The Viall Files - E206 Relationships & Sexology With Love On the Spectrum’s Jodi Rodgers

Episode Date: December 2, 2020

Today we are joined by Jodi Rodgers, the relationship and sexologist specialist from Netflix’s Love On The Spectrum. Jodi started working with people with disabilities and expanded her studies specialzing in autism & relationships. She saw there was a lack of conversation around sexual and romantic dynamics when it came to Autism in adults and this focus made her the therapist helping out some of the people we meet on Love On The Spectrum. Nick and Jodi do not only speak about her time on the show but also get into Sexology and Jodi takes the time to share her thoughts on some of the relationship questions we often get on The Viall Files.  “It had something to do with a love of snails.“ Please make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and as always send in your relationship questions to [e-mail] to be a part of our Monday episodes.  THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: Manscaped: http://www.manscaped.com use code VIALL for 20% off and free shipping  Blendjet: http://www.blendjet.com/VIALL to save an extra 12% Brooklinen: http://www.brooklinen.com enter promo code VIALL for 10% off your order plus free shipping. Skylight Frames: http://www.skylightframes.com enter code FILES to get $10 off your purchase.  Episode Socials:  @viallfiles @nickviall See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What is going on everybody? Welcome to another episode of The Vow Files. I am your host, Nick. I'll be with you on this journey. Joined by my producer, Chrissy. Chrissy, how are you? I'm good. I'm also on this journey joined by my producer chrissy chrissy how are you i'm good i'm also on this journey so thank you i don't know where we're going i love this journey for you but um we're on it we have uh such a delightful episode for you today um that just sounds fun because our guest is australian and yes sounds amazing everything

she says if you've watched love on the spectrum um you will know who jody rogers is she is the uh what does she refer to herself she doesn't like to be called a specialist who works with the cast the autistic cast on love on a spectrum she's also a been studying sexuality and sensuality for her entire adult life she's got a master's uh and so we both talk about love on the spectrum the show uh autism the spectrum and we get into sexuality and sensuality and spicing up things in the bedroom and in relationships and things that might be considered that taboo but are not. And we just have a fun conversation about autism and sex, basically. I mean, there you go.

There you go. It's a nice sandwich. It's a nice little sandwich. So I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget to send in your questions at AskNick at CassMedia.com. Cass with a K. Send in your questions. We appreciate a K. Send your questions. We appreciate those who send in their questions.

They are the lifeblood of our Ask Nick episode. So if you're struggling with something and you have an interesting story, go ahead and take the time to email us. And if you want to bring in your partner, even more fun. Even more fun. You won't regret it. You can be anonymous. Subscribe.

Whatever. J, whatever. Jody Rogers. Jody, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Obviously, Christy and I are big fans of you and even bigger fans of the show, Love on the Spectrum, of which you are a big part of. So we wanted to have you

on and have a conversation obviously about the show i know a lot of my friends and just people worldwide quite frankly really enjoyed the show and um i think it opened up a lot of people's eyes to uh the autism community and uh normalized it in a great way. But I also think there were some helpful takeaways for, for everyone watching it as it relates to relationships. And I thought it would just be fun to have you on. I'm more than happy to, you know,

be here with you from the other side of the world. Yeah. So I guess maybe let's start at the beginning uh i know briefly oh there's jody's cat i love it for those listening um i know that you are reluctant to be referred to as an expert yes why and that being said could you give us expert or not a little bit about yourself and your background and how did you get into studying relationships and then how did you start working with the autism community well i don't i don't call my next myself an expert at all. In actual fact, when they made the show in Australia, I refused to let them use that word because in two fronts,

I think the only people that can be an expert in a field, if you're talking about autism, the only people who really can be experts on autism are autistic people themselves. It's their lives and their story and their experience of autism and um I'm not autistic so that's number one and the other one is if anyone said they were an expert on relationships then their whole life their relationships would be only successful and that's not how relationships work you know relationships are complex and difficult and so yeah I just don't claim expert I don't have a PhD I haven't you know studied it to

to that length so I call myself a specialist in the fact that I specialize in those areas but definitely I'm learning every single day and continue to learn every single day about both autism and sexuality and relationships. So that's that part. Did you get into studying sexuality and relationships before you knew you wanted to specialize in the autism space? No, actually it worked the opposite way, Nick. So what happened was I was working within the disability space and I know you can't tell by my, you know, incredibly youthful look,

but I've worked in the industry for over 30 years. So when I first started working, autism, people with a diagnosis of autism all had an intellectual disability. So there wasn't a concept of somebody with Asperger's or people that had autism that didn't have an intellectual disability until the 90s. So in the time period that I've worked with autistic people, the diagnosis has changed three to four times. So I originally started working within the disability community then started specializing in autism specifically and what I found was there was a lot of support for young children or young autistic children and then as people got older we seemed to drop away

on um I can't explain it so when kids are little we did a lot about social skills for kids and connecting with other people and then once kids got into high school and then in moved into adulthood it's like we stopped talking about relationships because the complexity as we all know in intimate and romantic and you know sexual, I think just was a too hard basket for many people, except that I was finding because I was working with people over a lifespan, nearly every person I was working with needed support in sexuality and relationships. So that's when I went the opposite direction

and started doing sort of much more counselling specifically for the autistic community or people who communicate in a different way. And then finally put my money where my mouth is and went and got a master's degree in sexual health counselling and sexuality. So yeah, it was the autism and disability first and then the relationships second. Interesting.

