Body Worship: Sensuality, Nonsexual Eros, and Asexual Love

I’ve added something new to my list of kinks I want to explore with at least one life partner: nonsexual body worship.

Body worship is a kink frequently intertwined with BDSM, as something that a Sub will perform on their Dom; it involves prolonged, deliberate attention to certain body parts—usually the genitals but sometimes other parts—with an air of awe, appreciation, adoration, etc. The person doing the worship will kiss, lick, or stroke their partner’s body part(s), while their partner passively enjoys.

Obviously, this kink is a highly erotic one and most likely happens in a sexual relationship, as opposed to a nonsexual kinky relationship. (Several kinks can be performed without sex/genital contact, but usually, sex does follow or go hand in hand with kink.) The most commonly worshipped body parts are the genitals—penis, vagina, ass—and while achieving orgasm may not be the goal of body worship, genital arousal is bound to be unavoidable if said genitals are the focus of your partner’s touching, kissing, licking, etc. The sexual encounter will continue beyond the body worship.

I’m interested in exploring body worship as a celibate asexual: a kind of highly sensual touching that focuses on the whole body, while avoiding stimulation of the genitals altogether. Body worship not as a phase of a sexual encounter or a kind of foreplay leading up to genital orgasm but as its own bottom line, as the intimate experience.

What I have in mind for myself and my fellow asexual partner(s) is to spend time in bed together, clothed only in our underwear or maybe in our underwear and t-shirts, and caress each other, stroke, massage, kiss each other’s body wherever we like for however long we want, focusing our attention on the other’s body in its fullness—the way it looks, the way it feels, the way it smells, and the desire/love/adoration each of us feels for the other’s. I could spend twenty minutes on my partner’s back, for example: just looking at it, touching it, smelling the skin, kissing it lightly, admiring its every beautiful feature, etc. Maybe I do this while cuddling them from behind; maybe I do this while they lie on their front for me and just relax into the sensations of my touch. We don’t have to cover the whole body in every session, but I’d like it if we did sometimes.

The energy of this kind of encounter is sensual, deeply intimate, loving, even passionate. But it’s not sexual. It doesn’t involve our genitals or seek to arouse us genitally or produce an orgasm. This kind of body worship does qualify as erotic in my book.

I define eros as “a state of desire; having the potential for sexuality.” To me, the erotic can extend into sex, but it doesn’t have to. Eroticism and sex aren’t the same, they aren’t synonymous, but they are closely related. Sexual people generally can’t conceive of separating eroticism from sex completely, of experiencing eros with someone that they don’t want to have sex with eventually. I bet I’d be hard-pressed to find a sexual person willing to believe that eroticism can happen between two people who aren’t sexually attracted to each other (or romantically attracted to each other, for that matter)—that erotic energy can exist in a nonsexual relationship between two asexuals and that erotic energy can feel deeply satisfying without being released into a sexual encounter ending in orgasm.

Erotic energy, divorced from sex, is the energy of desire. It’s creative energy. I might even say it’s intimacy energy, although I never want to suggest or support the idea that all intimacy is erotic or sexual because nonsexual intimacy is tremendously important and amazing. This kind of energy, this kind of eros, can unfold between two asexuals loving each other in a celibate relationship, and it doesn’t even have to be a “romantic” relationship in the traditional sense. For a pair of asexuals, intense sensuality, coupled with desire for each other’s touch and for each other’s body, becomes erotic without pushing the eroticism to the sexual conclusion that sexual people and their culture always pursue as if eroticism is only a means to sex.

I’ve mentioned desire before as something I want asexuals to explore, within themselves and in celibate relationships with each other, and I want to reiterate how important and fascinating I think this exploration can be for us. Sexual culture frames “desire,” even at a linguistic level, as something exclusively sexual, and that denies so much of what desire between two people can be. Celibate asexuals have this incredible opportunity to find out what nonsexual desire feels like, what can it mean, how it can manifest in nonsexual and even nonromantic relationships. What does desire feel like to us? What does it feel like to be desired in a nonsexual way, by our asexual and/or aromantic partners? What does aromantic desire feel like? What’s it like to desire your nonromantic/nonsexual partner’s body and touch?  These are questions I want us, particularly those of us who are celibate and who are involved or want to be involved emotionally with other aces and aros, to meditate on.

So nonsexual body worship (between two asexuals) is erotic, sensual, and includes desire energy. It does not have to come from a place of romantic love or attraction. The idea that such intimacy can happen in a nonromantic relationship for nonromantic reasons is extremely radical, I know, but I’m a relationship anarchist unwilling to be close-minded about what’s possible for asexual and aromantic people.

Asexual body worship and nonsexual eroticism brings me to another concept I’ve had in mind for a while now: the desexualization of nudity.

Sexual culture conditions us to see the naked body as exclusively erotic, as something to arouse other people genitally and inspire sexual desire. Unless you’re at the doctor’s office, exposing your genitals or even your breasts (if you’re female) to someone else is perceived as unavoidably sexual in nature, whether you intend it to be or not.

Why should we, asexuals, buy into this? Why should we allow ourselves to sexualize our own nudity by default, just because the rest of society does? Why should we carry this over into our personal relationships, even the ones we have with each other? I don’t think it makes any sense.

On the one hand, I strongly believe that asexuals should only do what is comfortable and natural to them, when it comes to their bodies. If being naked around anybody, even another ace, is super uncomfortable for you, than don’t do it. Period. Fuck giving someone else access to your body just to please them when it hurts you, then calling it “compromise.” On the other hand, I think we should ask ourselves why it’s uncomfortable for us, if it is. Personally, the only answer I can come up with for myself—a celibate ace would never even remotely consider getting anywhere near that intimate with someone, unless they were asexual too—is that I’ve grown up assimilating sexual culture’s messages about nudity and about my nudity to the point that I automatically connect “being naked in front of someone” with “sex”—with that other person viewing my body sexually, wanting sex from me, expecting it from me, etc. And if that person was someone sexually attracted to my kind of body, I’d have a right to heed all of that conditioning and therefore hide my nudity from them.

But if I’m with another ace, why should I worry? If I’m with another asexual, someone who loves me and cares about me and supports me completely in my celibacy and who respects my asexuality and my body and me, then why should I feel guarded about nudity in their presence?

I’m not saying I have an actual desire to spend time naked around my ace partners or passionate friends, but what I am saying is that I want to be liberated from the sexualization of nudity and of my own naked body because I never consented to that and because that’s an attitude out of sexual culture, not my culture as a celibate asexual. I don’t want sexual culture having any influence whatsoever over the relationships I have with other asexuals. I want my ace passionate friends and I to love each other and interact with each other from a starting point of total mental, emotional, and physical freedom that wipes out all preconceived notions of what certain behaviors mean, of what we can and can’t do in nonsexual relationships and/or nonromantic relationships, to be the only ones in our home or in our bedrooms when we’re sharing intimacy in any way.

If my asexual passionate friends and I are going to specifically leave nudity out of our relationships, I want it to be because we genuinely don’t feel a need or desire to include it, not because of the false belief that all nudity in an intimate relationship is sexual. If I’m going to hide my breasts from partners who I live with for decades and who I still allow to caress and cuddle and kiss the rest of my body, the reason better be “I, who I really am, do not feel comfortable showing my breasts to anyone,” and not “Showing my breasts to other people is sexual, so I don’t want to do that in relationships that are specifically and permanently nonsexual.” I don’t even think the default sexualization of breasts makes any sense! For anyone! So I can’t allow that kind of assumption dictate what I do in my intimate relationships.

