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Sex repulsed allosexual?


cardentist

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I've identified as asexual for quite a few years now, but I've started to think that I might be a sex repulsed allosexual instead. I get extremely grossed out by sex and I get really uncomfortable when I start feeling arousal, but I still get aroused by things. I know that I'll never want to have sex, but I don't think I'm actually asexual. What do you guys think? And would somebody like that even have a place in the asexual community?

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Sage Raven Domino

So-called libidoist asexuals (like myself) do have a place in the ace community :cake: The criterion for being asexual is never craving to have sex with another person; arousal and even masturbation are not criteria (in particular, because, from the relationship viewpoint, masturbating / libidoist aces are hardly different from non-masturbating / non-libidoist ones* - both can do without a sexual partner).

* It's worth noting that libido and masturbation are independent. There are those who get aroused but prefer to have wet dreams instead of masturbation, and there are also those who have no drive to masturbate but do so 'mechanically' to release nervous tension unrelated to arousal, or for hygienic or other conscious reasons. My own motivation (TMI):

Initially, even though I had read in a book that masturbation exists, I forgot about it until the first two of my lifetime four wet dreams happened. Then I discovered on my own that rubbing the penis against the bed while thinking about my primary fetish was causing orgasms, but still my main motivation to do it was neither pleasure nor release of tension, but keeping my pants dry. Only later did tension release become paramount to me because I started experiencing more stress.

Sex-repulsed allosexuals exist (e.g. those who have fears of sex caused by e.g. childhood traumas that they deem mental illness and wish to get rid of because they desire sex with other people and the fears are getting in their way), but fortunately, that doesn't seem to be your case.

Edited by DiamondAce
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What DiamondAce said -- if you don't desire partnered sex with others, you're ace.

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  • 5 months later...

Sorry for necro'ing this thread, but it is one of the few somethings I can really really 100% relate to here! I'm a sex repulsed allosexual.

Sex-repulsed allosexuals exist (e.g. those who have fears of sex caused by e.g. childhood traumas that they deem mental illness and wish to get rid of because they desire sex with other people and the fears are getting in their way), but fortunately, that doesn't seem to be your case.

What would you say about someone (like me) who knows he's allosexual, wasn't always sex repulsed, but doesn't want to change the sex repulsion? I only desire sex in the sense that my body wants it, but I, as in my actual personality, doesn't. To elaborate, Even before my sex repulsion I've never liked sex outside of a romantic relationship, it does nothing for me, and my sex drive always went down if I wasn't in a relationship. Now I don't want to have a romantic relationship at all, and the last time I had sex at all caused me to have severe anxiety and depression that lasted well over a month or so, I cried everyday for like a week after, and there was absolutely no enjoyment out of it again. Since I never liked sex outside of a relationship, don't want a relationship as I wouldn't be comfortable getting close to someone like that anymore, and on top of that I'm now sex repulsed, so I wouldn't want sex even if I was in a relationship.

The reason I brought it up I guess is because you suggested that sex repulsed allosexuals want to get rid of their repulsion. Personally, I'd rather get rid of my sexual urges/attraction, although I don't know how that'd ever happen, as it seems impossible.

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Sorry for necro'ing this thread, but it is one of the few somethings I can really really 100% relate to here! I'm a sex repulsed allosexual.

Sex-repulsed allosexuals exist (e.g. those who have fears of sex caused by e.g. childhood traumas that they deem mental illness and wish to get rid of because they desire sex with other people and the fears are getting in their way), but fortunately, that doesn't seem to be your case.

What would you say about someone (like me) who knows he's allosexual, wasn't always sex repulsed, but doesn't want to change the sex repulsion? I only desire sex in the sense that my body wants it, but I, as in my actual personality, doesn't. To elaborate, Even before my sex repulsion I've never liked sex outside of a romantic relationship, it does nothing for me, and my sex drive always went down if I wasn't in a relationship. Now I don't want to have a romantic relationship at all, and the last time I had sex at all caused me to have severe anxiety and depression that lasted well over a month or so, I cried everyday for like a week after, and there was absolutely no enjoyment out of it again. Since I never liked sex outside of a relationship, don't want a relationship as I wouldn't be comfortable getting close to someone like that anymore, and on top of that I'm now sex repulsed, so I wouldn't want sex even if I was in a relationship.