How did Love on the the spectrum come to pass because i feel like when we we spoke briefly before we recorded you guys started producing the show before there was any relationship with netflix or any guarantee that it was going to be streaming worldwide you guys had i think if my memory serves kind of low expectations at first yeah so remember when you say you i'm not part of the production team i'm just somebody they talked into being on the show so they had the idea and they came to you yeah so what happened was they the production northern pictures had actually produced in Australia another couple of documentaries that were about employment and disability.

And while they were making those documentaries, many of the people that they were filming based on employment, autistic people were saying, I really want a boyfriend or a girlfriend or I really want to, you know, experience love. And so this idea just developed about actually could we produce something or could they produce something that was based around that you know adults experience autistic experience of love and dating so it grew from that but yes in australia it was on our public broadcasting um i don't know what the equivalent is in the u.s but here it's our

government public broadcasting channel i thought maybe three people would watch it that was about it um but it was really popular in australia really really popular and i think came out at a time when you know the the year's been really crappy for lots of us and so it came out at a time when i think people just really needed something that was joyous and hopeful and easy to watch and then out of the blue all of a sudden netflix picks it up so they contacted me the production team contacted me and just said oh by the way jody netflix has picked it up and it's going global. So, yeah, that was a bit of a shock for everybody.

Did you get to talk to any of your patients about the fact that it got all the buzz that it got? I'm curious, like Michael's reaction. I'd love to know Michael's reaction. I love Michael so much. When they asked me to be on the show, I originally said no, Nick, because I'm a therapist. You know, this is my job and what I know is that if you build a relationship therapeutically, that sounds a bit wanky,

but, you know, if you build a relationship with somebody, particularly an autistic person, that's really important to me. That relationship is really integrally important and I'm really worried about being filmed, you know up to Michael's house like you were talking I'll tell you about that in a minute but I didn't want to be filmed in an unnatural situation and then go okay see ya I'll never see you again so I requested that um any person that I was filmed with on the show that I spoke to their families and then prior, you know, after meeting them and said, could I continue to see them?

So Michael and I, we still Skype each other on a Saturday afternoon every month. Kelvin and I, you know, still chat regularly. So every single person I work with I've still got an ongoing relationship with. Mike, Michael, is an absolute card of a human. He is so funny. He's so earnest.

He's the best. I want to find my own Michael. Yeah, no, he's great. And the funny thing about him is he knows he's funny. So when people are sort of saying, oh, why are people laughing at Michael? Because he's so deadpan. Like he's really so when people are sort of saying oh why are people laughing at michael and because he's so deadpan like he's really dry and really deadpan and that's part of his autism but he knows that he's funny so if you laugh he even though he doesn't have any kind of um he doesn't laugh back you know how can i explain like if i was telling you guys a joke

i would start laughing at myself for being witty before I've even got through to the punchline. But Mike doesn't do that. He's just really deadpan. That's what makes it so funny. So when he talks about his popularity, his global popularity, I'm saying, and then people are saying, oh, he should have his own show, and he's really deadpan about it. It's almost like he says, of course. Of course I would be.

He's just a really great person. But I think it's just been a shock for everyone that it was picked up by Netflix in the first place because it was so small. It was such a small idea and really was just going to have four episodes in Australia and that was going to be it. But, yeah, no, it's great. Got a life of its own now. What's – is Michael dating?

What's his relationship status these days? I am not allowed to tell you. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, because – So you're saying there's a chance. They're in the midst of filming season two and that's right yeah so i'm under a confidentiality contract and can't tell you anything but what i can tell you is there will be there will be catch-ups of what's happened to people that have been could you at least say if

love is in the air with anyone love is in the air with lots of people. Okay. That's good. And that makes me happy because I saw that they were casting. So I thought maybe it was going to be a whole new group of people, but if they're still going to catch up with the old people, then that makes me feel better. Yeah.

And I, everybody wants, everybody wants the, what's, what's happened to the others. Yeah. So what's happened? Yeah.

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of autism and that affects them differently or is that the case? No, that's 100% correct. So because it is a spectrum, it's really broad. And I always say that every person's autism presents in a different way. But there's some key, key things that diagnostically and remember I was saying to you it's changed three or four times so in my lifetime I'll see the diagnosis change again but currently what they do it's autism is only seen through observable

behaviors how people interact and one of those things is within what they call social communication or social interaction the way people with autism interact with other people and it can be let me give you an example so one of the one of the areas they look for is what they call social and emotional reciprocity so that's basically matching another person both socially and emotionally so it could be that a person may have problems initiating conversation. They may not even know how to start a conversation. They might be really, really aloof and distant.

