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Post by Apocrypha on Jan 13, 2017 11:04:42 GMT -5
And to be clear, I'd never suggest there is no such thing as legitimate responsive desire from a sexual person. But I am quite convinced a lot of basically asexual people hide behind the excuse of responsive desire. And I also think, because of that, that responsive desire masks a far larger asexual population than is conventionally believed. I think it is well north of the usually quoted 1% number, which is a WAG that the asexual community came up with. My own experience doesn't support your hypothesis. Take what you will from my anecdote, but as a post-marriage dating man, and as a man who also tried polyamory as a last ditch effort - I have met quite a few women who thought they were "aesexual" when they were married, or had only "responsive desire" in their marriages - and now were enthusiastically making efforts to explore their own fantasies (and not just starting with me), doing things that are the stuff of Penthouse Letters. Aesexuality and responsive desire are thought of as persistent conditions that exist irrespective of one's partner. In most of the deals discussed on ILIASM, there isn't recent experience to compare the quality of sexual desire outside of the primary relationship, aside from the intimacy-averse's partner's typically normal libido prior to marriage (which is often conveniently dismissed). So, how would anyone determine if it was a persistent lack of libido, irrespective of context? I have bolded something you put in brackets that figured prominently in my marriage and is relevant to what I'm saying about "aesexuality" as a gaslight - refusing early in the marriage. This doesn't suggest to me that aesexuality is involved. Rather, it likely suggests that the person feels the marriage itself is a condition of unwanted obligation. Consider: In the autopsy of my own marriage, I was able to chart several precipitous dropoffs: 1. The wedding day itself, and spiked again on the honeymoon. 2. Buying the house. 3. pregnancy 1 - problem spoken aloud 4. Birth 1 - on the ropes 5. pregnancy 2 - total flatline 4. Birth 2 - total flatline. crisis 5. Her affair - total flatline and marital collapse. It increased with her affair partner, and for a while, with her ongoing lover and with me when she was also dating him. With each level of increasing marital investment - notably TO THE DAY - starting with our wedding, the character and quality of her sexual expression with me dropped significantly. With each of her personal demonstrations of freedom from responsibility (or at least the perception of that - from her perspective), her libido increased. NOTE that during the entire time she STILL clung to her narrative of low or different libido. She believed it, regardless of the mountain of evidence in her behavior to the contrary. In our separation, around 2 years now, she appears to have had few issues with the sex part, but is demonstrably averse to commitment and personal romantic investment that requires responsibility or obligation. I've dated prolifically in my post marriage world, and I've found similar stories abound among the women I've dated. For some reason, they weren't aesexual and did not experience "responsive desire" (if it matters in the slightest what it is called), either before their marriage, after their marriage, or during their marriage with their non-marital partners. Some of them explored and enjoyed shockingly daring scenarios. I suggest there isn't necessarily some epidemic of aesexuality. Framing a lack of desire for one's partner as a problem to figure out "how to accomodate" offers a likely narrative to latch onto and to feel a sense of agency in the situation, even though it is futile. It's futile because the partner still doesn't want to have sex with you. It comes down to what you do with someone with whom you hold a romantic interest but who isn't interested in seeking sexual expression with you.
In the dating world, this answer is comparably easy to remedy. It's a total no brainer. |
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Post by LITW on Jan 13, 2017 11:25:05 GMT -5
Unmatched said "if you are going to try to turn things around, you have to not automatically assume there is something wrong just because your partner doesn't feel like having sex until they get into it."
100% true. I would extend that to if you are going to turn things around, you need to not automatically assume negative intent on the part of your spouse for anything.
But given that sexless marriages mess with your mind, that is extremely difficult for us flawed human beings to do. Part of the joy of having a sexual relationship is that it makes you feel wanted. When your spouse puts the 100% of the responsibility for initiation on you, (whether overt or passively) it doesn't make you feel wanted. I have to jump though all kinds of hoops to organize a sexual encounter with my wife, and whether or not it happens ultimately depends on her mood at the time, which in turn depends on many factors that I have no control over. My wife very much appreciates that I do most of the cooking and dishes in my family, but if she had to nag me into doing it every time, I am sure she would not feel loved by it.
Because my wife does not feel like having sex, and almost never thinks about it, I feel like I am nagging her when I have to keep asking over and over and over and over again before anything happens. That is such a killjoy for me, it me not want to ask. And the longer I go without asking, the less I want to ask. And the less I ask, the more she thinks that >I AM< the refuser .......
yes, it hurts. It hurts badly.
