As Mike touched on last week, there is something inherently problematic about being a parent and kinky or in a non-standard relationship. He expressed his concerns about not knowing exactly where to start on explaining his/our life, and if he should even do so in the first place.
To be honest, I have concerns as well, but in a completely different realm.
Let's look at the facts: Mike's son is being raised by four parents:
-a conservative Christian lesbian mother
-her butch lesbian wife
-a kinky sadist poly demisexual father
-and me, an open-minded pansexual mildly kinky chronic masturbator (or something)
So my first question in regards to my stepson would have to be, "What if he grows up to be kind of normal?"
My second question would be something along the lines of, "who is going to guide him when it comes to being an average boy when he hits puberty?"
By all accounts, it seems likely he will turn into the average cis-gendered straight boy in a few years. He already seems to have a fondness for ladies, and he's just, you know, a boy. My worry is that he won't have a good basis for understanding how to appreciate his body, his sexuality, and not grow up in the dark about how this whole thing works and how to be safe.
Mike said his ex-wife gave their son "the talk" a few years ago, but we don't know exactly what that means. Did she give him the technical overview and then tack on the "and God doesn't want you to do this until you're married" bit at the end? When he hits puberty, is she going to teach him that masturbation is wrong and he is a monster if he does it?
He takes after his father in a lot of ways, so maybe sex won't be a thing that even occurs to him to care about. But if he does, it seems I had the closest to a "standard teen-boy libido" of everyone currently parenting the boy. So I guess, of everything, I'm not worried he'll find out about how his father and I are, but that he won't understand that there are healthy and unhealthy ways to show one's inherent sexuality and some people have odd ideas about what that means. I don't want him to grow up ashamed of his desires (assuming they don't end up being destructive to himself or others, which, statistically, is probably unlikely) and I don't want him to be unjustifiably conflicted over having desires in the first place, regardless of how "normal" they are or aren't.
The last thing this world needs is more people who don't know how to treat themselves and others. I still believe that most of us are trying our best on any given day (sometimes, as my mom likes to point out, our best kind of sucks), but there's sometimes only so much we can do with the information we are given in the first place.
Showing posts with label Sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sex. Show all posts
2014/12/18
Selfies and Struggles
Okay. So. Mike and I are in the process of moving -- we have three weeks to get our current place packed up and whatnot, and last night we were looking through a plastic tote full of miscellaneous tech-bits. Alright, maybe he was going through it and I was half-paying-attention while binge-watching The Flash. Either way, as I said: miscellaneous tech-bits. Several keyboards, lots of Apple cords, some mice, and a bunch of old external hard drives.
Like...a bunch.
We weren't sure which ones still worked and which ones didn't (to say nothing of what was on any of them), so Mike plugged one into his computer for a bit of a look.
It was mine, one I purchased almost a decade ago when my iBook G3 started to go a little wonky. It was small, but apparently held some interesting things -- mostly pictures...and every episode of Star Trek you could ever want, provided you weren't looking for the original series.
Anyway. Mike started looking through the pictures, like one does. And there were a lot.
Like a good early-20s lady, I took a lot of photographs of myself. Most of them were in varying states of undress, and I can't even tell you who I was sending them to -- because I was, for sure, sending them to people. Most of them were taken in my bedroom at my mother's house before I moved out for good, and most of them have some kind of filter on them.
Move over, Instagram, let Ash show you how sexy selfies are done. I probably have more experience in this department than you. You might think of me as a bit of an artiste.
Except, it occurred to me: I don't take pictures of myself anymore.
I was single back then and actually got off on making myself appear attractive in photographs. In my head, that wasn't what I looked like in person, but damn if I wasn't able to ramp up the good-lookin' on the other end of a webcam (and later, the iPhone). It was so strange that people appeared to want me. My standards for partners (for both relationships and hookups) was much lower, and what I wanted was someone to find me so attractive that they would stop at nothing (relatively speaking) to have sex with me. Now I'm almost 31 and often walk out of the house without even so much as a glance in a mirror.
The selfies have gone by the wayside as well, except for the sporadic boob-shots taken in my office bathroom. I used to take more of these, sending them off to Mike's phone in the hopes of getting him hard at his desk or in a meeting with his coworkers. But that didn't really happen, so I gave it up after a while. Understanding Mike's sexual nature (that is to say, some flavor of asexual) was hard, and it took a long time to come to terms with it. I started to feel like I was assaulting him with naked pictures and explicit text messages, all of which received little feedback.
