Reverie
Active member
Adapted from my blog post:
An ongoing issue throughout my adult and sexual life is this:
I have no idea how to sustain sexual desire for a person past NRE. I warn each maybe-longterm partner of this early on, but each partner thinks that their cock will be the magic bullet that will kill the problem.
And perhaps they have reason to think so, because my desire for sex in NRE is legendary, my passion relentless, my obsession unquenchable, and, to make matters worse, my NRE lasts juuuust long enough (2.5–3 years) that it begins to appear that maybe they were right, before it all comes tumbling down.
My husband (together for nearly four years, married six months) sometimes tries to pin the problem on my NRE with my boyfriend of four months, but he forgets that we were already grappling with this issue in mid-2016. He forgets that he complained on our honeymoon (in April) that we were not having enough sex for what a honeymoon should contain. He remembers when I remind him, but I know it's really tough for him to know that I'm having NRE sex with someone else while at the same time not really desiring him much at all.
I warned my husband at the beginning that my sex drive for a partner nosedives dramatically a few years in, and he's said he believed me but did not realize how difficult it would actually be. (And I do actually still have sex and do sexual things with him—what people here have called "Mexican Dinner Consent"—but it's just that I never want it for my own purposes.)
My boyfriend, both of us deep in NRE, doesn't believe me when I warn him. He says things like, "Why you gotta make negative predictions about the future? Let's just keep it alive and see what happens! I think this can last forever! Keep thinking like that and of course things go wrong—focus on the positive."
My love for people doesn't die with the fade of NRE. I still care for them. I still think they are beautiful and attractive and remember all the good that I saw in them. I still value and respect them and it matters to me what happens to them. I still want to nurture them and help them and hang out with them. And I even still remember what it was like to be alight with passion for them. But do I crave them? Desire them? Lust after them? Nope. Not so far, anyway.
As fatal as it would be to my relationship with my husband, for whom my desire is currently close to zero, I almost want to believe that I just "haven't found the right person(s) yet" who could keep the desire alive; that maybe it's just a symptom of the relationship having "run its course"; that it is anything but inevitable with anyone. I can't believe that, though. I have no evidence in favor and too much to the contrary.
And anyway, I don't really want my relationship with my husband to end. I just want to not feel like a total freak of nature who is hypersexual at the beginning of a relationship and then nearly asexual after a few years. I feel well-suited for no one.
All of this is a large part of the reason I decided to try poly with my husband in the first place, lo those nearly-four years ago. I thought, "It allows me to have relationships longer than three years by killing three birds with one stone, right?"
1) It allows my long-term partner to be able to find sexual outlets other than me when I turn nearly asexual toward them, which seems to happen no matter what.
2) It allows me to find sexual outlets other than my long-term partner and actually get to experience desire again.
3) Hopefully, some of my re-awakened desire will "reflect" on my long-term partner, and I'll start to desire them again too.
I figured that since I reliably turn "companionate" pretty early on, my best bet would be to find someone I'm super compatible with in a "companionate" way, and with whom I also have strong sexual chemistry, and tell them the truth and be poly. And then if the sex lasts, it lasts, and if it doesn't, well, it doesn't with anyone, and at least we're best friends.
It's not really working out as planned, though. My husband still aches for me to desire him, even though he has freedom to pursue others (and he's also having more trouble finding others lately than he'd hoped). It's a thorn in his side that I now have sexual desire . . . but for someone else. The "reflection" thing is totally not happening as I'd hoped. All my reading about how sexual variety can "solve" lack of desire seems not to have been true in my case.
So I guess my questions are this:
- Is anyone else here like this and can commiserate? Sometimes just feeling not alone helps.
- Does anyone have a clue why this happens to people/me, and if there is anything I can do about it? (e.g., is this something that has a name and some kind of therapy is known to fix, since sexual variety has not been a cure?)
- How do I get people to truly believe me that this has, thus far, always happened to me, and will likely happen to me with them too, eventually? Just telling them upfront has not seemed to work well.
- Is it totally batshit to expect a marriage that STARTED already mostly companionate to survive, as long as both parties have other sexual outlets?
If there is a solution, great. If not, it'd be nice to just have some supportive words . . .
