Tag: asexuality

A white woman with blonde hair sits on a bed with her head in her hands looking despairing. Behind her, a white man lies in bed with his arms behind his head. Header image for a post on polyamory as a solution for sexual incompatibility in a relationship

Sexual Incompatibility in a Relationship: Is Polyamory the Answer? [Polyamory Conversation Cards #20]

Published on by Amy

Sexual incompatibility in a relationship can take many forms. Perhaps you have a much higher or lower libido than your partner. Maybe you’re kinky and they’re not, you’re asexual and they’re not, or you’re in a mixed-orientation relationship. Perhaps your kinks, fetishes, or sexual interests don’t overlap. One of you might be unable or unwilling to have sex for reasons relating to physical or mental health, trauma, aging, or disability, while the other still desires sex.

Sexual incompatibility can be a tricky thing to navigate, and an even harder thing to overcome. It’s also one of the reasons that formerly-monogamous couples might consider opening up a relationship to polyamory, swinging, or another form of consensual non-monogamy (CNM.)

But is polyamory actually a solution for sexual incompatibility? That’s a difficult question.

In case you missed it, this post is part of a series inspired by Odder Being’s Polyamory Conversation Cards. As often as I can, I’ll pull a card at random and write a piece of content based on it. There will likely be some essays, advice pieces, personal experiences, rants, and more! You can read the whole series at the dedicated tag. And if you want to support my work and get occasional bonus content, head on over to my Patreon.

This week’s card asks:

“What sexual activities would you prefer your partner(s) to explore with someone else than you?”

Sexual variety is definitely one of the reasons I’m polyamorous, though it’s far from the only (or main) reason. I enjoy getting to have sexual adventures with different people, and getting to connect with people naturally in the way that feels right for us, whether that connection involves a sexual component or not. I have a lot of sexual desires, kinks, and interests, and polyamory allows me to meet those needs and wants with different people.

Another reason I love being polyamorous, though? It also allows my partners to get certain needs met outside our relationship.

Let’s take it out of the sexual realm for a second to illustrate what I mean. I realise I might lose my Polyamorist Card for this admission but… I don’t play Dungeons & Dragons and I’m not that into board games. My nesting partner, though, loves those things. If we were monogamous I might feel bad that I couldn’t share those interests with him, or be tempted to force myself into taking part in activities I don’t enjoy. As it is, though, he can enjoy those things with his girlfriend and everyone is happy.

Sex is much the same way. Realistically, it’s very unlikely that desires, kinks, and needs will overlap 100% in any sexual relationship. Being polyamorous takes that pressure off, allowing each relationship to find its own sexual groove. When I know that my partners can also meet their sexual needs in other relationships, I don’t feel guilty or inadequate because of the things I can’t provide for them.

But does that mean polyamory is the answer to sexual incompatibility in a relationship that was formerly monogamous? Not necessarily.

Will Meeting Your Sexual Needs Elsewhere Actually Help?

After everything I’ve just said about polyamory being a wonderful way to explore different sexual needs with different people, I have to add on this enormous caveat: for me and for many people, sexual desire for a person isn’t transferrable.

What do I mean by that?

If I want to experience a particular act, I can probably meet that need with any partner with whom I have a sufficiently healthy and trusting relationship. But if what I’m craving is sex with Partner A, then sex with Partner B will probably be very nice but won’t actually address that desire.

Of course, no-one ever owes you sex. If what you actually desire is sex with your partner specifically, and they’re unwilling or unable to meet that desire, polyamory or non-monogamy is unlikely to help. Better options might be to explore together to find other ways to connect intimately, to adjust your expectations for the relationship and make peace with the situation (perhaps meeting your sexual needs through solo sex and fantasy), or to end the relationship.

It’s also okay if sexual intimacy is a core component of any romantic relationship for you. And if it is, a relationship that is sexually incompatible on a long-term basis is probably a relationship you won’t be able to be happy in, even if you also have other sexual relationships. (As fabulous sex blogger Kate Sloan wrote, “it’s okay to break up because of sex!“)

Would You Want to be Non-Monogamous if it Weren’t for This Incompatibility?

If the answer to this question is no, then you probably don’t actually want to be non-monogamous. Polyamory and non-monogamy are things you should pursue because you desire them for their own sake, because they align with your values, and because they represent how you want to live your life. They’re not a bandage for things that are missing in your existing relationship.