Finally, I want to briefly mention that during these kinds of intensely sensual and intimate encounters, whether they’re body worship or just high-impact cuddling, whether they include nudity or not, involuntary genital arousal should be handled and accepted be both ace partners as a bodily reaction that can happen without sexual attraction but as a result of lots of sensual touching with someone you love. Every ace body is different: some of us experience genital arousal, some don’t, some of us have a libido and some don’t. All of it’s fine. I do think that for a celibate ace, especially one who’s sex-repulsed or sex-averse, the knee jerk reaction to one’s own genital arousal (that doesn’t happen because you deliberately tried but because you’ve been touched a certain way) is panic, worry, fear, embarrassment, etc. because we’re taught that genital arousal necessitates sex. (And many aces who are new on the scene and don’t have a comprehensive understanding of sexual attraction vs. libido vs. arousal can come under the erroneous impression that a true asexual doesn’t have a libido, can’t experience genital arousal, can’t have an orgasm, etc. None of which is true!)

I just want you to know, fellow aces, that getting genitally aroused in the middle of a very sensual, physically intimate encounter with someone you love doesn’t make you less asexual, doesn’t mean you’re experiencing sexual attraction or desire for your partner, and is nothing to be ashamed of or sorry for. The body reacts to stimuli without waiting for cognitive permission from you. That’s why it’s possible for an ace to become aroused when exposed to porn, even though that ace doesn’t experience sexual attraction to anyone. Some bodies will get aroused as a result of heavy touching, no matter the context. What you need to remember is unless your mind is on board with your body, meaning unless YOU—the thinking and feeling you—want to have sex with a person that physically arouses you, your arousal isn’t indicative of sexual attraction.

If you’re with another ace and you get aroused during super sensual contact, talk to your partner honestly about it and let them know how you feel. Accept your body and its reactions with love and compassion. If you’re an ace partner to another ace who sometimes gets aroused by sensual touch, be sensitive to them when they talk to you about it. If either of you is uncomfortable with these arousal reactions, be willing to explore why and to do what you both need to feel comfortable while being physical with each other.

And most of all, don’t think that involuntary genital arousal needs to prevent you from the sensual encounters you desire, that you’re somehow “failing” if you get aroused and then don’t have sex to make the arousal go away. Arousal doesn’t obligate you to have sex. It doesn’t even obligate you to masturbate. Purge those compulsory sexuality messages from your brain ASAP.

Sensuality, body worship, eroticism, nudity, and even genital arousal can be totally nonsexual for those of us who are ace and aromantic. Allow yourself to discover what level of physical intimacy and touch makes you feel loved, wanted, pleased, and nurtured, from a place of freedom that allows any and all behaviors not involving genitals to be nonsexual—even if they feel erotic.

Relationship Anarchy Basics

What is relationship anarchy?

Relationship anarchy is a lifestyle, a way of doing personal relationships. Relationship anarchy is a philosophy, specifically a philosophy of love. A relationship anarchist believes that love is abundant and infinite, that all forms of love are equal, that relationships can and should develop organically with no adherence to rules or expectations from outside sources, that two people in any kind of emotionally salient relationship should have the freedom to do whatever they naturally desire both inside their relationship and outside of it with other people.

When, where, how, and by who did relationship anarchy get started?

It’s unclear. Very few resources exist about relationship anarchy at this point, but it’s definitely a philosophy that’s recently evolved out of the polyamorous community. Two online sources about the “guidelines” of relationship anarchy come from an unknown contributor in New Zealand during the first decade of the 2000s and from Andi Nordgren, a Swedish queer person who developed their own ideas about RA through discussion on a blog around that same time. In the last couple years, more poly individuals have begun to explore the idea of relationship anarchy, but at this point, it’s a very new idea.

There was once a Wikipedia page for R.A. but it has been mysteriously taken down.

How does relationship anarchy differ from polyamory?

First, let’s define polyamory.

Polyamory is the practice of having more than one romantic-sexual relationship at the same time, in an open and honest way that requires the consent and knowledge of all people involved. Polyamory, which is different from polygamy, is a fairly recent social phenomenon in Western civilization that is sometimes traced back to the “free love” movement of the 1960s. Polygamy, which is an ancient and worldwide practice of having multiple marriages, is based in religion and usually only allows a man to have more than one wife while prohibiting women from having multiple husbands. Polyamory is not about marriage or religion. Polyamory is a secular movement about expanding and increasing consensual romantic-sexual love, an alternative way to build family and community.

Awesome polyamorous glossary here.

Relationship anarchy goes further than polyamory in its departure from the monogamous norm. Relationship anarchy does share with polyamory an overall rejection of sexual and romantic monogamy, its common rejection of legal/institutional marriage, etc, but it also seeks to completely break down what I like to call the Romantic Sex-Based Relationship Hierarchy by erasing relationship categories determined by the presence or absence of sex and/or romance and consequently creates equality of all personal/intimate relationships, behaviorally and emotionally. The freedom to interact and value one’s relationships starting with a blank slate, distributing physical intimacy, sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, etc. according to one’s desires rather than preexisting rules and categories of relationship types, is an expression of this equality.

A polyamorus person can be and often is just as much as a sex supremacist or a romance supremacist as a monogamous person. That means, just like the vast majority of monogamists, a poly person can make their romantic and/or sexual relationships superior to their nonsexual/nonromantic relationships, solely on the basis of sex and romance. A polyamorous person can and often does separate romantic-sexual relationships from their friendships by restricting intimacy and certain behaviors to their romantic-sexual relationships.

A relationship anarchist does not assign special value to a relationship because it includes sex. A relationship anarchist does not assign special value to a relationship because it includes romance, if they even acknowledge romance as a distinct emotion or set of behaviors in the first place. A relationship anarchist begins from a place of assuming total freedom and flexibility as the one in charge of their personal relationships and decides on a case by case basis what they want each relationship to look like. They may have sex with more than one person, they may be celibate their whole lives, they may live with someone they aren’t having sex with, they may live alone no matter what, they may raise a child with one sexual partner or multiple sexual partners, they may raise a child with a nonsexual partner, they may have highly physical/sensual relationships with multiple people simultaneously (some or all of whom are not sexually and/or romantically involved with them), etc.

For monogamists and many poly people, a “partner” is someone you are both fucking and romantically attracted to, and only that kind of relationship can be a space for commitment, for long-term cohabitation, for childrearing, for profound emotional intimacy and vulnerability, for financial interdependence, for sensual touch and nongenital physical affection, etc. For these people, a “friend” is not as important as a partner because they’re neither the object nor the source of sexual desire and romantic attraction. “Friendship” does not allow for commitment, for long-term cohabitation, for childrearing, for complete emotional intimacy, for financial interdependence, for sensual touch and nongenital physical affection, for legally binding agreements, etc. Monogamists rank their relationships in a very obvious, rigid fashion, and many polyamorous people follow the same basic ranking system by putting romantic-sexual relationships above nonromantic/nonsexual relationships and sometimes also ranking their polyamorous romantic-sexual relationships too. (Thus, the idea of “primary” vs. “secondary” partners.)

Relationship anarchists do not rank personal, intimate relationships. They do not see any set of behaviors as innately restricted to romantic and/or sexual relationships, which certainly makes it difficult to elevate romantic-sexual relationships to a superior position above nonsexual/nonromantic relationships. RA’s see all of their personal relationships—meaning, any relationship that isn’t professional or casual in nature—as equally important, unique, fulfilling different needs or desires in their life, and as possessing similar or identical potential for emotional/physical/mental intimacy, love, and satisfaction. A relationship anarchist does not place an emotional ceiling on nonromantic/nonsexual friendship or on a sexual friendship that’s devoid of “romance.” A relationship anarchist does not limit physical/sensual affection in their nonsexual relationships just because they’re nonsexual. A relationship anarchist does not expect to spend most of their time with just one sexual partner or with their sexual partners in general, nor does an RA assume that the sexual relationships (if they have any) automatically deserve or get more time than the nonsexual relationships. A relationship anarchist understands that all relationships deserve and need the same amount of open communication, consideration of needs, focused attention, etc.

