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Hi Doc,
I identify myself as a sex-averse heteroromantic asexual. To describe my experience the best: I am a cis gender 33 year old male who enjoys quite a lot a female company. In other words, I feel very comfortable around women.
I feel the emotional connection and enjoy sharing things and spending time with them quite a lot. I have a couple of female friends I meet up with quite regularly and we do activities together, such as going for walks, for coffee, chatting with each other, going for trips, going to a museum, etc. I generally have a very good mutual connection with these women and we enjoy spending time together quite a lot.
I also like being physical in some ways with women. I enjoy things like hugging, holding hands, being physically close to each other. I regularly dance salsa and bachata (in classes and Latino clubs/bars) which both means being physically close with my dance partners. Particularly bachata is a type of dance that is quite romantic and there is a certain intimate, physical and also emotional aspect with my female dance partners I enjoy quite a lot.
At the same time, however, there is this ace and sex-averse part of me. I do not feel sexual attraction to any other person or gender whatsoever. I had sex three times in my life and I did not like it at all, it felt more like an obligation for me I was actually glad when it was over. I didn’t like it and enjoy it at all. This is what proved me of the fact I am not into genital sex at all and I simply do not want to experience it again for the rest of my life. I actually masturbate sometimes because I like the physical sensation of it and it helps me to relieve tension. I just do not like sex with any other person.
At the same time I am not really looking for a serious romantic partner despite seeing myself as heteroromantic. I actually enjoy quite a lot being single and having all of this freedom having the time for myself and my hobbies. But I still enjoy the connection I have with my female dance partners and my three female friends I write about above. One of them is also ace. The other one is allosexual and single and we both enjoy this time together and both like being single. The third one is bisexual and married to a straight man – and I have also a really good mutual emotional connection with this woman. And her husband is generally ok with us hanging up together time to time. But these relationships are not about sex at all – they are mainly about the emotional and somewhat physical connection but not in a sexual way.
I call myself heteroromantic not because I would be actively looking for a serious romantic partner but because I feel all of this sensual, emotional, physical (but non-sexual) and also aesthetic attraction towards women while being a cis gender man.
It seems I have found a way how to live my life in those ways and I am generally satisfied in those ways. So why am I writing to you?
It seems my experience is so ‘unique’ and it breaks the stereotypes in so many aspects. Like I was straight to a very large extent but not in a sexual way – this is something that the heterosexually-normative world does not seem to understand. Like I was queer to some extent because of my asexuality but not queer enough because of my heteroromantic side – so something that the LQBTQIA+ community does not seem to understand because I seem to be quite straight to them. And there is this very ace part of me because of my lack of sexual attraction and sexual interest towards anyone. But there is also this part of me that enjoys being physical with women, just not in a sexual way. So in this way like I was not ace enough. It is like I was somewhat part of all of those words but not fully enough because of my experience.
To put some example how I have confused people a couple of times in my life:
A few times in my life people wrongly labelled me ‘gay’ because of my lack of interest in sex with women. But I am not ‘gay’ because I am not interested in sex with guys either. Then I can confuse the very same people because I actually enjoy the connection and a particular physical intimacy with women (particularly during dances) – it is just not connected to any sexual interest in the women, there is more this emotional connection I enjoy about the whole thing. People around me seem to be really puzzled about this and they question who I am.
Do you please have any advice how to not feel as such an alien in this world where I seem to have such a different experience from everyone else around me that I feel I do not feel almost in any community? How to explain to all of these people around me who I really am without feeling broken or incomplete?
Thanks a lot for any help or advice
Straight But Not Aro
I think the issue here is that a lot of people misunderstand the difference between physical intimacy and sexual intimacy, SBNA.
Now before I get into this, let me explain a couple things for folks who may not be familiar with asexuality and it’s permutations. Asexuality, in general, is a lack of interest in sex or lack of sexual desire. However, like many aspects of the human experience, asexuality falls on a spectrum. There are folks who aren’t interested in in sex – as in, they don’t feel sexual desire – but are ok with having sex on occasion, usually for their partner’s sake. There’re folks who are what’s sometimes called “gray ace” who experience sexual attraction on an extremely rare and sporadic occasion; for example, they may find that once every few years they feel a stirring and desire to get laid. And then there’re folks who, like you, SBNA, who are sex-averse or sex-repulsed, who not only don’t feel a desire for sex but are kinda squicked out by it entirely.
Now, part of the disconnect that a lot of folks have is that they often equate being asexual with not having a sexual orientation – after all, if you don’t care about sex, why would gender matter to you? But sex and romance are two separate things. Just as you can want sex with someone you’re not romantically interested in, people with no interest in sex still can desire romantic, emotional intimacy. Ace people fall into the same sexuality spectrum as everyone else – some are heterosexual, some are homosexual, some are bi/pan, etc.
