Flirting While Neurodivergent with @polymananswers

How do polyamorous, neurodivergent people flirt? Albert from @polymananswers and I discuss the difference between (and success rates of) consent-based, directly communicated flirting methods and those utilised by "pickup artists" in mainstream media (which are often built on a foundation of deception and manipulation). We also discuss:

- Albert's experiences growing up in a polygamous Hmong household with 2 mothers and a father

- How neurotypical people can support their neurodivergent partners from a trauma-informed perspective

- How to manage dopamine-chasing impulses with ADHD and managing the high of New Relationship Energy

and much more.

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Albert (@polymananswers): Instagram

transcribed by Albert @polymananswers

Leanne: Welcome to Happy Polydays, a series of intimate conversations about polyamory, sexuality, identity, and relationships, hosted by me – Leanne Yau of the Poly Philia blog.

Leanne: Hello everyone and welcome to day 8 of the Happy Polydays series. Today, I am joined by Albert, who is a polyamorous content creator who goes by the username @polymananswers, and today we will be talking about flirting as neurodivergent people. I’m autistic and they’re ADHD. So Albert, can you tell us more about your page and what you do on it?

Albert: Yeah. It mostly started as a joke because a lot of my friends saw me as the person to ask about polyamory and non-monogamy. So I started it just to have a place to dump a lot of the stories and a lot of the things that I’ve learned and all these experiences. But it got really serious, so I was like, “People are actually tuning in to this, this is actually important information that people want to hear.” So I decided to get a little more serious with it. It’s from a lens of someone who has been practising polyamory for about 5 years, it’s my experiences, it’s basically my diary. I don’t have any background in psychology or coaching or anything.

Leanne: Mine was much the same. It started as a joke with encouragement from friends, then people started tuning in, and I was like, “Ok, let’s do this then”!

[They laugh]

I’ve been practising polyamory for about as long as you have, so about 5 or 6 years. In relation to that, your page is almost like a diary or a blog. How did you get into polyamory? What was your origin story? How did you come across it? What have your experiences been like?

Albert: I was in an 8-year monogamous relationship. It was very relationship escalator, we were just going through the motions, and not really growing, not really addressing the issues we were having. Towards the end of it, we didn’t want to break up but we also wanted to see other people. I had stumbled upon polyamory in a few articles and a few things on the internet, and I asked, “Why don’t we try this? Because we want to date other people but we don’t want to break up?” It was a terrible idea, we didn’t know what we were doing. It ended very badly, we hurt a lot of people in the process, including ourselves, but what happened was that it gave me the mindset. If this was something I actually wanted to go into, I had to do the research, I had to do the work for myself, I had to dive into this in a real way. Along that journey, I met people who gave me bits and pieces here and there. I dated different polyamorous people and became very open about it and drew more polyamorous people to me. The more I learned, the better I got at it. It’s just the default for me now.

Leanne: Okay. May I ask what were the mistakes you made early on in your polyamory journey? As content creators, it’s very easy for people to pedestalize us and forget that we’re human beings who make mistakes very often. So if you don’t mind sharing, I’d like to hear what were your early struggles. What were your early faux pas in practising polyamory?

Albert: Of course! I wanted to hear about all of my partner’s exploits. I want to hear all the details, all of the people she was dating…but she didn’t want to meet anyone I was dating. So there was this mismatch. It’s not as if I wanted her to be best friends with them or that I wanted her to be in a relationship with them, but that caused a lot of tension in our relationship. Because she had all of these stories in her head about what was going on or if I was out on a date. She was all over the place as to what I was doing, where I was going…

We didn’t have very clearly defined boundaries of what we should tell each other in terms of sexual health, just being in public and people seeing us. What do you say when someone says, “Hey, I saw Albert with somebody else,” those kinds of things. I feel like these are things you need to talk about before you jump into a polyamorous relationship.

For me, I did like to say, “I am not a jealous person.” At the beginning, I was like, “I’m getting into polyamory because I don’t get jealous! I actually get happy seeing my partner with somebody else,” but there was a lot of programming that I just repressed. A lot of male jealousy and baring my chest and feeling like women are property, that sort of programming, that really came to the surface when I saw her with other men specifically. We did have a One Penis Policy at some point in our relationship - it just came naturally from what it feels like being a man in a relationship. These are things you need to address before you jump into a relationship in that way.

Leanne: I think One Penis Policies are super common, regrettably. I think people are drawing more attention to it these days, talking about how problematic it is. I rarely hear it from the other side, the man who imposes the One Penis Policy, and how you work your way out of that. What work did you have to do to unlearn these things? Because I get a lot of clients, men who come to me going, “I have a One Penis Policy, but I really don’t want to. But I don’t know how to get myself out of this.” So what was your process?

Albert: It involved a lot of asking where it came from.

Leanne: Okay.

Albert: I’m Hmong, and in our culture, you can marry multiple wives. It was very much seen as trading property. You pay for your wives, you can have as many as you wanted, depending on how much money you had. So I actually grew up in a household with two moms, and they were both my moms.

Leanne: Oh!

