Mixed Relationships: Positive Experiences

[Mountain House]

31 minutes ago, Whore*of*Mensa said:

The 'tragedy' narrative seems very entrenched here.

You would prefer that the people coming to this sub-forum looking for advice and support was comedy?

 

36 minutes ago, Whore*of*Mensa said:

comment as Mountain House did

You clearly missed my point.  I did not analyse her relationship.  I analysed me.  The red flag is mine.  I too said those things.  I too believed those things.  I did not know or understand me.  The incompatibility is real.  It is not made up by anyone and we all can be lulled into believing everything is fine.  There is no fault.  I was trying to show how happy post can trigger not happy response.  She asked for positive, eventually gave her positive, and I pulled out my red flag to show how pretty much anything you say is going to trigger someone in a house of pain.  (And then gave my happy positive)

 

@RavenAlyssa has analysed her own relationship.  I don't care if they are having sex or not.  She seems happy and I am happy for her.   I wish that for everyone that comes to this sub-forum.

 

Her last post was positive.  I ended with my happy positive.  @anisotrophic's post was positive.  I guess I could keep going backwards and copy all of the names here but by and large the posts are positive.  Yeah, there is a sub-thread happening answering the implicit question asked by @RavenAlyssa which is, "where's the happy that encourages relationships to work through this unhappy?"

 

Besides, she allowed it.

 

Quote

Of course it is okay to discuss the difficulties that led up to the current relationship, or to contrast past relationships with the present. It doesn't all have to be fluff...

So I showed a difficulty and gave the happy.

 

Seriously, I am in a happy place.  Knowledge and understanding and communications is working for my relationship.

[SithLord]

I think positivity it good, and showing people that there's a chance is better than those who say it's doomed. Because there ARE members who firmly believe all mixed relationships are doomed and will never work, that one or both partners are lying to themselves or their partner about how happy they are and it'll never be as fulfilling as a relationship with someone of their orientation. 

 

I hate when people post stuff telling others their relationship is doomed. Offering advice and experience is good, but it can be misunderstood as universal or general trends. And while on average most mixed relationships don't go well, most of ALL relationships don't go well. It just takes realism because an asexual can't just come in assuming that after they come out to their partner they can stop all sex completely and expect their partner to be okay with that no questions asked, and a sexual can't come in expecting their asexual partner to not mind having sex because obviously they can still orgasm and get aroused so it's fine, right? Reality is good, which means giving the good experiences with the bad. 

[anisotrophic]

I thought @Mountain House's post was very thoughtful, and very careful to say "this is something that happened to me". Furthermore he walked through how difficulties were encountered, to reach a happy ending. I also walked through a tough adjustment, and I'm happy now.

What is meant by "positive" here? Do we want a happy current status? (You got that.) Or – as @Mountain House observed – is one hoping to hear that there's an "easy" answer, to validate rosy-tinted glasses – to reassure the despair and anxiety that wants to know "everything is going to be OK"?

If "positive" means "easy" for you, you may be on a quixotic quest. Because this (sexuality mismatch) is just one of many many ways in which a relationship can struggle in the long term. If you have a long term relationship that's easy the whole way through, for years on end, you must have won a lottery! But challenges can be confronted and navigated. It's not "easy", but with empathy and communication, and we may come out stronger – and happier – for it.

[RavenAlyssa]

7 minutes ago, anisotrophic said:

I thought @Mountain House's post was very thoughtful, and very careful to say "this is something that happened to me". Furthermore he walked through how difficulties were encountered, to reach a happy ending. I also walked through a tough adjustment, and I'm happy now.

What is meant by "positive" here? Do we want a happy current status? (You got that.) Or – as @Mountain House observed – is one hoping to hear that there's an "easy" answer, to validate rosy-tinted glasses – to reassure the despair and anxiety that wants to know "everything is going to be OK"?

If "positive" means "easy" for you, you may be on a quixotic quest. Because this (sexuality mismatch) is just one of many many ways in which a relationship can struggle in the long term. If you have a long term relationship that's easy the whole way through, for years on end, you must have won a lottery! But challenges can be confronted and navigated. It's not "easy", but with empathy and communication, and we may come out stronger – and happier – for it.

