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Does having sex without desire make me some kind of asexual?


magiccactus

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magiccactus

Howdy,

This post requires a fair bit of background. Also in the effort to be thorough, there will be some TMI/NSFW/TW related to descriptions of sexual acts. Now, to business.

So the background: I'm a 25 year old cis-hetero male. I have a mild form of a physical disability called cerebral palsy (CP for short). I am also a virgin. Recently, while on holiday in a major metropolitan city, I decided I wanted to see a sexworker. My reasons for this were two-fold: One, I had recently begun to question my cis-het identity, landing on asexual as the most probable answer. Because I'd never had sex before though, I wanted to... "test the waters" so to speak, and since I had a bad history of dating as a disabled person, I figured a sex worker would be the best way to go about things. Reason two stemmed primarily from wanting to understand how my physical disability might physically or psychologically impact my ability to have sex. 

 

Anyway, long story short, I was able to achieve erection and penetration and had the woman on top. The woman I was with was able to orgasm multiple times from riding me, but I was totally unable to climax. Barring that though, sex felt very... abstract to me. There wasn't really desire or lust in any sense of the word. It felt very... clinical. It was warm and human, in the sense that we chatted and kissed and did all the foreplay stuff, but in my mind there was no desire for the person or their body, more of a "well let's try this and see what happens" kind of deal. To clarify, aesthetically speaking, I could recognize the beauty of a woman's body and the physical features therein (for instance I really enjoyed spanking her ass), but there was no feeling of "I want to spank this ass, I want to fuck this person." It felt, honestly, like a science experiment or something. 

 

I've never in my life had any kind of feeling of physical desire for a member of the opposite sex. I have friends who are members of the opposite sex who I care for, deeply (I would even say that I love them, but "love" here is playing the role of something like "deep respect for their personhood" rather than something like "I want to be romantically attached to them"), but I've never desired sex with another person, except in the case of sex workers, and here "desire", as I pointed out above carries this kind of sense of abstraction. I posted about this on another forum and someone suggested I might be graysexual, which to be frank was a new term for me. Googling around brought me here to this community, so I thought I might as well ask and see what the consensus appears to be. I know with sexual orientation the rule of thumb is "you are who you feel like being", but if I'm frank I don't know much about the landscape and would appreciate some guidance/advice/whatever.

 

Thanks for reading my novel.  

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nineGardens
20 minutes ago, magiccactus said:

Thanks for reading my novel.  

Okay, so first off, this made me snigger.

 

 

 

Secondly:

Sex is weird. I would not recommend taking a single instance of "this is weird and I feel nothing" with a sex worker to be particularly strong evidence, but I also wouldn't recommend ignoring it.

Maybe you are full Ace, and Sex will always mean nothing much.

Maybe you are somewhere in the Grey Zone, (for example, Demi-sexual), and given the right circumstances, and sufficient trust, sex would be more enjoyable. I've had lots of friends I was close to etc... but had no interest in. Personally, I've also had someone who I WAS interested in, and that was pretty neat. The sex wasn't the main aspect of that, but it was enjoyable.

Or maybe you'd get labeled as actually being sexual? You did go to the trouble of hiring someone. I dunno. I have a friend who chases after boys like mad, and then tells me how she never actually enjoys it. Probably It sounds like your somewhere in the general direction of Aceness, but the exact coordinates are unknowable un irrelevant (as you seem to be aware).

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magiccactus

Hey thanks for taking the time to reply, I really appreciate it.

 

I mean, I feel like I'm for sure somewhere in the grey zone, but I'm not 100% certain. The idea of Demi-sexuality is the one thing stopping me from taking a full-on ace identity. On the gripping hand though, and why I hesitate to really go with that view, is the fact that I've never had sexual desire for another person. It's always been more platonic for me. Like I like having a friend of the opposite sex to hang out with/vent to/ listen to their problems, that is, I like the idea of emotional intimacy, but I never even stop to consider the question of physical intimacy with these people, and isn't it usually that you get to know someone before you sleep with them? That just... doesn't happen. I have this very abstracted view of sex and physical intimacy, where I think things are interesting (in the sense that I've never done it before and it taught me a fair bit about my body and physically what I can do), but not pleasurable (in the sense that I'm not really in any rush to do it again). So again, I'm just not sure. I mean the grey zone sounds like it fits, but the territory is murky and I'm left with more questions than answers.