Albert: I had a biological one, but they were both my moms, I had to treat them as such. So I already had this idea of what a relationship between a man and woman was.

Leanne: Right!

Albert: And I brought that into every single relationship that I had with women as a man in the world. It was very much, they were my property. I didn't pay for them the way our culture did, but it just…

In my teenage years, I wanted to steer so far away from that as much as I can. I didn’t want to do anything like my family, like my culture, but I ended up in that same mentality.  So, accepting it, sitting with it, asking where it’s coming from, and just processing it, like, “What’s actually wrong with it? Why do I feel like I deserve to own a woman?” When you really get down to it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense once you break it down into individual pieces. It’s a lot of inner work in just asking why. It seems obvious now when I’m not in that space, but when I’m in that mad jealous state, it all makes sense; you go back to your old programming in those states.

Leanne: What was it like growing up with three parents? Two moms and a dad?

Albert: There was constant drama in the household.

Leanne: Really?

Albert: Yeah. This is one example. Both moms would cook and put a dish on the table and they would sort of stare to see which kids were eating which ones. There was this manipulative game being played at all times, like, “I’ve got these kids, and these kids are on my side…” My dad quashed that as much as he could, but he wasn’t always around. That’s not the healthy way to get rid of that behaviour either. You don’t just say stop, you have to ask where that behaviour comes from. There was always a fight for who was in the pecking order and it went back and forth all the time. It showed us as children that we had to do that as well. Not a very consistent place to grow up.

Leanne: I suppose your two moms were metamours to each other. They were very competitive and didn’t get along. I think one thing that’s really important to break down in polyamorous, non-monogamous, or polygamous dynamics is to move from competition to collaboration. Instead of going, “Which dish are the kids going to like more? Which dish is going to be more impressive” or, “Who’s attention can I get more of?”, recognizing that everyone is on the same team, and you’re all developing a home and family together. That’s definitely going to help with that, right? Otherwise, you’re just being really calculating and petty all the time. But that’s really interesting and I didn’t know that about you. That’s really cool.

Albert: I think a lot of people have this concept of a pipeline, like I grew up in a polygamous household so that brought me to polyamory myself, but it had the opposite effect. I don’t want to marry someone against their will, because that’s what happened with my moms. They weren’t there by choice. So I got to see all the wrong things modelled in my head, so I do it the right way. I want to get into multiple relationships with people who want to be in a relationship with me. So the cooperation comes naturally and we want to get there, because they weren’t there against their will.

Leanne: Yeah, absolutely. Something I say to my clients a lot is that it’s also important to find your anchoring reason why you want to be in a non-monogamous relationship. If you’re not there by choice, if you’re basically polyamorous under duress, then you’re going to have a super tough time, and it’s going to be a tough time for the people around you because you're not honouring your own needs and boundaries. It sounds like that’s what was going on with your two moms. They didn’t sound happy in that situation, so they were trying to fight their way in the pecking order.

Albert: There were good parts to having two moms.

Leanne: Of course!

Albert: It set me up in that way, because I want to have a big chosen family and I wanted to do it in the right way, and those pulled me in the right direction.

Leanne: Yeah, Dr. Elisabeth Sheff is the most prominent researcher on polyamorous families, particularly children who come from polyamorous families. There are obviously cons, but the pros are that you have more avenues for support, even if one parent isn’t home. You still have more people to get advice or opinions from, and more people to rely on. And assuming everyone gets along and is in a cohesive dynamic, it can be very good. I’m not a parent myself, at least not yet, but I do intend to continue practising polyamory when I’m having kids. I do think that the priority shouldn’t be the number of parents, but whether you are building a healthy dynamic or good examples for children to follow in terms of communication, trust, and empathy.

So let’s get to the topic of today, which is flirting while neurodivergent. I think this is quite a good topic because there was a TikTok that came out reasonably recently, where this person was talking about how polyamorous people flirt in a very unique way that is direct but addresses consent. I think she was just doing it for fun, but it ended up massively blowing up and there was actually a lot of controversy about it because people were like, “That’s not polyamorous behaviour, that’s just neurodivergent behaviour”. And others were like, “Why are you talking shit about neurodivergent people?” You know. The internet has absolutely no sense of nuance and that person just got piled on. But that brought me to reflect on being autistic and how I navigate romantic relationships as an autistic person. This is not an uncommon experience. There’s a massive correlation between polyamorous people and the neurodivergent community, this has been well-demonstrated, not by research yet, but there is some research in the works that is investigating that. So what are your initial thoughts about flirting as a neurodivergent person, and what do you think sets us apart from the mainstream narrative of what flirting looks like?

Albert: I saw that TikTok you’re talking about. She said this phrase, ”They sound like they have no game,” and I really really connected with that. [Leanne laughs] Because growing up, 16-year-old me was brought by my older brother to this pick-up artist convention.

Leanne: Oh!

Albert: Yeah. I was taught techniques to isolate women, to prey on their insecurities, and manipulate them in that way. As a 16-year-old, to be taught, “This is the way to get women,” it was very confusing to my neurodivergent brain. I was like, “Wait, that’s not right, that’s incredibly hurtful, that’s incredibly manipulative, this doesn’t make any sense. This is how I get someone in my life? This is how I create a relationship with someone? Why would I want to treat the person I want to be in a relationship with in this way?” It never connected the dots for me.