Yes! I certainly don't mind discussion of struggles. But hearing that people are able to make it through those struggles, that they are able to be happy and grow closer in their relationship despite that, can be very encouraging. I don't want to erase what people have gone through. Finding that is not easy, and I know this. Stories are complicated. People are complicated. Life and relationships come with hurt and struggle. But knowing that people can work through that together, and that not everyone ends up having their relationship ruined or separated because of that, is very important for those in such relationships. I get that not every relationship will work out. But sometimes all the negativity makes it seem like it could never work out, that someday it'll inevitably fall to pieces. I don't believe that's true and I want to counter that.

 

Maybe people misunderstood what I meant, and if so, I am sorry for that. I hope this clarifies.

[anisotrophic]

@RavenAlyssa after I posted what I hoped was a positive story of getting through it, you ignored it and declared the entire topic thread negative & a loss.

Even though I opened it about being hesitant to weigh in. :sigh: Maybe you could slow down and try not to make blanket statements about everyone being negative.

[Guest]

I named several ex-members who are (last they posted) happy in mixed relationships. A few others posted about theirs. A couple of people went a little negative. But... you're never going to have a 100% positive thread without it being moderated to be so. 

 

 

[RavenAlyssa]

15 minutes ago, anisotrophic said:

@RavenAlyssa after I posted what I hoped was a positive story of getting through it, you ignored it and declared the entire topic thread negative & a loss.

Even though I opened it about being hesitant to weigh in. :sigh: Maybe you could slow down and try not to make blanket statements about everyone being negative.

I'm sorry. You're right. I was upset at the time... but I do realize that not everyone was negative. Communication can be difficult sometimes (especially online) and conveying how one feels in toneless words is difficult. Thank you for your story, I am sincerely sorry for overlooking you.

 

I am learning a lot from this at least, haha. Thank you all for witnessing my personal growth (I guess?)

[RavenAlyssa]

I feel like I have caused unnecessary conflict... I'm sorry.

 

I hope you can see where I was coming from. My expectations were a bit disappointed and the posts which were negative clouded my view. I guess because this matter is very close to me, I felt very strongly about it. But I misunderstood some things and miscommunicated others. So here we are. The vain part of me is hoping y'all don't think I'm a complete [insert insult of choice here]. But it doesn't matter - I guess this has turned into a learning experience and I value all of you for that. Thank you for being willing to reply etc.

 

I still believe in my intentions, and hopefully they're better understood now. But of course we can move forward in whatever manner happens.

 

Sending (platonic) love to all who might need it 🖤

[anisotrophic]

3 minutes ago, RavenAlyssa said:

I hope you can see where I was coming from. My expectations were a bit disappointed and the posts which were negative clouded my view.

Yeah, I'm ok! I think you started out as understandably distressed by the nay-sayers, and it can be hard to receive "in my experience it's a challenge" without seeing it as more of the same. (Even if the ending was "and we got through it".)

 

But I think getting through challenges can make a relationship even stronger, imho!

[RavenAlyssa]

3 minutes ago, anisotrophic said:

But I think getting through challenges can make a relationship even stronger, imho!

Definitely!

[Mountain House]

1 hour ago, RavenAlyssa said:

hoping y'all don't think I'm a complete [insert insult of choice here].

Oh no, quite the opposite.  I don't react to people/subjects/threads that are complete [insert insult of choice here].

[Chelsey]

On 3/9/2020 at 6:26 AM, TheSunshineKid said:

My partner and I have been together nearly 6 months now, and it’s going really well. I suppose that’s not very long compared to lots of people on here, but I figured even a small success story is worth posting. I’m not a huge fan of posting personal details on forums, but if it would help anyone out there to hear a bit more, just let me know.

Hi, I’d love to hear some advice. My partner has just come out as asexual after us having a year of being together (with sex included) she now feels negative towards sex and has no desire to do it with me or anyone. Help pls! 