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Post by csl on Jan 13, 2017 11:58:28 GMT -5
The other that that's REALLY HARD TO PARSE, if when someone tells you there are "open to the possibility" and "willing to give it a try" then don't actually take any visible actions. That's where I have been more recently, and what the next few months/year will bear out. I'm going to see if there is actually any change. ^^^^^^ This! It's as if the phrase "holding her feet to the fire" doesn't apply in marriage!! Okay, once the INITIAL convo is had, it's not over. Just as in many of the tasks that undertake are broken down into observable action steps, "open to possibilities" and "willing to try" need to be taken up in convos as well. "what will show that you are willing?" "how will you demonstrate that you are open to possibilities?" "give me some ways of creating these possibilities." "help me know your signs of willingness" Keep the discussion going and moving along. It's not a "one and done" event, and if she says she's not comfortable talking about it, talk about it anyway. Refusal to continue discussion shows that claims of openness and willingness are false. |
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Post by csl on Jan 13, 2017 12:01:06 GMT -5
I agree that this is an important distinction. Responsive desire is about somebody only feeling the need to have sex after they get physically turned on. This is NOT the same as feeling desire after you [feel comfortable/feel loved/get massaged/have the dishes done/receive gifts/hear the right words/fill in your own personal blanks here...]. It basically says someone with responsive desire needs to start actually making out and getting turned on before they are ever going to feel any real desire for sex. To try to be clear, I agree that this is an important distinction. My experience with "responsive desire" looks something like this: Wife says that she almost never is aroused, but she finds out about something called "responsive desire." Oh yes, that is what she has. Thus, as she tells me, I just need to initiate and "work on" her arousal, and then she will be interested. This becomes: (a) if I would do more housework, make more money, be less fat, be less fit, work out more, work out less, etc. ad nauseam, then maybe she would want to let me initiate, approach her. Ie, I can't even get a chance to try unless I am somehow a "better person." Thus, she has to respond to my acts of service to want to let me try to get her to respond to my attempts at arousing her; or (b) she knows that she would respond if only I gave back rubs, foot rubs, was more physically demonstrative, was less physically demonstrative, tried to kiss her more, tried to stop with the kissing, etc. Thus, she would respond with desire for me if only I somehow found that magical combination of romantic acts of service that worked for her. Which, as you may imagine, I never did, because such combination doesn't exist. So, maybe what I experienced was more avoidance and some gaslighting than responsive desire. But it was proposed point blank as a matter of my needing to understand her responsive desire. And this was a bunch of nonsense ... SaveSaveChoreplay, plain and simple. |
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Post by novembercomingfire on Jan 13, 2017 12:03:07 GMT -5
To try to be clear, I agree that this is an important distinction. My experience with "responsive desire" looks something like this: Wife says that she almost never is aroused, but she finds out about something called "responsive desire." Oh yes, that is what she has. Thus, as she tells me, I just need to initiate and "work on" her arousal, and then she will be interested. This becomes: (a) if I would do more housework, make more money, be less fat, be less fit, work out more, work out less, etc. ad nauseam, then maybe she would want to let me initiate, approach her. Ie, I can't even get a chance to try unless I am somehow a "better person." Thus, she has to respond to my acts of service to want to let me try to get her to respond to my attempts at arousing her; or (b) she knows that she would respond if only I gave back rubs, foot rubs, was more physically demonstrative, was less physically demonstrative, tried to kiss her more, tried to stop with the kissing, etc. Thus, she would respond with desire for me if only I somehow found that magical combination of romantic acts of service that worked for her. Which, as you may imagine, I never did, because such combination doesn't exist. So, maybe what I experienced was more avoidance and some gaslighting than responsive desire. But it was proposed point blank as a matter of my needing to understand her responsive desire. And this was a bunch of nonsense ... SaveSaveChoreplay, plain and simple. Funny how it doesn't work. |
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Post by csl on Jan 13, 2017 12:06:45 GMT -5
Choreplay, plain and simple. Funny how it doesn't work. It was never meant to, was it? |
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Post by Apocrypha on Jan 13, 2017 12:09:06 GMT -5
Add the words "with you" to the end of your statement and try it out again. "you have to not automatically assume there is something wrong just because your partner doesn't feel like having sex (with you)."It's helpful to be specific. Something wrong with whom? Or with what? There might not be anything wrong with your spouse. Your spouse simply might not want to have sex with you for their own reasons. There are usually reasons - they come out after the divorce, or after a while in therapy, hindsight. There are lots of people you don't want to have sex with. It doesn't mean something is wrong with you if you don't want to have sex with someone. Something wrong with your marriage? It depends if either you or your spouse feel that lifelong celibacy is an important goal or trajectory in marriage. Was it included or understood as part of your wedding agreement? If celibacy conflicts with your idea of marriage, then something is most definitely wrong. I'd question any advice dismissing it. "your partner doesn't feel like having sex until they get into it."If by "get into it", you refer to "feel like having sex", then we