So here I am, tacking my two cents onto Mike's previous post. I'll be honest and say I didn't read the page he linked -- I deactivated my Fetlife account a while ago because I couldn't for the life of me feel like I fit in -- but I was thinking about how hard it is to explain to other people about how asexuality works and why I'm okay because married to someone who falls in that spectrum.
Let me lay out the scene for you:
I'll admit that, at times, I complain about it. I'll be at work and one of my raunchier coworkers (I love you guys) will make some sort of reference to some winked and nodded implied sex act, leaving me to comment that I didn't know what that was like anymore. Do I do that all the time? No. But I'm bad at pretending things are any different than they are (I used all that up back when I still lived at home with my mother) plus I am entirely too open about certain things at the best of times. The people I say things like that to are often aghast or offended, or like to think terribly of Mike because of some societal belief that all men are led solely by their gonads, therefore, clearly he must be defective.
One of them actually told me, "maybe if you lost some weight and put some effort into how you look, he'd want to fuck you more." It's weird to say, but she wasn't actually trying to be a bitch. She just not only doesn't understand asexuality but she doesn't understand that I'm not the type to dress a certain way or wear makeup not because I'm lazy -- I actually just don't think there's anything wrong with the way I was put together. I don't believe in God, but my reaction to people doing things to change how they look is often along the lines of, "So you're saying that God made a mistake and you have to fix it?"
Anyway.
If someone had told me ten years ago that I would meet someone who I would want to spend the rest of my life with and we wouldn't be particularly sexually active and I'd be okay with it, I'd consider it another reason to never venture out in the real world because people who think they have psychic powers are creepy and often wrong. But here I am, and here is how things have shaken out.
I understand that it's hard to wrap one's mind around. It's why I don't bring it up much with other people, but I also don't go out of my way to hide it. I'm of the belief that, in a world where people are often so self-motivated and always on the prowl for anything that furthers their agenda, when two people (or three, or four...) can get together and work together for mutual satisfaction and enjoyment, it's the most beautiful thing those people can do together. It can relax tensed muscles, it can help ease headaches and body pain, it can create life and deepen existing bonds between partners. But I can also understand that some people just aren't into it and have other ways of dealing with headaches. Over time, I've learned to find other ways to enjoy Mike's company. As anyone in a relationship knows, it's almost impossible to find someone who feels the same way as you do about everything across the boards. So if you won't break up with someone because maybe they like tomato soup and you prefer New England clam chowder, can't sex be handled similarly if everything else is going well?
What it comes down to for me is that life's too hard to throw away a good thing over a lack of mind-blowing mutual orgasms, even if some of my friends think it's ridiculous. I just do my part to convince them otherwise by speaking well of my relationship and not only bringing Mike up in conversation when he's driving me crazy. And ultimately, they're not the ones putting in the work every day in this marriage so I appreciate their concern, but that's as far as I'll take it.
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