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ACEs..do you love your spouse?


scaredhubby

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Coming to terms with it all, I'm doubting that my wife loves me. that's natural. So just curious..how many of you ACE folks genuinely love your sexual spouse or couldn't care less if they left?

 

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I'm not in a relationship, but I am in love with someone and want to be with them.

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I’m still sorting out where I fall on the spectrum but I genuinely love my partner and will be heartbroken when he leaves.  I’m not sure why someone would put up with all the challenges a relationship brings if he/she/they couldn’t care less if the partner left...

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I'm asexual, my partner is hypersexual, and I genuinely love him (even when he drives me crazy and I'm not sure I like him anymore, and even after all the sacrifices and compromises we've had to make to stay together).

 

[We're not married, but we've been living together for 2 years.]

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I just got out of a relationship and I genuinely loved them (still do, it was recent), they were questioning if they were sexual though, leaning more-so to asexuality, but even when I thought they were sexual, I still loved them

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There's no reason asexuals wouldn't love their partners, it's just that sex isn't a natural expression of love/attraction/affection for them. When it is for you, it sucks, I get it. It's innate to us, but it isn't to them. Neither way is right or wrong, and the fact that an asexual person doesn't want to share a sexual connection with someone doesn't mean they don't or can't love their partners. You gotta trust that's true for them just as asexuals needs to trust that for us, sex is an important expression of our feelings and who we are.

 

That said, it's within your right to decide that you're not ok with a non-sexual relationship. It isn't your right to demand sex from an asexual partner though, and if you can't work out any type of acceptable compromise, then you need to make the choice to leave.

 

But yeah, even a lack of a sexual connection for a limited period of time within an otherwise normally sexual relationship can leave you feeling like you're not loved or wanted. So for the course of an entire relationship, it's hard to believe they love you as much as they claim they do. But unless there are other problems (obviously asexuals can fall out of love as well), they do.

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15 minutes ago, CBC said:

[...]the fact that an asexual person doesn't want to share a sexual connection with someone doesn't mean they don't or can't love their partners.

Plus, for at least some aces, sex doesn’t establish (and may corrode) a connection.

 

Unfortunately, regardless of sexuality, there’s no way to prove love or to be certain love exists.

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34 minutes ago, uhtred said:

I think one problem is that people may mean very different things by "love". 

For sure people experience facets of love differently (regardless of sexual orientation), but if you mean that an asexual person's love is somehow very different from an ace's, despite being sexual myself, I don't really agree. There's not a sexual component for them, and so to non-asexuals, it's going to feel like a different type of love. But for romantic asexuals, I don't doubt that they can love just as deeply as a sexual person can. There's just that "extra gear" missing as a way to express it. To us that makes it less passionate, but I'm not sure it speaks to the strength of their love at all.

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36 minutes ago, uhtred said:

I think one problem is that people may mean very different things by "love". 

 

 

They may... but I’m not aromantic and over the years I’ve romantically loved several partners a great deal.  I also love my friends, say, and my pets, but those aren’t the same kinds of love to me.

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49 minutes ago, uhtred said:

I think one problem is that people may mean very different things by "love". 

Asexuals are capable of experiencing the same kind of romantic love as sexuals do in relationships, and to the same depth and keenness 

But for an asexual sex (and the desire of the partner for sex) will drive a rift into the romantic bond, whereas for a sexual, sex enhances it (and it's the lack of drive in the ace partner that drives a rift into the bond for the sexual). That's pretty much the main reason why it's sooooo hard for sexuals and aces to see eye to eye when it comes to sex. 

 

I answer as someone who has had both asexual and sexual partners. With my most recent sexual partner his love was just as intense and passionate as my asexual ex's love, but sex was not a factor in any way for my ace ex partner.

 

Obviously though of course EVERYONE experiences and expresses romantic love differently from person to person, regardless of sexual orientation, I'm just talking in generalizations here. I've known many aces in my time from chat especially who are just as passionate as sexuals when in love, and some even moreso as the lack of drive for sex may be channeled into other intimate things two people can do together. It just totally depends on the person really. There are sexuals who are limp fish in the sack even when totally in love, and asexuals who are wild beasts just minus the sex 😛

 

So yeah, despite experiencing equal passionate romantic love, it's still almost impossible for asexuals and sexuals to be compatible long term in a romantic relationship due to the difference in inherent sexuality. @Chimeric and her ace partner are an exception to that though!! ❤️:)

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i was in love ,she was my best friend i mourned the loss of her  we had our issues ( or my issues) but i still loved her

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I don't experience any kind or type of love. The only reason I don't consider that love thing a myth is that most of you seem, and I take your word for it folks, to experience it.

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Nea Rose Symphony

Not exactly spouses or even engaged at this point but yes I love my boyfriend a lot. I feel happier and calmer with him than without and it's been that way since I met him for the first time. I like the physical affection with him and miss it when I have to sleep alone in my bed coming back home (we live like 180 miles apart). We've tried out sex and he's definitely not asexual though he's a lot more respectful and less needy of sex compared to the person I had dated before, which is a big relief. I think we're rather compatible even with me being ace

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Last night,

"Do you love me even though I'm a sexual?"

"Sure. I'm asexual too!"

Hah, very funny. We seem to have become pretty chill about it.

