Ace view on orgasms

[Ceebs]

4 hours ago, ryn2 said:

I’m honestly not sure.  I don’t get the sense of closeness people reference... but I do get markedly more physical enjoyment out of sex when I can get that “contact high” (directly partnered, or via some sort of media/fantasy scenario) than I do without it.

That's likely the mirror neurons Tele was referring to. If you're not highly averse/repulsed, it's probably not a big stretch that one can play off their partner's energy and enjoyment of the situation to some extent. I imagine asexuals still don't get the emotional connection from the actual sexual component, since an innate desire for that is precisely what's missing for them.

[Skycaptain]

Pardon me for skipping many pages 

 

The chief (not exclusive) purpose of sexual intercourse is the exchange of genetic material between the male and female of a species. 

In my opinion, evolution has made sexual activity trigger pleasure sensations (e.g. dopamine release) within the brains of all protagonists. In the binary hypothesis that means that the male experiences orgasm and deposits spermatozoa into the female, who simultaneously experiences orgasm, the contractions of the vagina and cerxix aid and abet the delivery of sperm to the uterus where an ovum should be available for fertilisation. 

However, this overlooks every experience of intercourse and orgasm experienced outside of heterosexual intercourse. Species can experience orgasm by themselves, with other members of the same sex or by means other than PIV. 

From a personal point I can experience ejaculation without orgasm (anorgasmy) "whether through hypogonadism or ASD, IDK. 

However there are asexuals who can experience orgasm either by themselves or with a partner depending on which erogenous zones are stimulated. 

 

Ultimately asexualality and anorgasmy need not be comorbid, even though in some cases they may be 

[ryn2]

1 hour ago, CBC said:

That's likely the mirror neurons Tele was referring to.

This part would be equally true for sexuals too, no?  It’s “just” that either the emotional component isn’t there, or it’s there and not appealing.

[Ceebs]

Correct I would assume, yeah. I imagine the effect would be stronger in sexuals than asexuals. Although in the case of the emotional component being there but not appealing... honestly I would think that would be more likely something else besides asexuality. Trauma or other psychological conditions, religious indoctrination, whatever. I think asexuals are simply innately missing that mental/emotional part, so sharing sexual activity as a way of being intimate doesn't make sense to them.

[ryn2]

I’m just thinking back to some of the things Tele and Uhtred (and others) have said about the emotional bonding part... some of the ace posters sound like it’s totally foreign to them, but others seem to get it but just not see it as a positive thing.

 

I’d put myself in that latter group, I guess.  I don’t bond with people over vulnerability (shared or otherwise) and the idea is kind of squicky.

 

Others, though, seem to wistfully feel like they’re missing something lovely.

[Ceebs]

I'm sure there are a zillion variations on it since we're all different, I guess. And I imagine some people who identify as ace actually have something else going on.

 

I understand the thing about not bonding and the vulnerability being a bad thing, actually. Been there done that, when the situation wasn't right. Honestly I put it down to my partner's lack of sexual instinct more than their gender. I often wonder if my experiences with guys have just been... meh and incompatible that way... since I can still develop feelings for them. I really don't know, but that's why I assumed I was bi for years. I suppose I still think of myself as technically being so, but I've never been close to a guy where all the components were mutual and compatible. My experiences with men and my sexuality mostly involve someone who was emotionally unavailable and young and kind of an asshole, and then an asexual dude. ANWYAY. I'll definitely say that bonding during sex is kind of impossible when you're with someone who isn't into it, like with an asexual partner. Makes you feel very weird, bordering on being creepy, like you're somehow a freak for wanting that. Definitely does not help one's self esteem or comfort levels, so the vulnerability becomes icky. Sharing that vulnerability with someone who gets it is vastly different. Night and day. It's ultimately a major positive.

[ryn2]

33 minutes ago, CBC said:

Honestly I put it down to my partner's lack of sexual instinct more than their gender. I often wonder if my experiences with guys have just been... meh and incompatible that way... since I can still develop feelings for them.

I sometimes wonder that as well.  I do see people say “being ace is the same as gay people feel about the opposite sex... but with everybody,” but the way I feel about men - both romantically and sexually - is completely different than the way I feel about women.