could rewrite the phrase as "if you are going to try to turn things around, you have to not automatically assume there is something wrong just because...your partner doesn't feel like having sex until they feel like having sex." This is a tautology. This advice could be summed as "If you are going to turn this around (and have sex in your marriage with your spouse), you have to behave as if your partner not wanting to have sex with you isn't a problem with either your partner and does not threaten your marriage."People, myself included, get entwined in these traps of defining and diagnosing, parsing etc, and using these fascinations and unwitting tricks to avoid being authentic with the root behavior. The sex you want is the result of desire. A person can have a sexual response to a doll, to one's own hand, to the skilled ministrations of an utterly unattractive person, to a bicycle seat, a dildo, a mattress. A person will "get into it", but it doesn't mean that person necessarily is into YOU - that you present some form of unique attraction as a person to them, irrespective of how you diddle them. For most people who are married, that presents a real problem and should likely be treated as such. |
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Post by csl on Jan 13, 2017 12:31:12 GMT -5
"your partner doesn't feel like having sex until they get into it."If by "get into it", you refer to "feel like having sex", then we could rewrite the phrase as "if you are going to try to turn things around, you have to not automatically assume there is something wrong just because...your partner doesn't feel like having sex until they feel like having sex." This is a tautology. This advice could be summed as "If you are going to turn this around (and have sex in your marriage with your spouse), you have to behave as if your partner not wanting to have sex with you isn't a problem with either your partner and does not threaten your marriage." No, it's not a tautology; it becomes one when you reword it in such a way as to alter the underlying assumption. However, if you don't assume that your partner doesn't want to have sex with you, but rather that your partner is willing to be aroused, then a new possibility presents itself, doesn't it? |
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Post by beachguy on Jan 13, 2017 12:48:07 GMT -5
And to be clear, I'd never suggest there is no such thing as legitimate responsive desire from a sexual person. But I am quite convinced a lot of basically asexual people hide behind the excuse of responsive desire. And I also think, because of that, that responsive desire masks a far larger asexual population than is conventionally believed. I think it is well north of the usually quoted 1% number, which is a WAG that the asexual community came up with. My own experience doesn't support your hypothesis. Take what you will from my anecdote, but as a post-marriage dating man, and as a man who also tried polyamory as a last ditch effort - I have met quite a few women who thought they were "aesexual" when they were married, or had only "responsive desire" in their marriages - and now were enthusiastically making efforts to explore their own fantasies (and not just starting with me), doing things that are the stuff of Penthouse Letters. Aesexuality and responsive desire are thought of as persistent conditions that exist irrespective of one's partner. In most of the deals discussed on ILIASM, there isn't recent experience to compare the quality of sexual desire outside of the primary relationship, aside from the intimacy-averse's partner's typically normal libido prior to marriage (which is often conveniently dismissed). So, how would anyone determine if it was a persistent lack of libido, irrespective of context? I have bolded something you put in brackets that figured prominently in my marriage and is relevant to what I'm saying about "aesexuality" as a gaslight - refusing early in the marriage. This doesn't suggest to me that aesexuality is involved. Rather, it likely suggests that the person feels the marriage itself is a condition of unwanted obligation. Consider: In the autopsy of my own marriage, I was able to chart several precipitous dropoffs: 1. The wedding day itself, and spiked again on the honeymoon. 2. Buying the house. 3. pregnancy 1 - problem spoken aloud 4. Birth 1 - on the ropes 5. pregnancy 2 - total flatline 4. Birth 2 - total flatline. crisis 5. Her affair - total flatline and marital collapse. It increased with her affair partner, and for a while, with her ongoing lover and with me when she was also dating him. With each level of increasing marital investment - notably TO THE DAY - starting with our wedding, the character and quality of her sexual expression with me dropped significantly. With each of her personal demonstrations of freedom from responsibility (or at least the perception of that - from her perspective), her libido increased. NOTE that during the entire time she STILL clung to her narrative of low or different libido. She believed it, regardless of the mountain of evidence in her behavior to the contrary. In our separation, around 2 years now, she appears to have had few issues with the sex part, but is demonstrably averse to commitment and personal romantic investment that requires responsibility or obligation. I've dated prolifically in my post marriage world, and I've found similar stories abound among the women I've dated. For some reason, they weren't aesexual and did not experience "responsive desire" (if it matters in the slightest what it is called), either before their marriage, after their marriage, or during their marriage with their non-marital partners. Some of them explored and enjoyed shockingly daring scenarios. I suggest there isn't necessarily some epidemic of aesexuality. Framing a lack of desire for one's partner as a problem to figure out "how to accomodate" offers a likely narrative to latch onto and to feel a sense of agency in the situation, even though it is futile. It's futile because the partner still doesn't want to have sex with you. It comes down to what you do with someone with whom you hold a romantic interest but who isn't interested in seeking sexual expression with you.