They may have kind of a different way, or some people call it active and odd, you know, a way of starting a conversation. They might just come in sideways and rather than doing a greeting or building slowly into a communication or conversation they'll just come in with their special interest so that might be one presentation it might be that people have great difficulties keeping a conversation going they just can't look at they've got a rote learnt system of what you

say in a conversation but once they've got through that rote learnt set of questions, then they don't know where to go with that or they may not be able to, they may be really good conversationalists as long as it's about their area of interest or the things that they're into, but they don't really, they've got no interest in what you're saying whatsoever. If you're talking about their stuff and what they're into, that's cool. Every single one of us, if I went through the diagnostic criteria

for autism, every single one of us does these little ticks. Okay. That's what I keep saying to people. We've all got it. We're all quirky and we're all different and this is what makes humans so wonderful that we have all of these things going on to have a diagnosis of autism. It has to be complexity on a daily basis that,

you know, means that your relationships or the way you interact with people, or it gets in the way of work or social interaction. You're fine, Nick. You're fine. Well, I mean, and honestly, either way, like this is who I am.

It brings me to like a question that I have in terms of I think a lot of people's introduction to autism was the movie Rain Man. Do you remember the movie Rain Man with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman? A brilliant movie. It's older, but I think that was a lot of people's first introduction with it. And since then, it's become a lot more normalized and a lot more aware. And I'm assuming a great way. Now people are getting diagnosed properly and more often.

And it sounds like, especially watching Love on the Spectrum, that that wasn't always the case. And it sounds like, especially watching Love on the Spectrum, that that wasn't always the case. People, you know, I was even surprised while watching Love on the Spectrum how many of your patients weren't diagnosed until late teens, you know, or, you know, and that was like, wow, you know, you would think how frustrating that might be to go, you know, through 15, 16 years of life, not having any answers to their uniqueness. And then you have the spectrum. Now people are more aware of it, but now they might even say, oh, I wonder if he or she's on the spectrum, or they do something weird, or they do something cork. Is that an offensive thing for people to suggest, or it maybe in a good way just it's become more mainstream

and now people are aware of autism and aware of what it means to be in the spectrum? Where do you fall on that kind of point of view on how normalized it has become as a good or a bad thing, if anything? So the autistic community, there's a great sense of pride in the autistic community and and i think you know you what you what you just spoke about to there's two sides to that story one is isn't it brilliant that we have this kind of inclusive language

that we actually are all understanding that we're all diverse the way we perceive the world and interact is really diverse so in one hand it's really great that we will be able to say, oh, geez, that's a bit autistic or you're on the spectrum or that's kind of because that shows that as a general population, we're getting more and more knowledge about people with different neurology and the way that they present. And it's not a scary thing and it's not something that needs to be sort of put away and not thought about.

It's about us as a mainstream being educated and then we're kind of almost turning it into something where we recognize those traits in other people or have a giggle about it I mean the other hand of that is that the autistic community is a really really strong community and that they are starting to talk about neurodiversity and that maybe we need to stop talking about autism or ADHD or you know these these differing and actually just look at a population of people who are neurodiverse so what do you mean by neurodiverse so people that so I always think about like the bell curve really. So the majority of us interact in a specific way or we have a specific style of the way we do things.

But the autistic community are really looking about when people do things differently, is that such a bad thing? Is it more, you know, maybe it's the mainstream population have to be much more accepting of the way that somebody communicates in a different way and much more inclusive of that difference. Because if, I'll show you the difference with it, Nick. If you and I, if you and I meet somebody and they're just really odd in their interaction, and I know you know those people. and they're just really odd in their interaction. And I know you know those people.

So say we went somewhere socially and we get introduced to somebody and pretty quickly you can pick up if somebody's, you know, in your own head you might be thinking, man, this person's really different in the way they're doing things or you get a little bit uncomfortable in the way they're talking or they just talk at you insistently so you try and back out and get away from that. We used to say, well, we would say, geez, that person's odd or we'd move away from it.

If we get more understanding of people, have different ways of interacting, maybe we actually move towards it a little bit. Maybe we move into that and we actually then are able to go, oh, maybe this guy's, oh, hang on, sorry, I'm talking, sometimes I'll do this. My brain works really quickly and I'd get halfway through a sentence and then I'll go on to something else. But somebody told me something beautiful the other day, and that was that they work in

a call center. And they said that there's this guy that rings the call center all the time. And he's known for being a bit of a pain in the backside because he's always on his own agenda. He's always saying what he needs to say. He's always complaining about things. And they said that everybody, when he'd call in, they'd in the course and they'd try and push him onto somebody else. And then they said to me that they had watched Love on the Spectrum.

