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No sex??
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I am, well I thought I was, a normal 27-year-old female. I have been with my current boyfriend for just over a year now. We get along great and have so much in common. But the one thing that causes the most distress in our relationship is the sex…or lack of it, actually. He loves it. I can’t be bothered with it. I have never really been into it, even in past relationship. (Even when I see a fine-looking man on tv, sex is one of the last things I think about). When we do it, it’s mainly to fill his satisfaction. And he can see that. He won’t touch me unless I initiate it because he hates being turned down. He’s not bad. On the contrary, he’s the best I’ve ever had. Adventurous, open to new things, passionate. But still, it just doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t think about it unless the topic is brought up. We’ve had many talks about it. He just wants to understand why I don’t think about it. He says it’s not normal. He has never met anyone who just doesn’t want sex as much as I do. He wants to know why. He thinks I’m not into our relationship anymore. But that’s not true. I love him. I wouldn’t be trying to fix this if I didn’t. We thought it could be the birth control I was on. I got off of it and, while my body responds to his touch more than it did before, it hasn’t helped my initial wanting of sex. I still would rather cuddle and watch a movie, sleep, hike, plan a vacation, clean, etc. (I think you get the idea). We’ve tried watching sexual movies or shows, I read sexual books (Fifty Shades), he’s even bought me toys to try to get my sex drive up. Still nothing. It’s causing a lot of tension between us and I don’t know what to do. I do carry a lot of stress with me. I let small things bother me and keep things bottled up. I overthink almost everything and I hate when things aren’t perfect. (I know, nothing will ever be perfect.) Any advice? I feel like I’ve done everything I can do on my own. I am finally at that point where I think I need some outside help.
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Comments
Does all this sound familiar?
Only you can tell for sure, but it sounds like you're simply asexual. If that's the case then it may be "not normal" in the sense of "different from the norm" but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem that this will be much help in your current situation. If you're not interested in sex there's a high chance you never will be, so you and your boyfriend will always have different needs in that respect.
Of course you can continue doing it if you both want to, but it may always be for his enjoyment far more than yours. It seems this kind of arrangement is far from rare.
www.asexuality.org has a forum, perhaps you can find opinions of people with first-hand experience of this.
Hopefully you'll find something you're both happy with!
I have masturbated a few times. It does feel good, but it's not something that I crave. I could, and have, lived without it for quite some time.
I've been off of the birth control for about 4 months now. Aside from nutritional supplements, I'm not on any other medications.
Was there ever a point where you truly enjoyed sex but you stopped doing so?
Also, there are (legal) herbal supplements with aphrodisiacal effect, worth looking into it maybe.
If it's become a case of going the whole way or not at all then that could be putting subconscious pressure on the whole situation. It might be worth considering relaxing slightly more into intimacy in general. Snuggled up on the sofa watching a movie, snuggling together before going to sleep at night. Cuddling in bed when you wake up in the morning. Massage. Playing with each other (mutual masturbation). Oral. All can play a big part in a sex life, without actually ever getting to the insert part A into slot B bit of it.
There are plenty of people who don't go from cold to thinking I want sex, but going from cuddling or massaging, to tickling, to teasing, to play fighting, to intimate touching, to 'I want you this minute' will get people going.
Does that sound similar to how you feel kanga?
Thanks for that article, James. It is similar to how I'm feeling. Still, I wonder what other possibilities it could be. It's hard to imagine not wanting something so popular and necessary to keep our species alive.
I was just thinking that you seem to be focused a lot on what other people do and want. That's understandable - other people's preferences can give us a good guideline for ourselves, and it can be easy to feel we're missing out.
But on the other hand, it's easy to caught up in that and not focus on what we want. Personally, I get no pleasure from watching football (not even the World Cup), or Harry Potter, or a cup of tea. But we're all different, and as long as we have things in our life that do satisfy us, give us pleasure, make us feel close to our loved ones; then we can learn to appreciate those as enough (that process might take some time though).
And I wouldn't worry about the reproduction side, humans have survived a long time with a wide range of sexual preferences, so I don't think there's a universal, in-built drive for reproductive sex.
There's a really good set of suggestions here, so do consider and check out psychological and medical factors that might lower your sex drive, and do try a range of different things with your boyfriend to make sure that you're not just missing out on your personal preferences. But do also consider that you might just have a naturally low sex drive, and that the most important thing is to be comfortable with what you do really want, rather than what you feel you should want.
You're welcome, that's really positive that you're going to keep communicating and moving forward
It does sound like you put a lot of pressure on yourself. Which is for really nice and positive reasons, but must be exhausting. And it's also worth remembering that for a happy relationship, you both have to be happy. We should always consider our partners, and it sounds like there's no risk of you not doing that. But you should also consider yourself as equally important.
Do keep talking here, I hope you find a bit more clarity for yourself.