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Anthracite_Impreza
1 minute ago, ryn2 said:

There, for our small sample of three people, one ace and two sexuals, the theory holds!

I'm repulsed ace and hate coffee, make it four.

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Even though my boyfriend was celibate for 35 years, when we started dating he still didn't want to admit that he was ace.  He wanted so badly to believe that he was demi.  I helped him come to terms with it.  I let him know that it was okay and that he was not broken or that he was somehow bad.  Sometimes people just don't want to admit to themselves that they are what they are because society stigmatizes them.

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1 hour ago, ryn2 said:

There, for our small sample of three people, one ace and two sexuals, the theory holds!  :)

 

Not trying to make light of your situation, @Sparkly...

Uh oh.  I love coffee and my ace partner hates it.  Add to your data!  😂

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anisotrophic
1 hour ago, ☆゚°˖* ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ said:

Uh oh.  I love coffee and my ace partner hates it.  Add to your data!  😂

Daaaang

 

Ace/no-coffee: @ryn2 @Anthracite_Impreza & your partner (3)

 

Sexual/coffee: you, me, @Sparkly (3)

 

QED

 

FOR SCIENCE!! 👩‍🔬

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On 5/14/2019 at 5:14 PM, Sparkly said:

@uhtred yes, that is my worry that we will try to compromise again and it will turn into solely my compromise again. As always. I understand he does not miss anything in our relationship, he has it all (according to his words) but is not able to see things from my perspective. And also I don’t have any desire of mechanical sex when I feel he wants to be done with it. It has zero benefit for me, it feels humiliating. 

@anisotrophic I need deeper connection with somebody I would sleep with. I just can’t hop on anybody and feel satisfied. So open marriage will either give me zero satisfaction or I will develop feelings for the other man. 

It sounds like you are indeed done -- your anger comes through very strongly, and children will feel that also.  Perhaps you shouldn't wait until the anger is worse and the children become affected.  

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Traveler40
14 hours ago, ryn2 said:

From the outside this sounds like a very, very slow breakup (that won’t be complete until the kids are grown, and maybe not then if things change) but maybe it feels different from within it.

Yes. I can see how it seems that way.  No, I’m not sure it is that way, Yes, it feels different from within it.  

 

So, now you understand my position. Push me, pull me and there’s no clear answer.  I opt not to choose any direction other than what’s best for my children while the men in my life afford me the luxury of not making any concrete moves. There is a simplicity in not pushing in any direction. Whatever is meant to happen will.

 

I married my husband for reasons that didn’t have sex in the top five.  Heck, top ten? 😂. Those reasons still exist.  A mixed marriage is a hell of a thing. No two compromises across time will look the same.  My focus is the well being of my children which, in turn, solves other things for the time being.  I’m ok with that...we all are.

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Custard Cream
3 hours ago, anisotrophic said:

Daaaang

 

Ace/no-coffee: @ryn2 @Anthracite_Impreza & your partner (3)

 

Sexual/coffee: you, me, @Sparkly (3)

 

QED

 

FOR SCIENCE!! 👩‍🔬

Can I throw my ace hat into the 'hating coffee' arena?

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Anthracite_Impreza
2 minutes ago, Serran said:

I hate coffee. But, I don't qualify as ace. Im breaking the pattern !

Omg serran, there always has to be one 🙄

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17 hours ago, Telecaster68 said:

I'm just interested in whether you derive any patterns from your experiences, and if you do, why 'I don't like sex' wasn't one of them.

Does anyone *not* derive patterns from their experiences? That must be a very strange way to go through life.

 

The conclusion I needed to draw wasn’t “I don’t like sex” (that became true over time, but it’s more “mini-PTSD” from a bunch of convoluted stuff that happened in my last relationship and less an inherent dislike of sex itself) but, rather, “my - emotional, especially - experience of sex is different than many people’s, and that difference is going to be upsetting to people whose experiences are more typical.”  I don’t know how I would have discovered that solely through introspection, as I needed input from others to see the contrast.