It went around the office that, you know, that they should watch this show. And then this email that somebody said to me is that then after the show, somebody said, maybe Bill has autism. Maybe he's on the spectrum. And it has completely changed the way those people are interacting with him because they're now not seeing him as the odd different person. They're seeing him as somebody that actually

it's not him deliberately being this way it's because this is who he is does that help him yeah but it's also i don't know if it's great or sad in a way like as humans we almost need to label something yeah to feel more comfortable with it. You know what I'm saying? But I guess what you're saying is they just weren't sure if he was a dick or not. Yep. And now we're like, oh, he's not a dick. He's just like his way of communicating. Yeah. Yeah, it's his way of communicating.

And maybe if we communicate in a different way with him, it will actually be easier for both of us. And that's what I find. I work with autistic people every single day, but they're autistic. That's just the way their brains work. So I could sit there for the next 30 years of my life saying, will you change? Will you do it my way?

Will you be a bit more like me, socialised like me? But it's not going to happen because that's the way they are. So why isn't it that I need to change the way that I interact to move closer towards their differing way of communicating? So, yeah, as a specialist who works with autistic people, you're not necessarily, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're not trying to change what they do or teach them to do things differently.

You're more working with them so that you can take their skill set and adapt it to be able to have a relationship in their own way, not necessarily in the way that people who aren't on the spectrum are used to having relationships. Yep, that's 100 great and

it's like you know it where if i don't know whether you have but if you ever go to a psychologist or a therapist it's not like you walk in there and they go right this is what we're going to do with you we're gonna you know that's not how it works we go to somebody saying here's what i need help with here's the things that i'm having difficulty with so every single person that I see comes to me with their own unique and they're not just autistic we've got to remember that you know it's every single sexual orientation and gender and religion and race and ethnicity and politics you know it's all of that sort of stuff. But when they come to me, they might say, I'm in a relationship with somebody, but I'm having a lot of difficulty negotiating and understanding compromise in this relationship. Or it might be somebody different saying, I'm in this really great relationship, but I've got no understanding of intimacy. Or I really want to be in a relationship relationship but I don't know how to meet somebody

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And you can preload it with your favorite photos for your personalized gift important pictures of you and the significant others and spouses grandparents in your life they didn't even know that you had my mom just had a birthday i gave her a skylight frame of pictures of me and boy she cried because she loves me so much true story now as an offer you can get 10 off your purchase of a Skylight Frame when you go to skylightframe.com and enter code FILES, F-I-L-E-S. That's right. Get 10% off your purchase of a Skylight Frame.

Just go to skylightframe.com and enter code FILES, F-I-L-E-S. That is S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T-F-R-A-M-E.com. Promo code F-I-L-H-T-F-R-A-M-E.com, promo code F-I-L-E-S. And are you, what's your, I guess you probably can't talk about show related. Do you have like a big success story that like your most, that makes you feel really good or warm and fuzzy or someone that you started working with without naming names or just like a story of working with a patient that's now like happily in love and married you know i've worked with autistic people for 30 years so if i didn't have some successes

sometimes i don't know what the hell i'm still yeah i don't know but i'm sure you have i guess just what do you have a heart well it's like it's? It's like I am a relationship counsellor. You know, I'm a sexologist and a sex therapist and a relationship counsellor. So the success is what those people see as being success. But, yeah, 100% I work with people that couldn't even walk into a space where there's other people and now they're in long-term relationships with children,

you know, the whole, if that's what people see as successful, there's other people that have thought that a relationship is what makes us all, is the kind of biggest goal in life, that to be in a long-term successful relationship actually makes you normal. That's their understanding of it. And being able to actually shake that up a bit and say is that what we all need in life you know some people come in

thinking that's what they need and find out actually they're asexual and they don't even want to be in a relationship with somebody else but their perception of relationship sometimes needs to shift yeah it's very hard because you're asking me to, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. So what is a sexologist? So a sexologist is somebody that, a sex therapist basically, but I call myself a sexologist. So it's somebody that's studied. Sounds more fun.

Yeah, it does. They've studied human sexuality in a postgraduate level or master's degree level. So it means that they understand and have studied everything about human sexuality. So that can be the anatomy and physiology, the behaviour, gender, all different types of presentations in sexualised behavior fetishes you know paraphilias fetishes how does one determine whether a fetish is a healthy fetish or like or is there is there

such a thing as a healthy fetish or where do you draw the line in being i hope so and and yeah well i'm curious about fetish yeah it's i suppose it's the same as um what makes something a fetish for let's start there yeah well i suppose if you would do whatever you want to do in the privacy of your own bedroom if it's not harming you or anybody else then it's not really a fetish if it's if it's impacting on your day-to-day functioning or if you become so into it that you can't leave the house or you it's impacting on your relationships with other people. I mean, if you've got a fetish that you then have a partner and this is something that you want to be fulfilled

with that partner, sometimes even being able to talk about that with another person can be very complex and difficult. You know, we have trouble talking about sex even if we're just heterosexual missionary position have trouble talking about especially especially in america we we we do not i mean i think we've gotten better at it we promote a very sex positive culture on this show but you know we grew up in a very puritanical society in the states and even you know god bless my parents but we didn't talk about much about sex um so so you're are you saying a fetish is only a fetish if if it's a it's if it can be harmful or it gets in the way of your