Opening up a relationship because of problems or deficiencies within it is almost always a bad idea. The experienced polyamorists amongst us have seen this approach, and seen it go wrong, so many times that we have a name for it: “relationship broken; add more people.”

Is the Problem Actually Sex, or Something Else?

Sexual incompatibility can certainly be a relationship issue in itself. However, it can also be a symptom of other problems. So before you leap into opening up, why not sit down with your partner and have a conversation about what your sexual incompatibility means and what it is telling you?

Sexual incompatibility that has been there since the beginning, or that is due to a fundamental aspect of identity such as asexuality, is unlikely to change. However, sexual incompatibility that has emerged over the course of your relationship can be a symptom of all kinds of things.

Physical health issues, mental health struggles such as depression, pain during sex, hormonal changes, stress, trauma, broken trust in the relationship, resentments over other conflicts or relationship problems, or one partner coming into a new understanding of their sexual orientation or gender identity are just some of the things that can be at the root of sexual incompatibility in a relationship.

Many of these issues can be worked through with mutual willingness, shared effort, plenty of love and kindness, and possibly an appropriately qualified therapist. Others likely spell the end of the road for your relationship, signalling that it’s time to peacefully part ways. Only you two know which is true for you.

So When Can Polyamory or Non-Monogamy Be a Solution to Sexual Incompatibility?

Sexual incompatibility, like so many aspects of relationships, is complex. If you’re sexually incompatible but want to stay together, there is unlikely to be one quick or easy fix. It will require lots of time and effort on both sides.

With all of that said, polyamory or non-monogamy can sometimes be one possible way to navigate maintaining a happy, healthy relationship when you’re sexually incompatible.

It could be a good option for you if…
  • You would both still like the idea of polyamory or non-monogamy as a relationship structure, relationship orientation, or lovestyle even if you had great sexual compatibility with each other.
  • You’ve talked about what opening up would mean for your relationship – the challenges, changes, pitfalls, and fears as well as the opportunities.
  • You’re able to have open and vulnerable conversations about your relationships, sex, and your feelings.
  • You’ve done your research – read the books, listened to the podcasts, gone to the meet-ups, made polyamorous friends, and learned the theory.
  • You’ve worked on decoupling/disentangling, learning to view yourselves as two autonomous individuals in a relationship rather than a single unit.
  • You’re willing to sit with uncomfortable feelings, communicate, and maintain personal boundaries rather than relying on rules and restrictions to keep you safe.
  • You are ready to treat incoming partners well, work to eliminate or minimise hierarchy, and actively dismantle couples’ privilege.

In general, opening up a relationship to polyamory or non-monogamy should feel like the next exciting step on an adventure you’re taking, both together and as individuals. It should not feel like an ultimatum, a proverbial gun to the head, or the only way to bring a dying relationship back from the brink.

And sure, sometimes sexual incompatibility can be the catalyst for transitioning from monogamy to non-monogamy. But it’s rarely the only catalyst, and it’s certainly not a quick fix or an easy solution.

If you find my work helpful, I’d love it if you shared it on Bluesky. You can also buy me a coffee to say thanks!

Demisexual pride flag for a guest post about discovering her demisexuality by Lacie Bee

[Guest Post] The Demisexual Slut by Lexie Bee

Published on by Amy

Today’s guest blog comes from Lexie Bee (she/her), a new writer to C&K! Lexie is here to talk about her journey to understanding her demisexual identity and the role that emotional intimacy plays in her sexual attractions.

In brief, a person is demisexual if they only experience sexual attraction in the context of emotional intimacy. Demisexuality is part of the asexual (ace) spectrum and some consider it one form that greysexuality. The header image for this post shows the demisexual pride flag.

I can’t believe that in over 8 years of this site, I’ve never published a piece about demisexuality! It’s time we rectified that.

Amy x

The Demisexual Slut by Lexie Bee

I’ve been dating since I was 4 years old—I was something of an “early bloomer” in that department. It’s hard to tell if liking boys was a chicken or an egg situation; was my attraction to them something I’d possessed since the womb, or had I acquired it during my hyper-feminized childhood upbringing? All I’ve ever known is that if there’s a boy, I should be interested.

This ideology led me to be a smallish, slightly sizable super romantic:

I was in love with love. 

Having a boyfriend was always on my mind, even before I hit puberty.