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On 9/24/2018 at 8:14 PM, CBC said:

For sure people experience facets of love differently (regardless of sexual orientation), but if you mean that an asexual person's love is somehow very different from an ace's, despite being sexual myself, I don't really agree. There's not a sexual component for them, and so to non-asexuals, it's going to feel like a different type of love. But for romantic asexuals, I don't doubt that they can love just as deeply as a sexual person can. There's just that "extra gear" missing as a way to express it. To us that makes it less passionate, but I'm not sure it speaks to the strength of their love at all.

I don't know how to know what love is like for someone else. I've seen people use "love" to describe relationships that do not in any way match the definition for me.   My parents "loved" each other, but clearly arranged their lives to be apart as much as possible.  My wife's mother "loved" her husband, but seemed to think that the world had to revolve around what *she* wanted, with no care at all for his happiness.  So this goes deeper than sexual / asexual.  

 

We would need to hear from someone who themselves has been both sexual and asexual to know if love felt the same way in both situations 

 

 

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Ah. Well I was never actually asexual but I identified that way mistakenly for a while. I'm not sure I'm the right person to answer that, though.

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48 minutes ago, uhtred said:

We would need to hear from someone who themselves has been both sexual and asexual to know if love felt the same way in both situations

I’m not sure this is possible, just like realizing later in life that you are gay isn’t really “being both straight and bi.”  It could potentially happen with brain trauma but that introduces too many other variables.

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Right, agreed.

 

I also don't know how to compare my experiences. When I assumed I may be possibly ace-ish, I likely wasn't. I felt an attraction to and interest in someone who did not have the capacity for expressing feelings through sex, and at the time that was my main experience with sharing sexual stuff with anyone else, so it put a damper on my own sexuality and didn't allow for much growth. I eventually became even more turned off by the idea of sex with him than I was in the beginning. I loved him though, and still do. Very much. I'm not sure that connection should ever have gone beyond a crush that led to a close friendship, rather than an attempted marriage. I thought I was in love, I felt the giddy feelings, but the more the relationship progressed, the more that died off because something was missing and I had no clue what at that point.

 

The love I've felt for someone else since definitely contains the sexual element, I can't imagine it not doing so, and so that inherently makes it feel stronger in certain ways. Easily more passionate and intense, and it's reciprocal. It's certainly an "in love" feeling much more than the other was. But whether that means I love her more, I don't know. It brings up all sorts of questions about how we're defining love, and ridiculous scenarios in my head -- like if both of these people were in danger of falling off a cliff and I could only save one, who would I choose? Whoever I chose, surely that would be the person I loved more, right? I have no answer to that hypothetical situation (and am comforted by the fact that I will likely never face it, hahaha).

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Yeah, exactly.  My understanding is that someone who initially identifies as one sexuality and later discovers they’re another isn’t really changing sexualities... “just” identification.  Therefore a sexual who thinks they’re ace (or vice versa) probably doesn’t experience (a lack of) sexial desire the same way someone who’s actually ace does.

 

”Who would I save?” is a tough one.  I’m not sure it even gets at who you love more.  There are too many other factors.

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A few years ago I had a brain hemhorrage and following this I became asexual. This was my natural state before I met my wife. I had always been asexual before I met her, and perfectly happy to be so, and I only became demisexual after I was new her for several years. She is the only person in my entire life that I have ever been attracted to. And so I guess you can imagine how devastated she was to realise that I was no longer attacted to her. 

 

Our story is very long and I am not able to explain how we sorted all this out here in one short post but what I can tell you is relationship therapy was the answer for us.

 

But it was hard to find a therapist that was able to accept that there is such a thing as Demisexual, Asexual etc.

 

If you want to know more about any of the things I post about, please just ask, or send me a PM. I do have some links that explain some of the things we are doing. It is hard work but it is well worth it

 

I love her and she loves me. The way that we experience our shared love is very different for each of us. But neither persons love is superior. My love for her is as valuble as her love for me. The giving and receiving of the love is genuine from both sides and although experienced differently, it is equal 

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2 hours ago, ryn2 said:

I’m not sure this is possible, just like realizing later in life that you are gay isn’t really “being both straight and bi.”  It could potentially happen with brain trauma but that introduces too many other variables.

Agreed - I don't see is as realistic, but without it I also don't know how to compare.

 

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5 minutes ago, uhtred said:

Agreed - I don't see is as realistic, but without it I also don't know how to compare.

 

Same.  That was my point a while back when I said (not to you) I don’t necessarily believe asexuals experience less intense intimacy than sexuals do based on the reasoning that many sexuals experience a loss of intimacy when sex is gone.  There’s no way to know if what asexuals in relationships feel is the same as what sexuals in sexless relationships feel.

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1 hour ago, ryn2 said:

Yeah, exactly.  Someone who initially identifies as one sexuality and later discovers they’re another isn’t really changing sexualities... “just” identification.

[citation needed]

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As for the actual topic, we love people the same way anyone else might.  We just may show it differently.

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4 minutes ago, Philip027 said:

[citation needed]

I rephrased the post to make it clearer that it’s my opinion.

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3 minutes ago, Philip027 said:

As for the actual topic, we love people the same way anyone else might.  We just may show it differently.

Well, that was what was under debate... some of the posters disagreed.

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I've loved someone I wasn't sexually attracted to. It didn't work out for other reasons. But, we're still friends. 

 

I love someone I am sexually attracted to now. 

 

It's different, I'll admit. But, part of it is we're more compatible, so closer. I didn't even know I was capable of sexual attraction when with the others. And I don't feel like that part really makes a big difference. I can still take or leave the sexual parts. In fact, I sometimes wish the sexual part wasn't part of our relationship, because it leads to other issues 

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