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58 minutes ago, Serran said:

I hate coffee. But, I don't qualify as ace. Im breaking the pattern !

@Serran, you outlier you!  😂

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6 minutes ago, CBC said:

If it's a substance that my body tolerates (and annoyingly, my piece of crap body does have issues dealing with some stuff) and it doesn't fall under the category of hard drugs that are going to end in me pissing my life away (because I've already pissed it away on another non-drug addiction for years) or have immediate severe repercussions, I'm probably into it. 

I totally get that.  I have a lot of obsessive and addictive traits.  Caffeine just doesn’t do anything for me, except make me need to pee more often (which is the last thing I need).  Even NoDoze only used to make me nauseated along with making me need to pee.  I don’t feel better, or more energetic, or even jittery, and if I have high intake for a while I feel no different if I suddenly stop.

 

I don’t know that there’s any science to back it up but I definitely seem to process some of these chemicals differently - or have different sensitivity to them - than others.  That may apply to sex, too.

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Well, my asexual husband loves coffee so minus points here🙄.

 

@Sally You are right about the anger. I was telling that to my husband as well that this whole situation creates so much inner anger in me and unfortunately, from time to time, it gets on the surface either in a way of pure anger or in a way of frustration (a lot of tears, sadness and hopelessness). None of those are pleasant emotions for me (and for him either).

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12 minutes ago, Sparkly said:

I was telling that to my husband as well that this whole situation creates so much inner anger in me and unfortunately, from time to time, it gets on the surface either in a way of pure anger or in a way of frustration (a lot of tears, sadness and hopelessness).

That was my point above about willful deception.  If you feel like you were willfully deceived (when you actually weren’t), that’s a lot of corrosive anger you might be able to eliminate.  It’s still frustrating, but being collectively angry about an unfortunate situation (discovering your incompatible orientations after you were well into a relationship)  is less toxic to both of you than being angry with your husband for lying.

 

If he did lie, you have to work through the whole process of forgiveness.  If he didn’t, you may be able to set the anger aside more easily.

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16 minutes ago, ryn2 said:

That was my point above about willful deception.  If you feel like you were willfully deceived (when you actually weren’t), that’s a lot of corrosive anger you might be able to eliminate.  It’s still frustrating, but being collectively angry about an unfortunate situation (discovering your incompatible orientations after you were well into a relationship)  is less toxic to both of you than being angry with your husband for lying.

 

If he did lie, you have to work through the whole process of forgiveness.  If he didn’t, you may be able to set the anger aside more easily.

I would say the biggest share of my anger/frustration comes from the fact that he knew how I felt basically from the beginning of our relationship, but still decided to ignore it til these days. I understand his sexuality is not his choice and I do not consider him broken by any means. Although ignoring my needs and trying to find a compromise is his choice. And that is the painful part. 

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27 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

There is a concept in US corporate law that's something like 'wilful ignorance' - where for instance the board of directors deliberately didn't ask hard questions because they suspected they wouldn't like the answer, and if they didn't inquire too vigorously, they could just about honestly say they had no idea certain things were going on. Asexuals' attitude to their own sexuality and the effect it can have on their partners can look a lot like that, to me. It's understandable that there's some avoidance going on; I'm genuinely sympathetic. But I continue to have trouble accepting that asexuals can have decades of relationships in which their lack of sexual desire is a consistent issue, and not wonder if maybe there's a pattern there.

I can only speak to my own experience, and to that shared with me by my IRL ace friend.  This was not the case for either of us until we learned we might be ace.  Once I learned I might be ace I fought it for a while - not so much willful ignorance as a resistance to believing it because it didn’t fit what I knew.  She has opted not to tell her partner, but they are already not having sex for another reason and her situation is complicated.

 

Maybe she and I are alone in the world but I doubt it.

 

To engage in willful ignorance you still have to have enough knowledge of a thing - in this case, that your experience of sex is significantly different than that of most people around you - to know that there’s something worth not probing.

