Unloved

I was a little surprised to realize that I hadn't written about this on here, yet.  It's one of those insecurities that's really easy for me to get wrapped up in.  I get a whiff of it, and immediately get stuck playing and replaying everything that feeds into it.  The conversations I've had.  Those moments where an understanding suddenly shifts into sharp focus.

When it comes to insecurities about being loved, many people seem to get wrapped around their worthiness, or lack of worthiness.  But that's an area in which I've always been oddly confident.  While I'm certainly imperfect, I don't for a second doubt the ways in which I'm a compassionate, attentive, caring partner.  I absolutely believe that I am worthy of love.

But it can be hard to believe that I am loved, or will be loved, romantically.  Some of that has been from the experience of dating people who struggle with the reality of a relationship that doesn't include a sexual element.  As it was put so succinctly in the movie (A)Sexual, there's a way in which sexless relationships are simply not to be taken as seriously as those which do include sex.  Even when people think they'll be fine with it, the reality often ends up being that... they're not.  And that's never a pleasant reality to come to grips with.

But well before experiencing how that played out, a series of conversations left me rattled.  They all occurred within the same year or so, as I was just starting to wrap my head around the notion that my sexuality was markedly different than that of most folks.  And multiple people- all of whom were people that I'd been sexually involved with, and who I loved- shared their dubiousness that I would ever find partners who were comfortable with a sexless relationship.  Of course, I was a wonderful person, and sweet and kind and all of that... it's just that it was plain unreasonable to believe that anybody could really love me if I wasn't putting out.  And really, it wasn't very realistic to think that anybody would wait around if I always took so damn long to get around to the good stuff, and even when I did it wasn't the right kinds of sex anyhow, and it certainly wasn't frequent enough, and, and....

Let me emphasize again that these were conversations that I had with people I loved, and in many ways, still love today.  They were conversations that came from a place of genuine concern on my behalf.

And they're conversations which now, years later, I've never been entirely able to shake.

It's a rough insecurity to overcome, because it targets that which is necessarily out of my control.  I can't control others' feelings and emotions.  And really, it's an impossible thing to assure against.  Feelings do shift and evolve and change over time.  Romantic love is never guaranteed.  Even when it is there, it can (and does!) dissipate, for any number of reasons.

It's not an insecurity that dominates my life, by any means.  I am fortunate enough to have a slew of fantastic people in my life, and that does quite a bit to help keep these kinds of worries from the forefront of my mind.

But when this particular insecurity comes up, it really comes out a'swinging.  And I still haven't quite figured out how to block that right hook.

Still Not Interested

So a funny thing has happened lately.  I've had a pretty sharp uptick in my libido.  I've got some theories as to why that might be, but that's neither here nor there.  The point is, I'm all, "Yeah, sex sounds awesome, let's do that!  Fuck yes, sex!"  And, as usual for me, all this enthusiasm has been directed at an exceptionally short list of people.

I decided to do a little thought experiment with myself, since sex has been seeming like such a great idea.  Delicately, tentatively, I sent a few little probes into my mind to see if maybe I might be a little interested in some of the people who it would really, really make sense for me to want to have sex with.  People who are attractive to me in many of the non-sexy ways.  People who I like and trust.  Was there any libido that might get kicked in a different direction..?

Nope.  Nope, definitely not.  Still not interested.

But it did make me realize that some part of me still thinks I'm broken.  That maybe, if I get fucked in just the right way, or do just the right little dance in my own head, or stumble upon some fantastic magical cure, suddenly it will click, and I'll relate to sex like a normal person (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean).  I'll be fixed.

Nope.  Nope, definitely not.  Still not interested.

And that's okay.

Appearances

Wow, blog!  That post from earlier today was a big pile of depressing!  So here's something less sad that I dug out of the drafts pile.  I wrote it a couple of months ago, and have no idea where I was going with it.  But here it is, probably in incomplete form, for your reading pleasure!

Working as a professional naked chick does weird things to your relationship with your body, and bodies in general.  At least it did to me.

