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Playing devil's advocate


Pappeh

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On 2/15/2019 at 5:07 AM, ☆゚°˖* ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ said:

Now I've got a guy who will 100% not lead or initiate and I'm like oh god damn it.  I'm so bad at this. 😭  But I'm taking it as a means to build up my confidence?  

I can relate with this. I've always been an active participant in sex. Taking the lead easily. Till... my ace. Initially I did take the lead in our relationship too, and that is probably why we are in a sexually enjoyable space. He had no preference on sex whatsoever and zero instinct - I assumed it was inexperience/shyness, but in hindsight, this should have been a RED FLAG. There was a lot of sensitive handholding, helping us both discover what worked for him, etc. But with time, as my awareness of his lack of enthusiasm grew, I started wanting to take the lead less and less to the point that about a year before we discovered he was asexual, all my favorite sex was where he decided what happened. I have things I like or prefer, but more than all that, I prefer him comfortable and involved.

 

Another dynamic was my absolute horror of coerced sex and damned if I wanted to be a villain in that scene, so the more aware I was of his lack of enthusiasm, the more I held back to ensure his willingness. To the point where I don't expect any sex from him at all. We aren't platonic, but the sex is rare and initiated by him when he is comfortable with no expectations that he has to ever  do it. Any sex that happens is an individual event and no pattern is assumed.

 

I am not frustrated, because I basically see myself as single and him as a companion. In the sense that if I am frustrated on occasion, it may be because I feel a need for a sexual relationship (not him).

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That does sound a lot like my relationship.  Only he doesn't ever initiate.  It has to be me, always.  We've come to the conclusion that if I want anything I need to ask for it.  It's really hard for me.  And also I just want to be desired but that's not happening so I need to adjust my wants and compromise.

 

His benevolence is tenfold, but I still feel like I'm missing a piece of him... which is stupid and really frustrating for me.

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1 hour ago, ☆゚°˖* ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ said:

I still feel like I'm missing a piece of him... which is stupid and really frustrating for me.

It’s not stupid - it’s human nature for most sexual people.  You are missing a piece of him in a sense.  You can’t help missing it any more than he can help not having it.

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On 3/9/2019 at 8:41 PM, ☆゚°˖* ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ said:

That does sound a lot like my relationship.  Only he doesn't ever initiate.  It has to be me, always.  We've come to the conclusion that if I want anything I need to ask for it.  It's really hard for me.  And also I just want to be desired but that's not happening so I need to adjust my wants and compromise.

 

His benevolence is tenfold, but I still feel like I'm missing a piece of him... which is stupid and really frustrating for me.

It is hard. Also, we sense the sexual piece missing. Except it isn't missing in our relationship, it isn't there at all in the person. It is like learning a new way to relate. At least for me, it totally upended my idea of love. It is still hard to define what we have, though we are happy enough together. 

 

For us, it is a whole package deal. A certain kind of involvement, a certain intimate zone not shared with another, etc. Take the sex out, and at least for me, the whole thing was up for second guessing. I still have times when I simply tune him out - indifference - he's no longer on my radar. I care about him, but the sort of awareness with a partner, when you always have a sense of them as a sort of ... background music to life... it isn't there. Perhaps it is a sexual thing? Some primitive instinct to keep track of a mate that sort of just vanishes if you aren't having sex?

 

And when I say this, I don't at all mean that I love him less, or that we are having trouble. We are actually in a fantastic relationship overall. It is just.... different. Not what clicks in my mind as an intimate one. Which is strange, because we also know each other pretty deeply, connect superbly on emotional and intellectual levels, are in perfect sync, are very comfortable with each others bodies, even occasionally have sex... but brain registers it as some variation of best friends. If I feel sexually frustrated and long for a relationship, it is me longing for a relationship with a new partner. Not him!

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1 hour ago, anamikanon said:

the sort of awareness with a partner, when you always have a sense of them as a sort of ... background music to life... 

This is a big part of what I tried (and failed!) to explain to tele a while back about what distinguishes a romantic (even if non-sexual) partner from a friend!  

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42 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

So take it away, and that visceral level of association will eventually fade.

Does anyone know if it fades in ace/ace relationships?  It’s definitely a good way to describe how I have about my partners (versus my friends) despite not having a sexual bond with them.

