Last month me and my partners headed down to London to participate in Open Relating’s playfighting workshop followed by a Temple of Eros play party. I was in the middle of a PMS tornado and ended up having my first public autistic meltdown in a long-time on the way down while sitting on a packed train feeling overstimulated and overwhelmed.
Given how fractured and distressed my brain and body was that day many people would assume that jumping into my first ever experience of a play party with a bunch of strangers would be the last thing I’d be able to engage with. But what followed could not have been further from that expectation and it helped me to more deeply understand the way I experience the world and my needs as a result.
Finding my threads
I often explain to people that the difference between my neurodivergent brain and my partners more ‘nuerotypical’ brain is that if life was a piece of woven fabric he’d be noticing and engaging with the threads that run parallel, and I’d more easily spot and navigate the threads that run vertically. The only difference in how we experience the world as a result is that much of our society is built on the threads that run horizontally, so I end up struggling with more ‘mundane’ or ‘obvious’ stuff and my experience of the world ends up as more disjointed and painful as a result.
But in reality that same combination of perceptions means that I can navigate typically anxiety inducing conversations or experiences much more easily. My discomfort in discussions about the weather and what you did at the weekend is no different to other people’s discomfort with discussions surrounding death and sex… in the same way my ease with explicit consenting rough and tumble with a load of different naked bodies is no different to other people’s ease with handshakes.
And on a more literal sense of ‘finding my threads’ it was so amazing to be able to go from rolling around in lycra yoga pants during the playfighting to wearing nothing but my leather harness in the evening. Honestly if that could be my entire wardrobe I’d be happy.
Seeing energy
I’ve written before about how I am often experiencing the world through a sense which exists between the visual and the physical. And wow did play fighting enable me to really lean into that way of navigating the world. Watching the energy exchanges between people helped me to really understand their vibe and got me really excited to engage with everyone. In contrast, in settings which rely heavily on spoken communication I can often get myself up in my head both worrying about not explaining myself properly or not being able to understand where someone is coming from, so I tend to hone in on one or two people I can feel safe with.
Given the overstimulation and meltdown in the morning, and my past experiences of spaces with lots of people, I’d expected to want to stick close to my partners throughout the night and to not find many other people attractive. But the opposite occurred. As a result of the playfighting, during the play party ice breakers and pair activities I was readily seeking out people with intriguing energies and confidently inviting them to engage with me in ways I often reserve only for close friends.
Consent and boundaries
As a highly sexual person who’s brain takes a while to properly connect with my body I have often found that I am far too late to realise when someone has overstepped my boundaries. I also find that the way I communicate my uncertainty or what feels like an outright ‘no thank you’ is often ignored by people repeatedly. I think much of this overstepping doesn’t just stem from misoginy within our society, but may also be connected to different neurotypes and cultural upbringings. But it is everyone’s responsibility to listen out for cues we might not be familiar with, practice patience and seek out emphatic yes’s when it comes to building intimate relationships.
I often have a ‘what-ing’ phase when first exploring an intimate connection with someone. Repeatedly asking things like ‘What are you thinking’, ‘What did that expression mean’ etc. in order to get to know their unique responses to pleasure or discomfort. But the facilitators and the other participants in the play fighting space and play party gave me much more inspiration for different ways of communicating and seeking consent.
The playfighting itself was a good way to practice this without heightened feelings of rejection. At the start of each fight you would sit opposite your opponent and state where and how you didn’t want to be touched, and the others would repeat the boundary to really sense check it and pay attention to what is being requested. I have since repeated this way of inviting boundary setting ahead of intimacy with a new partner by asking if there is anywhere someone does or doesn’t want to be touched. It not only helps everyone to feel safer that they’ve each been explicit but I also found hearing the responses to these questions really sexy. Being with someone that knows their body and is in control of how it can or can’t be touched makes me feel like so much more is possible, because I know where I stand and can get creative within the parameters they have set.
And this combination of both sexy and considerate communication played our beautifully towards the end of the play party as part of a sexual health conversation with someone and our respective partners but that really requires a whole other blog post. So watch this space for all the sexy details of dental dams in my next post on ‘Navigating sexual health within polyamory and open relationships’.
By the end of the evening I was absolutely buzzing about how safe the space had felt for me, and what that had in turn unlocked for me and my partners. Having experienced uncertainty, confusion or harm in most “normal” public spaces it was a complete joy and relief to realise that there are spaces like this where I can invite more feelings of safety and vibrancy into my life, and I learnt so much that I can take into non-sexual and non-physical spaces too.