I get that for many people, their bodies are deeply personal to them.  And why wouldn't they be?  They're the container we're in.  It's the space our minds and spirits inhabit.  We carry them with us everywhere we go.  And yeah, that's pretty personal.  So it follows that the appearance of that container, that space, would be similarly personal.

But when the thing that I was selling was that container, I inevitably changed my relationship with my body.  I've become much more utilitarian about my appearance.  Does it get the job done?  Is it bouncing light as it needs to, carrying me where I need to go, responding to sensory input in the ways I'd like it to?  Cool.  That's what it needs to do.

I'm also pretty honest- at least I think- about the limits of my body.  I don't view that as a personal failing.  There is no way that my body can be perfectly suited to everything.  It isn't.  Nobody's is.  It's suited to that which I need it to do.  And that is exactly what I want.  No more, no less.

Primary and Secondary Attraction

In an attempt to explain the asexual experience, quite a few words and terms have been coined.  I've only given a cursory look over many of them- just enough to see that they didn't deeply resonate with me.  As several of those terms have been thrown around by others, I've become increasingly familiar with them, and have given them some more thought.

Primary and secondary attraction are a couple of those terms.  Primary attraction, as I understand it, is sexual attraction that's rooted in that which is immediately apparent about a person- the way they carry themselves, their smell, the clever things they say, all that kind of stuff.  Secondary attraction- again, as I understand it- is attraction that develops over time, and is rooted in a relationship.

These terms are usually used to help explain demisexuality.  Demisexual folks only develop secondary attraction.

So as these terms have been bouncing around in my mind as of late, I realized that I'm kind of... the opposite.. of demisexual.

Primary attraction isn't actually that rare for me to come by.  Lots of people can seem at least moderately shiny to me upon first meeting.  Where things fall apart for me is when that novel shininess fades away, and I'm left without any secondary attraction to keep that interest going.

The way that this has manifested in my life has been that my sexual interest in people- people who I really, really love!- consistently drops off within a couple of months.  So far as I've found, there's no nice way for that to happen.  There aren't cute greeting cards that say, "Yeah, I mean, you smelled really nice!  But you're just not sexually interesting to me any more.  I still care about you though!  Let's still hold hands!"

So I'm pretty well left with two options.

I can have a series of sexual relationships that we both know are going to last a couple of weeks, or if we're lucky, a couple of months.  Adding sexual partners is a pretty big emotional investment for me, so on the whole, that's not going to be a very fun option.  I can get the occasional kick by making out with folks who, for any number of reasons, aren't on the table as long-term partners, but that's about as far as I'm inclined to go down that road.

Or I can opt to move really slowly into new sexual relationships, until I have a solid feeling that I'm experiencing more than just primary attraction.  That also gives me a chance to decide if I feel good about making that emotional investment in them.  If I'm still feeling it after the shiny-newness has worn off, game on!

I'm not quite sure what it is that keeps things sustainable.  This is where the primary/secondary attraction model seems to break down for me.  When I have a sustainable sexual attraction to somebody, I don't think that the root of that attraction is the non-sexual parts of the relationship.  I care about my sexual partners, and enjoy spending time with them, but it's not like they're The One(s), by any means.

It's an imperfect model in my case, but an interesting one nonetheless.  It's certainly given me a different lens to look through.

Identity, as Assumed by Others

Okay, you know how in that most recent post about orientation and whatnot I was all, "Hmm, I don't know why I consider myself sexually active and apart from the LGBT community"?  It's true that I didn't when it first came to my attention, but by the time that I got around to clicking the publish post button, I had an inclination.  I just couldn't find a way to work it into the post without disrupting the flow.  Call it stylistic dishonesty.

But hey, now is my chance to come clean!

I think the default assumption of women in my general age range in my culture is that we are not an active part of the LGBT community, and we are sexually active.  For whatever reason, I just haven't gotten around to doing the internal fact-checking on those points.  Society says that I'm straight and sexually active, so I am!  Woohoo!

