting beliefs, those rules that we’re carrying around, those reasons that we do things that we’re not consciously aware of, but that live there.
And those come from all sorts of places, right? They can come from your own upbringing. They can come from society. They can come from one thing that someone said to you one time in a particularly judgmental way that just made that stick in your brain as a, “oh, I should never do that again”.
[00:10:25] Dusty: Oh yeah, I’m the opposite of that. I was relentlessly bullied. So I’m like, so far gone. I tried to play D&D with my friends and I couldn’t because I couldn’t get myself to, like, do the voices. I was like, I feel too cringy, I feel too inhibited because I got, you know, the crap kicked out of me for that kind of thing.I remember the exact moment in, like, grade 6 when I learned that wearing sweatpants was not cool and, like, I’d have to wear jeans from now on. And I didn’t wear, I did not own a single pair of sweatpants again until I was, like, in my 30’s. And when I got one, I was like, oh my god, this is so comfortable, like, what have I been doing with my life?
Right? But I, like, went so far to the opposite because of that. There are some, I think, ways for me to be just naturally myself that are still, like, a little bit, uncomfortable, because I’m like, is anybody looking? You know?
[00:11:15] Ash: Dusty, that’s really funny. I have such a similar story to that.Some asshole called me ‘Thunder Thighs’ in middle school and I did not wear shorts again, including in the dead of summer in marching band camp, I would be wearing, and back then, big wide-leg jeans were the fashion. So not even just jeans, but like an insane amount of fabric out in the hot August sun.
Because I didn’t want to show off my thighs anymore. And it took a very, very long time for me to wear shorts or dresses again. I obviously don’t wear dresses now, but well, I guess not so obviously men can wear dresses. I choose not to wear dresses, but men can wear dresses. But it took me a very long time to let go of that particular limiting belief.
So yeah, two stories right there that illustrate the way that as people with ADHD, we don’t always know the reasons behind why we believe what we believe, why we might find something repulsive or unappealing. One of the interesting things that I found on my own kink journey is I’m open to more than I thought I would be.
I find enjoyment in experiences that I previously found from the outside looking in, maybe a little off-putting or a little scary. And I think part of that is number one, it’s all hypothetical until you have the lived experience. And that speaks to another big component of coaching work, right? We talk about a dilemma.
We try to find something new about that old dilemma. And then we design some practice and the client goes and has their experience. And what we’re not attached to there is that the experience is successful. What we are attached to is what was the experience. And now from this new place with more context, with more to go on now, where do we go now?
What can we learn? And I think so many things, especially when it comes to the difference between hypothetical and actually having an experience is, night and day, in terms of your understanding and your relationship to whether or not that might be something for you. And by the way, this doesn’t mean you should go out and try everything.
It is okay to have things that just feel like a no to you. And you just don’t need to have that experience to know that it’s a no for you. I certainly have a long list of those. But just to consider that there’s an opportunity there to be curious. Just because you have an experience doesn’t mean you have to like that experience, but it will inform you about something that you couldn’t have known about yourself before you had that experience.
[00:13:48] Dusty: To have an experience that’s for you doesn’t have to automatically mean that it was, like, traumatic, right? Again, I think, like, I think where we want to go with this episode is eventually kind of talking about how to sort of build or get into a kinky practice in a way that’s safe and sustainable.I know that’s something you were asking me about earlier, Ash. And so, before we go into that, I wanted to add one more thing about kink that I keep hearing about in the context of ADHD, which is about having sensory needs met. Right? So, I, okay. I met this girl. I knew this girl a long time ago.
She was like a casual acquaintance of a friend of mine. And I knew that she was into a sort of very kinky, like lifestyle. And I was asking her about it one time and she said, I can’t remember why we’re talking about this, but she told me that she was really into impact play, heavy impact play. And I was like, what does that mean?
And she was like, well, it means I like getting punched. And so what’s interesting here is like, okay, you know, eventually maybe we’ll talk in this episode about sort of like abuse and dynamics of power and how to make sure that you’re like having a good power dynamic that’s not exploitative or abusive but like okay imagine this right, a small tiny girl likes impact play.
She likes getting punched. So like, how’s that going to look if her partner is like a big cishet man? Right? So, I mean, I can’t imagine how they made that work there without people being very suspicious, but like she genuinely liked that. I’ve heard that before around, you know, sensory needs, common sensory needs for neurodivergent people around like, heavy pressure, right?