In the dating world, this answer is comparably easy to remedy. It's a total no brainer. Believe it or not, nothing you describe is counter to some flavor of asexuality. According to the self identifying asexuals on that site that have created labels for dozens of differing flavors. |
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Post by Apocrypha on Jan 13, 2017 13:02:33 GMT -5
...someone tells you there are "open to the possibility" and "willing to give it a try" then don't actually take any visible actions. That's where I have been more recently, and what the next few months/year will bear out. I'm going to see if there is actually any change. I quoted the tells that jump out at me: By "turning things around", I presume you mean you want your wife to want to have sex with you again. While I'm all about the self-improvement, I'd direct you to consider the statement " I want to turn things around." Why does the responsibility for the consequences of her lack of desire for you land on YOUR shoulders? Do you feel that you can make her desire you through some form of cooperative action? I'm trying to imagine how this might play out in the dating world, and what that conversation might look like. If you've taken the measures to be an interesting and appealing person, her desire for you is not a thing that YOU can turn around. She is likely doing the best she can. It's helpful to be specific about what it is that she is doing though. She is figuring out how to either have sex with someone she doesn't desire, or how to desire someone she doesn't desire presently - which is much harder. So, ya - that's a tough spot for her. If someone I'm dating tells me she is "open to the possibility" and "willing to give it a try" - regardless of whether she takes actions - I already know that she isn't into me. The language of desire is "I'm booking a hotel" "please take a break and come to bed now" "please f#ck me" or "I bought a little outfit I can't wait to show you". It's when she comes back from the washroom at the restaurant and her lipstick is completely gone. If someone isn't into you, the consequences of that, played out across a month or a year will be obvious. Having sex with someone you aren't into ends up reinforcing that feeling. |
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Post by greatcoastal on Jan 13, 2017 13:14:52 GMT -5
Choreplay, plain and simple. Funny how it doesn't work. Oh it works!! It works for a long, long time,......for the controller. You will find it runs rampant through the christian community. The silent sin. It takes having the FOG (Fear, Obligation, Guilt) lifted. By reading sights like these. |
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Post by Apocrypha on Jan 13, 2017 13:23:35 GMT -5
"your partner doesn't feel like having sex until they get into it."If by "get into it", you refer to "feel like having sex", then we could rewrite the phrase as "if you are going to try to turn things around, you have to not automatically assume there is something wrong just because...your partner doesn't feel like having sex until they feel like having sex." This is a tautology. This advice could be summed as "If you are going to turn this around (and have sex in your marriage with your spouse), you have to behave as if your partner not wanting to have sex with you isn't a problem with either your partner and does not threaten your marriage." No, it's not a tautology; it becomes one when you reword it in such a way as to alter the underlying assumption. However, if you don't assume that your partner doesn't want to have sex with you, but rather that your partner is willing to be aroused, then a new possibility presents itself, doesn't it? Let's linger on defining that underlying assumption for a moment, if you please. It's the whole point of my suggestion. I'd add, I'm not trying to "catch" you or intending to make anyone feel foolish. I'm simply recognizing something in this writing that I did myself, and that I see differently now, in hindsight. Your clarification is useful - where I am thinking of "desire" or "want" in lieu of "get into it", you specify "arousal". I can be "aroused" by my hand. I don't "desire" my hand. I can be aroused by my hand while imagining the person I desire. Quite a few celibate spouses are "willing to be aroused" - they just don't include a partner whom they don't desire when they explore their arousal privately. If a partner is "willing to be aroused", it might result in a sexual encounter - but that still doesn't translate to the condition of desire. There may be no unique and significant attraction to the partner, despite the willingness or even urgency to complete the sexual act on both parts in the moment. There is no continual state of "yes". It's a cold start, every time, when there is no desire. In short, your partner might be willing to have sex, even with you, but not necessarily as the product of desire for you. If you know your partner, you are going to be able to see the disconnection they are feeling. Suppose you try running that program for a year or two. How do you think it might shake out? |
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Post by beachguy on Jan 13, 2017 13:28:51 GMT -5
@apocryphia - a hint: fraysexual - attraction fades after a bond is formed.