so anything that you know there's a there is become complex in their life but but i suppose the difficulty with that is it's still a diagnostic criteria and a diagnostic criteria is all about if it's impacting on your day-to-day life so if you like if you're just like into sucking toes and your partner's fine with it and like that's just something you do that's not a fetish because people will say like oh he or she has a foot fetish or no but if like wearing a leather jock strap under everything that you have to wear under your business suit every day gets you off then that's a fetish okay well i didn't know that i think a lot of people then use the word fetish a little too loosely

and liberally. Yeah. Yeah. I can't tell you how people's presentation and what their sexual desire and what arouses them and what their attraction. It is so diverse. It is. You know, we just get vanilla mainstream stuff but what what people want what people need what's their sensuality and their expression of sexuality is so

um i always tell this story about one of the things when i was first becoming a sexologist and had to talk about this on a daily basis we basically had to you know learn to do this a bit like Michael without having an emotional reaction to it but I always say that at one point I was doing some counseling and a fellow was telling me a story about what he was into and I was sitting in an armchair like you are Nick so it had you know armrests on the side and I was so glad that it had an armrest because you're meant to be completely non-judgmental and non-valuable and you don't want to kind of express to somebody else to go, what are you talking about?

But this guy was telling me a story. I had my arm on the armrest like that because I had my chin up like that because if I'd taken my hand away, my face would have been like this. What are you telling me? When you talk about sex all day long. Are you able to share what it was without breaking any? I won't go into detail, but it had something to do with a love of snails. Okay.

All right. Yeah. Well, you talk about diversity. I saw an article. Actually, I tweeted it. It was Pornhub shared some of the top searches during the week of the election, and quite bizarre. Grandma's was the top search in both Tennessee and South Carolina.

Okay. How interesting. I'm going to go and do that after we finish speaking. What is your thoughts? We get a lot of questions about porn and the role it plays in a relationship if it's harmful. in a relationship, if it's harmful, do you have any thoughts on porn and how people should or could use it to benefit

and where does it maybe become harmful? I've gone quiet because it's the same thing. I say it from every angle and it's about the person's use. I think it can be really fantastic. I think it can be great for individuals. There's many, many lonely people who don't have the touch of somebody else and so they need to go to something that allows them to get off basically.

So I think it can be really successful in relationships as a way of people being able to explore things that are different and diverse and open up so that they don't just get into the routine of and sex can become routine for lots of people like literally it can be well yeah that was actually left breast hand touches right breast that was my next question is uh we like spicing things up. I mean, if you're someone who wants to be a monogamous relationship and you value that commitment and then all of a sudden five years go by, 10 years go by, 15 years go by,

what are some things that you would suggest and how can a couple communicate to, quoteunquote spice it up in the bedroom? I mean, one, they can watch. Sometimes I go back to people because people forget that our sexuality is really built on sensuality. Like it's really built on how we feel about ourselves first. So if you're feeling really, Chris, you might, women sometimes are much more accessible to this.

Sorry, Nick, but I'll build you in here with it. But like if we're feeling really sensual and really sexual, then that oozes out of us. But do you know when we're first in relationships with other people, we do a lot of preparation. We do a lot of thinking in our head. Like all these kind of chemicals are going off in our brain and we're feeling this level of attraction.

We get a bit giddy. And we do a lot of stuff to make. So if I'm going out to meet somebody or if we're feeling this level of attraction, we get a bit giddy and we do a lot of stuff to make. So if I'm going out to meet somebody or if we're in an early relationship, we actually take the time. We go, hmm, I'll have a shower. What can I do to make sure it's all good? An extra long shower to make sure everything gets cleaned up. We prepare an environment to go, you know,

like if you know somebody's coming back to your house, you don't just leave your wet towel on the floor and your dirty old undies on the bed and and so I think what happens in relationships isn't just about the routine of what happens sexually I think it's about routine of life and so sometimes what I'll do with people is actually say let's think back to what you were feeling like and what you did in this preparation that you guys had the best sex of your lives or when you were really enjoying it. You know, for some people, that can be as simple as saying,

oh, you know, early on we used to get a six-pack of beer and go out on a date and have a pizza together. Like it's really interesting what different people need to do or they used to go camping together but they haven't done that for 15 years or sometimes it's rediscovering your sensuality to start with and actually spending the time to go when i'm at my most aroused no i'm not i'm just using me as an example. Here you go. Please, the world needs to know. You can use me. When I'm feeling my most sexual, that means I'm giving to my partner much more than just lying back. I don't know, you guys might not know this,

but there's a terminology we use in Australia because we're from the Commonwealth saying lie back and think of England. You basically, I don't know whether you use that. It's like basically lie back and let it happen. Yeah, yeah. No, that's not how it should should be it's meant to be between the two of you and I think if you are sensual in yourself if you approach your partner but you're already gone had a bubble bath you've had a glass of champagne you've listened to that music that really gets you going you set the