 

I didn’t have that knowledge.  I don’t know why that’s so hard to believe.  Do sexual people spend a lot of time pondering how their experience of sex aligns with everyone else’s?

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anisotrophic
42 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

where for instance the board of directors deliberately didn't ask hard questions because they suspected they wouldn't like the answer

Well, in this case it's presumably an answer the board could predict -- a possibility they are aware of. As @ryn2 notes.

 

For many, the concept of "asexuality" is new: that is, the idea that it is an orientation (or like one), that it won't change, that it not amenable to attempted change (as with conversion therapy).

 

I do think it's possible to be in ignorance of something you haven't heard about and didn't know was possible. In a world where you lack the right explanation, sense-making will fill it with other explanations. That is going to lead to things like thinking things can be changed that can't be changed.

 

For my partner and I, the concept itself was a big deal. We agree that I was misled -- and that it was unintended.

 

I appreciate that many partners don't have this revelatory attitude shift. I'd be upset if my partner avoided an explanation they are well aware of.

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anisotrophic
11 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

I'm not expecting people to be aware there's a thing called 'asexuality', in all its infinite varieties. I'm just somewhat incredulous that someone could be totally unaware that they weren't interested in sex and that this was different to most of the rest of the world for thirty years.

The point is that they weren't aware that this was a permanent and unchangeable condition.

 

The world leads us to believe other things -- that people go through troughs, that everyone has *something* that will light a spark (and it hasn't been found yet), that you just need to [relax, take it slow, make time for it, etc] As you commonly note, there are so many other explanations out there, other than asexuality.

 

The issue is that someone keeps settling on those wrong answers, and that leads to bad inferences about stuff like "can this change in the future".

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4 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

But after 30 years of it not changing for you, would it at least occur to you that perhaps in this instance, for you, now, this was a permanent thing?

 

ETA:

 

Also, Ryn is saying she just didn't know her attitude to sex was different to most other people's. I can't understand how this could happen either.

I soooo much agree with you. My theory is that after a certain time asexuals do realize their lack of sexual interest is not a temporary thing. But they suppress the reality and keep it only to themselves (at least in a case of my husband). I was very vocal about it, I expressed my feelings and thoughts thousand times, we had countless of discussions about this problem and only under a therapist's guidance he revealed himself and said he knew since adolescence. But did not say it to me. I understand he was probably scared I would leave but is withdrawing the truth from me the right thing? In the name of his needs and possibly family needs? I don't think so. He might not know the word "asexual", but he definitely knew his sexual orientation is not mainstream. 

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52 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

Firstly, you (one) had a succession of partners raising your lack of enthusiasm - did you think it was coincidence and all about them each time?

The bolded section is not what I said, and not correct.  I said sex was an issue in all but one of my relationships.

 

None of my partners ever raised any concerns over my enthusiasm except my last ex, and he specifically raised it - only after I had outed myself as maybe ace - as something he might have unconsciously detected - he agreed that “on the surface” I “seemed into it” - that caused his ED.

 

The sexual issues in my relationships were not consistent from relationship to relationship, with one exception - in several relationships, as the relationship itself became more and more contentious, I felt less and less like having sex with my partner.  Every source I could find said that was normal.

 

52 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

If I had multiples (serial) partners raising the same issue about something I was doing that affected the relationship, I would - and have actually  - dig pretty deep in myself to figure out what was really going on with me. 

Same, and I have with other issues.  But the only consistent issue raised was “we never have sex anymore,” and that was raised after the relationship was already more fighting than anything else.  The answer of “well, yeah, I don’t like you anymore” made perfect sense in context.  The deep digging (and therapy, years of it) I did there was around “why do I keep picking people that end up being such a bad fit for me?”

 

52 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

actually nobody was that bothered about sex and the media was essentially making it up?

