pro tip: before getting serious w a man, just casually mention ur period. like, just say ‘my cramps are bad rn’ or ‘I have to go buy some pads’. his reaction is very telling of how mature and understanding he is. you don’t wanna be dating a grown ass man who gets grossed out by the word menstruation. u deserve someone who is comfortable w u and I do mean all of u. you’ll be thanking urself for doing it now and not later hun!
THIS IS REALLY INDICATIVE OF HOW THEY FEEL ABOUT A LOT OF THINGS. TRUST ME.
True story. Once, I dated a guy once that wouldn’t let me pay for my own pads him he has with me. He wouldn’t go out and buy them himself if I needed them though. I had to stand next to him, which defeated the whole reason for him going to buy me any. Was uncomfortable with period talk and letting me pay for things myself.
Once, I also dated a guy that wouldn’t even stand in the pads alley with him. It grossed him out. Everything about my period grossed him out and he didn’t want to touch me. Just left me alone and didn’t want to deal with any of it. Wouldn’t even stand next to me when I bought pads.
Now, the guy I’m with and going to marry, he is a whole different story. I was dying of cramps and got my period while finishing up a class. (My campus can get very bad to the point where I’m shaking in pain or unable to move) Mistakenly didn’t bring pads and texted I needed him to do me the biggest favor. Not only did he buy me pads (something he does from time to time when I need them) but he marched through campus with them not bothering to hide it and brought me Advil.
Last week, I was dying in pain and lost my hot pack when I went to visit my mother. I asked him to buy me a new one and he forgot. So, I’m in massive pain near tears and it’s past ten at night wishing I hadn’t been so stupid as to lose it. He gets dressed and goes out to get me a hot pack even when I tell him over and over that I can wait until morning and I don’t want him to go not because he needs to go to bed.
He flat out says “I love you. You asked me to get you a hot pack and I forgot. Now, you are in a lot of pain and I can’t stand to see that. So, I’m getting you the hot pack and I’ll be back soon.” Comes back with the hot pack, ice cream and a candy bar.
Not saying all men need to be this level of nice. But I am saying that bring up your period in a casual manner is a great way to see how people will treat you when you are sick, not feeling well, or just basically how they handled things.
ACTUALLY THEY DO NEED TO BE THAT LEVEL OF NICE THOUGH
You are absolutely correct, and I was a fool not to realize it sooner.
Early on in dating my boyfriend, we’d gone out to set up and claim a campsite for a group that would be meeting us there later, and I ended up getting my period after we arrived and started setting up. I hadn’t brought any supplies, wasn’t expecting things to start up for another few days.
So I had to bring it up and ask to go back to town on a supply run, since I didn’t have a car and he’d driven us out to the campground area. He got me a painkiller out of his car first-aid kit and one of those gauze bandage things as a stopgap so I wouldn’t bleed all over myself and ruin my clothes, then drove me all the way back to town to get pads. Didn’t even hesitate about walking in with me and being in the pads-and-tampons aisle, and also bought me a chocolate bar while I was in the bathroom getting things dealt with.
Good dudes are out there. And maybe if the dumbass immature guys realize that their dumbassery is costing them relationship chances, they’ll take it as a kick in the pants to grow up a little.
Tag: relationships
kirbylovesyou
replied to your post “impuretale:socialjusticeichigo:
thefriendsinmyheadthatilove:…”
if ur ace just date someone who also doesnt want sex ??? there r non ace ppl out there like that .if ur ace obvs dont date someone whos non ace n loves sex… like u gotta date ppl who want the same thing in a relationship , romanticly or sexually…wtf is this post
There is way too much to unpack here, maybe someone else can explain why ‘ace’ doesn’t mean ‘never wants to have sex.’ I am a) allosexual and b) too fucking tired.