The reason I brought it up I guess is because you suggested that sex repulsed allosexuals want to get rid of their repulsion. Personally, I'd rather get rid of my sexual urges/attraction, although I don't know how that'd ever happen, as it seems impossible.

I'm glad this was brought back up!

This topic is mentioned on occasion, but it also bothered me that the wording used a lot suggests that the only reason an allosexual person would be repulsed is due to fear, and assume they want to change. I've known allosexuals that don't ever want sex, not all specified if they were repulsed or not, but they didn't want to change not wanting sex, but wanted to get rid of their attraction.

Sorry to hear that your experiences with sex hurt you so much. :( Pardon me if this is too intrusive, but is part of the reason you don't want a romantic relationship is because of feeling like sexual and romantic attraction are naturally linked for you, so it follows that you don't want romance because you don't want sex?

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If you get attracted to people sexually, but would never do sexual things with them because you find it gross, you might be, yeah.

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Sorry for necro'ing this thread, but it is one of the few somethings I can really really 100% relate to here! I'm a sex repulsed allosexual.

Sex-repulsed allosexuals exist (e.g. those who have fears of sex caused by e.g. childhood traumas that they deem mental illness and wish to get rid of because they desire sex with other people and the fears are getting in their way), but fortunately, that doesn't seem to be your case.

What would you say about someone (like me) who knows he's allosexual, wasn't always sex repulsed, but doesn't want to change the sex repulsion? I only desire sex in the sense that my body wants it, but I, as in my actual personality, doesn't. To elaborate, Even before my sex repulsion I've never liked sex outside of a romantic relationship, it does nothing for me, and my sex drive always went down if I wasn't in a relationship. Now I don't want to have a romantic relationship at all, and the last time I had sex at all caused me to have severe anxiety and depression that lasted well over a month or so, I cried everyday for like a week after, and there was absolutely no enjoyment out of it again. Since I never liked sex outside of a relationship, don't want a relationship as I wouldn't be comfortable getting close to someone like that anymore, and on top of that I'm now sex repulsed, so I wouldn't want sex even if I was in a relationship.

The reason I brought it up I guess is because you suggested that sex repulsed allosexuals want to get rid of their repulsion. Personally, I'd rather get rid of my sexual urges/attraction, although I don't know how that'd ever happen, as it seems impossible.

I'm glad this was brought back up!

This topic is mentioned on occasion, but it also bothered me that the wording used a lot suggests that the only reason an allosexual person would be repulsed is due to fear, and assume they want to change. I've known allosexuals that don't ever want sex, not all specified if they were repulsed or not, but they didn't want to change not wanting sex, but wanted to get rid of their attraction.

Sorry to hear that your experiences with sex hurt you so much. :( Pardon me if this is too intrusive, but is part of the reason you don't want a romantic relationship is because of feeling like sexual and romantic attraction are naturally linked for you, so it follows that you don't want romance because you don't want sex?

For me sex is very much tied to romance and emotion. The past couple of days I have been examining sex and my relationship to it, and I realized that even before I was sex averse/repulsed I've never enjoyed sex without having an emotional connection with the person, although I can and do experience sexual attraction without an emotional connection. That's what I meant before when I said I've never liked sex outside of a relationship. If I'm single and not emotionally/romantically involved with someone I can go for years without sex and it doesn't bother me. I know some allosexuals who I'm friends with, however, who will just have sex with anyone they find attractive, they don't need any sort of emotional or romantic connection with the person and they act like sex is a drug and that they need it __ amount of times per week or whatever. I'm not like that and can't relate to it.

I know earlier I said the last time I had sex was with someone, I didn't have an emotional connection with them at all, and I had really horrible reaction to it. Sometimes, even reading about people having sex outside an emotionally intimate relationship has been enough to make my stomach feel nauseous sometimes.

A friend of mine who was helping me sort these feelings out described it, accurately or not, as: "you're like a demisexual in that you need an emotional connection with someone to have sex, but not because you can't feel attraction, but so you don't feel repulsion."

