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But, what if you are sexual and someone asexual is intereste


terebinth

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Actually, perhaps that isn't a fair subject line. Actually-- well, I'm confused!! I desperately need advice!! Allow me to start from the beginning.

Hi. I am a 19 year old bisexual female, and I've stumbled across this forum because I was searching for some information on asexuality.

See, one of my best friends has always claimed that she has never felt sexually attracted to anyone, and has no interest in sex, but she does want to have a relationship with someone someday--just not a sexual one. Upon reading the AVEN website and the posts here, I am fairly convinced that she is asexual--everything that people describe here as their experience (or lack thereof) with sexual attraction sounds a lot like my friend.

The thing is, over the past few months, I have become increasingly convinced that she is romantically interested in me. I mean, she says she is straight but has never been attracted to anyone, and yet, she is always tickling me, and saying things like "I've never felt this way about anyone before"... It seems pretty unequivocal.

So, supposing for the moment that she is asexual and interested in me, what can I do? I think she's stunningly hot, and I don't think I could handle only kissing and touching... I want to have sex!! I know that most of you probably have trouble sympathizing, but I just don't think I could be in a relationship with someone that I really want to have sex with, who has absolutely no desire to have sex with me! My libido simply couldn't handle it (to say nothing of my self-esteem).

I might add that I've told her I think she's hot and she's basically apologized profusely for not being able to feel any attraction for me in return.

Does anybody have any advice about this? I don't know how much more of the tickling and declarations of strong emotion I can take, considering that lately, when I'm around her, all I want to do is kiss her (passionately)! But, I know that that would not be pleasant for her. And if I tell her to just lay off, that would be even worse! This nonsexual tension is very strange.

Help!!

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Actually, I am thinking I should clarify my question a little... I guess what I'm really asking is this: I dearly love this friend of mine (as a friend, as more than a friend, I don't know these days). Does anybody have any ideas of how I can resolve this without hurting her feelings or asking for something she can't give or otherwise making our friendship all weird?

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Wow! It's something to be on the other side of the coin...

First off, I'm generally wary about assigning others sexual orientations (though it sounds like there's a pretty high possibility that your friend is asexual, it might be worth discussing with her.)

My advice is (obviously) biased in an asexual direction. I'm trying to think about how you can form a close meaningful nonsexual relationship without alot of tension. I acknowledge that that's not the only way to go, but it's my specialty so I'll stick to it..

It seems like both of you have to adjust to fit the situation. It shouldn't as much be a process of caging your libido as directing it elsewhere. Sex is, after all, one of many many things that you can do in a relationship. Focus on the other stuff.

Have fun together, hug each other, talk. Instead of focusing on not having sex focus on all of the stuff you ARE doing.

This can be difficult because you're probably used to most things in intimate relationships flowing into sexuality. When she declares strong emotion for you, you're used to expressing that emotion back through passionate kissing. It seems like in that instance what you mostly want to do is express emotion, and kissing is just the way that you're used to doing it. So find other ways, get creative. You're used to intimate emotions and self esteem and all sorts of stuff being caught up in and defined by your sexuality. This relationship might be a great opporitunity to let them out on their own for a little while, to better understand where they all fit.

As for her, she has to be conscious of the difficult process that you're going through and do what she can to make it easier. Tickling might be out of the picture, at least for a while, and other things that are turn-ons. She needs to figure out at about what level she's comfortable and what makes things easier or more difficult for her.

The trickiest part will be getting rid of the mentality that close romantic relationships are supposed to be sexual. Realize that this isn't inherint wiring, it's jsut something that's been socially programmed. There is nothing inherintly sexual about close emotion. As long as you have the expectation that there is you'll have to struggle with not being able to fulfill it. You have to let go and see exactly how deep your relationship can become.

(So I realize that this may suffer from some false ideas about how sexuality works, but I urge you to consider it closely before you jump to that conclusion. I'd love to answer any more questions that you have...)