I’m pretty fucking tired too but you know what let’s have at this
wrt aces having sex: asexual does not mean “has no libido”. asexual dos not mean “celibate”. asexual means “does not experience sexual attraction”. if you need help understanding this, let me use myself as an example: I get horny sometimes. it has nothing to do with the people I see around me or whether I think they’re pretty. so yes, I’m an ace with a libido, because libido is not the same as attraction.
wrt aces and allos being compatible or not: incompatibility is a mutual state. it’s never “YOU are incompatible with ME and that’s YOUR fault.” it’s always “WE are incompatible with each other, and that’s NOBODY’S fault.”
incompatibility is also based on a hell of a lot more than ace or allo identity, or libido, or celibacy. there are aces who can be and are happy in highly sexual relationships. there are allos who can be and are happy in entirely sexless relationships. don’t assume that “I’m not ace, and this is how I feel about sex, so this is how everyone who isn’t ace feels about sex.” once you’ve made that assumption, you’re automatically wrong.
if you, personally, are not going to be happy in a sexless relationship, by all means, don’t be in one! nobody’s asking you to! but that’s a negotiation that needs to happen between you and your partner(s), NOT between you and the entire concept of people who don’t want to have sex.
dang this is some good shit
I’m????
Oh my God this actually explains so much.
So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.
So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.
So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.
This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner.
So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.
The only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s okay to love your friends. It’s okay to share your needs and your problems with your friends. It’s okay to lean on your friends, to hug your friends, to be weak with your friends. Only if this is okay for boys to do with their male friends can this problem be resolved… so men, this one’s on you. Women can’t fix this for you; you don’t listen to us about matters of what it means to be a man. Fix your own shit and teach your brothers and sons and friends that this is okay, or everyone suffers.
The next time a guy says, “What? You don’t want to be my friend?” I’ll text him this and then ask if he really wants to be friends or just have another potential girlfriend.
y’all I am living for these analyses where the new way to fight the patriarchy is to teach men to love each other and themselves
Im a communication student and can confirm the above is absolutely 100% accurate and it’s called agentic vs communal friendship theorized by Steven McCornack
the problem with the monogamy polyamory discourse imo is the focus on identity. you let monogamous or polyamorous be who you are instead of a mere description of the way you form relationships. people aren’t hardwired one way or the other, at the end of the day you’re making choices about your boundaries. why don’t you just let life surprise you sometimes so it’s not a full on identity crisis every time you want something or someone you didn’t expect
👆☝👆☝ “what do I want right now?” “What am I comfortable with right now?” “What do I feel safe doing right now?”
One of the many reasons why I identify with descriptive rather than prescriptive language, and not just around relationships.
Some people feel identified by their relationship style. Cool. Some don’t. Rad. Some change many times over their lifetime, or even over a few weeks? Go you. Take care of yourself, be honest with yourself, and the haters can pound sand.
Adulting tip: before you move in with someone, sit down and have a discussion about what a clean living space looks like. Doing this would have saved me so much aggravation in my life.
“But Jaqui,” I hear you asking, “why should we have to talk about it? Clean’s clean, right?” No, it’s not. And thinking cleanliness is a self-evident concept is a great way for screaming fights to happen down the line.
Here’s an example: to my mom, clean means that all the things in the space are not actively dirty, and are free of crumbs and food stains and the like. It doesn’t matter to her where you put your shit, so long as no one has to worry about bugs or stains or diseases. To my once-stepfather, clean meant that everything had a place where it belonged, and things were neat and organized, and there was no visible clutter. He gave less of a shit about crumbs under the microwave than he did about random papers on the coffee table. So she could spend all day working to make sure you could eat off every surface in the kitchen, and he would come home and be upset because she’d spent all that time and as far as he could tell, nothing was clean. Meanwhile, his obsessive organization drove my mom batshit because he would blithely organize away things that weren’t clean by her standards. Needless to say, that relationship did not end well.
So yeah. Have the talk, and figure out what your “augh, this is unlivable, we need to clean!” points are. You may not always be able to get a shared living space exactly as clean as you want it, but if you figure out what everyone needs to feel like they have a reasonably clean space, you’re much more likely to correctly conclude that, when someone makes an offhand comment about the mess getting to them, you’ll know they mean the dishes in the sink are bothering them, and that they don’t give a shit about the dust on the bookshelves, and can act accordingly.