environment up you give yourselves the time to do it that's when it happens because it starts in us first if i if i'm feeling crap or any of us are feeling crap then we just it becomes an act no i just got to do this got to do it once a week because maintain you know it's part of the maintenance of the relationship and if i don't do it, then he'll nag me for the next. I'm talking heterosexually, but this is any couple. So I think relationships become routine, and when a relationship becomes routine, sex becomes part of that routine. So sometimes you've got to spice a relationship up,

and it's not about spicing it up in the bedroom. Sometimes it's actually doing it outside of the bedroom and then it goes off. Or the other one I say to people, which is a real trick, if you've been having sex and you do it routinely, why don't you have a go at just having a smooch and you basically put a barrier on it? Because sometimes when we were at our most wanting,

like our most, oh, my God, I want you so badly. Oh, yeah, it's the making out part. It was when we were making out. Withholding of love. I mean, that's what the bachelor's built on. Yeah, it's like that making out, like just kissing for hours part. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

So you almost forbid each other to have sex for a period of time while showing affection. Yeah, you just go, why don't you just forbid each other to have sex for a period of time while showing affection. Why don't you just see if you can just have a pash for 15 minutes without just pashing or only touching on top of clothes. See where that gets you. Because it is sometimes about that. That's hot. Some couples have stopped kissing.

Some people have stopped touching. Some people don't do any tenderness or any affection outside of the bedroom. Is it usually the guy's fault because he's... No, no, no. But you suggested, and I'm not disagreeing, that the men sometimes require less preparation. We're fine with the towel on the floor earlier so to speak but and that's biology like we it's this site you can read as much research all the way back to the kingsley

report stuff you know that um and johnson and johnson means and women's sexual and i'm being very gender right multiple ways but but if our hormones mean that we have a different sexual response system and men's sexual response system is very different from a woman's sexual response system so you're right i sometimes say like once the testosterone's going off in the fellas then once you've got testosterone in your system it's like heading straight for the goal post i don't know what you guys would use going for the touchdown or something no goal post works yeah yeah goal post so where women's uh sexual arousal system actually takes a bit longer and it's a complete it's a complex thing because you know most men if we're talking penetrative sex i don't know i don't know how

we've got into all of this but but if you talk about penetrative sex then men orgasm within a period of time where women's orgasm actually takes longer than that so it's a nice fact of just trying to um you know just try and and that's heterosexual but you know everybody's sexual arousal system's different so knowing what your partner requires or needs or wants is part of the communication and it is hard like it's hard to talk about our relationships with each other and the way we communicate with each other let alone talking about your sexual needs or what you want or it's a hard area to chat about yeah and it's i mean it's it's fascinating i mean it's uh it makes a lot of sense too uh you simplified it so well in terms of how how people can you know spice it up almost by not assuming sex is a guarantee or it's just something you do but you almost go back to making

it the you know the prize between the two of you or like something you both like build up or earn together you know like the kissing the foreplay the withholding the you know the doing the deeds of like you know what we used to hike before you know sensuality the going out of your way the effort that like create it and make it the even some of the things i sometimes talk about if you understand the sexual response system really well what happens is you know the brain sends the message down to our heart rate increases so you forget when our heart rate increases we're getting all this blood pumped around our body so the blood gets pumped into our skin.

And I always talk about this because when I'm talking about sensuality and tactile sense, if we forget to just really spend the time touching each other, like if you just go, right, get your gear off, get back, I'll just jump on top and, you know, the old wham bam. Thank you, man. It sounds better when you say it right right right it's so good shigera do you know that i did ask them when they told me when they told me at northern pictures that um it was got the show was going global. I asked them if they could have my voice dubbed. I asked them if they could dub it into a really husky Latino voice.

I'm even trying to make it husky. But what they said to me was, Jodie, you don't understand when people in the United States hear your voice. That is so Aussie. I've got this image in my head of what's really, oh, no, I want to sound like, oh, I want French. Make me French. That would be gorgeous.

You're doing just fine. Yeah. But, yeah, I think we forget to touch. We forget how important taking time out just to touch one another and outside of the active sex of just being able to walk past your partner. You know, interestingly, many people with autism, they have a real part of their life is to do things in routine and sameness.

And so some couples that I work with they have got the act of sex down to such a routine that um that if a well there's one couple that I worked with is that the the libido issue was shocking because the the and this is a heterosexual couple she was running anytime he came to her because his concept was of any type of affection if he so if he lay his hand on her physically touched her the routine was then to go all the way to coming you know all the way to orgasming so she used to be you know in the kitchen preparing the vegemite sandwiches for the kids or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and her partner come towards her and if he even got even anywhere close to her if she thought he was physically going to touch her she knew that this was the routine because he had no expression of

affection and physical affection outside of this act of sex and her their lives had changed and so that couldn't be done so he he was a great fella, a really wonderful man who just needed the support to understand that from her perspective and point of view, she needed some time for his hand to be laid on her but not have to end in this act. Like in support but not in the end in support. Yeah.