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Hi Terebinth,

Hmm, tricky! Like AVENguy says, the first thing you need to do is gain more understanding of her sexual orientation (admittedly easier said than done). Even if she thinks she is vaguely straight/asexual that may not be the whole story. I do have one friend who says she used to be repulsed by the idea of sleeping with another woman, but she found herself doing it once out of curiosity and has never looked back. It may be that your friend is unsure about what she feels about the whole thing and that her attitude to you reflects that.

On the other hand, if she really is asexual she will probably find it hard to imagine the effect her behaviour has on you. I have been in a similar situation with someone (me asexual, him not) and however hard I tried to remind myself it just seemed really odd to me that what felt to me like a friendly hug had a strong sexual effect on him. If your friend really isn't interested in any form of sex she will probably be very distressed to discover she's been leading you on completely accidentally.

Maybe when she starts tickling you next you could say something in a jokey manner, along the lines of 'no no, I can't bear it any more!' and see what she says? I'm sure she would rather know if her behaviour is causing you sexual tension, as she wouldn't want to hurt you.

Re. AVENguy's point about romantic relationships not having to be sexual, I think this is pretty hard if you're sexual. After all, if you want both sex and a committed exclusive relationship with someone (and most people do) then it seems ideal to combine them. Just having a romantic relationship leads to sexual frustration, and having a romantic relationship with one person and a sexual one with another would be confusing and (I suspect) not very pleasant. Still, it would be interesting to know what other sexuals thought of this!

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Hypatia: you bring up an interesting point (sorry to make a case study out of you, terebinth, but this is a problem that's pretty common across the asexual world.)

At this point we don't really KNOW how hard it is, becuase to my knowledge this sort of thing hasn't been tried to much. Binth, you have this general need for sex/romance that will be hard to go without. The question is: if you disentangle the two and manage to fulfill all of your romantic needs how much of a need will you have left over for sex? There is definitely a chance that sex will be too big an issues and, in the end, the relationship won't work, but that's a chance taken in one way or another with ALL relationships. I think that there's a good chance that problems around sex could be overcome one way or another and the relationship could really succeed.

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Hi AVENguy,

As an asexual I'm not really the best person to be arguing this, but I'm not convinced about this, both for personal and more general reasons.

As I said above, I have a very close asexual relationship with someone; he happily admits our relationship fulfils all his emotional/romantic needs, but he's still a seething mass of sexual frustration. I think that if you're sexual, trying to repress it is a bit like trying to repress your appetite for food; OK, it won't kill you, but it will mess you up and make you miserable. Surely what you're suggesting isn't very different from what the Catholic Church preaches - if you're called to be a priest, your dedication to your faith should fulfil your emotional needs and make your sexual urges less important. But it doesn't seem to work like that.

I agree with you wholeheartedly that society pigeonholes relationships too much and that very close asexual relationships are possible. But I think that it is also very easy for us asexuals to fail to appreciate most people's need and desire for sex. If we say, 'Oh, if you try hard enough you can do without it' we risk the rejoinder, 'Oh, if you try hard enough you can learn to enjoy it', and - much worse - 'If you try hard enough you can be straight not gay'. After all, at bottom our sexual desires (or lack of) are a matter of simple biological imperatives.

I know I'm simplifying your arguments a bit here and that you're not suggesting deliberate repression, but do you see what I'm getting at?

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I agree that there are situations where it won't work, but I think that there are also situations where it will, and right now we don't have the ratios figured out. While some people will still be frought with sexual frustration in this sort of a situation I think that there are other sexual people who won't be, and we can't make assumptions either way.

I realize that sexuality is difficult or impossible to change through will alone, I'm just trying to figure out how that can place a minimal limitation on emotional relationships.

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With sexual people, I think ... if they are sexually attracted to someone, and in a position where they might be -able- to act on that attraction, I think frustration may be almost unavoidable. I say this because of things I've read, and things that I've experienced. It's like ... if you "tease" someone sexual, like maybe kissing them or dressing scantily and rubbing up against them, apparently the physical urges are so painful that they're unpleasant to hold back. Or maybe that's not everyone. I'd read about that. And I know that I've at least been told that it's painful to have your body expect to have sex with someone and then not deliver. So it's therefore supposedly unfair to tell people "no" if you let them kiss you deeply first. Then again, this was an individual who had no self-control.