Does that not precisely define your marriage? At each stage of the increasing bond, her interest declined. And that is exactly what happened to my STBX.
Same thing. They all lost their sexual attraction as a bond formed. If you want to suggest they are not asexual you have to totally throw out everything we know about asexuality, including the entire AVEN site. And as attraction declines, I would suggest they simply become increasingly "responsive".
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Post by Apocrypha on Jan 13, 2017 13:52:09 GMT -5
Believe it or not, nothing you describe is counter to some flavor of asexuality. According to the self identifying asexuals on that site that have created labels for dozens of differing flavors. Ok? Given people's capacity for self-delusion to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths, like "I don't love my partner" or "I love my partner as a sibling or as a friend", or "I don't forgive my partner for what they did" I don't afford much credence to "self-identifying" labels, and the couching of a behaviour into identity-politics. I was off sex myself for a good long while, so I'm not pulling this out of my butt. And, I've seen my partner cling to this raft for quite a long time, and taken a sanctimonious role in adapting my marriage to accommodate the needs of her "complicated sexuality". I have literally been called a "saint" by most of the people who know us both for the rare lengths I've gone to, even by this board's standards. But suppose you are correct, and there are all these self-organizing tribes of people who have developed correct labels to attach to the "condition" of not wanting sex with one's partner. Suppose there is an accepted medical orthodoxy to the condition. It still starts with the condition of not desiring your spouse - and the lack of fruits of that desire. And it comes down to what you are going to do about it. If I attend a ballet dance recital and the performer is paralyzed from polio, is the performance really ballet? Is the performance, if not ballet, something I want to see? It's not the performer's fault they had polio. I certainly would understand the heartbreaking fantasy of expressing myself as a dancer if I was paralyzed, but what is your obligation as an audience member, or teacher, in supporting such an enterprise. Across a lifetime. To the extent that you would never see another performance? Likewise, does your most basic concept of what a marriage is include sexual expression with your partner? If your partner does not desire sex with you through no fault of their own, but wishes that they did (which would result in them having sex with you), then what is the nature of your relationship? |
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Post by beachguy on Jan 13, 2017 14:11:57 GMT -5
Likewise, does your most basic concept of what a marriage is include sexual expression with your partner? If your partner does not desire sex with you through no fault of their own, but wishes that they did (which would result in them having sex with you), then what is the nature of your relationship? Yes, it includes a strong sexual expression with my spouse. Depends on how you define "through no fault of their own". If it's a legitimate medical situation that absolutely precludes sex, then that is a difficult moral and ethical and emotional dilemma that I don't like to get into here. Because in most cases there is no such problem. And secondly, my STBX tried to BS me with all sorts of "no fault of her own" stuff, in fact it was her primary strategy of avoidance. If you mean they lose desire because they are "fraysexual", or for whatever reason you want to call it because you don;t like those labels, then I don't absolve them of fault. To the extent that my needs are equal to her needs. And the chips will fall where they may. I have a need for quality partnered sex My partner has a need for celibacy You can call me a prick if you want, but after wasting 30 of the best years of my life ignoring my needs, I decided that my need is equally as important as her need. And I believe in the idea that there is an expectation of mutually wanted sex within marriage. Marriage is not a license to enforce celibacy. Or misery. So let the chips fall where they will. |
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