How can or does relationship anarchy apply to asexuals, aromantics, mixed orientation sexual people, and celibates?

This is just my opinion as a young celibate asexual with no romantic identity, who is a relationship anarchist at heart and hopes to be one in practice for the rest of my life:

Relationship anarchy, far more than polyamory, can actually be a philosophy of love or lifestyle that’s highly compatible with celibate asexuality, aromanticism, and mixed orientation sexuality. By being a celibate asexual or an aromantic person who fully reject traditional couple relationships or a mixed orientation sexual person seeking to do relationships according to the split in your orientations, you’ve already made a major departure out of the normative relationship system that the vast majority of people live within. You’ve already rejected the Romantic Sex-Based Relationship Hierarchy, you’re already in a position that questions the validity of monogamy (whether sexual or “romantic”), you’re already in a position to blur or erase boundaries between “friendship” and “romantic (couple) relationships,” etc. just because of who you are. You’re already in a position to challenge the romantic-sexual majority’s ideas of what makes a “romantic” relationship, a life partnership, a family, etc.

Romantic asexuals can certainly be polyamorous, whether they’re celibate or sexually active, and just like poly people who are allosexual, these romantic aces can pretty much abide by most of the same rules that monogamous allosexuals play by: creating a hierarchy of relationships in which romance is superior, restricting most forms of intimacy to their romantic relationships, viewing romantic relationships as the only bonds that can be primary or life partnerships, etc.

On the other hand, a celibate asexual, whether romantic or aromantic, can very easily practice a nonsexual relationship anarchy that’s particularly radical for its celibacy. What relationship anarchy hinges on the most, for me, is the equality it seeks to create across the relationship board, so that sexual relationships are not superior to nonsexual relationships and “romantic” relationships are not superior to nonromantic friendships, and that equality means that a nonsexual and/or nonromantic friend has the same amount of access to love, intimacy, physical affection, support, etc. That means a nonsexual/nonromantic friend is just as likely to become an RA’s life partner or one of their life partners. Relationship anarchy provides the kind of respect, security, opportunity, equality, and love that a celibate asexual needs, especially if they are single or they’re not necessarily looking for just one romantic life partner to fulfill all of their major needs in a traditional romantic relationship.

Relationship anarchy should be important to the asexual community because it is the only philosophy of love, the only method of relationships, that removes sex as an indicator of relationship value, of a partner’s value, and as the line of separation between important, serious bonds and less important, casual bonds. Relationship anarchy should be important to aromantics because it is the only philosophy of love, the only method of relationships, that strips romance of its supremacy and power, that creates the freedom for nonromantic companions to experience a deeper emotional intimacy and physical intimacy than what mere common friendship allows. Relationship anarchy should matter to mixed orientation sexual people because it is the only philosophy of love, the only method of relationships, that supports the idea of having both nonsexual romantic relationships and nonromantic sexual relationships and creating equality between those two groups of relationships a person’s life.

I think an aromantic person who still wants a life partner or who wants multiple life partners, none of whom they’re romantically attracted to or involved with and maybe even none of whom they’re sexually involved with, is already something of a relationship anarchist. I think a mixed orientation allosexual who actually goes out of their way to separate romantic relationships from sexual relationships, who can genuinely pull off a nonromantic sexual friendship or a nonsexual romantic friendship, who wants to build a family or a life partnership with a nonsexual partner, is already something of a relationship anarchist. I think in a way, an asexual who is both celibate and polyamorous is already something of a relationship anarchist.

The polyamorous community can be extremely focused on sex and on the sexual aspect of having more than one romantic relationship at the same time, and this can feel isolating to poly asexuals in general but especially for celibate aces. Relationship anarchy, because it isn’t just about romantic/sexual relationships but about all personal/intimate relationships, can feel more asexual-friendly (and aromantic-friendly) right off the bat and thus provide a more comfortable context for aces and aros to explore nonmonogamy and alternative ways of loving, organizing relationships, etc.

Okay, this sounds really complicated and confusing. Could you give me some concrete examples of relationship anarchy in action?

1. Jessica’s a heterosexual and a relationship anarchist. She has sexual relationships with men, as many as she desires at the same time. Sometimes, she may develop more than friendly feelings for a sexual partner, but all of her sexual relationships are open and none of them are on the Relationship Escalator. Jessica also has a cohabiting partner named Tracy, who she isn’t sexually attracted to or involved, and Tracy spends just as much or more time with Jessica as her sexual partners. Jessica has made a commitment to her live-in partner that they will continue to live together as long as they’re happy doing so, and no sexual relationship with a third party can challenge that commitment (though maybe they would consider inviting a sexual partner to join them in their home). Jessica and Tracy plan on raising a child together. They have a physically intimate relationship—they cuddle and hold hands and kiss each other on the cheek and sometimes sleep in the same bed—and they’re also both physically intimate with their sexual partners and with other friends they’re not sexually involved with.
2. Joe’s a homoromantic asexual. He strongly prefers celibacy. He has a romantic relationship with Taylor, a gay man who has sex with other people but not with Joe. Joe also has a friendship with a woman named Rachel who’s just as important to him as his male partner, and he figures Rachel into all of his major life decisions and plans. Joe and Rachel love to be physically affectionate with each other. Rachel has her own romantic and/or sexual partner(s). Joe has a romantic friendship with another man named Paul who he loves just as much as Taylor. Joe and Paul’s relationship looks very similar to Joe and Taylor’s relationship, but it’s a little different simply because Paul isn’t interested in dating or having sex with Joe in the first place. Paul’s straight.
3. Gina’s an aromantic asexual. She will not have sex with anyone, and she’s not interested in traditional romantic relationships. She lives with her partner and best friend, Ruby. They have separate bedrooms and they’re not overly physically affectionate with each other but they love each other to the point where they want to spend the rest of their lives together. Ruby’s a heteromantic asexual, and she has a nonsexual romantic relationship with Don. Don’s a bisexual guy, and he has a sexual relationship with his boyfriend. Don and Ruby do not plan on living together; they like living apart. And Ruby will not move out of the home she shares with Gina anyway. If Ruby decides to have a child or children in the future, both Gina and Don will be co-parents (assuming Don’s still in the picture).

What’s the point of relationship anarchy? Why go through the trouble of figuring out how to organize so many deeply involved relationships and juggle the needs and desires of so many people at the same time?

I think each Relationship Anarchist is going to be different, perform their version of RA uniquely, and probably come to RA for different reasons….. But if I’m speaking for myself, all I can say is that this is simply the way I am and the way I’ve always thought, since childhood. It doesn’t make any sense to me to limit intimacy or love to one romantic-sexual relationship or to romantic/sexual relationships in general. It doesn’t make sense to me to prohibit physical or emotional intimacy and affection in nonromantic friendships or to make one couple relationship superior in any way to all other relationships in a person’s life. It doesn’t make sense to me to draw an arbitrary line in the sand and announce that if you love someone “this much,” then that’s friendship, but if you love someone “that much,” it’s “romance” (and sex, by default).

