I just don't want to have sex and it is ruining my life!

[Maraya1969]

I would hope to find a guy, (or a girl) who is happy just being with me in a sexless union. I've gone through menopause so my sex drive is even less than it was but even when I have a sex drive now I don't want to have sex.

It is ruining my relationship with the guy I have been dating. I had not been with anyone in about 3 years and one of the reasons why I avoided relationships was because I don't want to have to have sex.

WTF is the matter with me? Or where can I find a person like myself so dating won't be such a stress-er.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

1. Seems like a similar thing is going around with teens, believe it or not.

Half are dying (perhaps literally, someday) to turn in the v-cards and get nasty with one another. The rest of us aren't interested in sex for many years yet, and frankly, sometimes I feel like a loser for having this primal dread of contracting AIDS and dying, even more so than I fear becoming pregnant. But I think sex is best kept to serious relationships, of which I have none, so the risk of that happening any time soon is not particularly pressing. I just feel like any person I date is going to want it, badly, and I'm going to have to refuse and perhaps walk out of the relationship altogether. I suppose I have to trust my old history teacher's sardonic advice: "We'll run off that bridge when we get to it."

:hi:

[Redneck Socialist]

2. I have no answers to your question, but...

I do want to say your Animal clip is awesome! :headbang:

[Maraya1969]

3. LOL Thanks for the laugh. But it is a Muppet.

[Saboburns]

4. Methinks

Muppets name is animal.

[Maraya1969]

6. I didn't know that! I just looked it up and you are right!

[idgiehkt]

9. this exchange has me just about crying

with laughter.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I don't know why, it just hit my funny bone. :)

[Lethe]

12. lol

/agree

that was funny

[idgiehkt]

13. still laughing

[Maraya1969]

16. Me laughing too now......

:rofl:

[idgiehkt]

21. I love Animal!

that gif is one of the best I've seen :) :hi:

[Kali]

5. this is the age of the internets - google "celibate singles "or

some other phrase that sounds like what you might be looking for

or if you aren't happy with the way you feel, maybe therapy?

[Maraya1969]

17. Thanks Kali. I just did a search and found some great sites and even

ordered a book!

[Kali]

19. ...

:thumbsup:

[Richard Steele]

7. There's NOTHING "the matter with you".

You want as much sex as you want. If you want "none",
then that's what's NORMAL for you at this moment.

Our society is DRENCHED in the notion that everyone is
supposed to want sex all the time- TV and movies push that
idea because it SELLS PRODUCTS.

But it's bullshit. It's propaganda, it's "attempted brainwashing".

Even when I was 15-25 and trying to fuck anything that moved,
I was NOT as obsessed with sex as the average Ad-Campaign
wanted me to think I should be.

You WANT what you WANT, and that's what you WANT.
Stop worrying about what someone else thinks you
are "SUPPOSED TO" want, because no one else has ever
been YOU, so no one else can ever tell you how to BE you.

[Shine]

8. Yeah, what he said!!!

:applause: :thumbsup:

[SeattleGirl]

11. Exactly!!! Everyone is different.

Some people really like sex, and want it. Some don't care much for it. Some are somewhere on the continuum in between those two ends.

Wherever you are is where you are, and no one has the right to make you wrong for it. And YOU shouldn't feel there is something wrong with you because you feel the way you do.

:hi:

[Fire Walk With Me]

10. Monks have figured out how to not have sex for their entire lives.

(Perhaps those preachers who can't seem to do without, can learn something from them.)

[Deja Q]

27. Yeah, but did those monasteries have a moat surrounding them?

:hide:

[Fire Walk With Me]

32. Worse. Male chastity belts.

You don't want to know.

[noamnety]

14. Excellent post

When two people don't want sex the same amount, our culture treats the one with less/no desire as if they require medical intervention. The person who wants it more, on the other hand ... I've never seen that treated as a medical problem. I haven't seen commercials for lessening your sex drive, you know? We get this one set of messages that we hear maybe once or twice in health class or in a public service announcement, saying never coerce a person into unwanted sex, that's rape, that's wrong. And that's competing with this opposite message that we hear several times a day, saying that if you need coercing, you are the one with the problem, you're at fault, your doctor can fix that.

[Oeditpus Rex]

20. Virility has always been the desired standard

Humans know instinctively that the ability to reproduce is desirable in a mate. With a lot of help from pop-culture media, it went from "desirable" to "mandatory," which is utter bullshit. Asexuality is every bit as legitimate as any other type of sexuality and deserves the same respect — not that humanity as a whole respects all sexualities, but you know what I mean.

[Richard Steele]

23. "it went from "desirable" to "mandatory," which is utter bullshit."

Thanks, OR- you summed up a lot of what I was trying to say
in a single sentence.

I'm not so good at "summing up", but I know that if I ramble
on and on at DU, someone will eventually come along and 'sum up' for me.