I mean, I know you say like, I mean, he's autistic but that's the case for a lot of guys out there. You know, the, you know, the, I mean, the, especially young, the expectation of wanting to, you know, we've, the myth of blue balls, you know, even like back in the day, we're literally taught that somehow women should feel guilty if a guy didn't climax. And it was almost as if it's such a myth and such bullshit. And yeah, it's fascinating that somehow that was part of our curriculum. But yeah, you didn't even need it. And do you know, in the opposite way, I find that many, many women that I work with and young women particularly,

young women don't even understand their own sexual needs. They don't even understand their own sexual arousal. So I kind of, I teach boys what a, or even a lesbian, a girl who's lesbian or transgender, whatever, what a sexual arousal in a woman looks like. Because if you think about it, if you think about all that fumbly sex that happened, often girls weren't lubricated enough. So there was this perception that first-time sex was going to hurt.

But often first-time sex for women hurts because they're not bloody aroused and so if a woman's not aroused then of course sex is going to be uncomfortable and hurt but how many young men go through um you know sex education by the time they're 14 and 15 and 16 and getting taught okay if you're heterosexual this is what a woman's body should feel like and you should not be going anywhere with your fingers or inside or inserting anything until this is what you – nobody talks about pleasure. Nobody does. And so what young people do –

Pleasure's a sin. And what kids do then is they go to porn. Many people go to porn. And as we know, porn has a formula to it. And so we know that there's been an increase in different sort of, you know, the formula of, I mean, I teach young people and teach people about a money shot all the time like you know yeah i mean historically i think what you're trying is porn is designed specifically for men and that formula is all about like a man's interest that there's no focus on is the women and woman enjoying it there's a terrible implication that she will enjoy whatever whatever he offers her because good for her she's so lucky that the man is doing it so yeah that's the formula and if you guys watch most of it it'll be uh start with this then it will be we might see

a bit of a hand job going on somebody getting fingered then the next step will be maybe him having you know a blow job to him maybe oral her. Like a blowjob for like 20 minutes sometimes. Then we'll see anal sex. Then we'll see the money shot. So it's like this, then this, then this, then this, then this, and that's the formula that happens. And so with a lot of young people I work with, particularly if that's where they're getting their sex education,

we've got to help them critically analyze porn and help them. The analogy I always use is we don't watch fast and the furious to learn how to drive a car so if you're watching porn to learn to do sex that's great then you you're not going to get it right because there's no way in crap that when you can drop a car out of the back of a airplane with a parachute on it and think that that's driving a car so if they get that or but you know it's about we don't because we all still so have great difficulty talking about sexuality and sensuality and our presentation of gender and you know we we're stifled in it and that's why I think it becomes complex in relationships as well. Just communication in relationships. Yeah.

That was my final question is that let's say you have a couple struggling with it. They hear what you're saying in terms of reintroducing sensuality into the relationship to, to get that sexuality back. How, what's some tips in terms of communicating it? Because I'm assuming a lot of people listening, well, how do I have that conversation with my husband or wife? Or how do I address it?

Is it, you know, I'm a direct person, so I'm just like, oh, just say it. But would you, how, is there trips, tricks or tips that you can offer in terms of even something that you might suggest to your patients in terms of like, how do you go about resetting and having that conversation it depends on whether it's the individual is seeing me nick and the individual saying i am having trouble in my relationship or whether the couple's there together so if the couple's there together you can help them navigate that what if it's the individual yeah so if it's the individual? Yeah, so if it's the individual, then often what I will do to start with is try and talk to them about what their partner's like and what you're saying.

Does your partner like direct communication? How could we do this from your partner's perspective and point of view? I use the analogy a lot. Like sometimes it's when you've got, you know, if you walk into your boss sometimes and you say, oh, this is a really good idea, let's do this, your boss is like, nah. But if you dribble and feed little bits of information,

then all of a sudden it's your boss's idea. So sometimes it's actually dribbling the information to your partner in a way that they get to see the benefit and all of a sudden they do it. You know, if they're like you, then maybe you can just go and say, right, let's try something different. Let's, you know, do it in a different way. Other times it's, you know, if you can find out that your partner, I sometimes say, what is the best experience?

Like when were you guys having the best sex you've ever had? And people will be able to tell you what it's like. And then I say, well, why don't you just mix it up a little bit? And it's not mixing it up like we've all got that movie image of partner comes home and we're standing, you know, in our lingerie. No, that's not it. It's what was the thing.

So you go back to if it was the best time of your life was when you watched the footy together and had a couple of beers. Then set that up. Just with the two of you, set that up. And then while you're watching the footy and having a few beers, then you start dribbling the information. Then you start coming in.

There's a whole lot of different ways, but it really depends on what that person's, what your partner's communication is. I do, the one I do often is I say, you don't, sometimes you don't even have to say anything. And I know this is a long story. No, I'll keep it short. But sometimes you don't have to say, sometimes you don't have to say anything. Do you know we send a message to another person with our bodies all the time?