This is why we have weighted blankets and things like this, but you know, there are some kinky practices that people might enjoy like, “caning”, which is especially getting spanked with a cane, right? Or like, any kind of like, hard thudding, right? That might feel, on a sensory level, very very soothing to somebody with ADHD or autism. And then there’s also, you know, there’s some, like, autistic people who really enjoy the sensation of you know, being, like, sort of tightly, like, squeezed, right, or in small spaces. So stuff like being tied up might really kind of, like, do something for somebody on more than one level, right?
Like, maybe some of these sensory things are not just about sexual excitement, but they’re also meeting some need for, like, sensory good for neurodivergent people. And so that’s something to consider too. If you are neurodivergent I think especially if you’re autistic and you have, you know, some curiosity or maybe some shame around some of the the sexual kinky things that you’re interested in or do, consider whether or not part of this is actually about regulating your nervous system and meeting some of those sensory needs.
I think that’s something we don’t talk enough about.
[00:16:34] Ash: So Dusty, I do want to talk about safety. And really what I want to talk about is if this is something that you want to explore, particularly if you’re not already in a relationship where there is mutual trust and safety there, and you’re entering this exploration together, but you are a single person that might, you know, be venturing out and seeking out some type of kinky experience.I do think that it’s really important to know what kind of red flags to look for, because particularly in power dynamic situations, it is really easy to get into an abusive situation. And unfortunately, predators do live in this scene because it is easy to find victims, right? So how do you distinguish the line between being submissive and abuse?
[00:17:29] Dusty: And, you know, not just that, but also we know that neurodivergent people, particularly women, are at a higher likelihood of being gaslighted and manipulated by partners because we tend to have poorer boundaries. We tend to have more of the need for pleasing people. We’ve definitely got a terrible memory. So, like, we’re, you know, a lot of neurodivergent women, in particular, but also neurodivergent men, are, like, sitting ducks for some person that wants to come along and really kind of make them feel like they’re always the one that’s bad and wrong and, oh, you’re remembering that wrong and you didn’t do this, right?So I think we’re also at a higher likelihood of already finding ourselves in a relationship like that or quickly getting into one without realizing it.
[00:18:05] Ash: Absolutely. And that’s something that you and I both have some lived experience with. Which is why I think it’s so important to cover this because, it is just the environment itself that makes it so much more likely to be a potential thing that could happen to you. I think one of the mistakes that I see people who are brand new to kink, particularly people who are looking for a submissive experience make, is, oh, I’ll try anything. You tell me what you want to do. Listen, if you are looking to be dominated by someone in any fashion and they say okay to that, that’s already a red flag.Right. I do have a dom/sub relationship with a person right now. And I personally see my role and I’ve talked to a lot of dom’s who I trust. I have a couple of mentors, my cams of the kink world, if you will, that I go to when I run into new situations. And what I’ve really learned is that it’s all about communication.
Everything is communication based. So if I am assuming the role of Dom and I consider myself a switch, right, I have had experiences in both situations, but if I am assuming the role of Dom, before anything at all happens, I want to know something about what you like, what you don’t like, what you know, what you don’t know.
And if you’re brand new, we’re going to take it really slow, right? So an example of taking it really slow. You were talking about impact play earlier and one way to think about impact play and language that is often used in these circles is, do you like “thuddy” or do you like “stingy”? So, something like a paddle makes a very “thuddy” sort of impact. Something like a flogger with a lot of little leather strands hits with more of a sting.
So, if I’m with somebody in a subspace who doesn’t know the answer to that, then our opportunity is to get curious and try that out, but I’m not going to go and hit them as hard as I can. I’m going to start with a really kind of soft impact and work up a little at a time, both figuring out what types of impact they like and also how hard they like to be hit.
Right. So. All of this to say that every relationship, be it a one-time experience, be it an ongoing dynamic, whether you know a lot about what you want to try or what you do like when it comes to kink, whether it’s brand new to you and you’re just looking to find some experiences so that you can explore and see what you like – there should be conversation up front and there should be ample room for exploration. Nothing should move. Moving quickly is the homework of an abuser anyway, the love bombing stage, and you should be particularly wary of that in a kink scenario, right? I am never going to go from zero to an extreme kink situation, as dom or sub, with anyone.