Open relationships seem to be becoming more popular which is cool, but this should be kept in mind:
If your partner is allowed to flirt and mess around with other people, and you’re not, you’re not in an open relationship. You’re being strung along, manipulated, and emotionally abused by someone who wants to do what they want on their terms, and control you at the same time.
Get out.
This happened to a friend of mine. The second she slept with someone else her boyfriend flew into a rage and my friend blamed herself. He also had a girlfriend who didn’t even know about her so…he was straight up cheating on his girlfriend and forbidding my friend he was seeing from seeing anyone else and called this an “open relationship.” My friend actually bought this as legitimate polyamory. Exploiting the language of polyamory can allow abusers to gaslight you to prevent you from even seeing infidelity and abuse for what it is.
Here’s an unpopular opinion that shouldn’t be unpopular: Not wanting sex is a reasonable boundary to set for literally any reason. Be it your trauma, your mental health, your sexuality, or any other factor. Your partners should respect that and they should respect you. This shouldn’t be a debate.
I just read this super sad post about this girl who’s asexual and married and everyone is basically telling her that she doesn’t deserve her husband/she’s just a prude/she should just do it anyway.
So I want to tell you all right now that if people tell you this, or if they tell you you’ll never have a relationship, it is BULLSHIT.
My husband is asexual and I’m not. He’s sex repulsed, we don’t have sex, we never have.
And it doesn’t matter to me. You know what does? He does. His mental health and wellbeing matter to me. Because he is my best friend and he’s one of the smartest, kindest, funniest people I’ve ever met. And he’s had people tel him that he’s broken and it makes me SO ANGRY because they are WRONG.
Being different doesnt mean you’re broken.
If you don’t like sex/don’t want it/etc. Do not let anyone tell you that you’re inferior because you’re not.
Do not let anyone convice you that you’ll never have a relationship because they’re wrong(if you want one).
You are not broken, and it will be okay.This made me feel really good. Remember this, for all my ace spectrum friends out there
#it’s really reassuring to hear from the partner #the one who’s not ace #but is totally cool with having no sex #loves her husband anyway #is in a stable and happy relationship #it’s such a relief when you discover that asexuality is a thing #that you’re okay #but then you start to wonder if it means your only chance at not ending up alone is finding someone else who’s also ace #but no #turns out it’s not #that’s really good to hear #so #thanks #so ace #so space
I hope you don’t mind me reblogging your tags but these are my feelings EXACTLY
I’m always a little nervous that I’m not “good enough” for a “real relationship” because sex isn’t on the table. So yeah, these stories are reassuring
The amount of pressure from society to have sex is incredible. We’re told it’s linked to relationship health and if you’re not willing to do every damn thing you’re labeled a prude. It’s incredibly disheartening, especially considering how one’s libido can change over the years even if you’re not ace. Nice to see a supportive piece from a partner.
OK, kids, buckle up it’s story time.
When I got married, I hadn’t had sex yet. Waiting until marriage was important to me, so that’s what I did. My wedding night was the first time I had sex.
It sucked.
I figured, ok, this is new for both of us, it’s probably going to take some practice.
A year later? It still sucked We tried a lot of different stuff. A lot of different stuff.
It sucked so bad, we even bought a copy of “Sex for Dummies”.
(it didn’t help)
I started working late so I didn’t go to bed at the same time as my husband. Every time he would travel for work, I’d be grateful that I didn’t have to go through the awkwardness of avoiding his advances when I went to bed.
He didn’t think it was healthy for a newlywed couple to have sex less than once a week. So we scheduled it. Repeat, scheduled intimacy. I thought I was putting on a brave face and doing what I needed to do to maintain a good relationship.
Because I had no idea that asexuality was a thing.
I talked to my husband, told him I didn’t like sex. He didn’t understand. I lost track of how many times I said: “It’s not that I don’t want to have sex with you. I don’t want to have sex with anyone.”
So it was established, Amber doesn’t like sex.
But we still did it. Because I wanted my husband to be happy. Sometimes halfway through, I’d start crying.
And he’d always be supportive, and apologize.
After he finished.
So when I found out about asexuality, and told him how I felt, he suggested I go to a doctor. Because obviously there was something wrong with me.
