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Post by beachguy on Jan 25, 2017 15:05:13 GMT -5
That may be true. They may do this on a whim. But the important message is that they are NOT complaining about their partners or how they are being treated. They *BELIEVE* they are asexual and no one is going to convince them otherwise. I'm pretty sure there are refused partners on the other side of those people, banging their heads against a wall, trying to solve an unsolvable problem. And some of them are probably posting here! I have not read many stories there about asexuals suddenly switching, as you suggest. In fact, none at all. What I do read, over and over, is something like this: "I've had problems with sex {for xxx years} and then I found this site and now I understand I'm asexual and now it all makes sense. (So I'm no longer going to have sex with my partner). This is like a broken record there. The one big difference between many or most of our refusers and them is that they NOW acknowledge their identity. Where our spouses apparently never do (or they hide it- we'll never know how many of our refusers are over there). But many of them were obviously refusing for a decade or more before they "discovered their identity". Gotcha! The post will run its course and ultimately you are probably quite right. It isn't really a sexual orientation then. It's just someone who didn't like sex or lot lost their libido. I've never said it's not an orientation, or it is. What I have suggested is that they believe it is an orientation, to the extent that it is intrinsic to their personality. Therefore they do not believe it is something that can be fixed in therapy. Therefore they CANNOT be fixed by therapy because they will resist therapy. You can tie a patient to a gurney and perform surgery on them against their will. But you cannot convince someone to engage in therapy against their will. So it becomes an orientation, by default. A self fulfilling prophesy. Of course depending on how you quibble over the definition of orientation. We have previously discussed "intimacy aversion", which is indistinguishable from asexuality in terms feelings, thoughts and especially behavior. To the extent we can peer into the minds of the "intimacy averse". AFAIK they don't have a forum to hang out on that we can eavesdrop on. The party line on intimacy aversion is that "it might be fixable in therapy but it takes years, and the chance of success is low". I've never seen anyone offer hard evidence that anyone labeled intimacy averse was ever actually fixed. There is just this vague and perhaps mythical "might". That's bad enough, but if I'm right that intimacy aversion is just another label for asexuality and they are one and the same (or one a subset of the other) then the effect of AVEN is to basically take that "might be fixable" to "absolutely not fixable" because AVEN is busy convincing all those potential patients that there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. I also believe that asexuality has NOTHING AT ALL to do with libido. Libido, as I understand the term, is a quantitative measure. You measure it in how many times you want to have sex per unit time (or how often or how many O's you want per unit time). But those on AVEN have a distinctly qualitative divergent view on sex. They do not believe sex adds value to a relationship. They do not accept that sexual people need sex. In fact, they believe sex "pollutes" a relationship, making it "less pure". You might want sex 4x/week and I might want sex once a month, but that does not mean I place no value in sex or otherwise have the same qualitative views on sex as an asexual. There is more going on here than "low libido". Porn addiction: a guy sitting in front of his computer, jerking off to porn every night, and refusing to fuck his wife. That is considered a "treatable disease". Yet that fits perfectly a certain class of asexuals. That guy has a healthy libido or he wouldn't be doing it every night. And if he hangs out on AVEN he might not agree that it's treatable, it's part of his orientation. Even if he doesn't know about AVEN he may not think he has a problem that needs fixing and the result is the same. |
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Post by rejected101 on Jan 25, 2017 15:09:42 GMT -5
I see what you're saying and you explain it well.
