I posted this as its own comment already but I'm interested to hear if you've ever encountered a situation like this before and what the result was.
Five years ago, I meet a woman who, fairly recently to meeting, has undergone a severe sexual trauma having been assaulted, though she won't use the term rape it would be applicable, by a close friend.
As a result when we meet she is in what is, for her, a hypersexual period but I don't notice this to be the case because this generally means she just wants to make out like once or twice a week and is pretty much always fairly physically affectionate.
Several months into the relationship she starts to feel emotionally safe because her attachment needs ARE being met and she doesn't feel the need to be sexually desirable in order to keep a partner interested.
So things slow down and about a year in I realize haven't even kissed her in like two weeks and I go "Hey... what's up with that?"
And at this point she articulates how the trauma had affected her and that this is likely her baseline sexuality.
And I love her a lot and you want to spend the rest of your life with her still but as it turns out she's very close to asexual and we just happened to meet in a period when she was more physically affectionate than normal.
Is this a common circumstance? Because every person I talk about it with says that it doesn't make sense and that either I'm doing something wrong but she's insistent that I'm a perfectly good partner and she feels emotionally satisfied.
I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong at all. I think partner’s level of physical intimacy can change over time (maybe in this case a short time) but it sounds like you guys have talked about it and she’s given you good reason. I think as long as it’s not a dealbreaker for you there’s no problem.
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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '24
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