So I went to a doctor.
(surprise, surprise, I’m perfectly healthy)
Then I told my mom. When she suggested meds to improve my sex drive, I broke down in tears. I told her there was nothing wrong with me. And my mom has been 100% supportive of my orientation ever since. When people ask if I’m a lesbian, she teaches them about asexuality.
But anyway back to my journey of self-discovery
So I tell my husband, I’m asexual, I don’t want to have sex. You are not asexual, you do want to have sex. One of us is going to be miserable in this relationship, and I’m tired of it being me. I love you too much to make you miserable for the rest of your life, but I love myself too much to be miserable for the rest of my life. We might have to face the fact that we’re not right for each other.
So his immediate response is “no, I can change, I’ll do anything, divorce is not an option, etc”
But I can’t exactly ask him to stop wanting to have sex. Because that’s not how allosexual people work. And he can’t seduce me into wanting to have sex, because that’s not how asexual people work.
Anyway. He cries, I cry, we decide on marriage counseling to help our comunication.
Because we’d been married for almost 6 years by this point, and had been together for 3 years before that, and we still can’t really talk about what we want (or don’t want) in regards to sex.
So we go to counselling for 6 weeks. The first 3 sessions individually, and the last 3 together. During the together sessions, the therapist would prompt us with a question, and we’d talk to each other, being completely honest about things.
During (what turned out to be) our last session, I’d finally had enough. I’d had enough of being embarrassed about what anyone else would think. Enough of the gender roles I was being forced into. Enough of paying someone to watch me talk to my husband. Enough of pretending to salvage a relationship that I had been increasingly avoiding over the past 2 years, and I said:
“Josh, I love you. We have communication problems, but we’ve been together almost ten years and I’m willing to work through those if you think we can make it work. But I am never having sex with you again.”
(At this point, the therapist who’d been trying to get us to communicate put down her notebook and said, ok I think we’re done.)
Then and only then, did he agree to file for divorce.
—————–
I say all that to say this:
Don’t you dare fucking tell me that asexual representation doesn’t matter. I would have six years of my life back if I had known.
And if you’re in a relationship, talk to each other oh my God. About everything. What dream you had last night. That song from scout camp that randomly gets stuck in your head. The reason you don’t like sweet potato. That embarrassing thing you did in third grade that still makes you mad when you think about it. If you and your partner can share these tiny, intimate details, talking about sex is no big deal. And it takes practice, so practice.
————–
On a happy note, now, 3 years after the divorce, I am in a happy, stable relationship with another ace. And if you happen to ask my mom how I’m doing, she’ll tell you “I’ve never seen my baby girl happier.”
It gets better. But it’s up to you to make it that way.
@theonetheonlyjordanelizabeth please read this ❤️ I may be sex repulsed but I know that I love you and thats what matters ✨
I know this is already really long and really informative, but I also wanted to add a partner’s perspective. I too, have an ace fiancee. I knew about it before our relationship. I didn’t know it was a thing until I met her, and that was huge to me because I learned something new and also came to understand an old friend a little better.
I, on the other hand, am not ace. I am at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. I am pansexual, and she has a hard time I think coming to terms with the fact that I don’t want to make her have sex.
Like, ‘Really?’ you might ask me. Like really is my only reply. I have loved her for a long time now, and being we met over Tumblr and we knew one another before the relationship, sex isn’t a big deal in our relationship. and I can think of at least ten of my friends who would feel the same way right now.
ASEXUALITY IS A REAL THING, LOVING, SWEET ACE RELATIONSHIPS ARE REAL! Just because your partner wants sex doesn’t make you broken. Just because you don’t want sex doesn’t mean you should have to force yourself to do so.
Just be honest with one another, love one another. If a relationship can’t survive a healthy, honest conversation, then it wasn’t a very strong relationship to begin with.
TL;DR People who can’t see past sex as a ‘core’ in a relationship with someone ace/sex repulsed is an asshole.
It is okay to need sex in a relationship. It is also okay to be sexual and not need sex in a relationship.
Mind your own relationships, not other people’s.