Right, because for me, I also think that you need that experience with that person because it’s all hypothetical until it’s not right. You tell me how hard you like to get hit. That’s different from me actually hitting you that hard, right? Like my understanding of how hard you like it might be different than your understanding using the language that you’re using.
So you kind of need repeated experience with somebody to get to scenarios where not only do you know enough about this person to know exactly what their boundaries and limitations are. But more importantly, there’s complete safety and trust there because as a dom, I would never, ever enter a situation with a dom who does not hold this philosophy.
By the way, as a dom, I have the power because my sub gives me that power because I have established safety and trust with this person because we have gone through this slow process over time. So if and when they are comfortable entering that fully submissive headspace, and by the way, I wanna come back to the topic of headspace because I think there’s an interesting element for ADHD people there, but you know.
If and when they are willing and able to let go and be fully in that submissive headspace, that’s because of the work that we’ve done to this point together, right? That’s because there is safety and trust there and they can revoke that power in a single word, right? And my role in that point is to stop and then to check in on what is needed from there.
[00:22:45] Dusty: Yeah, I think you said all that wonderfully articulately. And I don’t have, I don’t have a lot to add, but like, two things on this point, and then a resource as you say. Ash, I think one thing that’s important is that if this is someone you’re in some, you know, sexual connection with, somebody that you are in a relationship with, or you’re dating, there’s probably going to be red flags outside the bedroom that are going to help you to understand that this is something that you should be concerned about, like you said, love bombing, right?So back to what I said about people with ADHD being more likely to get in a relationship with someone who’s gaslighting or manipulating, part of it comes from that love bombing, right? If you’ve had social rejection, if you’re rejection sensitive, if you’ve, you know, heard those 20,000 more comments about your behavior growing up, whatever the case may be you meet this person and they give you all the love and attention and you finally feel like you found someone who sees you the way that you want to be seen.
They really see the real you. Wow. They’re so enthusiastic about me. If they are just like drowning you in compliments, okay, yes, like to some extent that’s normal, like in an early relationship, but I think if you’re not familiar with what love bombing looks like and how it differs from sort of like healthy interest, do some research on that.
Okay. But it often involves moving the relationship to a point of very serious commitment very quickly, right? So you are now in a serious situation with this person before you’ve had the chance to assess whether or not they are a safe person, right? And they’re gonna make you feel like you guys are soulmates and you know everything about them and you’re just vibing and so you don’t need to you know take a lot of time, but it’s only through time passing.
And again, with ADHD, we skip steps, right? We don’t want to be patient. We don’t want to make incremental progress, but it’s only through incremental progress and patience in a relationship that you get to actually see how this person copes with disappointment – how this person copes with you saying no.
What are they like when they’re angry? What are they like when you disappoint them? This is all the data that you need to understand. What is likely to happen in the future of the relationship and when you skip steps and you get engaged right away, or you move in together, right? By the time you get that data, it may be too late.
Right? And so we can see how this might play out in a sort of a kinky power exchange. Because as Ash is saying, really, the thing that I’ve always heard is that the power in sort of a scene where there’s like a power exchange is actually with the person who’s being submissive, right? It seems like it’s with the person who’s being dominant, you know, do this, do that.
But at the end of the day, that person who’s in charge is sort of setting up a sexual scene that is based on what they know that submissive person likes or enjoys and feels comfortable with. If you’re a person who’s the dominant person in a scene and you’re making that other person do something that you know would make them uncomfortable or that they wouldn’t want to do – that’s not how you do that, right?
You want to be doing things that they’re, you know that they actually want and probably are checking in with them and asking for a lot of consent, right? So we want to make sure that this power dynamic outside the bedroom is reflective of what’s going to happen inside the bedroom.
Is the person that you’re with respectful of your needs? Is the person that you’re with respectful of your boundaries? Right? And if you’re a person who’s a people pleaser, and you’re a person with poor boundaries, you probably don’t even have that information because you’ve got poor boundaries. Maybe you don’t set boundaries, right? So I think really it all comes back to consent and checking in, right?
If Ash doesn’t know or somebody doesn’t know how hard somebody likes to be hit and they hit somebody in a way that they think is acceptable, then they’re going to check in later and it’s like, hey, how was that for you? Oh, you know what? Actually, that was too hard. Okay, great.
Now we have data. And hopefully we want a person who’s going to take that into consideration and care. But I think where it becomes problematic is if there’s any kind of guilt or pressure. And again, this is a dynamic that I see in relationships in literature, in people’s anecdotal experience that if you’re a person, if you’re the partner with ADHD and you’re like, disappointing that other person then sex can be weaponized, right?
