Hi, I need to air some thoughts

[Tjirpling]

I don't think I'm hitting TMI levels of detail here, but it gets pretty personal, so uh. You're warned, I guess? Also, wall of text.

Alright, so. I'm going to go ahead and put some personal ranting here because I don't know where else to put it. Too muh repetition for my fiancee, too much personal info for my potential social media outlets, too much sheer babbling for any one of my friends. A forum where no one knows me but may hear me? Sure, that'll work.

I'm currently in a serious relationship with an excellent person whose sexuality is not entirely easy to label (or at least she'd rather not), but for most contexts comes across as asexual. She is very fond of cuddles and verbal expressions of affection, and has a sexual fetish involving some objects that she finds more satisfying to engage with me rather than alone. She's also physically attracted to me, but not in a sexual way (I'm squishy, to use her phrase). She's extremely awesome and beautiful and I'm attracted to her in all the affectionate ways of a both sexual and romantic me, which sums up as "yes live together, yes talk to erryday, yes cuddles, yes want skin contact, yes trigger libido, yes want to comfort when applicable, yes share happiness". Etc. Love, anyway.
Judging by the threads I've read in here, this leaves me in the lucky end of relationships between people with vastly different libidos.

To sidetrack, gender is an odd thing. Or well. I'm not entirely capable of understanding social gender. I didn't have gender roles shoved down my throat as I grew up, and Denmark (where I'm from) isn't quite as divided in gender roles as, say, the US is. So I don't really understand what the fuss is about and why people can't just realize that everybody is people. Meanwhile my fiancee is a transgender woman, and pays intricate attention to gender differences (mostly because she finds it entertaining to make observations about it - my occasional counters of "I don't believe that's a gender thing" can lead to interesting discussions here and there, it's all good).
An issue is that neither of us are particularly comfortable with our physical sex. Her for hopefully obvious reasons, me because while I don't understand social gender I do understand the difference between bodies and have a strong desire to be able to experience both. This is easily integrated into the realm of fantasy where you really can be whatever you want to be, but as a result I can't be the shape I want in most potentially-sexually-loaded physical interactions. We both lament this occasionally, making light-hearted comments about how things could be a lot easier if only X, although there's sadness tied in.

Anyway, relationship summary go.

We met online in an MMO, had joined the same guild. Started playing together regularly, started being friends, started chatting outside the game, fell in tune with each other quite easily. Our friend circle in the game was generally pretty happy to talk openly (and mostly maturely) about various topics related to sexuality, so a round of "what orientation is errybody" came up. Thus I knew she was largely asexual before I knew she was trans and probably started developing feelings for her somewhere in between those. Love isn't exactly a conscious decision, but even then I didn't really fight falling for her, despite living some 8000 miles away. We sort of dismissed it as too complicated, but she found she had some sort of feelings for me too, even if she wasn't quite sure what they were. A few months later we concluded our interactions had grown pretty coupley in all the most adorable ways and started putting more effort into our plans to eventually meet (something we'd been meaning to do ~one day~ much earlier in our friendship).

First visit, me staying at her place for a bit over a month. Went okay, with a few expected "wow how do we live together" hurdles. Hardest part was figuring out how to physical affection, since we didn't expect or want the same things and hadn't really talked about it. Looking back, I definitely pushed her too far and too fast (pretty much exclusively by touching her too intimately), but while we're great at open communication in text, actually talking is a lot harder (it's gotten better over time but back then it was very new). There wasn't nearly enough asking for consent, and there weren't enough "actually this isn't okay" stops in their place either. I don't believe any lasting emotional damage was done, and from our talks about it after the fact, it seems like my guilt vastly outweighed her actual discomfort, but still. Poor.
Also poor was how alone I felt at night since her place was rather large and I slept in the opposite end of the building from her. Eventually one night, I went in and cried at her about it. She invited me to sleep in her (also rather large) bed and I tried taking up as little space as possible. Awkwardness of it wasn't permanent, though, and sleep cuddles were eventually established as an awesome thing that we both appreciate.