I’m an RA because I think the idea of having a life overflowing with real love and real intimacy, a life in which everywhere you go you have at least one person to love and support you and give you whatever attention you need, is beautiful. I’m an RA because while I don’t love many people, my natural tendency is to love every person I love with passion, to want physical/sensual intimacy with all of them, to want one-on-one quality time with all of them, to experience emotional vulnerability with all of them. Not just one person who stands in a culturally-designated role of “Romantic Partner.” I’m an RA because the Romantic Sex-Based Relationship Hierarchy is deeply offensive to me as a celibate asexual who seeks and values passionate friendship above anything, and because conventional monogamy–with or without sex–sounds and feels very limited, narrow, and suffocating to me on an emotional level. I want to be free, I want to love freely, and I want to be able to follow my natural impulses in all of my personal relationships, not just one special relationship. I’m an RA because I like making my own rules, rather than following someone else’s or mainstream society’s.

I adore the idea of passionate friendship and I adore the idea of having a group of people who are all attentive, caring, supportive, loving, loyal, involved, etc as much as they possibly can be. I adore the idea of having several different relationships that are all high quality and emotionally substantial. Every person is unique, and I want the same amount of opportunity with each person I meet and like to pursue a deeply satisfying, meaningful connection–as an asexual committed to lifelong celibacy and as someone who loves passionately but who does not acknowledge romance as dramatically distinct from friendship. I want love to be abundant in my life, and I want to love as much as I can, as many people as I can, as freely as I can. Relationship anarchy is the only way of life that offers me that freedom and abundance.

Why Celibacy is Awesome

I’ve already written at length in the past about what my personal celibacy means to me, but the following list is something a little bit different. Objective reasons why celibacy–the choice to NOT have sex, no matter what your sexual orientation–is awesome.

1. No chance of unwanted pregnancy.
2. No need to get an abortion.
3. No need to take birth control (or spend money on it).
4. No need to spend money on condoms or worry about them in any way.
5. No chance of contracting an STD or an STI.
6. No need to go through the potential physical trouble and expense of treating an STD or an STI.
7. No chance of having unsatisfying sex.
8. No chance of having sex that negatively affects your self-esteem, your body image, or your sense of being worthy of love.
9. Virtually no need to worry about sexual partners, ex sexual partners, or anybody else talking smack about you for your sexual behavior. (Note: nobody has a right to talk smack about a person’s sexual behavior unless that behavior directly harms someone else, but the fact of the matter is, people are assholes about sex all the time. Celibacy as a way to avoid being insulted or gossiped about doesn’t excuse the insulting/gossiping, but the wrongness of the insulting/gossiping doesn’t make celibacy any less of an effective way to avoid it.)
10. No opportunity to mistakenly base your own self-worth, self-love, or self-image on your sexual performance or anybody else’s sexual interest in you.
11. No chance of being used sexually by someone else.
12. If you are a heterosexual woman: celibacy is a way out of the ever-present sexist and potentially misogynistic dynamic of heterosexual relations, a relief from men exerting power over you–sexual and otherwise, a relief from the potential disrespect and cruelty of straight men directed at their female partners (whether to their faces or behind their backs) related to sex.
13. Celibacy can be deeply healthy on a psychological level, precisely because sex in a cultural context is fraught with problematic and pathological issues that cannot be single-handedly dismantled even in a personal relationship between two people. Celibacy can also be deeply healthy based on an individual’s past experiences with sex and romance or their relationship with themselves.
14. Celibacy for a man can serve as a powerful opportunity to disentangle his sense of manhood and his performance of masculinity from his sexuality. (Men are conditioned to entwine their masculinity with their sexuality, to their own and their sexual partners’ detriment.)
15. Celibacy can provide extra energy or a clear mind to focus on creativity, on self, on friendships and family relationships, on one’s own physical health and mental health, etc.
16. Celibacy removes you from the volatile and dramatic landscape of sexual activity: sexual competition, sexual infidelity, unrequited sexual desire, sexual incompatibility with partners,
17. No chance of coercive sex or sex under dubious consent with a romantic partner, in the context of a relationship that is normally sexually active.
18. Celibacy is the kind of decision that requires conscious, in-depth reasoning, in a way that choosing to become sexually active (or staying sexually active) usually doesn’t. Choosing to be celibate because you know exactly what benefits you’re after, as opposed to having sex simply because that’s what you’re supposed to do and because everybody you know does it, is a way to become intensely conscious of your own sexual lifestyle and your relationship to sex.
19. Celibacy can be a beneficial time-out in which you clean up any problematic attitudes or ideas you have about sex. (Or romance.)
20. If you’re an asexual, celibacy is awesome because 9 times out of 10, it’s your default setting. Living according to your nature feels great!
21. Celibacy can be a powerful political statement in a culture of compulsory sexuality, in a society that assigns social market value to people based on their sexual availability, performance, and history. Celibacy is the only way to completely withdraw from that system, whether temporarily or permanently.
22. Celibacy is an expression of freedom, autonomy, and ownership of your body. The world tells you, for a myriad of reasons that are pretty much all self-interested on their part, to have sex as soon and as much as you can. Choosing to be celibate is a way of saying, “Fuck you. I think for myself, and I do what I want with my body.”
23. Celibacy can be a pathway to real intimacy with other people, whether romantic partners or friends/family. Too many people erroneously believe that all sex is intimate–English-speaking people fucking use “intimacy” as a ridiculous euphemism for sex, for God’s sake–and thus end up having plenty of sex but no intimacy. Intimacy is not innately or exclusively sexual. Sex is not automatically intimate. Sometimes, taking sex out of your life is the perfect way to get at real intimacy.
24. Celibacy can be a catalyst for exploring alternative relationships and relationship systems.
25. Celibacy can actually be the only way to disengage from a lot of false beliefs and expectations you have of sex, particularly the ones about sex resulting in romantic love or meaning romantic love.

 

It bears saying that the fact of celibacy’s beneficial status does not automatically designate sexual activity as a purely bad or wrong choice. That kind of illogical reasoning is a smoke screen that some sexually active people, certainly the Genital Myth Makers of our culture (as Sally Cline calls them), use to derail any conversation about celibacy as a positive lifestyle because they are staunch supporters of compulsory sexuality. It’s easy to jump to the conclusion, in our society where sex moralism is very much alive and well, that saying “Celibacy is great for so many reasons” unavoidably translates into “Sex is bad, wrong, evil, and sinful!” But that’s lazy thinking, no different than interpreting the statement “Not having children is awesome” with “Having children sucks.” This may shatter your world, but most things in life are not conducive to an either/or attitude.

Religions teach that circumstantial, temporary celibacy is good because having sex outside of marriage is bad. Mainstream society has never, to my knowledge, framed celibacy in any other terms or conducted a conversation about celibacy in any other way. Celibacy, thus far, has not been considered objectively outside of a sex moralist framework. Sexual people either claim that celibacy is good in the short-term because having the wrong kind of sex is a sin or makes you a slut, or that celibacy is “uncool” and synonymous with “repression.” Sexual society doesn’t want to acknowledge celibacy as positive on its own steam, as a lifestyle choice that moves toward positives instead of away from the negatives of immoral sex. Talking about why celibacy is good is not the same conversation as talking about why sex is bad. The difference may be subtle, but it’s there.

I’m not telling you to be celibate because having sex is categorically sinful, wrong, bad, etc. That would make me a douche bag akin to all the douche bags who tell you to have sex because it’ll make you cool, mature, grown up, progressive, free, etc. I’m simply pointing out that regardless of who you are or what you think of having sex, not having sex actually does come with a whole lot of benefits. I can vouch for those benefits because I enjoy them on a daily basis.