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There’s definitely something there that is markedly different than friendship.

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(I’m back to leaning towards “maybe I *am* ace” because the more I talk to people - here and otherwise - about what they really mean by “desiring partnered sex” the less I can relate to it at all and the more I think I actually wanted things partnered sex got me)

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On 2/15/2019 at 10:41 AM, Telecaster68 said:

It's more sympathetic than you'd expect, but there is a fair amount of weight attached to how much of a fuck the lower libido person clearly gives. 

Late  to this party, but whatever. 

 

I think you’re spot on about deadbedrooms. Ultimately I had to leave, though. Too many people in the “anger” stage of grief. Which is great when you’re there too, not so great when you want to move on. 

 

Also, here there’s a *lot* more sympathy for those of us trying to stick it out in the marriage. In deadbedrooms, there’s very little acknowledgement that leaving a long relationship with kids and a home and a shared philosophy of life (except for the sex thing) and all that is hard. 

 

Granted, I get a lot more: “You should consider leaving” than most long-term married people here in the SPF&A group, so it also might be me. 

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43 minutes ago, ryn2 said:

There’s definitely something there that is markedly different than friendship.

Depends on what you call friendship. I consider my wife more of a “work wife”. We support each other in managing this family, we eat together and go to happy hour together, and we are fully platonic. 

 

I’ve had plenty of work wives in my outside the home career. I’m still close with a lot of them even though I don’t work with them anymore.  And I truly can’t see the difference between this and my relationship with them.

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7 minutes ago, SCPDX said:

Depends on what you call friendship. I consider my wife more of a “work wife”. We support each other in managing this family, we eat together and go to happy hour together, and we are fully platonic. 

 

I’ve had plenty of work wives in my outside the home career. I’m still close with a lot of them even though I don’t work with them anymore.  And I truly can’t see the difference between this and my relationship with them.

Which makes sense for a sexual person based on what tele is saying/on the idea that (at least most) sexual people do not experience romantic love in the absence of sexual attraction... but romantic aces do report feeling something very different towards their romantic partners than they do towards friends.

 

My relationship with my most recent ex was always problematic from a sex standpoint and had been wholly sexless for years by the end.  For him that also heralded the end of loving me in any way distinguishable from friendship... but for me it did not.

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8 hours ago, ryn2 said:

Does anyone know if it fades in ace/ace relationships?  It’s definitely a good way to describe how I have about my partners (versus my friends) despite not having a sexual bond with them.

No, it doesn't fade in the same way, because neither ace feels like anything's missing.  The sexual does.  

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15 hours ago, ryn2 said:

Which makes sense for a sexual person based on what tele is saying/on the idea that (at least most) sexual people do not experience romantic love in the absence of sexual attraction... but romantic aces do report feeling something very different towards their romantic partners than they do towards friends.

I mean, that makes sense.  Sexuals can definitely experience sexual attraction minus romantic attraction, so why wouldn't the inverse also be possible?

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36 minutes ago, ☆゚°˖* ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ said:

Sexuals can definitely experience sexual attraction minus romantic attraction, so why wouldn't the inverse also be possible?

It made sense to me but I was not able to offer up any example or description that successfully distinguished nonsexual romance from friendship.

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2 hours ago, ☆゚°˖* ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ said:

I mean, that makes sense.  Sexuals can definitely experience sexual attraction minus romantic attraction, so why wouldn't the inverse also be possible?

 

2 hours ago, ryn2 said:

It made sense to me but I was not able to offer up any example or description that successfully distinguished nonsexual romance from friendship.

 Yes, we can be physically attracted to someone without knowing anything about them. And yes we can be ‘romantically’ attracted to someone without being interested in them physically. 

 

Plenty of examples of that - same sex platonic “crushes” between heterosexuals, gay people having relationships with straight opposite gendered people etc. (not to ignore non-binary people...I’d prefer to let them speak for themselves). 

 

The main thing about such relationships, though, is that they’re not *committed*. They can be deep and very romantic (the Sir Ian McLellan/Sir Patrick Stewart bromance being a key example). But one person can decide to be done and there aren’t a whole lot of repercussions. 