 

39 minutes ago, CBC said:

My experiences with men and my sexuality mostly involve someone who was emotionally unavailable and young and kind of an asshole[...].

This is largely true for me as well, although they weren’t invariably assholes.  No one I’ve been in a relationship with was over 24 at the time we started seeing one another.  Only one person I’ve ever dated (or whatever) was older than me, and he was less than a month older.  My former therapist’s theory was that (thanks to my eating disorder, etc.) I got “stuck” at 20-21 and didn’t move beyond there emotionally until I was into my 40’s (years into my most recent relationship), so I was drawn to guys in a similar place from that perspective.

 

49 minutes ago, CBC said:

[...]the vulnerability becomes icky.

I pretty much feel like this about sharing vulnerability in general (not just around sex).  I don’t like/feel a need to do it myself and I often feel uncomfortable and awkward when someone else does it with/to me.

 

Lots of good food for thought!

[everywhere and nowhere]

1 hour ago, CBC said:

I think asexuals are simply innately missing that mental/emotional part, so sharing sexual activity as a way of being intimate doesn't make sense to them.

I can even understand it, I just don't want it. I anti-desire it, I'm frightened of it, I desire intimacy without sex.

[EightFourtySeven]

14 hours ago, Telecaster68 said:

Generally good sex results in orgasm, but orgasm doesn't make sex good. It's possible to orgasm during sex and it still be really bad sex

I agree with you, I had sex, it was terrible, I did come to orgasm and expected the orgasm to be the cherry on top, the hole reason to have it. It was not, It didn't make a difference. 

 

So that's why I think sex is much more then getting orgasms. It's the ultimate  form of intimacy as somebody said earlier. I think you have a sentiment of being exclusive with the person and doing something thats just between them two and the sense you have that that person 'belongs' to you for a few minutes must be exciting 

[Ceebs]

On 9/17/2018 at 6:59 PM, ryn2 said:

This is largely true for me as well, although they weren’t invariably assholes.  No one I’ve been in a relationship with was over 24 at the time we started seeing one another.  Only one person I’ve ever dated (or whatever) was older than me, and he was less than a month older.  My former therapist’s theory was that (thanks to my eating disorder, etc.) I got “stuck” at 20-21 and didn’t move beyond there emotionally until I was into my 40’s (years into my most recent relationship), so I was drawn to guys in a similar place from that perspective.

Oh yeah I'm very familiar with that aspect of eating disorders thanks to my own. I'm still struggling with it, amongst other things, but the last few years I've matured in a shitload of ways, probably due in large part to needing to navigate a bunch of difficult relationships (parental, my marriage, and another romantic connection), the death of someone I loved deeply (my gran), and a lot of health struggles that have given me some perspective. I'm more resilient and a lot more level-headed than I thought I was, or perhaps than I used to be. I felt mentally/emotionally stuck in my teens for a very long time. Plus I don't pass as a teenager anymore hahaha, I'm looking closer to 40 these days. Other than all my health issues, I don't mind ageing at all. I feel more secure in who I am.

 

Anyway. As for guys, only the one was a bit of an ass; my husband is a great person and we make good friends, just not at all on the romantic couple front. The other dude was someone I had a bit of an unofficial "thing" with when I was about 18 and our connection was based largely off being jaded smart-asses. I'm sure my mental health crap scared him, which is not unreasonable for a young guy who basically just wants to, well, get laid.

 

But yeah, I do wonder if my bi-ness has been tipped towards gayness in part due to never having had a romantic/sexual relationship with a guy that was actually suited to me in that department. I don't really care about reasons, though; I'm not sure they matter a whole lot. If there's anything I've learnt about sexuality, it's mostly just go with what feels right and who cares about defining yourself too narrowly.

 

On 9/17/2018 at 6:59 PM, ryn2 said:

I pretty much feel like this about sharing vulnerability in general (not just around sex).  I don’t like/feel a need to do it myself and I often feel uncomfortable and awkward when someone else does it with/to me.

I've never been great with it myself, but when it works it's been rewarding. Took me a very long time to learn that, but I'm glad I did. It's still not something that comes easily to me. In the sexual/romantic relationship sense there's really only been one person I've been comfortable with, and platonically perhaps two.