I’m also saying that there are a lot of shitty consequences or potential consequences to being sexually active. I know, several ranks of the “sex-positive” crowd just gasped in horror, but seriously. Being sexually active does have its cons, like pretty much everything else. When you have sex, you’re taking a risk in more ways than one. That doesn’t necessarily mean you ought to be celibate, but it does mean that a sexually active life is not some glorious, problem-free deal. And if you ask me, denying that there’s anything fucked up about the sexually active world doesn’t do anyone any favors. If your real mission is to create a world where people have healthy attitudes about sex and healthy sexual behaviors, then you have to be real about sex. Sex starts out neutral and becomes either positive or negative depending upon how you use it.

Bottom line: celibacy can be awesome and I would like to see the broader social dialogue acknowledge that fact.

Open Heart, Closed Heart?

Last night, I read a few of Lissa Rankin’s articles on heartbreak and keeping your heart open after it’s been broken, and it’s making me think about something that I’ve considered before only in passing. I wonder how open my heart really is–to love, to the relationships I desire, to intimacy. I wonder if the major shifts I’ve experienced in the last couple years, regarding what I feel for whom and moves I’ve made in my relationships, came from a process of closing my heart or if those shifts are simply the result of becoming uncompromisingly loyal to myself and my own desires. I have to ask myself about this and be honest because I want to live my life with an open heart. I pretty sure I mean it when I say it. I’ll do whatever I can to minimize pain and protect myself from more disappointment in love, but I believe those interests do not have to automatically conflict with having an open heart. Having an open heart doesn’t mean being stupid or indiscriminate about who you let in, right?

It’s not easy for me to answer the question, “Is my heart open or closed?” because of my unique circumstances: I’ve closed my heart to sexual people, not to asexuals, but because sexual people are 99% of the human population, it can look and feel like I’ve closed my heart completely. That’s what I’m unsure about: am I truly leaving my heart open to that 1%, to my own people, or have I effectively shut myself off from love no matter the source simply because I spend more time surrounded by sexual people than by fellow asexuals?

I feel like I’m open to love from asexuals. That’s the love I want, anyway. I know with total clarity that I want love from them. If I could spend time in an environment where everybody was a celibate ace, I feel like it would change everything for me: the way I carry myself, the way I relate, the way I feel about connecting and the possibility of love, etc. When I meet a new asexual or even hear from one, I’m very receptive to them. I know a small handful so far, in person and online, yet these connections haven’t yet evolved into love or deep emotional attachment. That’s not because I’m opposed but simply because we’d have to spend more time together and simply feel that emotional attraction to each other that’s somewhat unexplainable. Yet I’m open! I want more asexual friends, I want to spend all my social time with other celibate aces (and aromantics), and whether it’s casual/common friendship or passionate friendship, I feel like I’m open to seeing where my connections with those asexuals go.

I feel like my heart is closed to sexual people for a thousand reasons and every single one of them is valid, rational, real. No matter how I look at it, I always come up with the same conclusion: staying away from sexual people emotionally is unequivocally smart and wise and in my best interests. I’m almost 23 years old, and almost every single person I’ve ever loved or wanted to love has been a sexual person (because, unfortunately, they vastly outnumber asexuals) and left me with a long history of disappointment, pain, rejection, and betrayal. To date, I’ve never had a 100% satisfying (major) relationship with a sexual person, other than maybe my sister. I haven’t had a relationship with a sexual person that satisfied even 50% of my core needs and desires. Their race, their gender, their age, their sexual orientation, the environment in which I met them, how long I knew them–none of that matters. They’re all the same when it comes this issue of relationships. They think, act, pursue, and organize relationships the same way. The way they’ve been taught, by their families and their religions and the government and the media. Leaving room for the requisite exceptions to every rule, I think they’re incapable of passionate friendship. I think they’re incapable of nonsexual love that reaches the level of significance that I have in mind. I think they’re incapable of deviating from the conventional lifestyle that they pretty much all follow without question. And it’s not entirely their individual fault. We are all products of powerful social conditioning, to one degree or another, and the only way that a person can buck a Big Social Norm–like making romantic-sexual love the center of your life, subordinating all other relationships to your primary romantic-sexual partnership, etc–is if there’s something about you that makes it impossible for you to adhere to that Norm. Like being an asexual who doesn’t want to fuck anyone ever.

I’m not asking any sexual person to change for me. I’m way past that. I wouldn’t believe them even if they told me they were going to be different. I don’t think they can be, barring extraordinary circumstances that pose some huge obstacle to their defaulting onto the traditional relationship system. I guess I’m not looking for a reason to open myself to them again. They have nothing to offer me, beyond common, casual friendship. I don’t expect anything from them, other than shallow friendly attention. I’m not going to waste any more love on people who don’t get it, who actually believe that sex makes a relationship superior or that romance separated out from friendship is innately more valuable or compelling than nonsexual, nonromantic friendship. I’m not going to make myself completely and utterly vulnerable to someone, offer my sensitive heart full of passionate, tender love, only to have the other person reject me, betray me for sex and romance, judge my innermost relationship desires, blow off my identity, never once try to really understand what I’m saying when I talk about passionate friendship, etc. Fuck that. That’s not happening again.

I feel justified in protecting my heart from sexual people, yet I’m also aware that this is exactly the kind of thing that leads to a closed heart: a desperate need to prevent more pain after you’ve been burned one too many times. I have to be real with myself about the fact that I grew up in a near perpetual state of disappointed love that wounded me profoundly, and if I’m not careful, I might allow myself to close my heart to the love I want so intensely because I fear pain and suffering at the hands of anyone I love. I might become someone who wants safety so much that I’m willing to sacrifice love and intimacy for that safety. I don’t want that. I want to grow out of my pain and my disappointed love, not bow to it. I want to be able to trust someone again.

I know what I want in relationships, I know why and how I want it, and I am unwilling to accept anything less. I am determined to live my adult life with complete self-love, honoring my desires, honoring my needs, pursuing relationships that are healthy for me, being true to myself, etc. I want two life partners who live with me, and I want a group of passionate friends that become my long-term family. I want to love people who love me back AND who engage with me in all the ways that satisfy and delight me. I want to love people who respond to my needs and desires with loving, caring, enthusiastic support. I want to love people who want the love and friendship I want. I want to love people who think the way I do about relationships. I want to love people I can trust completely, with my body, my heart, my mind, and my soul. I want to love people who respect me, who respect my asexuality and my celibacy and my relationship anarchy and my gender identity. I want to love people who make me feel safe and secure. I want to be wanted, I want to be cared for, I want to be loved for real. I want to be absolutely wide open again, to bring people all the way into the depths of my heart, to be passionate in love again.

And I deserve to have the love I want. I think that’s the one of the most radical statements someone like me could make to the world. I deserve to have the love and the relationships I desire, exactly as I desire. It doesn’t matter how unique my desires are, it doesn’t matter how few people in the world can give me what I want, it doesn’t matter if my desires are in direct opposition to what the majority vote believes is “normal.” I deserve to have the love I want. I deserve to be loved. I deserve to have the relationships I want exactly the way I want them. And I believe those relationships are possible. I believe that there are people on earth (other celibate asexuals and aromantics) who can give me the love and relationships I desire, because they want the same thing. All that matters is that we find each other and create love the way we really want it.

I don’t know if my heart is open or closed to love from others right now, but I do know that I want to open it as much as possible to other asexuals. I want to open myself so that the Universe can deliver the right people to be my passionate friends and my partners. I’m not entirely sure how I do this, but I’m going to try a combination of meditation, prayer, journaling, feeling love for these people before I meet them, being happy as often as possible, visualizing my ideal relationships more, staying on the look-out for more ace/ace couples and pairs, going deeper into myself, into my own heart….. All the stuff I’ve been doing.

And when I’m ready and I meet my passionate friends and life partners, I can give them permission to break my heart….. because I can trust that they won’t.

