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Balance in a relationship between someone who is asexual and someone who is not?

Discussion in 'Family, Friends, and Relationships' started by LibraryKitten, Dec 16, 2014.

  1. LibraryKitten

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    I would appreciate insight from anyone who has been in this situation before, from either perspective, about how you found (or didn’t find) a way to keep both parties happy. Did you stick to some kind of schedule, or do something else entirely? I have also included a more in-depth description of my particular situation below, for anyone who cares to address it directly.

    I have been in a stable, incredibly happy relationship with my partner (they’re gender neutral, so those are the pronouns I’ll use) for a little over a year now, and both of us intend to make this work out for the long term. I have never met someone as beautiful, inside and out, as this person before, and connected with them so deeply on so many levels. I trust them. As a bonus, they’re probably the best cuddler ever, and they love to indulge me with allll the cuddles, which is good, because I have a seemingly insatiable desire for that with them. But, as most couples probably do eventually, we seem to be having some sexual compatibility problems that I’m not quite sure how to resolve. My partner is mostly (and possibly even entirely) asexual. Personally, I haven’t really figured out yet how important sex is to me in a relationship, but at this point I do know it’s more important to me than it seems to be to my partner. To add another complication to this situation, I have a history of child sex abuse, so I don’t really know what a healthy sexual relationship feels like. I think this is the closest I have ever come to a healthy sexual relationship, not to mention a healthy romantic relationship in general. I really don’t want to mess this one up.

    My partner seems to be as in love with me as I am with them, but they just never seem to think about sex on their own. Towards the beginning of our relationship, this was comforting to me, because most everyone else I’ve ever been with prioritized sex to the point where, especially coming from my background, I felt used and unloved. And whenever my current partner and I do anything sexual together, it is definitely empowering to me because I am clearly in control of the situation. If I start to get uncomfortable, they always stop, no hard feelings. I think I have grown a lot in this relationship, as far as comfort with my own sexuality (among other things). But the problem is, we can go for months at a time, and if I don’t initiate sex, it just doesn’t happen. And they won’t even notice. After long enough without feeling “pursued” by my current partner, I start feeling undesirable and grumpy. Whenever I do initiate sex, I feel disgusting for wanting sex if they’re not interested (which honestly happens more often than not recently). I don’t want to pressure them into something they don’t want to do, and I would hate myself if I ever let that happen.

    Where it gets the most confusing to me is that sometimes they say they’re not interested in sex, and we’ll just cuddle instead. But then sometimes, after cuddling for a while, they purposefully (or maybe not purposefully? I’m their first sexual partner, so it’s possible they just don’t know what they’re doing) escalate things with incredibly sensual kisses and touching, and then, sometimes they do want sex. But sometimes they still don’t, even after that. So I’m left feeling like I’m either begging, or pressuring them into something they don’t really want to do. I think they’re just doing this to try to accommodate me when they haven’t yet decided what they want to do, but it really just makes the situation worse for me. I’ve brought this up with them before, and they apologized, but we haven’t really figured out a way to fix it yet.
     
  2. LibraryKitten

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    *Just for clarification, by "have a history of" I mean "am a survivor of"
     
  3. LibraryKitten

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    Ok, I'm guessing no one wanted to touch this particular story. Fair enough. For the sake of others who might be in this kind of relationship though, I have some good news.

    As with most relationship problems, communication is key; I talked to my partner about everything and things seem to be going better now. I think most couples go through periods of higher and periods of lower amounts of sex, depending on their overall stress levels. Most of our problem was that I react to extra stress with an increased sex drive (it's a stress relief for me), but my partner reacts with a decreased drive. It's going to be a balancing act, but it's worth it to us.