[ryn2]

1 hour ago, CBC said:

our connection was based largely off being jaded smart-asses.

Yes, I had one of those as well.  A few, actually, while I was still in my teens and early-to-mid-20’s.

 

1 hour ago, CBC said:

I felt mentally/emotionally stuck in my teens for a very long time.

Oddly, I didn’t - maybe because as an actual teen I felt so old and jaded and was so responsible - but in hindsight it does explain why I was drawn to and kept dating the younger people.

 

Like you said, that’s over now.  These days I’m nearly too old to be someone who’s 21’s mother.  

[Tunes]

On 9/17/2018 at 4:35 PM, CBC said:

I think asexuals are simply innately missing that mental/emotional part, so sharing sexual activity as a way of being intimate doesn't make sense to them.

This is what I'm having problems with. I don't feel like I have anything emotional missing in my relationships. Physical maybe (and I honestly prefer it that way), but not emotional or mental. We still have that bond and it's just as deep as with anyone who does have sex. We just get that bond through different activities.

 

Unless you mean we lack the desire, like someone who doesn't like sky-diving. Two people who go sky diving together share an intimate experience. And it's different from, say, sitting and watching a movie together because the sky-diving involves different elements - the severe adrenaline, the rush of the wind, the feeling of danger or of free-fall-flying or whatever (obviously I'm not a sky-diving fan, but I can see why people might enjoy it). But that doesn't mean it creates more of an emotional bond than some other activity. The bond may come about in a different way, and thus feel different in the moment, but it's not a stronger or weaker overall bond just because you don't enjoy sky-diving. It's commonly accepted that asexuals lack the DESIRE for sex, but desire for a specific activity and emotional/mental aspects of a relationship are entirely different things.

 

Is it maybe that the specific way you experience that emotional bond is what the "goal" is? Although you can get the same emotional bond in other ways, the experience of HOW that bond developed and feels in the moment is different, and it's that difference that you are after, not necessarily the orgasm (although, as others have said, the orgasm certainly adds to it)? 

[ryn2]

It sounds like (to go with your example) people who skydive need that rush to really bond and don’t get it through other actvities, @Tunes...

[Ceebs]

6 hours ago, Tunes said:

This is what I'm having problems with. I don't feel like I have anything emotional missing in my relationships.

Right, and you probably wouldn't. That's the point. In the relationship I had with someone who's asexual, they maintained nothing was missing for them as well. But it was for me in a couple different ways (one of which was about me, not their asexuality).

 

No one is right or wrong, just different.

[Telecaster68]

I'm old, and the first couple of cars I had only had four gears. I never missed having a fifth at the time, but having got used to having it subsequently, I would now. 

[ryn2]

1 hour ago, Telecaster68 said:

I'm old, and the first couple of cars I had only had four gears. I never missed having a fifth at the time, but having got used to having it subsequently, I would now. 

I think this is the place many aces get stuck, though, as it implies what they may feel very, very deeply doesn’t actually measure up to what sexuals feel and they just don’t know any better.

 

We don’t really know that being ace is missing that top gear.  It may just mean aces get into top gear via different means.

 

I know a few folks on here have said they experienced the top gear situation when they discovered they weren’t actually ace...  but do people really “turn sexual” (or vice versa), at least in the absence of head trauma?  One could argue these folks were actually sexual all along and just didn’t realize it until the right combination of circumstances occurred.

[Telecaster68]

1 minute ago, ryn2 said:

I think this is the place many aces get stuck, though, as it implies what they may feel very, very deeply doesn’t actually measure up to what sexuals feel and they just don’t know any better.

I'll try and remember the baroque analogy I came up with on this...

 

If you have a car with four gears, you can still rev the engine just as hard, you just don't go as fast as you would with the same RPM in a higher gear. In other words, an asexual's emotions may be just as intense, but to the outside world, they don't look like it. So they're both missing something and not missing something....

 

People who've had the top gear situation were always sexual, I'd say, in the same way that people who realise they don't like sex some years after puberty were always asexual. 

[ryn2]

1 minute ago, Telecaster68 said:

People who've had the top gear situation were always sexual, I'd say, in the same way that people who realise they don't like sex some years after puberty were always asexual. 