Aromantic/Queerplatonic Partner Behavior Survey

(This applies to my male life partner, female life partner, and all passionate friends I may acquire in life).

*Note: I do not identify as aromantic or romantic. I claim no romantic orientation whatsoever. This survey was specifically made for nonromantic relationships, however.

Kissing (forehead, cheek, etc): Yes!
Kissing (mouth): Maybe, ask first.
Hand holding: Yes!
Cuddling: Yes!
Hugging: Yes!
Other affectionate touching: Yes!
Hugging in public: Yes!
Cuddling in public: Yes!
Kissing (forehead, cheek, etc) in public: Yes!
Kissing (mouth) in public:  Maybe, ask first.
Hand holding in public: Yes!
Other affectionate touch in public:  Yes!
Eye gazing: Yes!
Crying on: Yes. (Although I almost never cry.)
Being cried on:  Yes!
Massage (giving): Yes!
Massage (receiving): Yes!
Hair brushing (giving): Yes.
Hair brushing (receiving): No.
Nail painting (giving): Indifferent.
Nail painting (receiving): No.
Shaving (giving): Yes, but ask first.
Shaving (receiving): No.
Bathing together (with bathing suits): Maybe, ask first.
Bathing together (naked): No.
Seeing my partner naked: Maybe, ask first.
My partner seeing me naked: Maybe, ask first.
Feeding my partner: Yes, with restrictions — if necessary.
Being fed by my partner: No.
Tickling (being tickled):  No.
Tickling (doing the tickling): Maybe, ask first.
Terms of endearment: Yes.
Being called “best friend”: Yes.
Being called “partner”: Yes.
Being called romantically-coded words (boyfriend, girlfriend, etc): No.
Me having other platonic partners: Yes.
My partner having other platonic partners: Yes, but ask first.
Me having other romantic partners: Other — irrelevant, I don’t acknowledge a difference between “romantic” and “nonromantic” love.
My partner having other romantic partners: Maybe, ask first.
My partner doing romantic-coded things with someone else: Maybe, ask first.
Me doing romantic-coded things with someone else: Yes, but ask first.
My partner doing sexual things with someone else: No; it depends. (My cohabiting partners must be celibate asexuals, like me. My passionate friends don’t necessarily have to be, though I would prefer it. If any of them are sexually active, the sex must be disconnected from romance/primary partnership. Essentially, I’m not interested in attaching to romantic-sex supremacists.)
Me doing sexual things with someone else:  No.
Touching my partner sexually: No.
Being touched by my partner sexually: No.
Having sex of any kind with my partner [specify if yes]: No.
Sexual kink with my partner [specify if yes]: No.
Non-sexual kink with my partner [specify if yes]: Yes — consensual fist fighting followed by injury tending and cuddling; me roleplaying as male. (With my male partner. Undecided if with female partner or other passionate friends).
“Romantically coded” gifts (flowers, chocolates, etc): Yes.
Dancing: Yes.
Bed sharing (non-affectionate): Yes.
Bed sharing (cuddling): Yes.
Tucking my partner in: Yes, but ask first.
Being tucked in: No.
Living together: Yes/yes, but ask first. (I want to live with my male partner and my female partner, in two separate homes. Cohabitation in other passionate friendships is negotiable.)
[Platonic] marriage: No.
Raising children together: No; indifferent. (I’m childfree and want my partners to be, but if they change their minds at any point and want kids, I would agree to co-parent. Likewise, if my passionate friends have kids and want me to participate in rearing them, I would be open to that.)
Having pets together: Yes.
Other stipulations/concerns:

Sources: Original and Chart Form

Passionate Friendship

I want to define passionate friendship as I conceive of it in a separate post, for easy reference. It’s something I do talk about enough that a thorough definition will be useful.

“Passionate friendship” is a term I have chosen to describe a relationship akin, if not identical, to the “romantic friendships” which existed throughout history all over the world, up until the 19th century. My reasons for renaming the relationship type “passionate friendship” are twofold: I find the term “romantic friendship” potentially problematic because of its implications that certain behaviors are definitively “romantic” and because it could alienate aromantic people from naming and claiming this type of friendship on the basis that “romantic friendship” could easily imply the presence of romantic attraction; there are differences between my relationship ideal and historical romantic friendship to a degree that I think it makes sense to construct “passionate friendship” as a new concept, however rooted in romantic friendship it might be.

Passionate friendship is:

• a nonsexual relationship, meaning sexual activity does not occur and sexual attraction is not present
• a relationship that may or may not include “romantic” attraction, whether one-sided or reciprocal
• a relationship based on love; passionate friends love each other to the core, beyond mere liking or caring
• the emotional intensity of passionate friendship love is equivalent or greater to that of the standard romantic-sexual couple relationship, during phases or moments of (emotional) passion
• in the every day lives of two passionate friends, especially those who have been together a long time, the feeling of passion comes and goes (the way it does in any long-term, stable, successful romantic-sexual relationship) but the feeling of strong warmth and profound affection is constant
• a relationship in which emotional, mental, and spiritual intimacy are at their peaks
• a physically intimate relationship which may include any or all of the following, theoretically at any frequency but usually, the frequency is quite high (distinguishing the passionate friendship from a common friendship): full hugs, holding hands, chaste kisses on the face/body/lips, cuddling, sharing a bed, caressing, massages, dancing, linking arms, leaning against each other, looking into each other’s eyes deliberately, heartbeat listening, touching each other’s bare skin, etc.
• verbal or written expression of love and emotions to each other, for no reason, on a regular basis [EX: "I love you," "You're the most important person in my life," "I'm so happy when I'm with you," etc.]. This covers text messages, phone conversations, handwritten letters and notes, and face to face talk.
• If the two passionate friends individually create a hierarchy of relationships in their lives, the passionate friendship is either their most important relationship or one of their most important relationships, entirely equal to the other most important. Whether the passionate friendship happens within a relationship hierarchy or not, both friends prioritize each other and each other’s needs.
• The passionate friendship often doubles as the primary partnership of the two friends, and consequently, they either choose to live together permanently or live separately and alone. Being primary partners, the passionate friends carve out protected time to be together on a regular basis, take care of each other’s core needs, may choose to become financially interdependent, may choose to rear children together or combine their families that include other adults, are each other’s caregiver (or one of them) in case of illness or injury, travel together, etc.
• The feeling quality of a passionate friendship is a blend of love, caring, warmth, joy, attraction (emotional/intellectual/sensual), fondness, affection, trust, loyalty, appreciation, and intimacy.
• Ideally–and usually, on account of such a connection being rare in the first place–the passionate friendship is one that lasts until one or both of the friends die. It is a relationship that compels loyalty and commitment because the friends are so strongly attracted to each other, their love intense and their harmony natural, that they simply never find a good enough reason to terminate the friendship. Likewise, because the passionate friendship is the most important relationship in the friends’ lives, no matter what, they do whatever they can to preserve it.
• This is a connection that often begins with an instantaneous and unexplainable affinity: two passionate friends meet for the first time and immediately like each other without reason, wanting to be close to each other and important to each other.  The more they become acquainted, the faster and harder they fall for each other. Their love comes naturally and effortlessly, like the friendship itself. This resonance they have speaks to the spiritual nature of their connection and their love. There’s something about the relationship that can’t be seen with the eye or expressed adequately with words. The passionate friends themselves may not understand why they feel so strongly for each other, why they’re so drawn to each other, no matter how long they’ve been together.
• Passionate friendship is characterized by deep vulnerability and intimacy. Moments of emotional openness are frequent, whether one friend tells the other how they feel about them and the relationship, or one friend comforts the other because of emotional distress that the upset friend shares honestly. Passionate friends can be physically vulnerable, emotionally vulnerable, and intellectually vulnerable with each other. They respond to each other’s vulnerability with great respect, caring, compassion, and love.
• Passionate friendship is a one-on-one relationship. While passionate friends may spend time with other people in a group, most of the time they spend together is spent without anyone else around.
• Passionate friendship is an organic type of relationship. It is not made. It cannot be forced or orchestrated with just anyone. The most definitive quality of passionate friendship is a powerful emotional attraction and love that surpasses that of ordinary or common friendship. There’s a reason that most thinkers who wrote about romantic friendship throughout history characterized it as extremely rare, the rarest of all of human connections. A person doesn’t choose to have a passionate friendship with someone, so much as passionate friendship happens to two people without warning. For this reason, passionate friendship usually only visits a person once in life, although it’s entirely possible to have more than one passionate friend at a time.