When I did try these techniques in my late teens and early college years, sure, it got the results that the seminar was teaching, but not the results that I wanted which were actually meaningful and loving relationships. So it dawned on me to just try the opposite, to just say exactly how I feel, and it immediately showed results. Just being genuinely interested in what someone has to say and just who they are as a person and expressing that. Fear of rejection is always going to be there, it’s there for a reason, but to just go up to someone and say, “I really like talking to you, and I would like to talk to you more. I would like to get to know you more!” is the neurodivergent way of flirting in my mind. It’s just to be perfectly honest.

Leanne: Absolutely. Having watched some videos of people critiquing pick-up artist methods, I think it’s manipulative, but it does get short-term results. You’re probably going to be able to work your way up in terms of numbers and get a lot of people, but are they going to stick around? You might be able to sleep with them one time, but are they going to come back for a second or third date or for a long-term relationship? Probably not. Because the connection is built on manipulation and deception and that’s not the greatest foundation for something long-term.

Another thing the TikToker addressed that I felt was a good point was that there’s often a lot of sussing out the vibe. You look at someone and bat your eyelashes, [Albert laughs] or you move a certain way or you touch your hair. It’s very much like a performance for me. And basically, for guys, it’s like watch for these cues, and you just grab them and sweep them off their feet or whatever. And it’s like, woah, okay. I’ve had guys try that on with me, and sometimes it’s been very sudden, because I could be touching my hair not because I’m trying to make a move, but because genuinely a piece of hair is fucking tickling my cheek and I need to move it out of the way. [Albert laughs] And then a guy will grab me by the small of my back and pull me in and go like, “Hey,” and I’m like [surprised, awkward noises].

[Laughter]

And obviously, when you are into someone, and they do do that, then it feels great, it’s very overwhelming, you do feel swept off your feet, but…what if you’re not? That’s the risk that you take. They could be into it, but they could want to punch you in the face. And that is really risky to me, because why would you? I would just rather be direct and have a measured medium reaction, rather than a [loud gasp] or a “fuck off”!

[Laughter]

Albert: One thing that I notice a lot with myself being neurodivergent, and dating and flirting with others who are neurodivergent people, is that we have these things that we are very passionate about. These niche things that we can just rant about for 15-20 minutes, and I found that if you show someone that, and another neurodivergent person is nearby - in a group, if you just show that you’re a ranting, word-vomiting person like you’re really into plants or you’re really into photography, those neurodivergent people will just see you as a beacon and will just fly towards it, and you make space for them to do the same thing. [Leanne laughs] That is the epitome of neurodivergent flirting in my mind. It’s just to hear something in the corner of your ear like, “Are you guys talking about this? Cuz I would like to rant about this!” and you can see it in their eyes that they’re attracted to this. That’s something I notice a lot.

Leanne: I completely relate to the word-vomiting. When I was smaller, I was really bad at being able to tell whether someone was just nodding along or if they were genuinely invested. I read so many books on body language, and something I learned to tell when someone had genuinely lost interest in my conversation was to look at their feet.

Albert: Yeah, where they’re pointed, right?

Leanne: Yeah! [Laughter] You also read the same book by Joe Navarro. [Laughter] What Every Body is Saying by Joe Navarro. A really really good book. If their feet are facing you, they’re interested. If they have one foot facing that way, then they want to leave. Very subtle tells.

Most of the time, a lot of it felt very learned to me. I’m sure there are some people who naturally have game. And by game, I mean…what do you even mean by game? Do you measure game by the techniques you use or the results you get, I suppose? It was so foreign to me, I was always like, “I don’t understand. Why do I have to learn all these things and play all these games when I could just not play the game and be direct with people and cut the shit!”

Albert: I’m realizing just now that I learned a lot of that directness from the kink world actually.

Leanne: Really?

Albert: I’m putting this together right now, going into a sex club and propositioning someone, and just saying, “I think you’re really attractive, if you’d like to do a scene together, my name is Albert and I’ll be right here”. I’m actually connecting the dots - that’s actually where I got that directness from. Because when I started to go to sex clubs and kink gatherings, people were very direct and they were very consent-based in their conversations. I just sort of applied that to the real world, and it just worked and blossomed. 

Leanne: Yeah, that also lines up with my experiences. I remember going to a sex party. Something as simple as a kiss. remember watching people in my periphery engaging in conversation, and suddenly one of them said, “I’d would like to kiss you, if that is something that would bring you pleasure,” and then the other person said, “That would bring me pleasure!” and then they kissed.

[Laughter]

Albert: And that opens up the space for that person to say “That wouldn’t bring me pleasure, I would not like to kiss too”. It all just plays into it. I think that’s why I connected to that world so much. Because I was just like, “Wow, people are actually saying what they believe. I don’t have to worry about crossing someone’s boundaries accidentally.” It still happens, but a lot less likely.