I appreciate that. :thumbsup:

[Oeditpus Rex]

24. No, your post was the best in this thread

So good, in fact, that I was kinda ticked when I saw it because you beat me to it. :D

[Maraya1969]

18. Thanks DickSteele. That makes me feel better. Maybe the guy

I am dating just has a different sex drive than me, (he = lots and lots me = not so much)


It is causing such a strain though. I even told him to go have sex with another person. I don't think I would have anything to say about it and I think I might not be jealous since I don't want to do it.

[Richard Steele]

22. People have different "appetites" for many things. Sex is just one of the many things.

Even back when I was wanting "lots and lots", and the lady
I was with wanted just as much, we didn't always want the
SAME THINGS from the same places...

Finding what we wanted in different places didn't mean we didn't LOVE
one another, any more than working for different employers did.

I'm pushing 40 now, and my "sex drive" isn't gone, but it's just
not such a big deal as I used to think it was. Pretty much every
fantasy I thought was "the ultimate" back when I was a kid has
come and gone. I've been there/done that, and it was all real nice,
but none of it ever changed my life.

My Sweetie and I have been together 8 years now, as of 2 weeks ago,
and neither of us are under any pretense that the other is the
"greatest lover of our lives".

I've had better lovers, and so has she. But I've never lived with
anyone as ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL as she is.

And, Lord help her, she's never met anyone as "special" as me.

[raccoon]

28. Great post!

"Our society is DRENCHED in the notion that everyone is
supposed to want sex all the time"

That's right on target.

Another thing, ads, movies, TV, and novels would have you believe that every time a couple have sex (unless it's rape), both of them are marvelously satisfied and have a great sexual experience.

That is SOOOOOOOOOO not real life.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

30. You got it.

:thumbsup:

[Lethe]

15. like he said, nothing is the matter with you

it sounds like you need a close personal friend right now more than a "date"

most guys i know want to have sex, and frequently.

[grasswire]

25. I've been planning to have a talk with the teenagers...

...in my house about this sort of thing. It's clear that they have been brainwashed by the culture into a false idea that everyone wants lots of sex all the time and that it's the most important pursuit in life. I've been going to tell them (and I expect it to be a surprise) that plenty of humans don't want sex OR are indifferent to it OR only want it under certain conditions. I hope they will see that those paths are just as normal and usual as the hypersexed humans sold to them by Madison Avenue and Hollywood. These two teens have been through the sex education curriculum taught by the Unitarian Universalist church, and there's nothing mechanical that is a mystery to them. But I don't know if this aspect of human sexuality is ever discussed in sex ed.

Now, to your dilemma. I would think that in this age of enlightenment regarding self-gratification, there might be potential partners who could enjoy your company while respecting your boundary. Maybe you could save time in dating relationships by signaling it early on.

[alarimer]

26. You need to let this person go

You will never change that aspect of them.

Or you may find he will break up with you.

End it. He will only get more and more unhappy. It is a major incompatibility.

I would not stay with someone who would not have sex with me.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

29. seconded

[cobalt1999]

31. Agree.

It's not fair to either of you.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

33. I am in the very same boat you are.

All of my life, my sex drive has been naturally rather low -- once a week or even less was more than enough for me. Interestingly, I always ended up with men who had very high sex drives, completely out of synch with mine -- I have read that this is very common. I have also read that difference in sexual appetite is one of the leading problems in relationships.

I was with one guy who liked his sex often, and preferred "fucking" over lovemaking. He tried to convince me that there was something wrong with me because I didn't want sex as often and in the manner he did. I was fairly young and sexually uneducated, so I thought he might be right and went to my doctor to get "cured". My Doc at the time was an old coot from Texas, completely no nonsense kind of guy - think Henry Fonda in "On Golden Pond". So I tell him what my "problem" is, and he barked at me, "When you have sex when you want it, do you enjoy it?" I thought about it and told him yes, very much, I just didn't want it that often. He then declared, "There's nothing wrong with you. You're fine. Go home."

It still took me awhile to truly "get" what he said, but he was absolutely right -- there was nothing wrong with me -- I just had a different sex drive than my boyfriend. :shrug:

Now that I am perimenopausal, my drive has gotten even more tenuous, and I too have avoided dating because I didn't want the pressure of having to be more sexual than I am feeling.

One thing that did help me when I was in past relationships, was to discover different ways of sexually satisfying my partner that didn't involve me having to have intercourse. Tantric massage was what I explored most -- I got a wonderful video and a few books that I learned a great deal from. Once my partner was able to wrap his head around the idea of "sex" being more than just intercourse, we were usually able to come to a fairly happy compromise/medium where both of us were getting close to what we needed. Once the pressure was off me to have full blown interecourse, I felt really freed up and less tense in my relationships -- and that actually improved my sex drive sometimes! :)

The trick is finding the guy who can understand and be satisfied with the notion that sexuality and intimacy in a relationship can expressed in many ways.

On edit: I just wanted to add a few of the teaching tools I used:

Fire on the Mountain - Male Genital Massage
Instructional DVD, Joseph Kramer Ph.D.

Erotic Massage: Sensual Touch for Deep Pleasure & Extended Arousal Charla Hathaway

The Multi-orgasmic Man
by Mantak Chia amd Douglas Abrams Arava