I didn’t feel that way.  I think it’s more that I consumed the media message differently than you did.  I got the impression people have sex often, and that men cheat or leave if you don’t.  My friends - male and female - corroborated that.  So, that’s what I did until the relationship hit the skids for other reasons.  Once the daily sex stopped, getting back into it was challenging... but I was also trying to get past being cheated on, or living with someone who needed to be medicated and wasn’t, or other “normal” reasons sex with someone might be unappealing.  I was also dealing with my own mental health challenges, some of which involve body image.  Fights where someone preyed on that were guaranteed to shut sex down, but that again sounded “normal” to therapists and friends.

 

52 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

Thirdly, from what you've said, you put your lack of interest in sex down to a series of external, essentially arbitrary, factors. Other people presumably had these factors going on too, which I'd have thought would lead someone to think 'well, maybe there's not a straight causal relationship there', and try to figure out what was going on.

It did look there was a straight causal relationship.  Remember that I didn’t have what I recognized as a general lack of interest in sex.  Literally no one had *ever* raised that as a possibility.  Other people I knew who were in failing or strife-filled relationships cut their partners off (or grudgingly continued having sex) and complained about it.  Nothing stood out as a problem besides my inability to find a healthy relationship.

 

~

 

I sought out sex.  I knew that people had sex in relationships.  I expected that I would.  I thought I liked it.

 

I didn’t realize until I came here that my reasons for the above were different than, say, yours.

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57 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

I'm just somewhat incredulous that someone could be totally unaware that they weren't interested in sex and that this was different to most of the rest of the world for thirty years.

If you’re referring to me, I wasn’t uninterested in sex.  I was very interested in it, knew a ton about it, was obsessed with (and forbidden from) having it as a tween and teen.  Once I started having it, I was underawed.  I spent a lot of time later on trying to see what was different in my first relationship, but the focus was on interpersonal issues.

 

Just like my friends, I was still on the hunt for the awesome sex I had heard about at puberty.  Real life fell short.  Real life has fallen short for me in many areas, and a lot of people gripe about their sex lives.  I had no reason to think this particular category was different.

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3 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

Did the whole emotional connection stuff never come up in conversations though? From what I recall, that's one of the bits that you were oblivious of.

Never.  In fact, it still never has with anyone except 1) people here on AVEN and 2) my ace irl friend, with whom I discuss things I read here.

 

I’ve spent a lot of time watching for it in conversation now that I know about it, and also thinking back through past discussions to see if I missed it... but, no.  I cannot find a single example.

 

There’s definitely a (US-specific?) stereotype that women have sex because of the mushy feels and men put up with their partners’ mushy feels to get sex.  I don’t fit with the “female” stereotype at all... but I also very much don’t fit with US gender stereotypes of loving to shop, loving to talk on the phone with my girlfriends, hating to get dirty, not being mechanically-inclined, etc.  Not being “girly enough” in this context was actual consistent with the rest of my life.

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7 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

It was more of a general point, but clearly it had a context.

 

It may be of course you're not asexual in some purist, Platonic ideal way, but if you've had pretty much entirely mediocre sex as part of mediocre relationships, I guess it makes sense any internal drive for it would whither.

I thought that (withering) for a while, especially since I spent 20 years with someone with persistent ED and have always hated receiving oral.  It is still the more appealing explanation.

 

However, when I think back, there are significant inconsistencies between my thoughts on/experience of sex and yours that are probably indicative of something beyond “bad partners ruined it for me.”

 

I am also post-CVA and post-menopausal so I’m no longer a valid control for my own prior experience.

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15 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

Sorry, it was my interpretation of what you'd said, given the context.

In this same spirit, I am not trying to explain or excuse others’ partners’ behavior; I’m just trying to show that there are actually reasonable ways an otherwise intelligent, educated, non-naive adult could be ace and not know it.

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1 hour ago, Telecaster68 said:

 

Given you sought out sex (and I know you've pondered this before), I'm not sure you'd fit the definition of asexuality anyhow.

This gets back to intrinsic and extrinsic reasons.  I have said all of this before but will put it in one spot.