Leanne: Yeah, you have the rudimentary level flirting which is like, “I’m going to do this, and I guess we’ll see if you like it!” And the second level is, “Can I do this thing to you?” And there’s the next level which is, “Would you like me to do this thing to you?” And I think that’s a step further on.

There’s a difference between, “I would like to kiss you,” and “I would like to kiss you, if that is something that would bring you pleasure.” It’s like, “I’m going to do this to you, are you going to let me do this to you?” but like, “would you enjoy it? Is that something that you want? Is that something that you would want and enjoy?”

Of course, there’s going to be some situations where I feel fairly ambivalent about someone doing something to me. I’m going to be like, “It doesn’t do that much for me, but if I don’t mind, and if it brings you joy or whatever, then cool!” There’s definitely situations where that’s fine. But I think the idea of both people getting something out of it, rather than one person just doing stuff that would pleasure themselves to someone else. I think that’s a nuance that often gets missed in these consent situations.

Albert: Yeah. I don’t requent dating apps, but I think you talk about them. Do you use dating apps? 

Leanne: Yeah, a lot.

Albert: So how do the openers or flirting work on there? How does it translate?

Leanne: Ooh! Obviously, there are some guys - usually guys, let’s be real, it’s usually guys - who openly just compliment my photos. “Oh, I really like this photo in particular and here’s a reason why,” or, “Where were you in this photo? I would like to hear more about that,” or they will comment on something in my bio. What I try to do is in my photos or my bio, I create conversation starters. I give a lot of hooks for people to grab onto, and they can ask me about them, because I don’t just want to put a bunch of photos of me looking hot and doing nothing, and then people are just going to be like, “Wow, you look good!” and I’m like, “I know.”

[Laughter]

I want to make it easy for both parties. If I just put photos of me looking good, then that’s all people have to go off of. They see a profile, they don’t know me, they’re just going to comment and then we’ll have a boring conversation. Whereas if I talk about, “Here’s me playing guitar!” or “Here’s me travelling!” there will be stuff to talk about. Anyway, there are some people who comment on my photos, and say something, and we’ll have a little conversation about it. I’ll do the same thing with their profile, “This is interesting” or “This made me laugh” or “This made me smile”. And then at some point, I’ll say, “How long have you been using this app?” or “What are you here for? What are you looking for?” And that’s usually easier on apps like Feeld, because on Feeld, there’s a specific bit where you put down your desires and your interests, so it’s much easier to pick up on that and go, “Oh, I see on your profile that you’re looking for this thing, that’s something I’m interested in too.”

There’s not much beyond that. I think in terms of flirting moves...I’m trying to remember. There was one person whose opening message to me on Feeld was something along the lines of, “I found your profile really intriguing for these reasons, I think we have these things in common, and I’d like to take you out for a drink sometime, whenever you’re ready,” and then a little rose emoji”. I thought the “whenever you’re ready” thing was a good addition.

Albert: Yeah! I got goosebumps!

[Laughter]

Leanne: I thought that was good because sometimes, as a woman on dating apps, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed. You get a lot of messages from people and you don’t respond to them for ages. So the fact that he added “whenever you’re ready” meant that I wouldn’t feel the embarrassment of responding to him after a week or two weeks, and going, “Oh my god, sorry I didn’t respond to you right away.” He was like, “in your own time”. [laughs] I thought that was quite clever. I told my anchor partner about it and he was like, “Damn, I’m gonna use that line.”

[Laughter]

Albert: Yeah! I’m totally writing it down!

[Crosstalk]

Leanne: Go ahead.

Albert: I had some friends who have really good luck with men and women to just be really emotionally vulnerable in the first few messages. Find some way to get to emotional vulnerability really quickly. Ask about attachment theory, mention therapy in some way. Or be honest that they don’t know fully about some subject, and I want to talk about this. I found that people say that works for them well. Those are things that I do in real life, but it’s somehow weird to translate into a text-based conversation.

Leanne: At the end of the day, if you’re going to build connections with people, a lot of it is going to be in person. So I try to move things to in-person as soon as possible. I have a little chat, and as long as someone can hold a conversation and not just saying “Oh, you’re hot,” [laughs] then I’ll probably want to move it to something in person. I’ll usually arrange to meet up within about 10 messages of exchanges.

I’ve just picked up my phone and I’m on Feeld. And I just looked up what people have said to me. Let’s see.

So I connected with someone, and I messaged first. And to be fair, not many women message first. This is just the thing on dating apps, I don’t understand why. Make the first move, you don’t have to just do it on Bumble. Do it!

So I said to him, “Your third photo is (fire emoji). Love a man who leans into his feminine side (heart emoji).” And he said “Hey, hank you so much (heart emoji). You’re gorgeous and interesting haha, what is your meme page called?” because I said I run a meme page. I gave him the thing. And then he asked me, “How long have you been in Bristol?” And I told him. “What about you? What kind of artist are you?” because in his profile he’d put that he was an artist and he had some actor headshots, and so I was like, “Okay, this person’s probably some kind of theater person.”

And then he proceeded to send me about 5 messages about what he does, and what he’s been up to, and what he does for work. He complimented my legs in my second photo. So then it’s like, peppering conversation about yourself with a compliment here and there, so we start engaging and opening up. I sent him a video link to something I did.