Of course, there's more nuance to it than that.  I don't think that I can reason my way into feeling like part of a community, and I'm pretty sure that there are some emotional hang-ups (along with maybe just a little bit of holding out for impractical crushes), that are keeping me from declaring that I'm sexually inactive and taking myself off of birth control.

So where next?  Well, I'm still not sure.  But I do have a better feel for where I'm at, and why I'm here.

Orientation

I've filled out a couple of surveys about sexuality as of late.  One was for the Westword, Denver's weekly newspaper.  The other was for the upcoming Asexual Awareness Week.  The two surveys brought some really interesting realizations to my attention.

Although I've had sex with boys and girls, I regularly play with boys, girls, and people elsewhere on the gender spectrum, and am romantically attracted to people all over the gender spectrum, I don't consider myself part of the LGBT community.  Left entirely to my own devices, I identify my sexual orientation as "ambivalent" or as I'm fond of saying these days, "I'm mostly disinterested in everybody."  Of course, neither of those options are ever available on dropdown menus.  The closest that I can ever get is something like bisexual or pansexual.  Or asexual.

In any event, in spite of having an abundance of reasons to identify myself as part of the LGBT community, I just don't feel it.  I'm on the periphery, with frequent overlap of social circles and events.  But I don't feel that it's my community.

Another unexpected revelation: In spite of having only had sex a dozen or so times- and that's being generous- in the past year, with absolutely zilch for the past five months, I still consider myself sexually active.  And not just in the sense that I'm sexually active with myself.  For whatever reason, I still think of myself as having one foot in the sexy pool.

I don't know why either of these things are as they are.  Using even a very, very small amount of logic makes it obvious that I fit neatly under the LGBT umbrella, and that I am not sexually active.  So why the discrepancy?  It'll be something that I mull over, that's for sure.

Labels

I cannot overstate how happy I am to have a label for my sexuality.  While revolting against labels is currently en vogue ("You can't box me in!  I'm a snowflake!!"), finding out that I did have a bucket, and therefore was not utterly alone in my experience, was hugely validating for me.

I'm too asexual to claim to be normal in that regard.  This has made itself clear- repeatedly, and painfully.  But I'm not asexual enough to write it off entirely- there ARE contexts in which I really like being sexual, with myself and others.  Before discovering the label "gray-a" I felt like I didn't fit in anywhere I went.  I was my own little island of freak.

So I'm pretty excited about having a label, and I wear it with pride.  It gives me a framework to explain who I am, and a sense of security that my experience is shared by others.

How I Got Here

I'm a 26 year old female (by both biology and psychology).  I have poured countless hours into rope bondage, erotic photography, and many corners of the BDSM playground.  Most of the time, the idea of throwing genitals into the mix kind of freaks me out.  And so this is where I find myself, writing about my experiences as a gray-a kink practitioner.  How the hell did I get here?

It's only been within the past several months that I began identifying as gray-a, or asexual-ish, though it's been a long time coming.  With very, very few exceptions, my sexual interest in partners has tended to drop off pretty quickly.  Unsurprisingly, this phenomenon has resulted in much hurt, confusion, heartache and compromise.  I'll spare the details for now, but I've tried a whole slew of approaches to coax, cajole, trick, allow, or otherwise get my sex drive back into the range of "normal."  No dice.  These days, I don't experience much in the way of sexual desire with partners at all.  It seems simple enough.

But once you take genitals out of the picture... game on, baby!  I love erotic energy.  Pushing tension back and forth, physical and emotional challenges, the rush of racing right to the edge.  I love connecting with others in this realm, taking them intense and exciting places, or being taken there by others.  All of the fiery passion that others seem to feel for sex, I feel for BDSM play.

It's been a bumpy ride, and I'm surely not past all of the curves I'll face.  I'm hoping that this outlet will give me a means to explore places that I've been, and places that I'm going.  I also write with the goal that it might give some hope, comfort, or sense of fellowship to others going through a similar journey.  So here I am.