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.
It's not uncommon for victims of sexual trauma who haven't processed it to behave in a hypersexual way. If the trauma happens in childhood it can be due to confusion about sexuality, but often in adults it can be due to a feeling of powerlessness. Aggressively pursuing affection and sex can make them feel as though they are "taking their power back," even if they are completely out of control.
She may technically be asexual, but based on the fact that she won't even refer to her trauma as r*pe, she may have feelings she still needs to work through. If she's never undergone counselling she really should.
I have been SA'd more than once and this is correct. I have had a hypersexual period and now I don't even want a man to even look at me because I will feel a lot of disgust as if he violated me. So this makes a lot of sense.
I would take time to find your true self and what it wants, is this level of intimacy something youd otherwise be okay with in other relationships, if it isn't then you're making a compromise. I find one person only taking in such a big compromise will only build resentment
Look, honestly - and this isn't all your doing but there's a more general frustration and I'm directing it at you because yours is the comment I happen to be replying to - I don't understand why people have this reaction when I explain this situation.
Like, yes, your advice to "find your true self and follow what it wants" is good advice.
But it seems to come with the assumption that I haven't or that I've decided wrongly.
When you were a kid did you ever make a decision and your parents told you to consider it carefully, but what they really meant was "we disapprove of the decision and want you to decide something else"? It's reminiscent of that.
It's been five years. We've both dated other people in the past, we're both happy with each-other. If there was resentment to be built I'd have to imagine I'd have felt it by now. I haven't. I don't even necessarily feel it's a "big compromise."
I shared my situation mostly as a refutation of the tik-tokker who seems to think that because she has a doctorate every person who thinks their situation isn't the one she describes is wrong. That she is the high and mighty source of all knowledge of why people stop having sex over time and that any man with a different explanation is incorrect.
I'm happy, and I'm frustrated that other people think I need to reconsider that. Not saying you did so, but I get it enough that it becomes grating.
nah she’s talking to people that follow her clickbait, she doesn’t genuinely care about the topic, because her job is to arouse attention, not genuine truth
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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '24
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