 

I’d argue that for the vast majority of sexuals  to commit to someone else, the person they commit to is always going to be a match their sexual orientation and, like it or not, sex is going to need to be a part of that commitment. 

 

And maybe my wife and I should aspire to the Gandalf/Picard thing...

 

 

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The examples you gave, though, are (as far as we know) examples of close friendship rather than of romantic love.  They may love each other as friends but they are not “in love” romantically with one another.

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On 3/9/2019 at 7:11 AM, ☆゚°˖* ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ said:

That does sound a lot like my relationship.  Only he doesn't ever initiate.  It has to be me, always.  We've come to the conclusion that if I want anything I need to ask for it.  It's really hard for me.  And also I just want to be desired but that's not happening so I need to adjust my wants and compromise.

 

 

All that is because you two don't want the same thing.  You really can't expect someone to initiate something that they don't want.   If you want it, yes, you have to initiate it.    

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3 hours ago, Sally said:

All that is because you two don't want the same thing.  You really can't expect someone to initiate something that they don't want.   If you want it, yes, you have to initiate it.    

Oh, I don't disagree with that in the slightest.  I'm only admitting that it's a challenge for me as I've always been submissive in my relationships.

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On 3/12/2019 at 2:32 AM, ryn2 said:

Does anyone know if it fades in ace/ace relationships?  It’s definitely a good way to describe how I have about my partners (versus my friends) despite not having a sexual bond with them.

I don't know how aces experience "love" of the sort you have with a partner. Mine insists I'm special, and indeed uprooted his entire life to move to another city to be with me, but how he feels or how I am different from others he cares about is hard to say for me. He isn't able to describe it either, other than saying it is different. Very. He describes a sense of belonging, acceptance, security. That doesn't sound very romantic to me in that sense. Particularly since, as a loner, I've never depended on another person to feel all that...

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3 minutes ago, anamikanon said:

I don't know how aces experience "love" of the sort you have with a partner. Mine insists I'm special, and indeed uprooted his entire life to move to another city to be with me, but how he feels or how I am different from others he cares about is hard to say for me. He isn't able to describe it either, other than saying it is different. Very. He describes a sense of belonging, acceptance, security. That doesn't sound very romantic to me in that sense. Particularly since, as a loner, I've never depended on another person to feel all that...

What he says sounds similar to *some* of how I feel.  I guess, since it’s impossible to feel how others are feeling, there’s not really any way to know whether what sexual people experience as (any nonsexual components of) romantic love and what romantic aces experience as romantic love are the same... but given my own experiences (whatever the eff I am) and what other aces have described I still think what romantic aces experience as romantic love is *not* the same as what sexuals experience as friendship (unless what romantic aces experience as friendship is not the same as what sexuals experience as friendship, and I haven’t seen indications that’s true).  It just doesn’t have a handy reference marker.

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Yeah, that’s a bit of a different question, because a lot of the ways people prioritize their partners do happen in their heads.  It’s not like every time you choose to go home and spend time with a partner rather than going out alone/with friends, or every time you volunteer to do a chore or run an  errand because a partner might be tired, or every time you suggest places for vacation you know a partner will love, etc., you verbalize the “I could have xyz but you’re my first priority/really special to me so I didn’t even bother seriously considering it and went for what you would want instead.”

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It may not be unfair but it could be unproductive.  If you don’t discuss it (an actual calm discussion or discussion(s), not an argument or an gripe session where one complains and the other doesn’t really listen) you can get into a situation where one partner is putting the other first in their head (and believing they’re acting accordingly) where the other isn’t picking up on that at all (because the things they consider being put first aren’t happening, and/or the other partner never mentions any of the sacrifices so they’re completely invisible).

 

I got in that last situation with someone, where I was making time for him rather than going out with my friends and he was doing the opposite.  To me, saying “you know, xyz invited me out but I chose to spend time with you instead” feels passive-aggressive and guilt-trippy, so I just made accommodations in relatively cheerful silence.

 

To him, it read as “she doesn’t have enough friends,” and also as “she doesn’t like to go out and would rather sit home all the time, and now she’s trying to impose that on me.”

 

If we’d actually talked about it more initially the odds of either of us feeling understood would have been a whole lot better.

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