In preschool, there was…

– Bradley, a spiky blonde-haired boy who would kiss my hand under the pre-K playhouse.

And in elementary…

– Eric, the little Black boy in my Bible school class who gave me a necklace.

– Kyhlen and Noah, the only two Black boys in 4th grade (which meant I had to like them, since y’know, I was one of the only Black girls in the 4th grade class—and Cultural-CompHet was a lesson many years in the future.)

In middle school…

– Raymond, a sunkissed and freckled country boy who played the fiddle next to me in orchestra.

– Bailey, Joseph, and Tyler, the aptly aged trio of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders who were childhood friends in my neighborhood and simultaneously pining for my affection.

And in high school, I fell for Nathaniel and Seth and Devin and Ryan and Grady and Alex…

…In college, Corbin and Mitch and Josh and Jack…

…After college, Duncan and Ben and Daniel…

And about 50 or so others!

Yes, the Autism in me made a list of EVERY guy who had a romantic tie to me, based on the central premise of the book The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart.

Maybe it was because I always felt inferior in both the looks and personality departments, or maybe it was because I saw the world through bubblegum pink glasses. But all I knew is that I wanted to be wanted.

It was the one never-ending quest: to find my Happily Ever After.

I didn’t discover that I had ADHD or very unhealthy anxiety until I was 19 and having a mental breakdown after my first year of college. It wouldn’t be until I was 24 that someone would tell me they thought I was on the spectrum, and that everyone else “thought I knew.” For my 25th birthday, I discovered that my surely delusional paranoia would be validated as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

In other words, I’ve always been something of an awkward, oddly-behaved duck.

But without even realizing it, I had become an avid hyper-fixator on two of the most universal concepts of them all:

LOVE & SEX. 

My first boyfriend was deemed a dork who would be forever alone. And I was the girl-dork who, people assumed, would also be forever alone. So we decided to date. If you can’t beat ‘em, outsmart them. Play to win.

There was a sort of power in being able to tell others I was spoken for, even if by the least desired guy around. It meant that no matter how uncool I was, I was at least cool enough to score a date. This social currency would carry me into my adulthood. So, like anyone who becomes an expert in their field, I planned and practiced.

I had a multitude of methods at my disposal, which went roughly like this:

STEP 1: Never miss your shot. Anyone could be THE ONE.

After I hit puberty, no guy was off the table for consideration. Humiliation be damned—if he could breathe, he could and would be asked out by me. Or flirted with, at the very least.

STEP 2: PLAN PLAN PLAN. 

Knowledge wasn’t just power. It was precision. I had my first kiss a month shy of my 14th birthday and lost my virginity the week after my high school graduation at an amusement park motel; nothing too far from ordinary. What no one else knew was that there was 4 years’ worth of bookmarks telling me how to kiss with tongue, folded Cosmopolitan magazines with instructions how to pleasure a perineum, and copious peer-reviewed evidence in the form of sex blogs highlighted.

I wouldn’t just have sex. I’d win sex.

STEP 3: JUST DO IT

I had my first one-night stand on a drunk guy’s floor at the end of my first semester in college. He gave me strep throat, ruined a blockbuster film I wanted to see, and I would occasionally have an awkward encounter of seeing him ride the same campus bus for the rest of the year. 

One day, after he was kicked out of college, my high school crush reached out to me to rekindle our friendship. After a year of asynchronously communicating, he rented a hotel room for an hour to have sex with me. Midway through, he made a comment on my performance that would inspire me to become a power-bottom from that point on. My anxiety about being considered “bad in bed” told me that if guys desired girls who are good at sex, then that’s the girl I needed to be. Bad sex = no sex = unattractive to the male sex.

That night, shortly after he finished, we sat beside each other on the hotel bed and without hesitation both proceeded to open and scroll on Tinder. I pretended that I didn’t care about his apathy to our reunion after those few years. I brushed away the sinking fear in my gut that I had been used.

Over time, I kept a log of everyone I had slept with. But it was becoming harder to remember the names or even faces of those people after those first few encounters. Anytime sex was asked for or offered, I took the opportunity.

Every date, good or bad, became a hookup. Think of it like an unpaid internship on a resume; a crappy job was still one you could reference. And that experience was accompanied by the liberation of being a young adult in college with my own agency, in tandem with the maturation of my body, to give out something of my own that was ALWAYS valued.