What are the differences between passionate friendship and romantic friendship?

Romantic friendship was primarily a youth relationship that ended upon one or both friends getting married. (This is particularly true of romantic friendships during the 18th and 19th centuries, in America and Europe.) Romantic friendship was also a predominantly same-sex relationship, because throughout history, cross-sex friendship was considered impossible or inappropriate (unless the male and female were related). Romantic friendship, if it survived the weddings of the friends, would still become subordinate to the romantic-sexual relationships the friends had with others. Romantic friendship was usually a relationship that formed between members of the same generation, which ties into it being a youth-oriented relationship preceding marriage.

Passionate friendship can happen between any gender combination, can be inter-generational, is never subordinated to a romantic-sexual relationship or any other relationship, can happen at any stage of life, and lasts forever or as close to it as possible.

I have to assume that most romantic friendships in history happened between allosexual people, simply because allosexuals make up most of the human race. That said, I believe passionate friendship in the 21st century is far more likely to happen between two asexuals or at the very least involve an asexual. Passionate friendship is rare in the first place, no matter what someone’s gender or sexual orientation, and I don’t think it can happen to someone who doesn’t believe in it, who isn’t aware of it, or whose heart isn’t open to it. Most allosexuals, at least in Western civilization, fall into one or more of those categories. The present, post-Freudian, post-sexual revolution American cultural atmosphere is not conducive to passionate friendship and may never be again, on a grand scale. Passionate friendship depends on principles that directly contradict that of mainstream sexual society: the premise that powerful, passionate love and friendship can exist without sex, sexual attraction, romance, or romantic attraction and can be superior to romantic-sexual relationships in quality and importance; the premise that great sensual, physical intimacy can happen without sex or sexual attraction; the premise that the person you love most and with the greatest intensity of love is someone you do not want to fuck or need to fuck, someone you do not need to “date” or marry.

I personally view passionate friendship as distinct from asexual romantic relationships, although if two asexuals had a passionate friendship and one or both described feeling romantic attraction to the other, I certainly wouldn’t debate their naming of the relationship. I like to think that the love of passionate friendship, characterized by great intensity and intimacy, combined with the lack of sex, make the presence of “romantic” attraction irrelevant. But that could just be the relationship anarchist in me.

Being Vulnerable

Inspired by Lissa Rankin’s amazing post on the topic of vulnerability vs. neediness, I wanted to reflect on the issue of being vulnerable in relationships because it’s one of those areas where I know I really need practice. It’s such an important skill to have in intimate relationships; if we can’t be vulnerable enough to express our needs and desires, we have little chance of experiencing satisfaction or feeling truly loved and cared about. However, being vulnerable to anyone is also hard as fuck for the very reasons Rankin outlined: there’s always that chance the other person will choose not to meet your need, which will hurt and may even embarrass you. That choice can erode trust in the relationship, breed resentment, etc.

I realize, at this very early stage in my life, that as a child and teen and more recently as a young adult, I almost never deliberately chose to make myself vulnerable in the context of straightforwardly asking the people I loved for what I really needed and wanted. I don’t have a lot of practice with this. No one taught me how to do it, and as someone who’s always been highly perceptive, I also figured out early on that most of my deepest needs and desires in my nonsexual, nonromantic relationships with friends and/or family members would be considered misplaced in such relationships by romantic-sexual people.

Basically, I didn’t ask for what I wanted and needed because I knew I’d get rejected. Not to mention judged. Maybe that makes me a coward, maybe that makes me someone with common sense. Either way, the result was the same: I grew up with an empty love tank. I grew up with an intense yearning for some special relationship I didn’t have–for a while, I assumed it had to be a traditional romantic relationship–and never found it. I grew up loving various friends and family members with unbearable passion and intensity and suffering tremendously for it because I wasn’t getting even a quarter of my major needs met by any of those people and couldn’t even effectively communicate, whether to them or others, what I wanted and how I wanted it and what it meant. When I was 12 or 14 or 16 or even 18, I didn’t have the sophistication–or the courage–to attempt telling an allosexual friend with absolutely no knowledge of asexuality, passionate friendship, alternative nonsexual love, etc what I wanted from them and what it meant (i.e. I want this level of intimacy and this level of touching and this level of involvement but I don’t want to fuck you or conventionally date you). Maybe that was a blessing because I don’t think I could’ve coped with constant rejection.

I can so relate to the fine line separating vulnerability from neediness. I was a very needy kid, and no wonder: I never had any of my needs met. I’ve since grown up and grown out of that, due to simple choice and developing self-love and self-esteem. I was always unusually independent in the first place, and that independence and self-reliance has only ballooned as a result of my self-love and self-esteem. What I’ve discovered, though, is that all my core needs are the same as they always were. The only difference is I no longer feel desperate for someone else to fill them. I have to admit that I sort of don’t know if that lack of desperation is solely because self-love has taken away the desperation or also because I’ve spent so much time without these needs met by anyone outside of myself, that I’ve become anesthetized to the actual feeling of wanting or needing certain attention. Intellectually, I know what I want and need. Emotionally, I spend most of my time not really tapped into those wants and needs, which is primarily a positive thing because it means I don’t walk around in painful hunger.

I take pride in my level of independence and self-reliance. I take pride in NOT being needy. I take pride in my comfort with solitude and emotional detachment from others, in my ability to spend so much damn time by myself and never really get bored or lonely, let alone sad about it. I take pride in my self-love and my ability to take care of myself so well. Rankin’s right: our culture praises and encourages independence, self-sufficiency, strength and discourages neediness, weakness, vulnerability, etc. I love how independent and strong and self-reliant I am. I love how much of a loner I am, by nature. I wouldn’t trade these qualities for anything. I would never choose to be needier.

But at the same time, I have no choice but to acknowledge that no matter how much I love myself, how independent I am, how cool I am with flying solo, how good I am at entertaining myself, how strong I am emotionally….. I want to be loved by other people. I want those people to take care of me. I want those people to touch me the way I want to be touched. I want those people to support me emotionally and physically when I need it. I want someone to be waiting in the wings in case I need them for some reason, even though I don’t actually want to need them to step in. My whole life, I’ve been totally fixated on love and passionate friendship. It’s one of two major interests I have, the other being creative writing. I study love, I write about love, I think about love all the time. My desire to love and be loved is colossal. It’s been building and building all these years. It’s now an impressively specific and detailed desire: I know what I want, how I want it, and why I want it. I know what’s important to me in relationships, and I’m no longer willing to settle for ones that fall short.