And Chrissy, you'll know this. Okay. Because women spend a lot more money on lingerie. but I teach a lot of women and fellas this trick. When we're feeling sensual, if you go and buy, what do you guys call them? We call them a thong, you know, a G-string pair of underpants. Okay, so when you're wearing a G-string, that's not for your sensuality. That's because you're giving the other person the visual image to get them going.

Look, G-strings are not always comfortable. But I'll tell you what, if you go and buy a pair of really silky underwear that you're kind of moving against like this, like if you're wearing fabric on your own skin. Sorry, I'm doing this i'm just if you're wearing fabric on your skin or something really silky even if it's under your pants tell you what if you're sitting next to your partner while you're watching the football having a couple of beers but you start kind of moving around in your own skin just move it around your partner will belong to it like a flash you don't even have to

say the words no you just have to be presenting yourself as sensual i have one more question before i let you go is is it just because of how sex and society and um gender roles have been kind of taught us over the years. But why, how come if a woman is aroused and she wants to have sex with her partner in a heterosexual relationship, her male partner, and a guy might not be into it, do they get more, seem to be more offended or take it more personally than the other way around? Is that because men are just presumed to always want to be into it?

And then they just take it. Is it just that, or are there other reasons behind it? I think it's also because women put a lot more effort into it. We're taught, aren't we? And you would say it too, the pressure pressure on i think it's pressure on men i think that we've got i think that as a society we've really created this narrative that men are always ready and willing they will always have a big strong heart erection which is bullshit they always are going to come at the end of it they always if you if you just click your fingers bam man's going gonna be there and i think that that

has been a story that we've created and i feel really really sad for men that they are expected no i mean seriously like when you know when you're in your 20s yeah that's fine yeah you are generally like yeah so do you wanna and it's like you're always ready but like as you get older right even in late 20s early 30s you know like it doesn't always happen you don't always want to and you sometimes you have to explain it's not you or if you don't climax like it's like this whole x you have to like it's it's like this whole deal it's like oh like what's wrong like there's nothing wrong with me or like i just I just, I don't know. And it becomes a thing that couples often argue about

and men do get stressed about. And there's the narrative that's been created for us. The narrative has been created that that is what men's sexuality is about. And the opposing, as we know, it's taking a long, long time to break down that if a woman is just wanting to explore that in a, you know, she's an infomaniac

and he's impotent. How ridiculous is that? How ridiculous to think that our sexuality and our way that we express our sexuality is going to be the same across a lifespan or on any given day. And I'm with you. I think that men need to be able to go, this is just as it is. I'm just a human. Some days it's going to be working. Some days it's not. Some days I'm going to be into it. Some days I'm not. Jodie, it's always working. Just to be clear.

Sometimes it's tired. But also boys have to remember, like she said earlier, girls sometimes are working at the sensuality part and they probably put in an extra effort to try and make that happen that night. So that's why they get upset. We're emotional. It's why they get upset we're emotional some people say i can't believe you went to university and studied sex for that many years and i'm going have you there is the wealth of so

much interesting stuff when it comes to human sexuality it is so brilliant and you know our sexuality is also about our relationships and i just took it one step further and got a bit kooky because I just work with, you know, people that, you know, on the show itself they didn't actually put anywhere sexologist because they just thought that would be a bit too out there and because they just want to, there's very, very few people that sort of specialise in working with autistic people and around sexuality and relationships.

But, yeah, look at us. So you take me down a garden path in sex and I'll just walk down there with you. And I thank you for it. I mean, that's – a lot of the people listening will appreciate, you know, going down this path just because it is. It's something that we still don't talk about enough. And when we do not even talk about it but get that kind of content, whether it's porn or a sex scene in a movie, we don't discuss it or talk about it. I mean, how many people listening to this,

including myself, realize that a fetish isn't just because you're into something, right? And how we're so quick to label things as weird or just because it's not mainstream. We have this ability to judge a little bit more when we talk about sex and sex sexuality so and then everyone because and as i'm sure you know we just don't talk about it we all have these thoughts we're all doing our own weird things we're all like we don't want people to

know our truths and and the truth is everyone has their truths everyone's doing their shit you know and yeah most of the time it's all just fine and not harming anyone else it's just their unique perspective on on what is they find sensual and sexual yep so i'm glad uh i'm glad we uh we went down that path jody yeah i'm with you i think that it's hard enough to talk about It's hard to talk about with another person. You know, if it's causing no harm, it's causing no harm. Yeah. Well, Jodi, I really appreciate you taking the time. We know you're busy, and it's been such a delight to talk to you.

And best of luck on season two. We cannot wait to catch up on Michael and the rest of the gang, and maybe we'll be introduced to some more people. And if you're listening, you haven't seen Love on the Spectrum yet, it is streaming on Netflix. It is a really great feel-good series. It's five episodes.

It's an easy watch. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll feel good. And you might learn a little bit about communication and your own sexuality and might learn from people who are different than yourself. You love it. So thanks again for listening, guys. We'll just send you off on your way.

Don't forget you're sending your questions at nickcastme.com, cast with a K. If there's nothing else, subscribe. Rate us five stars. Other than that, we will see you on Monday.