And here’s the part that occasionally bakes people’s noodles: just because someone isn’t interested in sex or doesn’t like sex, that doesn’t mean that they don’t like physical intimacy.
Just because someone’s asexual doesn’t mean that they don’t have the same needs that all humans have. We are, after all, a species that needs physical touch; babies will literally die because they aren’t given enough skin to skin contact. Adults who are deprived of a certain amount of physical contact with others experience what’s known as “touch starvation” or “skin-hunger”.
(To this day, I’m surprised that “skin hunger” isn’t the name of an erotic horror movie)
Skin hunger or “touch starvation” is especially high in America, in no small part because we’re a country that’s touch-averse. We’re a culture that has conflated physical intimacy and contact with sexual contact. We treat certain forms of physical contact as being reserved strictly for sexual partners, and those forms of contact are seen as being signs of sexual interest regardless of the context. This is why, for example, you won’t see male friends casually holding hands in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but you will in Lahore, Pakistan.
In your case, SBNA, you’re actually doing a lot of the things that are recommended for people experiencing touch starvation and skin hunger – you’re going dancing, you’re physically affectionate with friends, etc. Those are forms of platonic, physical contact and ways of helping to get your needs for physical touch met. They also happen to be coded as romantically or sexually intimate in the US. This can create a weird disconnect in some people’s brains; if you weren’t into them, why would you want that sort of physical contact?
Well, because you’re human. You’re sex-averse, not touch-averse, and because you’re heteroromantic, you’re more interested in having this sort of contact with women.
Now admittedly, there’s some interesting questions to be asked about how much influence culture has on this for you and your preference for interacting with women in this way. It’s also worth noting that because of the coding and conflation, women are much more likely to be cool with these forms of platonic touch and contact than men are – again, America is very weird about conflating physical intimacy with sexual and romantic intimacy.
But that’s really more of an academic matter, and not as relevant as the fact that you’re romantically attracted to women and you enjoy forms of contact with them that are coded as being part of a romantic or intimate relationship. And asexual people can and do have romantic relationships with people, and those relationships frequently have forms of physical, but non-sexual intimacy. Ace people in relationships enjoy hugging and cuddling with their partners, sharing a bed with them and the same other forms of casual intimate contact that allosexual people have in relationships. The only difference is sex.
What I find interesting is that you mention that you aren’t “ace” enough because you enjoy physical contact. I’m curious as to whether that’s something that people in the queer community were actually saying or implying to you, or if this were something that you felt was present. It’s worth digging into whether that was something that was coming from other people, or if that was something that is ultimately coming from you – especially if it stemmed from comparing yourself to other ace people who might also be touch-averse or more biromantic.
(There’s also the possibility of it being a matter of the complexities of the queer label. There’s a lot of discourse over who is or isn’t covered by the term “queer”, and that’s a topic that’s well outside my wheelhouse as a straight cis man.)
But in terms of explaining it to others so that it makes sense? You keep it simple and straightforward. Don’t roll it out like it’s some shameful thing or that you’re trying to explain why you’re not broken, any more than someone who doesn’t liking coffee or IPAs or eating natto or particularly stinky cheeses isn’t broken. This isn’t a problem to be solved, a condition to be cured or a mystery to be unraveled. You’re satisfied with the way you are.
You’re straight, you like having relationships and intimate contact with women. You just don’t like sex, that’s all. You’re not opposed to it on moral, philosophical or religious grounds, you’re not opposed to other people having it, you just don’t feel desire and you don’t like having sex.
Don’t forget: this is just giving people a fact about you, one thing that describes part of who you are, not all of you. How people respond and whether they can accept this information or not?
Well that tells a lot more about them.
Good luck.
Hi Dr NerdLove,
I’m a bi man in an open relationship/ethically non-monogamous relationship with another man, and I’m working on setting up a Tinder profile to try and make some friends & find some hook ups. (We already use Grindr, but I would like to meet people who don’t use Grindr lol.)
I was reading some of your stuff because I’m used to the particular hookup culture norms of queer men, and I wanted to be prepared for culture differences I might run into on other apps. One of the articles I read was “Tune up your Tinder profile” and it felt like a real downer. I think it was fair for the writers to criticise the two polyamorous profiles, especially the “open LDR” one, but without an example of someone “doing it right” it felt like there’s no way to do it right — especially since one of the writers says “it’s just hard to put that in your profile. I’m actually not sure how you should do it.”
In that same article, I had a hard time with the comment that “He doesn’t say he’s poly. He says he’s in an open relationship. Those take out the -amory part from my experience.” I personally don’t like to describe myself as polyamorous (for complicated reasons), and since I’m explicitly not looking for more romantic relationships I feel like calling myself “polyamorous” could be misleading. But the reactions in that article make it seem like I have to call myself polyamorous in order to avoid the “red flag” of saying I’m in an open relationship.