It can be like, well, you’re disappointing me in all these other areas. Like, don’t disappoint me sexually to oh, you’re no fun. Oh, you don’t want to try the thing. Oh, you like, never do anything. Right? So I think there’s also a big potential for manipulation there. If the person that you’re with, like, isn’t a safe person.
And so, to me, I think that a lot of the red flags are probably happening outside the bedroom. But again, even in the bedroom, the main thing is there should always be consent. There should always be conversation. And, there should always be some sort of check in and aftercare, right? We have this term, maybe you’ve heard it, Ash, sub drop.
Have you heard the term sub drop?
[00:27:19] Ash: Yes, I have. [00:27:20] Dusty: Yeah, so for anyone who doesn’t know what that is, before you go thinking that I’m, like, that I have such an interesting bedroom life, I heard that term from Katie Osoris. I’m not that interesting. So Katie Osoris, great sex educator, great ADHD resource around kink.But I heard, I learned this from a TikTok from her, which is sub drop is kind of like that low mood that you get after a scene has concluded and you’re the submissive person so you may go through like a period of low emotion and so you want a dom who’s going to care for you through that sub drop and like be able to snuggle you or give you the care, you know, and maybe what you want is to be pushed, right?
Maybe you want to be pushed to do things that you find scary or humiliating, that’s the thrill for you, right? The emotional thrill. And so there may be a feeling after that and you want someone who’s going to care about that feeling and take care of you.
If that person is genuinely pushing you because they’re selfish or toxic or manipulative, and then they’ve gotten what they wanted. If you have some strong feelings afterwards, what’s likely to happen? Probably that person’s gonna have a bad reaction or something, right? And so I think like it’s just that consent and that conversation and peace and that care and if you’re feeling those things then okay, great – if you’re not sure that you’re gonna be able to feel those things with that person maybe don’t go there with them, you know?
[00:28:41] Ash: Really well said Dusty. And the one thing I want to add to that is that actually that drop can happen on either side of the power dynamic. And this speaks to what we were talking about earlier. One of the things that I really enjoy about getting into that space with somebody, where there is that safety and trust, is that it’s easy to be vulnerable. It’s easy to let go. And so one of the things that I find really appealing about that headspace, as a person with ADHD, is presence, right? What is one big challenge? And we talked about this quite a bit on last week’s episode, where we were talking about how ADHD can interfere with sex life.What is one big challenge that all of us with ADHD have? Being present in that moment, not being somewhere else, particularly for women, right? Particularly for women who feel beholden to household chores or children or any number of other responsibilities that still unfairly fall on women. But for any of us with ADHD, presence can be a challenge.
And so when safety and trust and mutual vulnerability is there, and you’re both able to let go and just be in that scene together, then there is nothing else. For that period of time, that’s it. And that is a really enjoyable experience as a person with ADHD. And honestly, that’s probably more than any particular kink.
That’s the thing that keeps me interested in this lifestyle. And this, this way of seeking out sexual experiences is that just full presence. It is a really incredible experience, I think, for anyone, but particularly for a person with ADHD, where presence can be so hard to come by, even if we deeply want to be engaged in a thing.
[00:30:37] Dusty: Very well said. [00:30:39] Ash: Do you have anything else to add? [00:30:40] Dusty: Well, yes. I have this resource that I found that I think is going to be so helpful for people for a few different situations.One is if you struggle with communication. Two is if you are personally inhibited about asking for what you want in the bedroom or, you know, if you and your partner are both inhibited about communicating. And three, I think it’s also really good for checking in about how much you should trust someone and also building trust.
And it’s called the Wheel of Consent. Have you heard of it, Ash?
[00:31:07] Ash: I haven’t, but I’m certainly going to look it up. [00:31:09] Dusty: Yeah, so you can just Google it. It’s this lady, I can’t remember her name, she’s great and then she put out a couple videos about it, but basically it’s a wheel, it’s divided into four quadrants: allow, take, serve and accept. So, like, give or take, right? So, giving, you’re giving something to someone, you’re letting them take. Taking – you’re taking something from someone, and that person is allowing the thing to be taken. It’s also written here as serve and accept, right?Anyway, if you look at the wheel there’s a lot of interesting things and there’s all these words on it. And so you see how these concepts are interrelated, but the woman has these videos on her website and she talks about little exercises you can do with your partner.
