I’ve been reading more on the topic lately (no it’s not for a friend or a coincidence) and have enjoyed a few articles that I thought would be nice to share with you all.
Life Without Sex: The Third Phase of the Asexuality Movement via The Atlantic:
In other words, you might want to have sex five times this week, or you might not want to have sex at all. Your experience of desire might be intensely physical, or it might be indistinguishable from emotional attachment. You might experience next to no attraction for years, and then find yourself consumed with another person. At one point in your life, sex might be the ultimate thrill; at another, it might be boring and routine. And all of it is okay, and none of it marks the essence of who you really are.
‘We’re married, we just don’t have sex’ via The Guardian:
People always ask how our marriage is different from just being friends, but I think a lot of relationships are about that – being friends. We have built on our friendship, rather than scrapping it and moving on somewhere else. The obvious way we differ is that we don’t have sex, though we do kiss and cuddle. We like to joke that the longer we’re married the less unusual this is. By the time we’ve been married five years we’ll be just like everyone else.
Do I feel as if I’m missing out on something? Not really. We’ve decided that if either of us wants to try sex out in the future then we will see what we can do. We would both be willing to compromise because we’re in a relationship and that’s what you do.
The Masturbation Paradox via Apositive.org:
If sexuality is just the desire for sex, then people who only masturbate should feel like the most purely sexual people on the planet.
They don’t.
Rather inconveniently, people who only masturbate tend to call themselves asexual. We can’t say this universally, but currently the asexual community is the only place where people who masturbate exclusively have gathered together to talk about it in any number. These people don’t identify with sexuality at all. Unlike most people, who consider masturbation sexuality and sexual desire to be central motivating factors in their lives, people who only masturbate tend to think of their sexuality as nonexistent. They spend their time hanging out and sharing an identity with people who experience no sexual arousal at all, or who experience sexual arousal and are never motivated to act on it. These people relate to one another’s experiences, use the same terms to describe themselves, struggle with the same problems and swap the same strategies to tackle them, and they do it all in a community founded by someone who masturbates and calls himself asexual. What’s going on here?
Reading more about this, nothing is black or white. There are many gray-sexuals or there are those who right now aren’t and could be sexual in 10 years. It’s interesting how we go through life. I’m not sure I’ll ever have kids…or a wife for that matter. I haven’t felt love for a long time or at least not in a way most people do. Maybe it’s my upbringing or I was born that way but I like being left alone and there are others that do too even if they’re not asexual.
and swap the same strategies to tackle them, and they do it all in a community founded by someone who masturbates and calls himself asexual. What’s going on here?