[TheSunshineKid]

15 hours ago, Chelsey said:

Hi, I’d love to hear some advice. My partner has just come out as asexual after us having a year of being together (with sex included) she now feels negative towards sex and has no desire to do it with me or anyone. Help pls! 

Our situation is a bit different, but I'll do my best to help. First, some more about us so you have context. One thing that was really important for us was that my partner knew I'm ace before we got into a relationship (and I, of course, knew he is bi) and so we were able to talk about our expectations, needs, boundaries, etc. right from the start. For both of us, the emotional connection and support is the most important part and we click really well in terms of that. Since I'm happy to compromise some in terms of sexual things, and he has a fairly low libido, it all works out. That's not to say it's always easy - we've talked a lot about how to make this work for us. I had to work past some bad memories and he had to get used to the fact that I'm not sexually attracted to him. 

 

I think that the first thing you need to do is sit down and have a talk with your partner. Ask her to talk to you about how she feels now and see if anything in particular is making her feel more negative about sex now than she used to. I think it's important for both of you to make your needs clear, and to discuss ways to compromise about how both of your needs can be met. Make sure you spend some quality time together while figuring this all out.

 

Good luck! 

[AceMissBehaving]

16 hours ago, Chelsey said:

Hi, I’d love to hear some advice. My partner has just come out as asexual after us having a year of being together (with sex included) she now feels negative towards sex and has no desire to do it with me or anyone. Help pls! 

It’s a tricky situation, with no single answer. If sex is off the table completely,  might your partner be open to opening the relationship?

[Lara Black]

Hi all.

If the topic’s still relevant, I’m here to pitch in. Actually, that’s why I stick around – to occasionally tell new-comers that it IS possible to be happy in a mixed relationship. Not very probable, but definitely possible.

And yeah, when I first came here (3-something years ago), it really looked grim – there was the success stories thread and the good partner thread, but the rest of it in Relationships and FSPFA seemed misery-filled. Of course, we all get why it is so. But I also believe that it might be really disconcerting and depressing for someone who’s just found themselves in a mixed relationship to dive into so much negativity. So yes, I believe that some positivity is a good idea – if people feel like sharing it.

 

But I honestly don’t know what to write in such a topic about us. We love each other… Sometimes I’m so happy we are together that it rushes over me like a wave – I just hug him and can’t let go. But what else? Or maybe that’s enough – just to say how happy he makes me and how grateful I am to him.

[Guest]

On 3/14/2020 at 7:19 AM, Chelsey said:

Hi, I’d love to hear some advice. My partner has just come out as asexual after us having a year of being together (with sex included) she now feels negative towards sex and has no desire to do it with me or anyone. Help pls! 

I know you wont like it, but sometimes taking sex off the table completely can be needed when a person has become repulsed by sex after having it too much. Basically, you can overload yourself on too much of a thing you dont much like by doing it for a partner and then feelings go from positive / neutral to quite negative. It's likely this has happened. So until you two have a chance to really sit down and discuss it in some detail, I would recommend sex be taken off and sidelined. No asking for it, no being flirty about it, etc.

 

Then, sit down and talk. And this means being honest even when it's going to hurt you both. 

 

It's possible there are ways to form a compromise still. When I pushed myself to have too much sex with my exes, a break from it reset me from negative back to neutral. But, it is also possible shes just unable to keep it up anymore. Then, there is the option of open, celibacy or transitioning to friends if compromise is off the table. 

 

It's possible to make it work. But first you need to talk it out. Good luck. 

[MrDane]

Well, We all know those couples that figth all the time and who are basically very different, but somehow still manages to cling together. It is like a wave of things that do not fit together and like they dont really ‘get’ each other. 
 

That is never us, my wife and I. We respect eachother a lot. We laugh and share the same values. We agree on how to live our life and find joy in the other persons company. We can both see ourselves grow old together. We like how the other one takes care of the children. 
 

her aromanticism and “not wanting me” and low to nil to below zero benefits from sex is not an easy pill to swallow, but I constanly have to remind myself, how lucky I still am to be with her, because that is what I am. Lucky.