 

Anyway thanks again for taking the time to read and reply!   

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Sounds like your "desire" here was really more to satisfy a curiosity rather than outright desiring sex for sex's sake.

 

I never felt that curiosities dictate orientation.

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magiccactus
1 hour ago, Philip027 said:

I never felt that curiosities dictate orientation.

Right, this is a valid point. But the reason I was curious about this was to try "the other side of the coin" so to speak. I have a good friend who is bisexual, and she told me she had to sleep with both sexes before she decided that she felt like that orientation. I note that this could be a bit non-equivalent, since she very clearly feels sexual desire, whereas I've never felt the desire to have sex with someone. This was not about the desire to have sex with someone, but rather an abstracted desire to have sex wholesale. I just wanted to see what it was like. It was... okay I guess? Like I've never had a very high sex drive. I masturbate from time to time, but it's less about sexual desire and erotic fantasies, and more about relieving stress. But yeah, I'm not really in any rush to do it again. For me, it was more of an interesting experience than pleasurable, so I'm not sure what the takeaway is for me here. I mean, the more I read about things, the more I feel like I'm some kind of gray, possibly gray-A.    

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While I feel like nothing you've said necessarily excludes you from potentially being ace, if you feel like you're grey, you probably have your reasons for thinking so.  It's pretty much an umbrella term for people who don't feel like they can neatly fit into either crowd.

 

Quote

This was not about the desire to have sex with someone, but rather an abstracted desire to have sex wholesale.

I don't feel such distinctions are particularly useful to try to make.  Sex invariably involves another person, otherwise it's called masturbation.

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magiccactus
3 hours ago, Philip027 said:

I don't feel such distinctions are particularly useful to try to make

 

I'm going to have to politely disagree with you there. I think such distinctions, at least in my own view and understanding of the sexual process, are important. I do think there is something like a (for want of a better term) sexual taxonomy. A desire for sex with someone, on my view, requires some kind of emotional or physical attraction to that target person, at least on some level. A desire for sex, in-and-of-itself, irrespective of partner connection, is, I think, something much more abstracted. So I think that's the crucial distinction, at least from my understanding of the emotional/psychological components of sex. That's kind of the sticking point for me with my experience. I had no sexual desire, at least as I understand what "sexual desire" is meant to convey. The best way I can think of this is to say that during your typical intimate acts (e.g. kissing, caressing and so forth), I couldn't help but feel that both my body and my partner's were just pieces of meat that happened to be touching in the same moment. I recognize that this is in some sense objectification, but I don't think it's objectification as a sexual act. On my understanding, sexual objectification revolves around taking away the autonomy and personhood of the one being objectified. This was not what I was doing. It was more like my brain was... "stuck" in seeing my partner's body in an aesthetic rather than an erotic way. I couldn't really "make the leap" so to speak, from one to the other. I'm not trying to pick a fight here or anything, and if I'm coming off a little strong I apologize, but I'm very much still processing these new experiences and trying to put two and two together. Thanks for taking the time to reply. 

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The way I see it, if you want sex, you want sex.  Simple as that.  And you seemingly do not.  That's all that anyone should really have to ask themselves when it comes to being asexual or not.  You probably never did either; what you probably desired was to answer the question about whether or not you could have/enjoy it -- but none of that has anything to do with being asexual or not.

 

And again, sex invariably involves another person, so there is no point in trying to take the other person out of it like they aren't a factor whatsoever.  They are a factor no matter how much people might try to pretend otherwise.

 

Your post right there kinda encapsulates to me why I feel all the pussyfooting around about desire/attraction (which I'm not just accusing you of or having a dig at you about; it's something that is done without end on this very forum by countless others before you, and surely countless others afterward) isn't useful.  It gets wordy, exhaustive, and confusing.  Surely you must think so too, or else you wouldn't have made this thread asking if you're "some kind of asexual" in the first place.

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magiccactus

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. It really helped me come to grips with a few things. I don't think I have much to add, except that your note about

3 hours ago, Philip027 said:

all the pussyfooting around about desire/attraction

is especially dead on. 

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