Then after a while, we started talking about theatre and plays and things we’d seen and really enjoyed. He said, “I wonder if there are good plays in Bristol soon, you seem like a good theatre buddy”. And I was like, “I was literally just thinking the same thing, can I have your number?” And he was like, “Here you go.” And that was how things kicked off.

I’ll use another example. But yeah, we bounce off things from the profile right? Right. So, I matched with this guitarist. He had different coloured hair in different photos, so my first message was, “I’m curious what colour your hair is currently. Also, I do love a man who plays guitar”. And then he said, “I’m currently blonde, but my roots have started to come through, and I’m really glad to hear that as I am indeed a man who plays guitar”.

[Laughter]

Albert: Alright, alright! That’s game, I would call that game.

Leanne: Yeah!

Albert: Banter. Banter is very attractive.

Leanne: Yeah. It was just like, “Ah! You’ve made the job easy for me then.” Then we’re just kind of talking about where we are in Bristol, and I was like, “What are you looking to get out of Feeld?” and then we got straight to the point. He told me. And I was like, “Just by the way, this app does get really buggy sometimes, so here’s my number.” Easy! Easy times!

The good thing about an app like Feeld, where sometimes the UI is not super reliable, is that you can definitely use that as an excuse to just give them your number and chat on Whatsapp.

Albert: Ah! I see. [laughs] Can I ask are there big differences when you flirt with men or women?

Leanne: Ooh. Uh…not really? I don’t want to say I’m aggressive, but I definitely take an active role rather than a passive one, regardless of gender. The two examples I just gave, they were two people I most recently messaged on Feeld, and both of them I started the conversation. I recognize that this is not usual behaviour for a woman. I think usually, women find it difficult to start a conversation, and I think partially it’s because a lot of men’s profiles are super bland.

[Laughter]

But then there’s also this sense of, “Am I going to seem a certain way or put them off if I message first?” and I’m like, “Fuck that shit. If they’re going to put off by me messaging first, then we shouldn’t be talking.” Put your best foot forward and all that. If you want something, go for it, right?

Which is why I think apps like Bumble are really good, because it motivates women to take the initiative, but from what my anchor partner has said of his experiences using Bumble, a lot of these women cop out by going “hey xx”. [Albert laugh] And then you’ve just thrown the ball back to the other person.

“Hey!” or “How are you?” or “How’s it going?” are the worst possible openers for a dating app - and people might disagree with me on this, some people don’t mind. For me, you’re being lazy, you’re throwing the ball in my direction to move this conversation along. No. Start with something. I’ve given you so much from my profile. Use it! That’s my opinion, anyway.

Albert: What I find in my life with people who are bisexual or pansexual was they’ve gone their whole life flirting with men, and then when they try to flirt with women, they have no idea what to do is what I found. This is a common thing.

Leanne: This is very real, and there are three layers to this when it comes to women flirting with other women. The first layer is societal expectation. You’re basically caught in this catch-22 where if you’re super active, you’re a slut, and if you’re super passive, you’re a prude. And so some people get frozen because they’re like, “Well, I’m fucked either way.”

And then there’s the additional layer of, particularly if you’re a bisexual person or you’ve engaged with men in the past, you naturally take a more passive role because that’s the societal scripts we’ve been taught. The only reason I haven’t adhered to these societal scripts is because autism. Hello! But most people, they mold to these expectations, so they wait for the other person to make the first move. So obviously, if you put two women together who are used to the other person making the first move, no one does anything!

[Albert laughs]

The third layer that I’ve heard from queer women is that they don’t want to make women feel the way that they have felt from men.

Albert: Oh.

Leanne: They’re worried that any move they make that is too sexually aggressive will make the other person feel uncomfortable, because they’ve felt that way from men. But I think they end up over-correcting themselves and interpreting any kind of flirting move as sexual assault.

The barriers are real. So I’m sometimes frustrated, actually, when flirting with other bisexual women, and I say bisexual women particularly. Because, in my personal experience, and people can definitely dispute me on this… I’ve been with a lot of women, and I definitely think there is a difference between flirting with women who are lesbians and women who are bisexual or who have had prior experience dating men. I think lesbians, because they don’t date men and don’t have any reason to take a passive role in any situation, they are much more brazen and direct and much easier to engage. But I think if you’re dating another bisexual woman, because most bisexual women have had experience dating men, just because there are more men who are into women than women into women, and societal compulsory heterosexuality stuff. I find myself very weirdly - because I’m the one making all the moves and being active - somehow being seen as the man in the relationship. I’ll be dating other bisexual women, and they’ll take a very femme personality that wasn’t there initally when I started talking to them until I started making the moves.

Albert: Interesting!

Leanne: And I’m like, “I’m a woman! You don’t have to perform all this stuff for me. This is really strange”. Gender dynamics are fucked, man.

Albert: I have to say that as a bisexual man, it’s much easier to flirt with men. At least from my experience. I think it was modelled my entire life. That locker room, comfortable with touch, very similar interests. You’ve seen two dudes bro out, right? It’s very gay.