[seapancake]

@RavenAlyssa I appreciate what you tried to create here.  When realizing I was ace 10 years into a relationship, I came to AVEN for help and found it... prickly, to say the least. Every once in awhile I come back and see the same old sadness. So this is nice.

 

Anyway my SO and I are still together. We got together when we were young. My bipolar 2 was just manifesting and I was in hypomania a lot of the time, so sex was common even though I wasn't thinking clearly. I was only 19, in college and away from an abusive and religious household for the first time, I thought it was what I wanted. My 4 years in college were constant flux of hypomania and deep depressions.

 

Then I got diagnosed and treated, and as I started to stabilize my libido lowered. I thought it was just the meds. Sex was less and less frequent, but I would still force myself to do it.

 

In the 7th year of our relationship, we became friends with an ace person. I had never heard of asexuality, but it really clicked in my head. My brain kept it on the back burner. Slowly sex stopped entirely.

 

Two years later I finally, finally found a good therapist. We walked through my past and it really dawned on me just how much I was abused as a kid, both by my mother and her religion. I had never thought so clearly. I was no longer just reacting to life, I was actually starting to understand myself. Enough mental clutter had been cleared that I could discover more about myself:  oh my god I think I'm asexual. I talked with my ace friend about it, and so much of it made sense. Then I sought help with how other mixed relationships work and I panicked and assumed our relationship was over.

 

I feel... intense guilt that my SO has been with me through all this only to find out I'm ace and bipolar and a little crazy. But he's still here. We mesh together so well in every other way, we like all the same foods and movies and games... We have a family of pets that we adore. We're there for each other through every anxiety attack, bad day at work, loss of a pet, everything. We have an art business together. We're so much more than friends, but at the end of the day I am sex-repulsed and he isn't. He says he can separate love and sex, and I believe him. I told him I want him to find a "friend with benefits" but I must be involved in the process. He has yet to do it. I am... afraid. About the future. But for right now we're fine.

[Yellow Highlighter]

I am an ace. My husband is not. He can be away for months due to his job. I miss him when he is gone but I do not crave sex. That is a positive. 

[Traveler40]

1 hour ago, Yellow Highlighter said:

I am an ace. My husband is not. He can be away for months due to his job. I miss him when he is gone but I do not crave sex. That is a positive. 

What about him? Is he happy with the success being relegated to zero sex and distance being the base of the win?

[thelistenersfury]

I have some postivity here. I'm an aro  sex repulsed ace in a relationship with a very romantic and moderately sexual partner. To top it off he's a straight boy and I am decidedly agender and plan on getting neutrosis surgery. So the current narrative of bad says we're doomed, right? 

Wrong.

 

He'd been my best friend for years before he brought up that he had feelings for me more than friendship, and since he knew I was ace and aro since the beginning he thought nothing could ever come of it and only told me because he wanted closure. Now I love this boy as much as is possible for me to love anything, and the idea of him not being in my life is really hard. After talking a lot, he mentioned queerplatonic stuff and asked if that's how I felt about him. It was. We agreed on a sort of mix, somewhere between romantic and not. 

That was two and a half years ago, and it hasn't been the easiest, especially because we're still waiting on his fiance visa (yeah were engaged, which is absolutely nuts to think about, and if you'd told five years ago me I'd have said you were crazy) and covid has made that wait even longer, since we were almost finished with it, he'd even passed his interview in March. 

A couple days ago there was a hitch, he had previously thought he could be okay without sexual intimacy with me(it had long been established that if he wanted to find someone else to do physical needs with that was okay and encouraged)  and had been thinking he might actually not be. I asked him the blunt question or what he actually wanted, explictly. It was kind of uncomfortable but it turned out that he didn't necessarily mean just sticking it in sex, that that bit wasn't what he necessarily wanted. And that there were a lot of sexual but not completely types of things I could do for him that didn't push my very clear boundaries too much, and I think we're much closer now. Like I'm definitely not okay with things being done to my no no square because of intense dysphoria about it, I trust him completely to listen to me when I say no. 