 

1)  Especially when I was (not nearly enough) younger, I liked doing things I wasn’t supposed to do because I wasn’t supposed to be doing them.  Once I was allowed to do them, they stopped being fun.  I hung out with a rough crowd as a tween/teen/young adult, and we shared enthusiastic interest in getting away with things, so that seemed pretty normal.  Once I had to act like a grownup, my work friends were not from that crowd (and, in fact, were disbelieving to the point of horrified that I had been), so I didn’t have the opportunity to talk to people over time and learn that most of them genuinely liked sex along with liking to get away with things.

 

2)  I was an ugly child/tween/teen whose parents could not afford to dress me in “the right clothes” and who was smart.  As such I was relentlessly bullied.  I learned quickly that people who won’t be caught dead with you otherwise suddenly like you a whole lot more if you will put out.  So, people desiring me sexually “proved” I had something to offer (and that made up for the sex itself being nothing to write home about).  I grew up in a house and community where people only had value if they had something to offer - not just by existing.  So, if I was feeling down on myself, the fastest fix was to find someone who had the hots for me.

 

Now that I’m not just ugly but also old, neither #2 nor #1 applies to me.  I’ve also therapied the whole self worth thing to death.  I have zero interest in seeking sex anymore.

 

tl;dr, I don’t think I sought sex for the same reasons sexual people seek sex.  I just didn’t realize that until I started consuming fanfic... and then talked to people here.  For me sex was a means - and not in the “a means by which to build emotional intimacy” sense - rather than an end.

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6 hours ago, Telecaster68 said:

Asexuals' attitude to their own sexuality and the effect it can have on their partners can look a lot like that, to me. 

For god's sake, stop assuming that "asexuals" are some kind of a hive mind rather than many different individuals (just as sexuals are).  This comes up constantly in your posts; it's unfair and irritating and adds nothing to the discussion.  

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3 hours ago, ryn2 said:

I don’t think I sought sex for the same reasons sexual people seek sex.

As a specific, concrete example of something that looks like “classic ace” in retrospect:

 

I was just telling someone the other day how, when I was a teen and young adult, I worked in technical theatre.  This was back when - at least in my conservative area - theatre was one of the few places gay men were out and proud.  I used to looooove working with them because they were super-flirty - full of winks and pats on the (my) butt and innuendo - but also “completely harmless.”  I felt so safe around them; I got lots of attention and could have fun but it never went beyond that.  I never got any pressure from them to actually deliver on my cocktease behavior.

 

At the time I thought I was just relieved that I could “be myself” without feeling guilty (I had a boyfriend).

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5 hours ago, Telecaster68 said:

I don't think sexual people spend inordinate amounts of time wondering how their sexual experiences aligns with other people's, but there is a normal amount of human curiosity, as there is with other aspects of life. The answers you quoted from friends when you did talk about your sexual issues seemed to indicate they were telling you what to do and you were blindly trying it, rather than considering whether/how those factors might apply to you.

 

I know for me, I first blindly tried because I was 15 and adults seemed wiser. Then I kept trying things because of the sheer amount of people who all said its normal how I feel and started listing what worked for them. No one ever listed no sex as an option. Those that said they never liked it just said they do it for their men anyway and suck it up or be cheated on.  I asked every female family member, friends, people at college and people online. Everyone said you are normal, just do this or that. 

 

5 hours ago, Telecaster68 said:

 

I do find it hard to believe. I'm going to have to be fairly blunt, so I'm not doing this to be offensive. I simply do think you (and many asexuals) had reason to think your experience of sex might well be significantly different to most people's.

Only people I found drastically different in discussing it with them was people who were ..  a bit hypersexual. Like, random threesomes at parties and going on to become sex workers as a dream sorts. Everyone else assured me i was normal. So, how could i argue?