Leanne: Yeah

[Laughter]

Albert: I’ve only identified as queer for a few months, so I’m only now going back through all my experiences with men, and I’m now saying, “Wow, we were flirting!” in those scenarios. It wasn’t identified as such because we didn’t want to be gay, that was a very negative thing growing up. But there were so many scenarios where we were flirting, man to man.

Leanne: Can you give an example?

Albert: In college, especially when there was alcohol and drugs involved, I had no issues making out with a guy friend. It was like, “Oh, we’re drunk, so we can blame it on the alcohol or the drugs, it’s not a big deal.” But now that I’m thinking back on it, no, I don’t think a heterosexual man would be ok, even with alcohol or drugs, with making out with another heterosexual man. That’s how my brain processes it now. I was attracted to that man, and that man was attracted to me, and that was how that happened.

Leanne: Yeah, for sure. We see this with women as well, right? There’s the typical, “Haha, I’m going to make out with a girl at this party, totally for my boyfriend’s attention!”

[Laughter]

While there are definitely straight women who do this, I think it’s worth questioning that behaviour, because it’s not something that you see with heterosexuals. It’s really funny, because - my anchor partner is straight…regrettably.

[Laughter]

Albert: Oh no!

Leanne: I joke all the time. This is a joke between us. He wishes he was into guys. I think dating and getting ass would be so much easier if he was also into guys. And we always joke that his heterosexuality is his greatest and only flaw. Which I think he takes as a compliment. It’s so funny because I’ll be asking him where his boundaries are for interacting with men. I’ll be like, “You wouldn’t even want to kiss them?” and he’s like “No,” and I’m like, “Not even if they’re really hot?” and he’s like “No!” He‘s like, “Making out with a guy would be like making out with a brick wall, it doesn’t feel like anything.” I was like “that’s such a wild concept to me”.

Albert: I’ll give you some hope. I used to say things like that.

Leanne: Really? [laughs]

Albert: Not too long ago, I would say things like that. There’s just this heavy layer of programming that says if I was not straight, I would get beat up or I wouldn’t be a part of society anymore growing up. That still plays very loudly now. It’s only with a lot of work to really go into why I think that way...

I used to say kissing a man would be like, not like kissing a brick wall, but like kissing a child or something. In that way, there’s no sexual connotation at all. I’d kiss my brother in that way. It’s only very recently where I’m like, “Wait, hold on, I’ve done so many things that a straight man wouldn’t do.” And I’m like, “I’m so queer!” And as soon as I started saying it, I’ve had two very different reactions. I’ve had the people who are like, “We’re so proud of you, we love you!” and the other which is, “Oh yeah, what else is new, we’ve known this entire time.”

[Laughter]

Leanne: I think there’s room for healthy experimentation. I have a straight friend, who has explored stuff with guys, gone further than most straight guys would have gone. He’s tried it and was like “You know what, I didn’t enjoy it. It was meh”. And he very happily identifies as straight, and I think I respect him more for that. I respect a straight or cis person who has properly questioned and explored their sexuality or gender identity, and has come out the other side like, “Yeah, I’m comfortable in my straight and cis identity”. We shouldn’t assume everyone who has tried gay shit in their past is definitely gay, because that puts all people who want to experiment. But I also completely know what you mean.

[Laughter]

So, Albert, I know you collated some questions from your followers related to flirting or being neurodivergent or both. Or just being neurodivergent and polyamorous. I think we already covered one of them, which was funny or wholesome stories while flirting via dating apps. We’ve talked about that.

From the little list you’ve given me here, someone said, “As a person with ADHD, can you give me advice for expectations in NRE (New Relationship Energy) or chasing dopamine?”

Now I don’t have ADHD - well at least I don’t think I do, maybe, who knows at this point, there’s so much comorbidity at this point. I’d love to hear your thoughts because I think there is a very real issue in the polyamorous community, and I don’t think this is just restricted to people with ADHD, where people are constantly chasing the honeymoon phase. They are constantly chasing that high. And so they have a lot of short-term connections, where as soon as the passion dies, they move on to the next person. And while that can be fine if that’s negotiated from the start, where you’re like, “This is just how I operate” and it’s like, “Okay,” whatever is consensually agreed between parties, not my business. But then if you’re a situation where someone has expectations of something long-term and you just get bored of them three months in, that can create a lot of issues, you can hurt a lot of people.

Albert: Absolutely.

Leanne: So, I would love to hear from you on whether you have any personal anecdotes to share, whether in your own life or from other people you’ve met or seen, about managing New Relationship Energy as a person with ADHD, and what you think about chasing this high or chasing dopamine. 

Albert: Yeah. It definitely affects every human, but it’s just completely heightened because there’s this tendency to build story. There’s this tendency to sort of really look down like “This is where we’re going to live, this is how our wedding is going to look like.” Especially with my journey with Jes from @remodeledlove, it’s something we made sure to document, because it’s something we both do very often in relationships when we start them. And a new way is to really really really slow down because our brains are going a mile a minute when we’re getting hit with those happy chemicals. And it’s really important to just ask, “Is this the story I’m building, or is this an actual connection that we’re building? Is this actually a vibe that is real or is it just something that’s spinning in my head and also spinning in their head and us playing off of each other?” That happens so often to me.

