Monday, 2 January 2017

Boyfriend Has Turned Asexual

It took me a very long time to find a man with the intelligence, kindness, energy, talent, competence and intellectual confidence that I wanted. He is perfect in all ways but sexual, I know he loves me. He proves it every day in countless ways.For many years now, I have totally buried my sexuality. I have, in fact, denied myself and not let myself be who I am. I have felt bad for being so sexual. I would try to initiate and/or discuss sex but has left him feeling pressured, demeaned and somehow the need to feel that he needed to be changed. Now, he is stuck in his own self-awareness of all that he feels he is not. To other women he was something. To me… I thought he was something else, that’s all. As a result, we’ve been terribly unhappy. I feel I have been in the hellish grip of a major depression.
This life we have created is untenable for both of us. He cannot give me the sex I want. I don’t know what he can give me anymore. I don’t yet know how much more I can do without. We have worked out so many things, our communication can’t be any stronger and yet continually fails us. I feel like it is my fault, my insecurities, my hidden pain, my lack of beauty or sexiness or my weight or any other such things. I need to reclaim myself again, letting my sexuality back out of storage. I have fallen into depression hating the very fact that I have to take full responsibility for satisfying my own sexual need.I feel rejected, unwanted and unworthy. I feel sexually abandoned. I feel trapped. I feel lesser of a human being when I have to masturbate. I feel even lesser of a human being to leave and choose sexual freedom over this relationship. I feel dismissed. I feel unimportant. I feel broken, unrepairable. I feel like I am mourning the little girl he helped me find again and now is gone, hidden, struck with the memories of why she went away to begin with. I feel that I have to worthy to leave. I have never felt worthy in my entire life. I wanted a home, he gave that. I wanted a place that I didn’t have to fear of having to start over again, ever and yet here I am. Fighting those thoughts and feelings again.
I have tried to be sympathetic, adapting to his needs or lack thereof. I have tried to tell myself that I am ok without sexual intimacy. I have tried to give him the space and commitment and support that he needs. I feel like I have tried… and he has not.

I gave him my little girl, I gave him my submission, I gave him my trust, my love, my inner broken being. I gave him the best and the worst of me. I feel now that I never should have. I should have just left him alone.

A. I can’t tell you whether or not you should have “just left him alone.” However, I would guess that deep down inside, you believe that you were very lucky to find this man. You have said endlessly complementary things about this man. The only negative things that you bring up are sexual things. There are 1440 minutes in one day. There are 10,080 minutes in a week. After the first year or two of a relationship, after things have settled in, most couples spend on average 15 to 30 minutes per week engaged in shared sexual activity. Out of a possible score of 10,080, your boyfriend has a score of 10,050 or better.

I could literally write a book about sexuality (and perhaps someday I will), with the misconceptions and problems that affect and often end relationships. I can’t do the subject justice in a few paragraphs but let me say this: Never confuse love and sex. Sex is a biological drive that can be increased or turned off by the simple manipulation of hormones within the body. Love has nothing to do with the biological drive and the simple manipulation of hormones; separation by thousands of miles or separation by decades, will have no impact upon love.

I once had a student who said something rather profound in one of my classes. He put up his hand and asked if he could speak to the class and make a comment about something he had seen on television the night before. He was well-liked and respected in the classroom and I of course told him that he could. He said that the night before he had been watching a National Geographic special that showed chimpanzees copulating in the wild. He said that initially he thought to himself, “Wow, look at how human-like those monkeys are.” He then went on to say that very quickly, a much stronger thought erased his earlier one. He said, “I suddenly realized it wasn’t the animals that were like humans, it was the humans who were like animals.” What he was saying was that he recognized copulation as an animalistic act.

As they say “birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it.”

I would strongly recommend sex therapy. In therapy you can spend hours talking about your thoughts and concepts of sexuality and receive feedback from a very knowledgeable source.

I suspect from the words that you have written, that you have a good relationship and a little fine tuning of ideas and concepts is all that’s necessary to solve this problem. Good luck.

Dr. Kristina Randle



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