An ongoing issue throughout my adult and sexual life is this:
I have no idea how to sustain sexual desire for a person past NRE. I warn each maybe-longterm partner of this early on, but each partner thinks that their cock will be the magic bullet that will kill the problem.
And perhaps they have reason to think so, because my desire for sex in NRE is legendary, my passion relentless, my obsession unquenchable, and, to make matters worse, my NRE lasts juuuust long enough (2.5–3 years) that it begins to appear that maybe they were right, before it all comes tumbling down.
My husband (together for nearly four years, married six months) sometimes tries to pin the problem on my NRE with my boyfriend of four months, but he forgets that we were already grappling with this issue in mid-2016. He forgets that he complained on our honeymoon (in April) that we were not having enough sex for what a honeymoon should contain. He remembers when I remind him, but I know it's really tough for him to know that I'm having NRE sex with someone else while at the same time not really desiring him much at all.
I warned my husband at the beginning that my sex drive for a partner nosedives dramatically a few years in, and he's said he believed me but did not realize how difficult it would actually be. (And I do actually still have sex and do sexual things with him—what people here have called "Mexican Dinner Consent"—but it's just that I never want it for my own purposes.)
My boyfriend, both of us deep in NRE, doesn't believe me when I warn him. He says things like, "Why you gotta make negative predictions about the future? Let's just keep it alive and see what happens! I think this can last forever! Keep thinking like that and of course things go wrong—focus on the positive."
My love for people doesn't die with the fade of NRE. I still care for them. I still think they are beautiful and attractive and remember all the good that I saw in them. I still value and respect them and it matters to me what happens to them. I still want to nurture them and help them and hang out with them. And I even still remember what it was like to be alight with passion for them. But do I crave them? Desire them? Lust after them? Nope. Not so far, anyway.
As fatal as it would be to my relationship with my husband, for whom my desire is currently close to zero, I almost want to believe that I just "haven't found the right person(s) yet" who could keep the desire alive; that maybe it's just a symptom of the relationship having "run its course"; that it is anything but inevitable with anyone. I can't believe that, though. I have no evidence in favor and too much to the contrary.
And anyway, I don't really want my relationship with my husband to end. I just want to not feel like a total freak of nature who is hypersexual at the beginning of a relationship and then nearly asexual after a few years. I feel well-suited for no one.
All of this is a large part of the reason I decided to try poly with my husband in the first place, lo those nearly-four years ago. I thought, "It allows me to have relationships longer than three years by killing three birds with one stone, right?"
1) It allows my long-term partner to be able to find sexual outlets other than me when I turn nearly asexual toward them, which seems to happen no matter what.
2) It allows me to find sexual outlets other than my long-term partner and actually get to experience desire again.
3) Hopefully, some of my re-awakened desire will "reflect" on my long-term partner, and I'll start to desire them again too.
I figured that since I reliably turn "companionate" pretty early on, my best bet would be to find someone I'm super compatible with in a "companionate" way, and with whom I also have strong sexual chemistry, and tell them the truth and be poly. And then if the sex lasts, it lasts, and if it doesn't, well, it doesn't with anyone, and at least we're best friends.
It's not really working out as planned, though. My husband still aches for me to desire him, even though he has freedom to pursue others (and he's also having more trouble finding others lately than he'd hoped). It's a thorn in his side that I now have sexual desire . . . but for someone else. The "reflection" thing is totally not happening as I'd hoped. All my reading about how sexual variety can "solve" lack of desire seems not to have been true in my case.
So I guess my questions are this:
- Is anyone else here like this and can commiserate? Sometimes just feeling not alone helps.
- Does anyone have a clue why this happens to people/me, and if there is anything I can do about it? (e.g., is this something that has a name and some kind of therapy is known to fix, since sexual variety has not been a cure?)
- How do I get people to truly believe me that this has, thus far, always happened to me, and will likely happen to me with them too, eventually? Just telling them upfront has not seemed to work well.
- Is it totally batshit to expect a marriage that STARTED already mostly companionate to survive, as long as both parties have other sexual outlets?
If there is a solution, great. If not, it'd be nice to just have some supportive words . . .
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