For a while, I thought it was just because I was polyamorous. For a while, I thought this was just how polyamorous people work. They just have this New Relationship Energy, and they just keep chasing, and I really thought that because that’s how my brain worked. Until I connected it to my neurodivergence, it made a lot of sense that my brain sort of puts those two together. It gives me more opportunities to chase.

Something that Jes talks about a lot is downshifting in a relationship. We were in my car which is a stick shift, and she compared it to, “Don’t just drop someone off the face of your life.” There’s a gentle process for you to downshift into a lower gear. Say, “I want to slow down in this way,” or “I want to make this boundary so I can have a little more time to figure out if this is right for us, for me, for you.” That was a really good metaphor, to hit the brakes a little, downshift, go into a different gear, go into a different speed. For me, that metaphor hit really hard. That makes a lot of sense. Don’t just completely say, “I’m done with you, I’m on to the next new shiny thing.” Be kind to the people that you’re in a relationship with. That’s aside from abuse or something you have to get away from for a good reason. Nuance, you know.

[Laughter]

Leanne: I’ve definitely had experiences with people who were looking for a high, and I didn’t know and was very much blind-sided. And when things were switched up, it was very shocking to me. Actually, earlier when I told you about that person who sent that rose emoji and was like “Let’s go out for a drink whenever you’re ready”. It was such a promising connection, but then it ended very abruptly basically a month after we first met. We started out as a very passionate connection, and he was saying all kinds of things, and I think we were feeding off each other, mirroring, and building up and up and up and up. I think at some point, he realized that he had gotten in way more serious than he was intending, and he very abruptly pulled away. It went from, “I want to meet up with you once a week, and I want us to build towards being boyfriend and girlfriend, and here’s the Relationship Anarchy diagram, and I filled in all the things I would like for us to build in our connection together.” And literally five days later, he was like, “I don’t want to meet up with you unless we can have a threesome”.

Albert: [pained noise]

Leanne: Yeah. And that hot and cold was emotional whiplash.

Albert: Oof. I felt that too! Oh my god.

Leanne: So it was very much like, “What? What were those things that you said?

So I mean, I don’t know if that was a bit of anxious/avoidant stuff going on there. Not to go too much into it, but on our second date, we had a bit of a vulnerable moment. He had told me about some of his childhood trauma, and there was a lot of it. And I know that for people who have histories with trauma, you build a disorganised, anxious/avoidant attachment style. You rev the engine and go all in, and suddenly you’re like, “Oh shit, this is too much!” and then you’re all out again. And you vacillate between the two wildly and that can be very dysregulating for everyone involved. There was an element of that in there, so it wasn’t just ADHD.

So I completely get what you mean. Being honest about, “This is where my body is at right now, this is what my brain is telling me, but I know this is an unhealthy pattern, so we can work together with this.” You can be open and honest with each other rather than going, “Nope, I’m out of here!” I think building expectations is really important, at the start. Knowing what your tendencies are. I think you and Jes have modelled a really great example of checking in with each other and not trying to build story, and being conscious of the patterns your neurodivergent brains are building, or what your impulses are telling you that are perhaps unwise to follow. You slow it down and you’re able to build something like feels embers in a fire, rather than a firework that goes WOOF! 

Albert: And it’s incredibly healing to just be able to build this foundation in a relationship. It’s very kind to my past selves who did it very poorly in my other relationships. It’s such a great experience.

Leanne: For sure.

Moving on to another question you got from a follower. “Suggestions for a neurodivergent partner to best support or relate to them.” So I know that, as you said, as a neurodivergent person, just by talking about your special interests, you just attract other neurodivergents like a beacon. And I do think that a lot of my partners are also neurodivergent, but my anchor partner is the exception. That’s because he grew up with a neurodivergent mother and sister. Even though I’m pretty sure he isn’t neurodivergent himself, he definitely is used to relating to people who are, which is why we fit together so well. As a neurodivergent person, what would you say to a neurotypical individual on how you would feel best supported in a relationship and what you would need to feel safe or secure or cared for?

Albert: This is a really good question. From a neurodivergent standpoint, there’s patterns and things you see that neurotypical people don’t. There are little tics, there are little sayings.

I have a partner who is very sensitive to laughing. When we’re in public or in any space, or even when they hear it on the TV, if they hear laughing they assume it’s about them.

Leanne: Oh.

Albert: And you sort of pay attention to those things. They ask things like “why are you laughing? I don’t know why you’re laughing. Can you tell me why you’re laughing?” or “Why are those people laughing?” There are little things like that that you pay attention to. It’s really easy to say, “What are you talking about? No one was talking about you.” That's what the neurotypical thing is, to react in that way. “It’s not a big deal, they’re not laughing at you”. But to a neurodivergent person, that’s incredibly hurtful. It’s so important for you to just accept that that’s how they feel when they hear something like that. It’s so important for you to say, “Hey, I was laughing because of this reason, and if you thought it was about you, it had nothing to do with you.” Just to reassure.