I'm not sure. But I don't think it would be as easy as AVENguy seems to expect ... I think it's at least as bad as any of us saying "I think I'm going to be sexual now so I can keep my significant other" ... maybe worse, if there's physical pain as well. Regardless of one's mental decisions.

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Well, I wouldn't say sexual frustration is "painful" per se, but it's kind of like this (to extend Hypatia's metaphor): Imagine you're on a really strict diet, so you're kind of in the back of your mind a little hungry all the time (that is, you might not feel it all the time, but if you think about it, you will probably want something to eat). And then, you go to a restaurant, and the person next to you orders the most delicious dessert, and you can smell it, and you can practically taste it, and it looks really good, and you're hungry, and you can't have it but you know how nice it would be, and every single primordial instinct you have is telling you to eat it because it would just be so wonderful. That's what it's like. It's not exactly painful, but it's so frustrating and it's so contrary to what your body and your instincts and your limbic system want (to say nothing of your rational mind, which isn't necessarily involved anyway, but probably is) that it might as well be painful. Not to be dramatic or anything. :) (Also, I sort of feel like not having sex would be kind of like not saying "I love you". Sure, there are other ways to express it, and you don't have to do it, but, to me anyway, it's meaningful in a way that other things aren't, quite.)

On that note, perhaps I should add that my friend and I did talk about it, and she does actually think she might be asexual... Which led us to the rather awkward but I think ultimately reasonable conclusion that even if we did try to have a relationship, there would be a good chance that things wouldn't work out, so it's probably better to just not risk souring our friendship... Kind of sad, but, I suppose it is for the best. After all, I don't want to not have sex any more than she wants to have it. Sigh...

As to what AVENguy says about no sex being acceptable to some sexual people, I agree. I think that there are some sexual people for whom an emotional, non-sexual relationship would be perfectly fulfilling. I don't think I actually know of any firsthand, but that's probably partly because I don't really discuss it with that many people. But, I am basing this information on a series of Dear Abbey or Ann Landers columns several years ago in which quite a number of people wrote in debating about whether or not "just cuddling" was enough. Lots of people said it was, and as I recall some of them were married people (mostly women, I think) who also enjoyed sex.

I am kind of wondering, though. I have some rather personal questions. Actually I am really curious! Alright.

1) For asexuals, is it that orgasms as just not interesting and you don't have any desire for one? Or, you can't have them?

2) Also, if touching your loved one's hand is pleasant, and cuddling with them is pleasant, is touching other parts of their body (for example, their private parts) not pleasant? (I mean, it does kind of seem like a compromise--albeit not a very satisfactory one on either side--to engage in, shall we say, manual sex?) Or is it just kind of like, "Er, this is weird, why am I doing this, why are you making those weird faces?", because I would imagine for the recipient it would sort of be like, "Well, I can see you're not enjoying this at all..." and it would lose its appeal.

I have another thought as well. As Hypatia said, sexual urges are biological imperatives. Well, I don't know all that much about brain chemistry and anatomy, but I am under the impression that sexual urges originate in the hypothalamus (and that in turn stimulates something in the pituitary gland), and that that is the part of the brain that is affected by hormones early in life (I think as a fetus) and may possibly affect sexual orientation. Ergo, if sexual urges come from the hypothalamus, they are completely out of the realm of conscious thought and are really biological imperatives. (I know my friend has trouble understanding how I could find a total bitch attractive. Well, that's how. It's my hypothalamus, really! Whatever part of my brain does the actual thinking doesn't find her attractive at all! Not having that be a problem would be a benefit of being asexual, I guess.) If romantic emotions come from a different part of the brain (and I would guess they do), this would also explain (in case you encounter any nonbelievers) how one could feel romantically towards someone without feeling sexually attracted to them. Unfortunately, it also explains why someone might find it really difficult to be in an asexual relationship if they are sexual.