 

5 hours ago, Telecaster68 said:

 

 

 


Firstly, you (one) had a succession of partners raising your lack of enthusiasm - did you think it was coincidence and all about them each time? If I had multiples (serial) partners raising the same issue about something I was doing that affected the relationship, I would - and have actually  - dig pretty deep in myself to figure out what was really going on with me. 

I only ever had one partner complain. And he was the blanket guy. Everyone else was happy, but most my partners I was their first... so... who knows. I was the one suffering from sex, they didnt seem to notice. The one ex I still talk to when I told him about it, he was surprised. 

 

5 hours ago, Telecaster68 said:

 

Secondly, while sex isn't especially  realistically represented in the media, at a more meta level, the sheer amount of it (which many asexuals notice and find a stressor), and the way it's almost never represented as anything but universally desirable, would raise questions to yourself about why you didn't share that attitude, wouldn't it? At least, wouldn't one of your questions to your friends be about whether they felt that actually nobody was that bothered about sex and the media was essentially making it up?

Answer from most people to me : Either its a nice fantasy but the reality sucks compared, or the media is trying to sell to men by selling sex, no one thinks about sex that much. 

 

I mean literally last week the convo on sex at work in the break room wasnt oh its awesome. . It was god, I cant even take a shower around my husband, its so annoying, I dont want sex. Thats the girl talk im used to. So it never seemed weird to not want it, really. At my hopeless points i just put it down to part of being a woman that sucked was putting up with sex, but at least a lot of other women seemed to go through it so I had people I could vent to and bond over it?

 

I sometimes doubted things, but im the kind of person that talks things out when stressing. And no one I talked to made me wonder too much. I did tell my last ex that after about 6 months i found it really hard to do sex, he said thats fine and normal but wouldnt be an issue with him. So *shrug*

 

Even after years on AVEN I didnt know my own sexuality though. I got involved with a person that was from here. Had sworn off sex and was thrilled no more sexual activities finally. Then turns out i just hate pressure and PiV / oral / anal. Give me relaxed non traditional and omg i love it. So sometimes no amount of introspection helps. You just figure it out when you figure it out. 

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anisotrophic

I continue to disagree with the sense that someone "should have figured out they won't change". They may know there's an issue without knowing that critical thing.

 

Sexuality is a thing we talk about as everyone having, and it just needs the right recipe -- and that it's intermittent and ebbs are totally normal. I also agree with @ryn2 that the emotional nature of sex is not how society discusses sex right now -- we are given narratives of sexual harassment, kink, scoring, status, prizes -- not love. Indeed apparently an orientation needs to be given to that ("demi"), as if this were unusual and ace-like ... rather than completely normal.

 

Someone who is asexual might notice they don't find it as fun as others seem to -- but maybe it's just because of transient life factors. Someone who is asexual is not going to know that others find it meaningful when that meaningfulness is so absent in media and discussions.

 

I think ace men are especially unlikely to have someone they can talk to about the meaningfulness of sex, for cultural reasons. And ace women deal with a cultural narrative/issue that women are naturally less probe to want sex (so it's normal to have trouble with desire, just be patient and etc).

 

How does one understand absence? How do you prove a negative?

 

What could possibly prompt you to think something is permanent when everyone tells you it's transient?

 

What makes you think humans should typically have the capacity to make that leap of understanding, when clearly this "truth" is so hard to grasp that we only recently started recognizing it culturally?

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Just now, PaganUnicorn said:

 

 

What is "relaxed non traditional"?

My wife was OK with it not happening. The fact it did was a surprise to us both. And if im not in the mood (or she isnt) there is no drama - just OK lets play games instead. She sometimes doesnt want for a month, sometimes I have various things going on for a while. Not a big deal. Was always such a thing to go a month no sex with exes, or to tell them no got them in a sour mood and they didnt want to snuggle and spend time together having fun elsewhere. No sex always meant loss of all physical intimacy. We can even still tease and grope with the understanding sex is a no for now, this is just playing. 

 

And... what activities not gonna go into detail. But, toys and hands and stuff. 

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