AMA: I’m asexual, and married with kids

[Asexualawakening]

Only realised in the last few years and wish I’d known it was a Thing back in the 90s!

Ask me anything………

Please can you explain what you mean?

@KnightonShiningArmour Asexual means no sexual feeling

@Asexualawakening

I am too (or at least on the spectrum). I have been dying to ask someone who is to compare as I feel so confused.

Do you enjoy kissing and cuddling?
Do you enjoy anything sexual?
Can you get turned on by anything?
Do you have any trauma that could have triggered it? (I'm hoping this isn't too personal a question. I do and I'm wondering if this plays a part)
Has this evolved over the years or has it always been the case?

How does your DH (or DW) feel about it? Does it bother you/do yo ufeel like you're missing out on something at all?

What’s the point in labelling yourself? Surely what you 'are' is personal and nothing to do with anyone else?

Are you neurodivergent at all?

Do you experience ‘romantic’ attraction?

@miseby I was asking OP to explain what they means. Just because you define in that way, doesn’t mean they do.

My DH (been together 22 years) misses intimacy. About 5 years ago I told him that I can never have sex again (not just with him, with anyone) and gave him the choice to split or go elsewhere to get that need met. Our relationship and marriage is so good and healthy except for this, that he chose to stay and sacrifice sex. I do feel guilt, he is such a good man and he deserves a full life, but I cannot give him that one part of it. I wish it were different.

As for me feeling like I am missing out, no. Since sex has come off the table I feel like I can breathe instead of constantly dreading the next time I have to say no.

I simply do not comprehend what all the fuss is about, and how sex can have such extreme control over otherwise sane human beings and how that urge, that I have never had, can have the power to make them do such damaging things (have affairs, assault people, lose control, “sink a thousand ships” etc).

Would you mind him having sex with other people?

It’s not a label. It means that after 40 years of thinking I am broken or defective, I finally realise that there is a name for how I am wired, I am certainly not the only one, and I am who I am.

If you’ve never felt the need to “label” yourself in any way then you are privileged.

My mum, sister and both my sons are neurodivergent HOWEVER I have analysed myself so much and I just don’t think I am! I don’t think I’d meet any formal thresholds but I do have sensory sensitivities, including smell (which plays a big part in sex if you think about it).

I am the least romantic person in the world (yes I know, my poor husband) but I am extremely warm, loving, affectionate (with hugs and words), and my loved ones have no doubts about my love for them. I’m just not into the Hollywood romance BS as I don’t think it’s real.

I’d say I experience platonic attraction. I can meet someone (male or female) and feel immediately that I like their vibes, they have a good soul, they are safe, and I do get attached. It’s not often though.

Since there is no intimacy, is he more of a room mate than a husband?

Do you have separate bedrooms?

Are you repulsed by the “act(s) and therefore unwilling to “engage” with him ?

I have never had a sexual awakening. I have never felt turned on. As a teen / puberty it never once occurred to me to touch myself or think about sex. Never had lusty thoughts. My ‘erogenous zones’ are about as erogenous as your coffee table, or my kneecap.

At uni (late 90s) I confessed to a new housemate / friend that I’d never toiched myself or had an orgasm and she was shocked and gave me a rampant rabbit for a birthday present! It stayed in its box on the mantle piece in the living room!

I have always been asexual.

Re the marriage, see previous reply.

To me it means I feel no sexual attraction or urges whatsoever, at any time. It means I do not think about or want sex, ever. It means that the physical and mental reaction sexual people have to certain stimuli does not happen to me.

It’s a sacrifice I would make, for him, but he would not entertain the idea in a million years.

Lots of women lose their libido as they get older. It's perfectly normal and not worth slapping a label on.
I lost mine with the menopause. I'm not asexual, neurodivergent or anything else, just a normal process of getting older.

Before you realised- did you find that you actively disliked/ felt repulsed by sex, or was it just that you didn't derive pleasure from it?

If you weren't getting pleasure from sex, I'm guessing you've not orgasmed from it? Did that not come up with your husband over at least 17 years of having sex with each other?

I'd say you were ND.
Sensory issues are a big part of that. It's probably genetic.

I wouldn’t say just roommates, no. We sleep together, legs entwined. We hold hands and laugh and compliment each other. We are more than friends. We just don’t have sex.

I am repulsed by the idea of “the acts”, yes. Because it’s smelly, tiring, and I get absolutely nothing from it.

I spent 20 years doing it with my partners and then DH as I believed that was normal and expected. Then I realised asexuality is a real thing and I don’t have to keep subjecting myself to an activity that I actively dislike (at best) if I don’t want to. I owe sex to nobody.

I have never had a libido in the first place, ever.

Also - if you could choose, would you want to experience sexual attraction?

You may just have a simple hormone imbalance. Have you ever asked a GP for help? It’s strange to me to decide that your husband never gets to have sex again without at least trying to solve the problem.

Women do lose their libido as they age but having never had one at all is a medical problem that may have a medical solution.

At its best, I felt no pain or disgust, just boredom. At its worst (not with my DH), I have felt pain, violated, and distressed, and hid it all and put on a brave face because I knew no different or that I wasn’t “normal”.

I faked orgasms prior to my DH. At the beginning I could orgasm through oral sex but only occasionally, and less so as I got older.

Difficult to say as I have never known it so don’t know what I am missing, and as a sexual “outsider” I see all the pain that sexual urges make humans cause each other!

But I suppose if I met a genie in a bottle I would probably request a sex drive for my DH’s sake (not mine)

Lol I’ve been tested for all sorts and my hormones have always been tip top.

We have had sex therapy years and years ago before we got married - the therapist had never had clients as young as us before, I have had hypnotherapy and done everything to “solve the problem”. I am asexual, not broken - you can therapy it out of me as much as a gay person can “pray the gay away”, I’m afraid!

I don’t need a sex drive to survive (or thrive even), so why is it a “medical problem”? I certainly don’t want research budgets spent on “curing” my asexuality, instead of cancers and dementia!