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1) For asexuals, is it that orgasms as just not interesting and you don't have any desire for one? Or, you can't have them?

Asexuality isn't being incapable of sex, it's not having a drive to have sex, or not having anyone you're sexually attracted to...

Asexuals are as likely to be able to experience orgasm through 'mechanical' stimulation as anyone else in the population. You can probably get yourself off with a sex toy even when you're not 'sexually attracted' to sex toys and maybe even when you're not even fantasing about sex but just letting the physical stimulation of the sex toy bring your to orgasm without any aid from your mind.

Orgasms feel great. It's cool that I can masturbate and get that sensation whenever I like. It's true that I could have sex with someone and at the end I'd also get an orgasm... I should just find someone randomly on the street and ask for a hand job! (but I won't because I don't care about that person, I wouldn't enjoy it any more than masturbation and I don't want orgasms enough to do things I don't really enjoy to get there).

Do you think that sexual attraction is about "that person could give me an orgasm therefore I want to have sex with them"? Just about every person you're /not/ attracted to could give you an orgasm if you had sex with them. That doesn't mean you'd find the experience comfortable or enjoyable.

I'm tempted to conclude that sex isn't about orgasm at all. It's not looking for an orgasm that makes people have sex with people, it's **sexual attraction** to that person. Because frankly you can get an orgasm from just about anyone or from anywhere.

If your brother offered to give you an orgasm why would you say no? The answer's nothing to do with how your feel about orgasms or your ability to orgasm. That's the way your question seems to me. I just don't think the orgasm is the issue here.

2) Also, if touching your loved one's hand is pleasant, and cuddling with them is pleasant, is touching other parts of their body (for example, their private parts) not pleasant?

Personally I find that it's 'pleasant' and it's nice to touch your partner in a way that they find sensual and pleasurable. Doing it for more than about ten minutes gets a bit boring. The other person tends to get a hell of a lot out of it, keeps asking you to do it for maybe an hour or two at a time more than once a week. You start wondering if you could have the TV on at the same time to keep you entertained. Maybe you could buy them a vibrator for christmas... (wasn't it great when we used to have conversations and snuggle and be cute together, oh but I must make them happy).

I mean I suppose it's no different to your partner insisting you go to see the musical Fame three times every week. I mean they REALLY like it and it's SO much better for them when you're there with them and I mean it's not a bad musical and I really enjoy that "I Want To Live Forever" song (although I suppose I could just buy the sound track album)... I'm starting to know the words off by heart though...

Or is it just kind of like, "Er, this is weird, why am I doing this, why are you making those weird faces?", because I would imagine for the recipient it would sort of be like, "Well, I can see you're not enjoying this at all..." and it would lose its appeal.

No I think I can understand that they really like sex and that the reason I'm doing it with them is that... they really like sex.

I can enjoy sex, it's just that sexual people seem to want to keep doing it. I mean... didn't we already do this already?

When there's no drive for sex then you're just doing it because it's nice and you chose it. If there's no drive for sex it's going to get boring very quickly.

Oh and some asexuals really won't like doing it, they'll certainly have a limit of what they're willing to do/have done to them just to make you happy (sex is often sweaty asd strenuous and may involve penetrations and exchanges of fluid, it's a bit different to touching your partner's genitals in a sensual way).

So I guess the critical point is that even if an asexual person does get some pleasure from sex and doesn't completely dislike doing it with someone they're really comfortable with, they're really not going to be the one who initiates it and they're not going to be constantly consistantly entertained by the experience. Asking them to keep doing it over and over again would be no different to constantly dragging your partner along to participate in your extremely repetative hobby.

Hope that helped (and note that that's my particular perspective on asexuality as someone who didn't mind being sexual with their partner but was never actually aroused by the prospect).

Nat.