 

As far as advice goes I'd just have to say communication. I'd thought we'd been good before about communication, but it turns out we both still had assumed different things. He'd assumed that when I meant no sexual contact he thought anything more than hugging was off the table, and me being completely clueless about a lot of sex actually didn't realize there were things that didn't involve sticking nasties together. And the first thing he said when I said I could do some things is that he was worried I was just saying these things because I was afraid. 

 

Also my partner is the kindest and most amazing token straight cis boy that could ever be, even being completely supportive of the surgery that I need to be happy, so yeah. There's hope. I never ever would have expected something like this could happen to me of all fucking people, but it did, and opening up to him helped me open my heart fully to my other friends too, and just made me a better person. 

 

JUST TALK TO YOUR PARTNER!!! IT MIGHT BE WEIRD AND UNCOMFORTABLE AND SCARY AND KINDA GROSS BUT ONLY IF BOTH PEOPLE CLEARLY AND EXPLICITLY STATE THEIR NEEDS CAN YOU KNOW IF A RELATIONSHIP OF ANY KIND CAN WORK! 

[Yellow Highlighter]

On 6/28/2020 at 9:26 PM, Traveler40 said:

What about him? Is he happy with the success being relegated to zero sex and distance being the base of the win?

I am sex positive.

I have reasons other than arousal for initiating sex. Mainly, I enjoy the emotional intimacy with my husband and making him happy. Secondary reasons: my feet are cold, I have a headache, I am thinking too much to fall asleep, special occasions, breaking in a new piece of furniture and other silly reasons.

Our relationship has a decent amount of levity and laughter. 

 

[iff]

5 hours ago, Yellow Highlighter said:

Secondary reasons: my feet are cold,

I loved this reason :d

But I think it is as I define happiness as a warm pair of socks

[ellkae]

I have a friend who is allo and has an ace partner and they're a total success story .

 

Recently my allo girlfriend and I have been having a lot of tension and fights. There are many factors but a big one is that up until now, I have been in denial of my asexuality because I thought it would mean an automatic break-up if I came out. I've realised that I need to be true about who I am, maybe things will end because of it and we'll go our separate ways and heal and find happiness with others, maybe we will learn to understand each other better and strengthen our relationship. Either way things will be better.

 

Anyway,

 

I asked this friend for some advice on allo/ace relationships and was very inspired by the advice he gave me. He and his partner have a very strong relationship built on communication and understanding where they have both explored different ways to make sure the other feels loved, appreciated and seen, and that their needs are met in some way.

 

Before talking to him I was resigned that coming out as ace would definitively end my relationship with my allo girlfriend. I couldn't imagine her being open to trying to understand the complexities of asexuality. This friend of mine knew nothing about asexuality when he started dating his partner, but he went to the effort to learn everything he could, and in turn his partner did a lot of research on allos / dating allos when ace. They've been going strong for ages and are absolute goals for a strong couple team.

 

allo/ace relationships aren't impossible. They take patience and communication and a willingness to learn and sympathise from both sides, but I've seen an allo/ace couple work really really well.

[KiraS]

Wrapping up yet another move. We move less frequently than some, more than others. I don't think I could do this with any other partner.

[brbdogsonfire]

On 3/10/2020 at 2:29 PM, Whore*of*Mensa said:

The 'tragedy' narrative seems very entrenched here.

 

I've also noticed that any time an asexual states that they are in a happy relationship with a sexual, someone will comment as Mountain House did, with something along the lines of 'but how happy is your partner, really? Do you honestly believe your partner would be OK without sex? That's a red flag,' even when that person wasn't asking for an analysis of their relationship  and had not even said that they weren't having sex.  

 

I don't know if that's why nobody dares to be too positive; it's very quickly crushed. 

You have been critical of mine and @SithApprentice's relationship due to us having sex in a mixed relationship. Why is it reasonable for you to be negative towards us while being upset at people skeptical of a mixed happy relationship with no sex?

[gisiebob]

sometimes folk need to imprint their own experiences onto other people's short stories