One of the biggest myths I see being promoted in the polyamory community is that people can control their feelings to the same extent that they can control their behavior. Couples who use “rules” will often include rules that aren’t just about behavior (i.e. “Ask me before you spend the night with someone else”) but also about feelings (i.e. “You can have sex with other people, but you can’t fall in love with them”; “We can’t love any other partners more than we love each other.”)
While you can, in theory, respond to unwanted feelings with behavior that neutralizes them (i.e. breaking up with a partner you’re developing feelings for), that will often be emotionally difficult and very painful, and also sets up a situation where people are very likely to break their promises in a very human and understandable way.
But even leaving the issue of rules aside, poly people (myself included) often make decisions based on the fantasy that we can control our feelings.
How many of us have gotten involved with someone who has made it very clear that we will never be allowed to be as intimate with them as they are with their “primary,” that certain forms of intimacy–being publicly known as partners, spending holidays with each others’ families, sharing a home, raising children–are forever off the table, all because we assumed that we can just choose to never *want* those things?
It’s easy at the beginning. You have a first date with someone from OkC, or you hook up with a friend, and you’re thinking, Wow, this person is super cute, I’ll see them casually cuz they don’t want to/aren’t allowed to be serious with anyone else, it’ll be great. Maybe it will. Sometimes that’s how it’s been for me. Other times it’s led to massive heartbreak when I realized that I wanted her to be my girlfriend all official-like, or that I could see myself living with him someday, but that would never happen because that person had already decided before we’d ever even gone out or kissed or fucked that it wouldn’t.
That’s why, nowadays, if someone tells me that their preexisting relationship literally precludes certain forms of intimacy with others (except the ones I truly don’t care about, like children and marriage), I won’t even fuck with it. Even if right now, you’re just a random friend I think is cute. Because we don’t control our feelings and I have way too awesome a life to live without sitting around mired in heartbreak because we love each other but can’t hold that truth up in the light and really look at it.
I like potential. I like being casual because that’s how the two of us have decided to do things, not because some third person I didn’t choose to be in relationship with has decided with you, for me.
The problem is, even rad consent-aware poly folks are rarely upfront with this. It’s usually only weeks or months into a dating situation that it comes up that, hey by the way, you’re always by default less important to me than this other person, sorry not sorry.
As far as I’m concerned, if I didn’t know from the beginning that that’s how your polyamory worked, then I didn’t enter into our relationship with informed consent.
True! The “you can totally control your feelings and make reliable agreements about what feelings you will have” thing also comes up a lot in regards to what we’re comfortable with when your partners do go out and have intense intimate relationships.
Like, for example, I can promise not to limit what kind of relationships my partners can have. That is an action. I can promise not to try to control the intensity of the relationships my partner can have. That is an action.
I can not promise not to feel ugly if they have 4 partners and I have 1, of not to feel lonely if they spend a month without me, or not to feel insecure if they have a child with another partner. I can control my actions, not those feelings. I can’t not have ‘the wrong’ feelings. I could hide those feelings but it wouldn’t be healthy for me or for my relationships.
And a lot of ‘advice’ from poly people comes down to “no don’t feel that way, feel this other way that makes more rational sense”. Stuff like “but your insecurities are all about YOU” often boil down to “you have to feel this other way”. Which is absolutely incredibly massively fucking useless.
That’s all very well and true, especially as someone who used to be the “third” who wanted more
But as someone who is now a primary of the same person in question, I’m not really sure what to do with this information.. You’re telling me that hierarchical poly doesn’t work and I can see why you’re saying that, but.. we don’t want non-hierarchical poly…
Read the post again. No one here is saying ‘this can’t work’. People are saying:
-don’t pretend that you can always control how you feel
-don’t pretend you will never have unplanned or unexpected feelings
-accept that the ‘rules’ you once set together may one day be unacceptable to you or your partner(s) because of feelings you could not predict
– accept that if you put limits on your ‘secondary’ relationships some people will say ‘no thanks’ to being your partner because that’s not what they want and that’s okay
-don’t lie to any of your partners about those things because intimacy through deception is not consent.The last point should be common sense and the other 4 create challenges in ANY relationship
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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