I still don't know if I'm totally repulsed by all sex or not at this point though, because to find out I'd have to develop an emotional connection with someone and then have sex, but I don't want to be in a romantic/emotionally intimate situation at all at this point, which means I don't want sex, so I'm just considering myself totally sex averse at this point. I don't want a romantic relationship because I've had many bad experiences with them and don't feel comfortable getting close to someone in that way anymore. For someone who's sexual it's almost like that feeling you have when you are nauseous but hungry at the same: you want to eat but thought of food, let alone having it in front of you, makes you more nauseous.

In short, to answer your question, it is not that I don't want romance because I don't want sex, but the other way around- I don't want sex because I don'r want romance right now due to my bad experiences with romance, and betraying the part of me that is repulsed by emotionaless/romanceless sex caused me to react in a repulsed manner to sex the last time I had it.

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What DiamondAce said -- if you don't desire partnered sex with others, you're ace.

My question is, is there a difference between lack of desire that results from lack of basic motivation and lack of desire that results from fear? It seems that sex repulsion is based in fear/distaste.

The effect is the same, but the underlying process is different, isn't it?

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The mechanism certainly is different. I experience sexual attraction, I have a libido, and my libido has a target. I also feel romantic attraction, and my romantic attraction aligns with my sexual attraction. (heterosexual and heteromantic, if you're curious.) However, due to past negative experiences with romance and sex I currently don't want to put myself in romantic or sexual situations, because such situations cause me distress and physical and psychological repulsion.

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What DiamondAce said -- if you don't desire partnered sex with others, you're ace.

My question is, is there a difference between lack of desire that results from lack of basic motivation and lack of desire that results from fear? It seems that sex repulsion is based in fear/distaste.

The effect is the same, but the underlying process is different, isn't it?

There's been a lot of discussion and debate on this site as to what "sexual attraction" means. It's all very confusing to me, and I can only conclude that it actually means different things for different people. Since that part is subjective, the only thing we can actually know for sure is whether or not someone desires partnered sex with other people.

I'm sex-averse/repulsed, and no, for me it's not based in fear (distaste is a pretty broad word, so I suppose that could apply to me, but it doesn't apply to all sex-averse asexuals). I think the problem there is the word choice (averse, repulsed), when in actuality there are plenty of asexual people who are not sex-indifferent, who would never ever want to have sex with someone (check out the sex-repulsed sticky in the intersectionality section of this site, if you have not already), but who aren't necessarily grossed out by sex (they might find it very interesting as a concept, and feel very comfortable talking about it, they may even be involved in sex education, but just never ever want to do it themselves).

Ultimately, it's up to each individual person to determine for themselves whether they consider themselves allo and repulsed, or under the ace umbrella. If someone doesn't desired partnered sex with others, regardless of how attraction works for them, I'm OK with them under the ace umbrella. (Celibacy for religious reasons is, however, different, imo.)

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The mechanism certainly is different. I experience sexual attraction, I have a libido, and my libido has a target. I also feel romantic attraction, and my romantic attraction aligns with my sexual attraction. (heterosexual and heteromantic, if you're curious.) However, due to past negative experiences with romance and sex I currently don't want to put myself in romantic or sexual situations, because such situations cause me distress and physical and psychological repulsion.

It sounds like what you wrote above that you're more romance-repulsed than sex-repulsed, though I gather the two blend together somehow.

I think my repulsion is also a blend. And yeah, there are both psychological and physical components.

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The mechanism certainly is different. I experience sexual attraction, I have a libido, and my libido has a target. I also feel romantic attraction, and my romantic attraction aligns with my sexual attraction. (heterosexual and heteromantic, if you're curious.) However, due to past negative experiences with romance and sex I currently don't want to put myself in romantic or sexual situations, because such situations cause me distress and physical and psychological repulsion.

It sounds like what you wrote above that you're more romance-repulsed than sex-repulsed, though I gather the two blend together somehow.

I think my repulsion is also a blend. And yeah, there are both psychological and physical components.

For me they go hand in hand. Earlier I said:

" I realized that even before I was sex averse/repulsed I've never enjoyed sex without having an emotional connection with the person, although I can and do experience sexual attraction without an emotional connection."

When I last had sex and betrayed the part of me that needs than emotional connection I was already repulsed by the idea of romance. What happened was I reacted to the sex with repulsion as well. I NEED an emotional connection in order to have sex, otherwise I'm averse. However, since I've become romance repulsed I'm by proxy sex repulsed, the two are linked for me.

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