GOOD ADVICE/BAD GAY is an advice series from an anonymous gay therapist1 who’s not afraid to hurt your feelings with the truth.
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Hi Bad Gay,
Basically my issue is a common one: different levels of sexual interest and different traumas knocking nasties in a relationship. But of course it has its own particular complications and I need help sorting it all out.
My partner and I have been together for more than a few years now and also were close before we started dating. When we started moving to a more romantic situation, she had made it known that she felt very alienated from her body and wasn't sure she could be in a sexual relationship. I told her I wouldn't hold any sexual expectations. We were and still are non-monogamous and this gave me the sense that I didn't need one partner to satisfy all my needs, something I still believe.
Then early on in our romantic relationship and to my surprise, she initiated sex and this started a period of us having a lot of sex. We had both left relationships where we felt undervalued and unattractive, and I think our mutual excitement about falling for each other prompted that winter when we would spend days in bed fucking or wake up in the middle of the night to fuck. She told me I was the first person to make her cum and I naively and arrogantly thought we (I, the knight in a shining black glove) had overcome all the bad associations she had with sex prior.
Those early relationship endorphins have since dissipated, and over the years my partner has become more and more withdrawn from sex. We've talked about it many times, and usually the conversation ends with my partner saying the problem is she doesn't feel attractive and brushing away my statements of desire for her. I know there is also a lot of unprocessed shame around her sexuality and body and though she was in therapy for several years, she has told me she never talked about sex and rarely about her relationship to her body. She is a queer cis woman, who hates being called femme, from a repressive religious family with lots of trauma, and I’m a they/them dyke dude from a repressive “broken” family with lots of trauma. I mention this to say not only are we both messed up (who isn’t), but that there’s a gender dynamic at play.
I have tried to come to terms with us simply not being sexual partners but remaining romantic partners. To me, this is an acknowledgement of my initial commitment to her (no expectations of sex) and also just the fact I want to be with her and I like being her partner. We are a really good little team together and I love being her companion in the world and we do have a ton of physical intimacy. But then, once every ~6 months, she initiates sex. And each time, I think, Wow, we might start doing this again. Though when I bring it up after to see if it's something she'd like to do more or do differently, she usually responds, "I don't know." She fully acknowledges the frustrations of being met with this ambivalence and she seems frustrated as well. More often we masturbate separately, sometimes next to each other but without engaging each other. I almost wish we just had a cut and dry non-sexual relationship if the alternative is this rare and rather random occurrence of sexual contact. Because they seem random to me, I don’t even have a chance to really feel good about it, i.e. I’m neither seduced nor acknowledged as seductive.
This is maybe my major difficulty, that not having sex also goes along with me feeling completely de-sexualized and infantilized (I am cuddly but not sexy). While I could accept not having a sexual relationship, it's hard for me to confront the idea of being with someone who doesn't find me attractive. I also think it’s getting to me that we don’t even make out. She assures me she does find me attractive and that she feels terrible that while I helped her at one point feel good about her body, she is incapable of doing the same for me. The infantilization according to her is a defense mechanism. As somebody who was once “daddy” to her in the bedroom, it’s hard to not feel demoted.
For most of our relationship I have navigated our differing orientations to sex by being with other people. This was an ongoing negotiation between us, as she hasn’t really dated anyone besides one long-distance flame (a mostly non-sexual relationship), while I have had several casual and one more seriously romantic relationship (this was very painful for her and ended over an impasse). Over the last year, though, I haven’t had sex with anyone. Tensions are also strained because we usually live separately but did lockdown together and I feel like my masturbation life has been disrupted. Maybe this will all seem less bad than it does right now when people feel comfortable dating again. But I also worry that no matter how much sex I have with other people, there will still be this feeling of alternating rejection and confusion with my partner.
How can I come to terms with the fact that she seems sometimes to want to scratch an itch with me but doesn’t think of me as a fully sexual adult person because she doesn’t seem to see herself that way? I think there is also some shame on both our parts that I am seeking sex outside the relationship. How might we create a reciprocal relationship where both people, despite different inclinations to sex, are sexually fulfilled? Should I ask for clarity in the form of taking sex off the table between us for the near future until we work out our issues?
Sincerely,
Long Gone Daddy
My dear Long Gone Daddy,
There is a tendency, I think, for us to hold these relational complications in our hands like a Rubik's Cube or a million-piece puzzle, thinking to ourselves, “All of the pieces are here. Why, after turning it over and over in my hands, sorting and organizing all of these pieces, can I not make this all fit together in a way that feels satisfying to me?”
The idea that pulling all of the right levers in the relationship (whether monogamous or not) will suddenly, like a mad scientist's experiment, result in a day where everyone feels fulfilled, sexually satisfied, and happy is misguided. This striving can cause you to lose sight of what is happening, and by that I mean that this letter, this constant re-adjusting, this “a little bit of this, little bit of that” recipe-testing, is the relationship.