It was hard to understand that I was essentially doing the thing that guys online have done to me and every other woman online for years -- sending unrequested pictures of their junk to an unreceptive recipient. Like them, I wanted a reaction. I wanted to turn someone on. I wanted encouragement, appreciation...anything. Instead, most of the time Mike responded politely, other times he said nothing. While he appreciated the thought, it was more common for the pictures to show up at the worst times possible, making him feel neglectful for not being able to respond the way I wanted, to say nothing of the fact that he wasn't in the mood in the first place and wouldn't necessarily be turned on by some bare skin.
Now, several years in, sexuality doesn't stress our relationship to the same level that it did toward the beginning. Maybe knowing I'm not bound to Mike exclusively allowed my sex drive to cool its heels. Maybe stress and life have made me too tired to even want sex in the first place. Maybe it's just a defense mechanism so I don't spend more time disappointed in something that won't change. Whatever the reason, though -- things aren't perfect, but none of this seems as imminently problematic as it did previously. It took time, it takes work, and sometimes issues STILL come up. It's normal, it's expected, and it's all possible to be dealt with.
Just, you know...be prepared to work your ass off for it. Hopefully it'll be worth it.
Like...a bunch.
We weren't sure which ones still worked and which ones didn't (to say nothing of what was on any of them), so Mike plugged one into his computer for a bit of a look.
It was mine, one I purchased almost a decade ago when my iBook G3 started to go a little wonky. It was small, but apparently held some interesting things -- mostly pictures...and every episode of Star Trek you could ever want, provided you weren't looking for the original series.
Anyway. Mike started looking through the pictures, like one does. And there were a lot.
Like a good early-20s lady, I took a lot of photographs of myself. Most of them were in varying states of undress, and I can't even tell you who I was sending them to -- because I was, for sure, sending them to people. Most of them were taken in my bedroom at my mother's house before I moved out for good, and most of them have some kind of filter on them.
Move over, Instagram, let Ash show you how sexy selfies are done. I probably have more experience in this department than you. You might think of me as a bit of an artiste.
Except, it occurred to me: I don't take pictures of myself anymore.
I was single back then and actually got off on making myself appear attractive in photographs. In my head, that wasn't what I looked like in person, but damn if I wasn't able to ramp up the good-lookin' on the other end of a webcam (and later, the iPhone). It was so strange that people appeared to want me. My standards for partners (for both relationships and hookups) was much lower, and what I wanted was someone to find me so attractive that they would stop at nothing (relatively speaking) to have sex with me. Now I'm almost 31 and often walk out of the house without even so much as a glance in a mirror.
The selfies have gone by the wayside as well, except for the sporadic boob-shots taken in my office bathroom. I used to take more of these, sending them off to Mike's phone in the hopes of getting him hard at his desk or in a meeting with his coworkers. But that didn't really happen, so I gave it up after a while. Understanding Mike's sexual nature (that is to say, some flavor of asexual) was hard, and it took a long time to come to terms with it. I started to feel like I was assaulting him with naked pictures and explicit text messages, all of which received little feedback.
It was hard to understand that I was essentially doing the thing that guys online have done to me and every other woman online for years -- sending unrequested pictures of their junk to an unreceptive recipient. Like them, I wanted a reaction. I wanted to turn someone on. I wanted encouragement, appreciation...anything. Instead, most of the time Mike responded politely, other times he said nothing. While he appreciated the thought, it was more common for the pictures to show up at the worst times possible, making him feel neglectful for not being able to respond the way I wanted, to say nothing of the fact that he wasn't in the mood in the first place and wouldn't necessarily be turned on by some bare skin.
Now, several years in, sexuality doesn't stress our relationship to the same level that it did toward the beginning. Maybe knowing I'm not bound to Mike exclusively allowed my sex drive to cool its heels. Maybe stress and life have made me too tired to even want sex in the first place. Maybe it's just a defense mechanism so I don't spend more time disappointed in something that won't change. Whatever the reason, though -- things aren't perfect, but none of this seems as imminently problematic as it did previously. It took time, it takes work, and sometimes issues STILL come up. It's normal, it's expected, and it's all possible to be dealt with.
Just, you know...be prepared to work your ass off for it. Hopefully it'll be worth it.