I wouldn’t have traded that feeling for the world.

To me, sex seemed like trophy hunting. It was silly and funny to laugh about dating, about how goofy it was, about the situations I would end up in. And I enjoyed being an expert at something that I thought I was, by nature, supposed to be good at. Failed dates became my friends, and sometimes my friends with extra benefits.

Sex was just…sex.

I enjoyed giving my partners pleasure. So it didn’t matter if, throughout the sex, I was thinking about what I was going to eat for dinner.

Sex itself was boring. The story leading up to it was always more interesting than the sex itself. I never orgasmed, and most of the time I never even came close. Most men didn’t mind that I didn’t mind. And I wasn’t comfortable pretending or betting that my body would cooperate and give me the orgasm we both wanted me to have. It would take a couple hours of chatting before I even felt warmed up enough to the idea of having sex. I wanted it, sure… but really, I just wanted the ability to say that I did it.

By 23, I’d had 23 sexual partners—and nothing more.

After having my heart broken more times than I could count both romantically and platonically, I finally thought that #23 might be the one.

After a heartfelt and vulnerable 7-hour conversation until dawn, leading up to an incredible date that ended in sensually connected and intimate sex… He suddenly distanced himself until I never heard from him again.

I was distraught. But for the past 5 years, I’d had one thing that always picked my confidence back up: dating apps. A few nights out with some fellas would surely bring back my charisma, right?

But it didn’t.

I felt nothing. I was swiping and swiping and trying to convince myself that I wanted to meet these people for something R-rated. But really, I just wanted to be in the arms of someone who I could talk to about my feelings. That was always the best part about the sex for me: the part when it was over, when we could talk and learn more about each other, having shared a unique and intimate experience. 

I couldn’t understand why my usual method of motivation wasn’t giving me what it had done through all of those years. I guess after years of school, therapy, and experiences… My “body count” wasn’t enough anymore.

It was as frustrating as it was enlightening.

Here I was, in my time of need, and my go-to therapeutic solution was failing me! How could I possibly have been lying to myself for so many years?! The one thing that seemed the most normal and socially acceptable about me was now somehow nuanced and indescribably complicated.

The timing was serendipitous for so many things in my life. I had just moved from my college town to a completely different state. I had cut contact with my family and toxic friends. My crappy job had me reconsidering everything I wanted in life. My inescapable loneliness left me boundless time for intense self-reflection.

I’ve always struggled with using labels to help define me as a person. Accepting the mental health diagnoses I’ve sought in adulthood has felt imposing, connecting to my ancestral roots has felt appropriative, and getting constantly excluded and ostracized through my life has left a deep-seated fear that spiraled into a never-ending habit of trying to prove my self-worth without room for error. And labels– if judged wrong– were errors.

But I started to put together the pieces…

  • Fixations of finding true love…
  • Dating in order to fit in and be desirable…
  • Receiving praise for my sexy skillset…
  • Loving the rise but hating the fall of every date…
  • Only liking audio porn…

As a Black cisgendered woman, I assumed there were a lot of things I couldn’t be:

  • Anxious, because I liked being around others
  • Autistic, because I made an extreme effort to be liked
  • Abstinent, because my body was the one thing men liked about me

And finally:

  • Ace/Graysexual, because I had had a lot of sex with various men.

Giving myself these titles feels wrong—no, it feels illegal. I’ve never been the poster example of anything, much less as a person who has eccentricities that come with explanations. I’m just “that weird Black girl” and these labels are just excuses.

Or maybe…

Maybe discovering who I am, what I need, and what I want, without worrying about what’s “right”, turned into my Happiest Ever After of them all.

I never quite understood the idea that labels are all bad; they are simply just tools that help us navigate in the world we live in.  

Letters, after all, use labels to get to where they need to go.

So perhaps I should begin using my labels as tools, too. However, and whenever, it helps.

About the writer:

For Lexie Bee, every awkward date or failed-flirty encounter is a new avenue for growth, connection, and of course: storytelling! Finally coming into her own as a self-described ‘Pokedex of Intersectionality’ with her race, culture, gender, sexuality, class, and neurodiversity, Coffee & Kink is her debut into public and professional conversations about her sex life– past, present, and evolving. With the duality of comedy and conversation, she aspires to give others the confidence to speak without shame (especially if you’re sitting at the table with her!)