When a neurodivergent person is more aware of those patterns and tics, they can sort of communicate it like, “I hate pranks, don’t scare me.” I say that to every partner that I have. “Don’t hide behind the door, and go HA! when I come in.” That is always in my head, because my brothers and sisters did that to me all the time, and it scares the shit out of me. Listen to those things, they’re not saying it for no reason. These are real, real things in our brains that tell us all these things about what can happen if these things happen in our life. So listening to what they tell you, picking up on patterns… For me, it just comes naturally, it’s like a video game. Jot down notes about this person, jot down notes about that person. But for a neurotypical person, I can see how it’s hard to pay attention to those things. And those are really mild cases, and it extends to really severe cases as well, but these are the cases that I know of. 

Leanne: And I think it’s important to note as well that there is a very high correlation between neurodivergent people and people with trauma. And I think that’s no accident. Some people can argue it’s a chicken and egg situation, but I do think if you’re a neurodivergent person, particularly if you’re autistic, you’re very susceptible to manipulation, you’re very susceptible to narcissism. Not being narcissistic, but being manipulated by narcissists.

I was bullied basically through all of my school days, and from that, I developed a very deep fear of being misunderstood. Because I was constantly misinterpreting other people and they were constantly misinterpreting me, and I often felt the need to over-explain myself in situations when I didn’t feel like people didn’t 100% understand me. It exposed a lot of personal vulnerabilities that were put in the wrong hands…and that creates trauma. And so, what you said about your partner who is very sensitive to people laughing, I think that is a trauma wound as well. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those two are related. I definitely personally have been in many situations growing up where I didn’t know I was the butt of a joke. I’d have people coming up to me pretending to be nice to me, listening to all my special interests at the time and going “Oh my god, that’s so interesting!” And because they were smiling, I thought they were friends with me. But what I didn’t know was that they were going back to their friends going, “Oh my god, did you see the way Leanne reacted to that? She’s so dumb”. And I would not know.

The feeling you get later when the other shoe drops, and you realize that you have been the butt of a joke for months, and you’ve been being manipulated for months… That does shit to you. So while I don’t have the same trigger to laughing as your partner does, I can completely see where it would come from. 

Albert: For your trigger for being misunderstood though, it helps if you’re saying something, and somebody says, “I didn’t understand this, can you clarify this?” It helps heal that part of it, for them to say that, because you don’t want to be misunderstood.

Leanne: Absolutely. It has pros and cons, but I think it’s important to be sensitive to these things, and if people ask a question, rather than going, “That’s a stupid question, why are you asking that?” to be like, “We were laughing because of this reason,” or “I was being serious,” or “That was sarcasm if you missed it.” If it was sarcasm. I hate it when I can’t tell if someone is joking or not, and then I ask if they’re joking or not and they turn that into a joke in itself, and I’m even more confused!

[Laughter]

So I think there are a lot of different things. There’s definitely more room in the polyamorous community for neurodivergent people to speak out about how they best feel supported and being more trauma-informed generally. I think that is something that the polyamorous community misses. A lot of the mainstream polyamory books assume that you have no childhood trauma, and you have fairly secure attachment. It’s like “read a book, and all of your insecurities will disappear!” And it’s like, that’s not how it works!

Which is why I think your voice like yours is so important, Albert.

Albert: Aww.

Leanne: Firstly, there aren’t many polyamorous men who are openly talking about their journeys on Instagram or otherwise. Modelling good examples of unlearning toxic masculinity and all that stuff. Although I understand you identify as somewhere between man and non-binary. It’s funny because I identify as somewhere between woman and non-binary. [Laughs] I wonder if that’s also neurodivergent stuff as well!

[Laughter]

And I think as one Asian to another as well, it’s important to talk about the intersections of polyamory and race, which is a topic I intend to cover a little more on my platform. Because I’ve been weirdly silent on the issue thus far. I think these unique perspectives all contribute to more understanding and communication and acceptance of the community as a whole.

Albert: I think we have enough content creators to make a summit just about Asian and Polyamory.

Leanne: Yes, absolutely. I guess I was averse to it before because I didn’t want to just be The Chinese Polyamorous Person or make my platform about me being Chinese and neurodivergent. I didn’t want to make that a whole thing. I wanted to be recognized as just another regular polyamorous person. But these days, I recognize the value of telling more personal stories and perhaps speaking from viewpoints that don’t reflect the mainstream. There is value in that as well, and I’m making more of an effort to be a little more personable as an individual, talking about the intersections of my identity and how they relate to each other.

Thank you so much for the work that you do, Albert.

Albert: Thank you!

Leanne: Are you on any other social media platforms other than Instagram?

Albert: No

Leanne: Okay. Everyone follow Albert @polymananswers and I hope you enjoyed this talk. Thank you so much, Albert.

Albert: Thank you.

Leanne: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Happy Polydays series. If you’d like to support my work, consider becoming a Patreon subscriber at patreon.com/polyphiliablog. You can also follow me at @polyphiliablog on Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, and Twitter, buy my polyamory merch at polyphiliashop.redbubble.com, or book a peer support session with me on my website polyphilia.blog. Until next time!