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Dammit. Just wrote a huge response and had it all deleted before I could post. No time to retype it all. Quick retype:

Your hunger-restaurant description of sexual frustration mirrors reasonably closely my experience of emotional frustration, when I want to tell someone I care about them but can't. I'm just making the point, in the context of the statement at the end of your first paragraph, that it's probably a healthy mix of sexual and emotional furstration. I would ask you to seriously question why sex has such strong emotional meaning to you, not that it's necissarily bad that it does, but to alot of sexual people it seems like this can be emotionally limiting.

Your questions:

1) The general sentiment seems to be "if I want orgasms I'll masturbate, otherwise I'll get on with my life." Some asexuals masturbate, some don't.

2)It's technically possible for asexual people to engage in sex as a sensual activity, there are a few instances of this that I've heard of, but it's so damned complicated that most people never bother. Since asexual people aren't personally driven the learning curve for becoming comfortable with sex (from what I understand no one is born that way) is considerably steeper, and so it takes alot of effort for the asexual person to become comfortable to a high degree with their partner's sexuality while it takes their partner about as much work to become comfortable with the notion that this is sexual for them an sensual for their partner. That being said such activity can't be neatly plopped into the role that sex plays in most sexual relationships. From what I understand it has to be just another activity and can't be the emotional foundation of the relationship the way that sexual sex is.

One last point I want to make, something that you should be aware of. The statement that you're not going to pursue a relationship with your friend probably has profoundly different implications for you and her (no doubt you've discussed this, but just in case..) For you it's:Ok, I've got a lot to lose in this great friendship and the potential romantic relationship doesn't look that stable ANYWAY, so I'll probably be better off elsewhere.

For her it's (or well could be, using my own experience in these situations) saying she can't form romantic relationships with sexual people, which is probably everyone she knows. Asexual people are still pretty few and far between, and if she even knows any her "dating pool" is miniscule at best. So she's limited emotionally to whatever the sexual people around her define as "just friendship." This is a fairly classic dilemma, and it's why I've been hitting this issue of asexual/sexual relationships so hard.

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Eta Carinae

I'm jumping in a bit late with advice, but nobody else seems to have seriously suggested this, so. . .

Terebinth, have you considered having a sexual relationship with someone else (or with multiple someone elses) while still having a romantic relationship with this girl? Granted, you'd still have to restrain yourself around your asexual friend, but you'd have to do that anyway unless you completely stopped associating with her (and even then, there would probably be others that you were attracted to but couldn't sleep with; it seems to be an unavoidable evil for the sexual crowd), and if you got your sex elsewhere it might make not having sex with her more bearable. It's also a bit complicated, and there's the risk that neither you nor she nor the potential third party will be comfortable with it, but I'd recommend seriously considering it as an option. If it works out, you can all get something you want: she gets a romantic relationship with you, you get a romantic relationship with her, and you still get sex.

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1) For asexuals, is it that orgasms as just not interesting and you don't have any desire for one? Or, you can't have them?

That differs with the person. For me, it seems like a lot of effort and not very worth it (in the context of masterbation). In the context of actual sex, well, I've never gotten that far. I never got past kissing. Kissing was boring. I'm not interested in going any further... not that I was all that interested in kissing either, more like mildly curious as to what the big deal was.

2. I think I'd fall more into the catagory of "eh this is weird". Eventually experiance would turn "weird" into "boring".

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PlatonicPimp

I have been mostly skimming, since I've only finally got to a computer. (many of you may remember me from Human Ameobas.) But my question is, how developed Platonically is this relationship with your friend. I am a sexual person myself, but I try to form all my relationships on an asexual model. My fiancee and I started horrendously attracted to one another, but I refused to engage in traditional sexual activities like "Dating" or "Making out," and stuck to more platonic means of affection. this, ultimately, forges a stronger bond, I feel, as we had a great relationship before we ever added sex to the equation.

You and your friend might wind up doing something similar. be sure you have a very solid Platonic Relationship before ever adding sex to the mix. A relationship that would survive a possible rejection by either party, and one based on Platonic Principles rather than any one sided or mutual attraction. and don't bother trying to define your relationship in any way, as doing so will make you want to "Fix" any aspects that don't fit the mold. You are exactly what you are to each other, and you don't need a word or phrase to describe it.

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