2014/12/15
Asexuality, for those even more removed
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.
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.
2014/06/03
Tuesday Links - Sexual Submission in and out of the bedroom?
Today's Tuesday Link is another Quora question I answered. Actually, this one I was tagged and requested to answer... But either way, the original is here: http://www.quora.com/Are-sexual-submissives-always-emotionally-submissive-in-their-relationships-outside-of-the-bedroom. Question and answer:
The important thing to remember here is that most elements of BDSM and kink are separate. They can be - and frequently are - closely related, but they don't have to be. They can relate to different pieces of your mind and your personality. It's always going to come down to exactly how you relate to it.
Is your submission tightly linked to your sex drive? If so, then odds are high that your submission won't extend beyond the bedroom. In my experience, most submissives really fall into this category - people who enjoy being spanked, being held down, being tied up to be fucked, being blindfolded, enjoy the fuzzy handcuffs... Whatever it might be. There's no connection between that and being a submissive outside the bedroom. There are dozens, hundreds of kinks that fall into the "submissive" category and will get someone off even while they feel ashamed or humiliated or totally uncomfortable with them in public, or just simply don't fit into their day-to-day lives.
Also be careful because "sexual submissive" is such a broad category. Saying "I'm a sexual submissive" could bring up any number of different things with different people. It can be everything from pet play to bondage to sadomasochism (which, of course, extends from spanking to blood and everything in between) to humiliation/degredation to... Well, whatever you can think of. Things that you may consider submissive may be perfectly commonplace and *not* submissive to someone else. Does your partner, for example, take their shoes off when they get home, but you put them by the door? Or do you always ask if the want a drink whenever you're in the kitchen? Or whatever. Things which are just "typical and domestic" to you may be "submissive" to someone else, and it blurs the edges, because my answer may not be the same as someone else's not because they don't agree with the idea -but because they don't agree with my definitions. What may be perfectly normal sex to you may be strongly submissive in someone else's opinion.
Are sexual submissives always emotionally submissive in their relationships outside of the bedroom?The short answer is, no, not at all.
TGIF again and my thoughts turn toward frisky fantasies such as D&S and S&M. A couple of weeks ago, I asked: Could you maintain respect for a submissive lover who worshipped you in potentially disgusting ways? Quite a few of the responses made it clear they thought that only someone with low self esteem and a constant sense of submission 24/7 could ever engage in such submissive behavior. To numerous respondents, it seems it was inconceivable someone could enjoy such games sexually, but turn off their submissive steak outside the bedroom. While I have not been in such a relationship, and so do not know, my guess is sexual submission is not related to submission in things outside of sex. Are those who enjoy being submissive in the bedroom usually or always suffering from Dependent Personality Disorder Symptoms? Am I guessing correctly that many view it as a way to enhance their sexual play, but are able to separate submission in sex play from submission in everyday life?
The important thing to remember here is that most elements of BDSM and kink are separate. They can be - and frequently are - closely related, but they don't have to be. They can relate to different pieces of your mind and your personality. It's always going to come down to exactly how you relate to it.
Is your submission tightly linked to your sex drive? If so, then odds are high that your submission won't extend beyond the bedroom. In my experience, most submissives really fall into this category - people who enjoy being spanked, being held down, being tied up to be fucked, being blindfolded, enjoy the fuzzy handcuffs... Whatever it might be. There's no connection between that and being a submissive outside the bedroom. There are dozens, hundreds of kinks that fall into the "submissive" category and will get someone off even while they feel ashamed or humiliated or totally uncomfortable with them in public, or just simply don't fit into their day-to-day lives.
Also be careful because "sexual submissive" is such a broad category. Saying "I'm a sexual submissive" could bring up any number of different things with different people. It can be everything from pet play to bondage to sadomasochism (which, of course, extends from spanking to blood and everything in between) to humiliation/degredation to... Well, whatever you can think of. Things that you may consider submissive may be perfectly commonplace and *not* submissive to someone else. Does your partner, for example, take their shoes off when they get home, but you put them by the door? Or do you always ask if the want a drink whenever you're in the kitchen? Or whatever. Things which are just "typical and domestic" to you may be "submissive" to someone else, and it blurs the edges, because my answer may not be the same as someone else's not because they don't agree with the idea -but because they don't agree with my definitions. What may be perfectly normal sex to you may be strongly submissive in someone else's opinion.
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