So for example, one exercise is, let’s say that like you, you lay on a bed or something, right? And you, for five minutes, you ask for what you want. So you’re talking. And so the person can give or not give, but essentially it’s about you just like, for five minutes, you’re just taking what you want, right?
I’m probably explaining this badly, but then like, you flip, and the person is going to like, ask if they can do things to you. And it doesn’t have to be like sexual things, it could be like, can I touch your big toe? Can I pet your hair? And then you get to decide what you want to allow. Right? So they’re doing, they’re taking because they’re doing things that they want to do and you’re deciding whether you want to allow that, right?
But there are these different exercises like this where you explore the concepts of giving and taking and allowing and so it helps you, I think, on a number of levels to understand what you genuinely enjoy. It helps you practice saying yes and no. It helps you learn what kinds of things your partner does, you know, cause like we always think about giving pleasure to our partners, right? Like we want to do things to them that make them happy. And sometimes we do things to them that we would like, but we don’t often talk about the fact that some of the things we do to our partners are more for us than they are for them.
And so making that concept, I think like, visual or making it explicit is really helpful because sometimes as a partner, and especially like, I think, as a submissive partner, you’re not letting things be done to you because you enjoy them, you are letting somebody do things because it gives you enjoyment to see them enjoy it, right?
And so it, takes these concepts, which I think are inherently quite kinky, but are also present and pretty, like, vanilla sex and it gets people thinking about them, talking about them and doing little exercises that can help them get more comfortable in their own skin. So I think especially for people with ADHD that’s really good to practice.
And if you maybe have a partner, maybe you’re in a rut, maybe you’re curious to try things with your partner and you’re inhibited or your partner is inhibited, this is like a great little game that you can start with. Right. So that’s kind of, that’s my research for you is to check out the Wheel of Consent.
[00:33:59] Ash: I love that Dusty. And that kind of brings us to like, what is the moral of this episode? Because certainly what it’s not is that ADHD people are inherently kinky. So you should go explore kink because you’re probably kinky. That’s not what we’re trying to say here. What we are really getting at and kind of the takeaway from this episode is kink can be a framework to approach whatever challenges or changes you would like to see in your own sex life through a lens of curiosity, because when done well, that framework that you just described, Dusty, the ways that I described earlier, in which I, I engage with a new dynamic and suss it out.That’s all coming from a curious place, right? Learning what’s true and not true for me, detaching from the outcome. And so, you don’t have to be particularly interested in kink to use these frameworks to look at your own sex life and your own situation with some amount of curiosity and see where the opportunities might be for you and your partner or you as a single person in what you might want to seek out next.
[00:35:09] Dusty: Yeah. And lastly, I just want to go back to that thing I said about sensory needs and stuff. If you have a partner who’s neurodivergent and they’re kinky or they’re, maybe they’re expressing that they’d like to try some things, like, please do not be sex negative.Do not be shamey. Like, we all have our boundaries and limits. You don’t have to do it. You don’t have to like it. You know, own your own sex negativity, and I’m speaking as a person with, like, some pretty severe sexual trauma, like, I have some, it’s not, you know, I’m not going to go into it, but like, there’s some, like, there’s some intense stuff going on there.
So, you know, I understand. Right. But like, it’s not your partner’s. It’s not okay to make somebody feel like a bad person because they want something. Especially when we fold in the fact that this person may just be trying to get some sensory needs met. Right? Again, you don’t have to do it. You don’t have to like it. But like, don’t be sex negative, please. That’s it.
[00:36:04] Ash: I think that’s a good note to end on Dusty. Don’t yuck someone else’s yum. And that is something that I always say up front. I always want someone to feel like they can tell me if there’s something that they want, even if it’s something that I won’t do, because as a coach, I am already very good at reacting with nonjudgment.That’s like one of the most critical parts of the job that you and I do is holding space and not with fake nonjudgment, but with real nonjudgment where I can hear it and even if it’s not for me, I can be curious about it. Right?
I had a situation like this where a guy asked me to do something that I was not interested in doing. But I approached it with curiosity and I said, I don’t, I don’t think that’s for me, but I am curious if you don’t mind sharing what that is for you. And this particular guy is a chef. He runs a kitchen and barks orders all day. So for him flipping the script and being humiliated feels good.