A bit over half a year later, she came to stay at my place for a couple of weeks. I have much less space and a much less usable internet connection, and she didn't have work to go to, so as a result we had a lot of time together and not a lot of personal space. Went better than the first time around anyway, probably well aided by having talked more about what worked and what didn't work and what went wrong and right the first time around in the meantime. There was a burst of pretty sexually heated (though rather clothed) interactions one of the first days, with her commenting that being around me seemed to get her libido going, but then it sort of faded into awkwardness until we tried talking about said awkwardness, at which point there was some naked cuddling and it was alright. Late in that visit I got her to get me off, which felt good at the time (other than me being intensely afraid) and she seemed happy with it, but some months later she's started feeling anxious when we talk about the idea of interacting with my bits ... so that's another thing discarded.
As for other relationship things, everything went awesomely. We didn't have the awkwardness of the first visit, we just had fun and love. Talking, cuddling, gaming, walks for the scenery, minor sightseeing, her meeting my family, her going out in a skirt for the first time (trans achievement, woo!), much loveliness followed by a world of missing each other when she went back home.
Much skype chat, both text and calls, more evaluation of the things that didn't work out. Conversations about our clashing needs started ending in her concluding she couldn't say anything for sure when we're so far apart and trying to come up with compromises got pushed back.

At the time of writing this, I've been at her place for another month. This visit, I'm staying the full ESTA allowance of three months and after I go back to Denmark this time, the next time I come over here it will probably be to live with her. I proposed to her early on in the visit, something that wasn't even remotely surprising to her as we've thoroughly discussed our plans to entertwine our lives. If you ignore how hard it is to move countries and the disparity between our libidos, I genuinely only have one real complaint with all this, and that is something as trivial as the local tap water being utterly vile (what's with the chlorine, blech). Basically, it's pretty great.

And yet, of course, the mismatched sexual wants don't just magically go away.
On the upside, we've concluded that my frustrations (which make her feel inadequate) are far more about not being comfortable feeling sexual desire rather than not having sexual desires fulfilled, which leaves less pressure on her since it's not "could you plz do this I really want it" but rather "I'm upset because I don't know what to do with these feelings".
On the downside, it's really hard to actually work on figuring out what sort of thing would work for both of us. She's fine with touching me sexually as long as it doesn't have to be my bits (sadly I'm still not fine with being turned on by such touch), and she's fine with me touching her, though it's unlikely to turn her on unless it's tied in to engaging her fetish. When we do do that, she likes getting off while I hold and nuzzle her, which is pretty gratifying for me, but not a frequent thing.

With the whole I'm-the-one-with-sexual-desires-that-she-doesn't-want-me-to-have (well, that she'd rather not hear about, at any rate) and not being comfortable with them myself and generally being afraid of actually letting her touch me even in ways she wants to or would be up for if I asked, I have a lot of "there is something wrong with me :c" feelings, which may not be entirely wrong. Sort of a "work through your own shit instead of throwing her all your confusing issues" thing, but I don't know how to and the issues I have with my gender only makes things harder.

I also don't know how much I should push her to figure out what she is and isn't comfortable with. Some of my fear of overstepping limits (again) could be alleviated if I actually knew where the limits are, but she doesn't know and it's difficult to request that she figure it out, even if revisions would always be okay.
Bluh.

Sexuality clashes aside, this relationship is immensely awesome. We get along swimmingly, share many interests without dismissing ones we don't share and our humor and general opinions on life as a whole are so in tune it's beautiful. Yes hello, I am finishing my rant on a happy note.

[Hawah]

Wow. That sounds incredibly complicated. I don't have any brilliant ideas for the gender or sexuality issues, but the chlorine water I can help you with because I hate it, too. :D A charcoal filter pitcher or bottle will get rid of the chlorine for you. It doesn't need to be a fancy one for filtering bacteria and whatnot, it just needs to have charcoal. I use a pitcher and keep it in the refrigerator for filling water bottles (plain bottles, not ones with filters) we carry around with us.

Good luck!

[Tjirpling]

Thanks for the feedback, and yeah, we've been considering getting a filter. c: Read some good things about carbon, which is apparently very similar to charcoal. Might not happen before I leave (we're both kind of lazy with actually getting around to things), but I don't need to drink a lot to stay hydrated anyway, so it's a limited issue.

On a note of continued self-exploration, the whole getting-thoughts-out-in-writing really did help provide some clarity/mental breathing room and it's pretty nice to be able to worry less about things that don't have to be figured out immediately. Certainly makes the cuddling more enjoyable. Still haven't a clue how to be okay with wanting things sometimes and even less how to be okay with expressing it when it happens, but work in progress and all that.

[rjtucke]

Charcoal is carbon!