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Post by Apocrypha on Jan 25, 2017 16:49:03 GMT -5
So please, don't just throw that out there, like a "have a nice day" comment. Again, assigning motivation, except this time to characterize how I'm posing my comment. One of the things I took from my family counselor as really GOOD relationship advice - was that it's hard to know what a person is thinking. You can understand the words and the action, but assigning the motivation correctly is really hard to do. Smart people get it wrong all the time. As an example, he tossed a question to Mrs Apocrypha and I. We wrote numbers down on a paper - the % of effort going into the relationship we each put, compared to the other. I wrote 90% in my favour, 10 to hers. She wrote 90% in her favour, 10 to mine. Our jaws dropped in amazement and rage at how ungrateful we each were for the other's tolerance in even living there another day - at how utterly hopeless it seemed. All of my efforts were at improving our general marital life and myself, such that I would be of romantic interest for my wife. All of her efforts were at improving our general marital life and herself, such that I would find my non-romantic partnership with her more endurable. Each of us were blowing our guts out. You think your spouse is not motivated by self-interest in preserving her comforts with the minimal possible effort, but is rather enacting a master plan in which to control you. Is that about it? Is she an evil person? |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2017 20:03:07 GMT -5
The best solution to closet asexuals is to make it clear at the start of a relationship that celibacy is not an option, and that there is more to a sexual relationship than not celibate. And enforce that boundary. My boundary: lack of good sex is a deal breaker. Stop. I doubt many people actually talk about that until they've been through this. Given the conventional wisdom we are taught - "men want it all the time" - I never thought there was such a thing as a man who didn't want sex, until my deal with Mr. Kat went south. Up until that time, from my teens until my late 30s, I assumed (and I was correct!) that men would try to push my boundaries - that they would want sex more than I did. In fact, once I got to my early 20s and had some dating experience under my belt, I would not even go out with a guy, unless I knew I wouldn't mind making out with him. Because it *always* went that way. So between cultural teachings, and my own experiences with men, I was totally unprepared for a man who didn't want sex. |
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Post by greatcoastal on Jan 25, 2017 20:21:44 GMT -5
The best solution to closet asexuals is to make it clear at the start of a relationship that celibacy is not an option, and that there is more to a sexual relationship than not celibate. And enforce that boundary. My boundary: lack of good sex is a deal breaker. Stop. I doubt many people actually talk about that until they've been through this. Given the conventional wisdom we are taught - "men want it all the time" - I never thought there was such a thing as a man who didn't want sex, until my deal with Mr. Kat went south. Up until that time, from my teens until my late 30s, I assumed (and I was correct!) that men would try to push my boundaries - that they would want sex more than I did. In fact, once I got to my early 20s and had some dating experience under my belt, I would not even go out with a guy, unless I knew I wouldn't mind making out with him. Because it *always* went that way. So between cultural teachings, and my own experiences with men, I was totally unprepared for a man who didn't want sex. Ditto here smartkat! I was shown and taught that not all women are going to like you, but that they all want to have sex with a guy. I didn't know about woman (or men) who didn't want sex , until EP. My experience in my teens and twenties where woman , kissing me first, shoving my hands down their blouse first, undressing for me first, undressing me first, and making me question my boundaries. Even my STBX ,although we waited till marriage, did plenty of initiating and pushing, all with a sexual, intimate tone. So after all those experiences, teachings, the bait N switch, the resets, it took the FOG lifting to realize how un-prepared, and how used I had been. |
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Post by Lithium92 on Jan 26, 2017 3:57:50 GMT -5
Some do. Many accept that sex is important for most people and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not for them. And not that many are actively going for the bait and switch, and they're generally called out on it by other posters.
I'd find examples, but I've been banned.
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Post by beachguy on Jan 26, 2017 14:32:10 GMT -5
The best solution to closet asexuals is to make it clear at the start of a relationship that celibacy is not an option, and that there is more to a sexual relationship than not celibate. And enforce that boundary. My boundary: lack of good sex is a deal breaker. Stop. I doubt many people actually talk about that until they've been through this. Given the conventional wisdom we are taught - "men want it all the time" - I never thought there was such a thing as a man who didn't want sex, until my deal with Mr. Kat went south. Up until that time, from my teens until my late 30s, I assumed (and I was correct!) that men would try to push my boundaries - that they would want sex more than I did. In fact, once I got to my early 20s and had some dating experience under my belt, I would not even go out with a guy, unless I knew I wouldn't mind making out with him. Because it *always* went that way. So between cultural teachings, and my own experiences with men, I was totally unprepared for a man who didn't want sex. You mean you never watched Married With Children? LOL |
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Post by beachguy on Jan 26, 2017 14:43:15 GMT -5
Some do. Many accept that sex is important for most people and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not for them. And not that many are actively going for the bait and switch, and they're generally called out on it by other posters. I'd find examples, but I've been banned. I have a different take on AVEN. They talk about their Bait N Switch in code words, and things they refuse to talk about. You might have been banned because, among other things, you may have touched that nerve. And I don't believe for a minute the idea I see there all the time... "I was married for xx years, and never understood myself until I found AVEN, and now I know I'm asexual!" Yea, bullshit. They may not have had a label for it, but they knew damned well they didn't like sex, and they were refusing. What AVEN gave them was not "understanding", it was an excuse to refuse. A justification. A way to justify the breach of the marriage contract. An ideology that declares them as "normal". "Many accept that sex is important for most people and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not for them" I don't read it that way. What some of them accept, through bitter experience, is the idea that regardless of what they think, enforced celibacy doesn't work, at a practical level, even though they think it's a perfectly good idea. I've yet to find anyone there validating the need for sex among "the other people". It seems to be a core tenet there. *IF* they validate the need, it calls into question the "normalcy" of their demand for enforced celibacy. And above all else, they want to be defined as "normal", and from that desire to be normal, the rest of their "ideology" is built. |
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Post by Lithium92 on Jan 26, 2017 17:46:59 GMT -5
I have, plenty.
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