And I say that without judgement, if you can believe that. You are here, this is the relationship you are in. The withholding and the closeness, the “knight in a shining black glove” to the sex every 6 months, to the hurt and pain navigated as you figure out what style of non-monogamy works best for you as a couple. The come here, come here, yes I am attracted to you but know I don’t want to fuck intermittent reinforcement schedule is it. This is who you and she are, for better or worse.
This is a relational dynamic, not a her problem or a you problem. The hard part of relational problems is that though they are co-created, they sometimes cannot be unwound in collaboration. Sometimes one person says, “Oh, THIS is my limit and not how I want my life to be and I have lots of evidence that it won’t change, so I have to make a change.”
Let me pause here and say that one of the ways to look at a relational conflict is to imagine it like this: Instead of sitting across the table from each other with something between us (a problem or dynamic that needs working on), what if we sat on the same side of the table and worked through it together? What if it wasn’t just you doing the puzzle, but rather both of you. Is this an incompatibility or is this an opportunity to really work through something as a team? This letter doesn’t make it clear to me whether you know what kind of problem you have here, but I think it is worth asking yourself.
Here’s my other thing, and this is perhaps a less-trusting read of her issues (as described by you) than she deserves, but what the hell—you deserve to be wanted, like really fucking wanted, by the person you love. And I’m not saying she has to be sexually available to you. I'm saying in a relationship it feels good to have someone you love, who you are sexually interested in, be sexually interested in you, and show you that. That’s really an OK want/need/feeling to have within the bounds of respectful and thoughtful sexual dynamics. You would do well to find your Daddy mode (a place you seem to like yourself in) and ask yourself, “How do I want to feel in relation to this very important person in my life?” You are a sexual adult. You should not have to convince anyone of this, especially not your long-term partner.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with different levels of sexual desire. There are PLENTY of relationships where one person is hornier than the other and people figure that out every day. The thing to watch out for here is your partner’s dip into “I’m soooooo sorry I’m the woooooorst, you deserve better.” That’s immature. It has smol energy. Very I’m an adult with agency but that’s hard so I’m going to just apologize and stay the same instead of thinking concretely about how to meet my partner’s needs energy. Instead, imagine a world where she says, “Listen, Daddy, our sexual drives are different and we love each other. Let’s problem-solve and make it hot,” instead of moping.
The question becomes, are you going to take it or leave it? I deduce from this letter that you are fairly good at communicating with each other. Though I will say all the Bad Gay RED FLAG sirens are absolutely blaring at the phrase you used earlier in the letter, “knocking nasties,” which perhaps reveals more than you meant to about your relationship to sex and bodies. The other one I pursed my lips at was that your partner has been in therapy for “several years” but has “never talked about sex and rarely about her relationship to her body.”
BUT I have decided to give you both the benefit of the doubt that you are reasonable and loving and doing your best because I’ve been absent for a little while and it is Pride after all (please someone write a letter about the babies being upset about Kink At Pride so I can really let loose?). So here is what you need to ask yourself: Are you ok with all this? Can you (now that we can cautiously re-emerge into the sexual world) be ok with getting your sexual needs met with just other folks? (It sounds like no.) Can you enjoy the every six months for what it is and feel good about the partnership in other ways? (It sounds like you feel really like you are squashing a part of yourself in order to stay in this relationship but, ok, do you.) Can you get yourself a nice hobby that makes you feel good and sexy and cool and strong and look within for some bits of that fulfillment rather than waiting for her sexual sun to shine on you?
As always, I can’t answer that for you but, as I always ask my dear readers—what is your commitment to suffering? You want what you want and you deserve it, but you cannot talk your way into her behavior shift. To answer one of your specific questions: You don’t want to take sex with her off the table, so don’t offer that, and don’t play “chicken” in relationships; that way lies madness. The only behavior you can shift is your own, at the end of the day. You can feel heard by another person, you can feel loved by another person, but if that other person isn’t interested in shifting the behavior, or in this case maybe just can’t, then I don’t know what to tell you, Daddy. It’s your life, do you want.
You seem to want to make it work, so it’s time to put all the puzzle pieces one the table, sit down next to each other, and work through them together. Be honest about the things that make you sad, mad, and hurt. Don’t forget to check in with your body, and listen to her a little less and you a little more. The way this relationship is, is your relationship—are you ok with that?
Sincerely,
Bad Gay
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David tweets at @k8bushofficial.
This column is meant as a source of advice and entertainment, and should not be considered therapy or medical advice in any way, nor does it establish a therapeutic relationship. If you are seeking either, please look into the appropriate venues.
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