So, good. Something I’ve learned about myself. I can’t do humiliation. I just don’t have it on either side. I don’t like receiving it. I don’t like giving it. I just don’t have a mean bone in my body. So even knowing that would bring pleasure to somebody – that’s not, if I’m your dom, that’s not something that I want to engage in. So if that’s something you’re looking for, I’m probably just not the right person for you. I tend to skew on either side of the power dynamic. I much prefer praise.
And that’s something that I didn’t know about myself a year ago, right? This conversation with this person actually helped give me some language I didn’t have before, created some understanding that I didn’t have before and also helped me examine what was true for me. Right? And two things can be true, right?
Like I can be perfectly fine with that kink of yours, and I can even see and understand and relate to why you like it and what it does for you. But I can also recognize that there’s just something intrinsically within me that’s always going to make that uncomfortable. And if it’s uncomfortable for me, then I’m not enjoying the experience of doing it for you.
Right? So mutual enjoyment and pleasure should always, always be the goal in any sexual situation, kinky or vanilla.
[00:38:14] Dusty: Yeah, sorry, I kept interrupting there, the thing is, even if you’re not interested in doing it, at least if the person tells you about it, you might be able to find some way, because, like, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, but, like, if your partner really wants something, like, do you want them to feel like they have to hide some part of themselves, or that there’s something that they want that’s just never going to get met?Like, that’s so sad. I would want my, you know, there’s always some workaround, right? It doesn’t have to look like, you know, it doesn’t have to look like, oh, okay, well, go bone somebody else or something, right? There’s often creative ways that we can have workarounds. But why would you want your partner to feel inhibited and to feel like you don’t care what they want?
Or vice versa, right? I think you should always be, you should feel cared about and you should be able to talk about what you like or want with your partner even if they’re like, yeah, I don’t think I could do that. I get it, I think I’ve had enough humiliation growing up and in the north with ADHD for like one lifetime – also, not my thing.
My thing is like, my big kink is like ask me about my plants. Attentively listen while I tell you the history of each one of my plants, okay?
[00:39:21] Ash: I love that. I love that. And I think that’s interesting. I’ve never thought too much about why humiliation wasn’t for me, but I am sure that ADHD and the ways that we can feel so deeply humiliated throughout our lives might have a role there. How interesting.I’m really glad you said what you just said because I’m obviously bringing the perspective of a single person who, who in part is single by choice. I’m not seeking to date. I’m certainly not seeking to date monogamously. So that advice for people already in relationships in terms of creating that safety, to be able to talk about it and find a way to fulfill that need, right? Maybe I’m not comfortable doing this, but if we can figure out what that is for you, maybe there is space where I could be comfortable doing that, right? Pretty much going to reject anyone who wants a lot of humiliation. Where I’m at right now is a single person who’s more so seeking sexual experiences than romantic ones.
But if you’re already romantically committed to somebody, right, then yeah, they do need to, that’s like the ultimate place where safety and trust should exist, including being able to articulate things – like what this person articulated to me, right? Here’s what it is and here’s why I like it. That doesn’t mean you have to do it, but that’s going to help you learn something about your partner and maybe get curious about ways in which you can fulfill that need.
And I will just double down on that and say that one of the most surprising things to me, cause there’s a lot of things I thought I wouldn’t do, I am a pacifist by nature. So the idea of hitting someone else with the intention of causing pain was very uncomfortable for me. But again, that’s all hypothetical until it’s not having the actual experience of doing that for someone else in a way that’s pleasurable for them.
Completely changed my perspective on that. And so previously, something that I would have said, I don’t see myself ever, ever doing that to something like, okay, not only do I see the appeal, I can find enjoyment in doing this with and for someone else. So stay curious. It’s okay to have boundaries. It’s okay to have hard no’s.
But more than anything, the opportunity here, just like the opportunity and all the work we do, is journey thinking and staying curious, right? Don’t get too attached to the outcome. Other than if the goal is to have a better experience with your sex life than you’re having now, here’s a framework that can help you be curious with no attachment to how kinky or not your sex life ends up being.
That’s not the important part. The important part is this is a framework that can help you explore in ways that you may have never thought to explore for yourself otherwise. And on that note we are at our time. So until next I am Ash.
[00:42:09] Dusty: I’m Dusty. [00:42:11] Ash: And this was the Translating ADHD Podcast. Thanks for listening.