This is my interpretation as well.

 

2 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

If you have a car with four gears, you can still rev the engine just as hard, you just don't go as fast as you would with the same RPM in a higher gear. In other words, an asexual's emotions may be just as intense, but to the outside world, they don't look like it. So they're both missing something and not missing something....

Maybe the analogy bugs me specifically because I, too, date back to the days of four- (and even three-) speed cars.  

 

There’s always the sense that a car with 5th gear/an equivalent overdrive setting is better, not just different.

 

I’m not sure I buy it that what sexuals experience is better than what asexuals experience.  It may just be that it seems that way to sexuals, who imagine asexuality as “my life, but without this very key component.”

 

The reverse may also be true, of course, where asexuals imagine life for an abstaining sexual is the same as theirs... when it’s not.

 

That’s why I like food analogies better.  Someone who craves salty, crunchy food is no less passionately “in heaven” with a bag of their favorite snack than is someone who craves sweets with their most beloved dessert

[Telecaster68]

Purely different, not 'more' at least in some ways, doesn't work, because most sexuals get closeness, intimacy, etc. from all the things that asexuals do - but they get it more, in spades, from sex. It's hard to imagine that asexuals are getting that massive, blissed out haze hit of dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin etc. from cuddling, and descriptions I've read on here generally bear that out. Even when they describe 'really good sex', it's not close to what most sexuals would describe as really good sex. Mostly it would just be 'not bad sex, fine thanks'. 

 

I'm differentiating having emotions from experiencing them here I guess. I'm not saying asexuals love less, or feel less close. They just don't associate it with sex. or sex with emotions at all.

[ryn2]

I don’t disagree that the experience of sex itself is different for the two groups; it clearly is.

 

Where I take issue (not saying it isn’t true - just that I’m not convinced any of us actually knows one way or the other) is with extending that to the idea that aces are therefore missing out on something in their relationships or lives (even if they’re “wired” not to miss it).

 

E.g., someone who cannot hear.  I live an area with a large, vocal, active deaf community.  Clearly those who cannot hear from birth experience the world differently than those who do hear, and it’s easy to understand why a music lover might feel like their lives are really missing something, but you will find they take considerable umbrage to anyone who claims their life experience is somehow lesser overall.

[Telecaster68]

Yes, overall, I don't think asexuals necessarily have a more impoverished life, but they are missing out on what sex does for sexuals. I have absolutely no inclination to play video games (I try them now and then, just to check some new one isn't somehow going to enthuse me, and it never does), but I have no issues with admitting I'm not getting the high/buzz/whateverthefuckitis that gamers get, and clearly in some cases it's as satisfying as what I get from a novel or movie. 

[ryn2]

Agreed, it’s likely similar to the “gamer thing.”

 

It seems as though some (many? Maybe just they’re more vocal?) sexuals think aces have more impoverished relationships, though, and that may be a case of “based on what a relationship without good sex feels like to me” rather than (ace) reality.

[Telecaster68]

1 minute ago, ryn2 said:

Agreed, it’s likely similar to the “gamer thing.”

 

It seems as though some (many? Maybe just they’re more vocal?) sexuals think aces have more impoverished relationships, though, and that may be a case of “based on what a relationship without good sex feels like to me” rather than (ace) reality.

It's honestly really difficult to see how a sexless relationship isn't less intense than one with sex, because sex is intense (or at least, generally is...), and a relationship without a shot of intensity (and the ongoing background potential for intensity). does seem missing something. It's like not seeing decaff coffee as somehow less than caffeinated coffee. It just.... is..... Even if you prefer decaff, and that's fine, it's lacking caffeine.

[ryn2]

Right, but you’re experiencing it from a sexual perspective.  It may not be like decaf coffee to the ace.  It may be like orange juice, or a chocolate milkshake, or a good aged whiskey.

[Telecaster68]

Agreed. By analogy, not a sexual relationship, which is different to it being a sexual relationship, and sexuals will always see a sexual relationship as being 'more' because there's one more element to it than a nonsexual relationship.

[ryn2]

Whereas aces will tend to see it as being less, because there are additional negatives to it.