I’m fine with the idea of disclosing that I have a primary partner in my profile; I do on Grindr, which has an “open relationship” flag. I just have zero idea how to disclose it in a way that’s acceptable in straight spaces, especially without coming off as “guy who makes being non-monogamous his whole personality”. This isn’t a “looking for the magic words to make everyone love you” thing, it’s just me feeling very unmoored in a dating culture I’m not used to, and not being sure how to disclose my relationship in a way that’s acceptable in these spaces.
Cheers,
Half Gay Half Straight All Bisexual
So there’re a few things to consider here, HGHSAB. First is a matter of defining terms. Non-monogamy is basically the umbrella term for the varying different flavors of not being monogamous or not making a monogamous commitment. It’s a bit like how parallelograms, trapezoids, squares and rectangles are all quadrilaterals, but not all quadrilaterals are squares or rectangles.
The different terms under the non-monogamous umbrella are ultimately about defining expectations. An open relationship, for example, just means that the participants are allowed to have sexual partners outside of their relationship. Sometimes that means they can have casual, infrequent sex with other people, sometimes it means they have an ongoing sexual connection with others. It may mean looking for play partners for specific activities (BDSM, for example) or for potential group sex scenarios (threesomes, orgies, etc). It’s a deliberately broad term; while being in an open relationship doesn’t preclude outside romantic relationships, it doesn’t promise them either, and most folks will assume “open” just means “not sexually exclusive”.
Polyamory, on the other hand, specifically means that the people in the relationship can or have romantic connections with other people in addition to their partner(s).
Another thing to consider is the differences between queer relationships, especially between men, and straight relationships. Non-monogamy is much more common in queer male relationships than it is in straight ones. It’s really only very recently that non-monogamy has hit a critical mass in straight culture. Even in the 2010s, a lot of folks looked at non-monogamy among the straits as being sus at best, if not an actual lie at worst.
This was actually a problem for a lot of people who were genuinely non-monogamous and why people started adopting the term ethically non-monogamous. One of the reasons why it felt hard to advertise yourself as being non-monogamous or being in an open relationship is… well, because a lot of people (mostly, but not exclusively men) were actively lying about being open or using “open” relationships as a “get out of cheating, free” card. Similarly, the way a lot of people would practice non-monogamy could be problematic; what was or wasn’t “allowed” could be nebulous at best, or one partner would put unreasonable limits on who the other could see or what kind of relationships they could have. The term “ethical non-monogamy”, at least, implied a more equitable and less sketchy relationship… even if it could still be messy as hell.
Polyamory, at least among people who didn’t reject non-monogamy out of hand, was seen as being more “honest” or “reasonable”…ish. After all, love was involved. It was still seen as being weird – those “poly is my whole personality” stereotypes exist for a reason, after all – but less like a dude who was trying to convince women that he and his wife had an arrangement… which would’ve come as a great surprise to his wife. It also had a lot of people who doubted the viability of a truly polyamorous relationship; people would make comments about being to a lot of poly weddings but not so many poly fifth anniversaries. There were multiple episodes of various daytime TV shows where poly throuples were paraded out like exotic animals at the zoo – “this man has a wife and a girlfriend and they’re both ok with it!”
These days, because non-monogamy has become, if not mainstream, then at least more recognized and acknowledged, it’s a lot easier to present yourself as non-monogamous. In fact – and getting back to the meat of your question – not only are there dating apps that cater specifically to non-monogamous people, but most of the mainstream apps like OKCupid, Tinder, Bumble, etc. have made it easier for people looking for non-monogamous partners. OKCupid allows for people in open or poly relationships to connect to their partners’ accounts, while Tinder, Hinge and others have specifically added categories like “ethical non-monogamy”, “open relationship” and “polyamory” to their relationship types.
So if you want to know how to present yourself to potential partners in straight or mostly straight spaces, you have the tools to do it. As with most best practices, you want to have this flagged in your profile (usually under “looking for” or “relationship type”) so people can search for or exclude those terms and to be clear about what you’re looking for and what you offer. In your case, you’ve got a male primary partner and you’re looking for casual female partners. You may want to make it clear that you’re not looking for threesomes and that you and your partner date separately (assuming that you do). Again, this helps set expectations and helps prevent (but can’t completely eliminate) confusion or misunderstandings.
Now, will being this straightforward cut down on potential matches? Absolutely… and that’s a good thing. The last thing you want are people who are expecting one thing and getting surprised that you’re offering something completely different. You want folks who are going to be cool with you and your relationship dynamic, which means you also want the folks who aren’t to keep on moving. This way neither of you is wasting the others’ time. Just don’t be surprised if you get a few false positives anyway; there’re always folks who will miss or ignore even the biggest, flashiest “I am not what you’re looking for” signs.
Good luck.
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