If I could go back in time and do my childhood friendships and family relationships differently, I don’t think I would’ve been any more vulnerable or made my needs and desires known, even with the adequate vocab and clear conceptualization of passionate friendship. I think my reading of allosexuals was accurate all along and still is: I think ten times out of ten, had I been courageous enough to ask a friend or family member for what I really wanted and needed, they would’ve shot me down without hesitation because they have no capacity to understand what I mean or even who I am. Passionate friendship is alien to contemporary allosexuals. Intense, passionate, nonsexual love, especially of a nonromantic nature, is beyond them. Furthermore, I can’t express my needs and desires to allosexuals without first giving a lecture on what asexuality is, what my asexuality is, what passionate friendship is, the fact that not all touching/intimacy/emotional passion means sex (and romance), etc. (And then, after explaining all of that, they’d have to actually believe me!) I feel confident now about my ability to eloquently express myself and my needs and desires, but my total lack of faith and trust in allosexuals to come through for me hasn’t changed at all. In fact, it’s worse today than it was several years ago: as a kid, some small part of me must’ve hoped some allosexual somewhere could be the kind of friend I needed, but now, I would sooner believe in unicorns ice skating on the ponds of Hell.

For me, vulnerability in relationships highlights the visceral difference between interacting with other asexuals vs. interacting with allosexuals. My fellow asexuals, I trust. I know they can be trusted. I know they can relate to me the way I want and need. I know they are all capable of passionate friendship, of the kind of nonsexual and/or nonromantic love and connection I desire, even if some of them never actually get into passionate friendships because they elect to have traditional romantic-sexual relationships and common friendships instead. I know I can talk to an asexual about passionate friendship and my own personal needs and desires in relationships, and the odds are good that they’ll understand where I’m coming from easily, whether they share my desires or not.

I can be vulnerable with other asexuals (and aromantics who are on the same page as me, relationship-wise). I can dare to be vulnerable with them because I feel safe with them by default. I know I can talk openly and honestly about my ideal of passionate friendship, and whether they want exactly the same thing or not, they’ll get it. They’ll be supportive and accepting and maybe even excited by what I describe. So many of them will respond by saying, “I want that too!”

What I want, what I need, is an asexual community in my physical life. I need asexual friends, I need asexual partners, I need the people in my relationship anarchist family to be asexual (or aromantics who reject traditional couplehood and prize nonsexual/nonromantic love). I only want to form close relationships with other celibate aces and aros for this precise and significant reason: they’re the only ones I can be safely vulnerable with. They’re the only ones I can trust. They’re the only ones who can love me the way I want and need to be loved.

I want to be vulnerable with people. I do. I want to be someone who’s brave enough to have those moments of putting my needs and desires out there on a regular basis. But they have to be people I can trust. They have to be other asexuals.

20/20 New Zealand Segment on Asexual Love Story!

Just found this beautiful segment and wanted to share because it’s about two aces in a long distance, international romantic relationship. So wonderful. Nothing makes me happier than two asexuals loving each other. And 20/20 NZ was actually very respectful!

The 4th Sexuality

Carnival of Aces March 2013: Asexuality and Kink

Are you interested in such?

I’m interested in only a few different things that could be classified as kink, although whether there are other people out there who share these kinks or think of these activities as kinks, I have no idea. I want to explore the following kinks in my life partnership with a male asexual. (I’m unsure whether I want to explore them in my life partnership with a female asexual or not.)

• Fist fighting/sparring, followed by physically caring for each other and cuddling

What I have in mind here is pretty much what it sounds like. Consensual fist fighting or bare knuckle boxing, with an allowance for minor pain/injury (nothing more serious than bruises). I imagine my partner and I doing this at home, just the two of us. We would, of course, have to clearly set boundaries beforehand as to how we’re allowed to fight, establish a safe word to stop the fight, etc.

Following a fight, I want us to clean each other up if necessary: icing each other’s bruises, cleaning each other’s cuts, etc.

Top it all off with some tender, restful cuddling.

• Pretending to be male in private/covertly

What I mean by this is, I want to roleplay as a man in the privacy of our home or go out into public with my partner under the agreement that I’m roleplaying a man to him. It would be just between us. I would have a male name that my partner calls me by, dress in masculine clothing (which I tend to do already anyway), etc.

Why?

I have a general fascination with violence, including physical fights. I’m going to start training as a boxer and plan on keeping that up for the rest of my life. (I’d be totally enthusiastic about my male partner boxing too). I don’t know why I’m attracted to this idea of consensual fights between my male partner and I. I may try it out and discover I don’t like it after all; I may try it out and get hooked. Only time will tell.

It may have something to do with the deep trust and respect necessary between my partner and I, for us to engage in such a kink with each other. I could truly hurt him, he could truly hurt me, and we have to trust each other NOT to do that, even in the heat of a fight that we could both get super into. Fighting consensually like this is a form of trusting each other with our bodies, which isn’t really any different than trusting a partner with your body during sex or in my case, during deliberately nonsexual cuddling and sensual encounters.

Cleaning each other up after a fight is also an expression of that body-trust. It’s a nice contrast of caring and kindness, in juxtaposition to the fight. I really like the idea of physically caring for each other in general because I find it to be a very loving expression.

Cuddling to finish out the session is because I adore cuddling no matter what the context and because it’s another way to follow up the physical fight with tenderness and caring.

I think fighting would be fun. I think it would be great practice for me as a boxer and/or for him. I think it would build up trust between us and physical easiness/comfort in our relationship. I think consensual, non-hostile fighting is actually a very potentially intimate activity for two people. It’s a way of making yourself physically vulnerable to someone else, a way of learning about how they move and how they think, etc.

As for pretending to be male….. When I imagine sharing that with my male partner and/or female partner, it feels thrilling to me. I identify as an androgynous boi, I strongly prefer masculine dress and behavior to feminine, and I’m sure that why I’m interested in playing a man with my partner(s) sometimes. I think it would bring us closer, because it’d be something I only do with him and/or her and something we keep private. In a way, it would contribute to the space of our relationship providing me with the most freedom to be myself and just follow my natural impulses and interests. This play, like the fist fights, require complete trust and respect between my partner and I. This isn’t an identity thing for me, I’m not trans, I don’t need the world to see me as male because I don’t identify as male. I guess you could say I’m an autoandrophiliac, except I don’t get sexually aroused by my fantasies of having a male body or wish to sexualize that fantasy.

Do you think that being asexual makes it harder to express or fulfill such desires or not?

I think the only reason why being asexual would make kink-exploration/expression more difficult is because most kink is totally submerged in sex. A lot of different kinks CAN be acted out without sexual activity, but it’s usually not, if it’s happening in a personal/intimate relationship—for the simple fact that most people are allosexual, so most people doing kink are allosexual and doing it within their sexual relationships. If you’re a celibate asexual, like me, looking to get into kink with someone, it can be tough to find somebody who will never expect sex to come into it, unless you’re paying somebody. Then again, it’s already hard to find allosexuals who will have an intimate, loving relationship sans sex whether you’re into kink or not.

It’s probably also difficult, depending on what your kinks are, to be a celibate ace or just an out asexual and approach allosexuals for kink play when most allosexuals don’t understand asexuality and therefore might go, “How can you be interested in kink if you’re an asexual?” or “How can you be interested in kink if you don’t want to have sex?” In that situation, before the asexual can even get into the kink negotiations, they have to explain asexuality and their own asexuality, which can be daunting as hell for any asexual.

Do you think that such things are oversexualised or that there should be a wider acceptance of nonsexual kink or does that not trouble you? Relatedly, do you think there’s a lack of resources for asexuals interested in such or not?

I think nonsexual kinks become more acceptable or doable, that more people should learn just because kink is usually associated with sex and can be sexual, doesn’t mean it has to be sexual.

There’s a lack of resources for kinky asexuals because there’s a lack of resources for asexuals, period. Our community needs more resources in general.

Do you think that an asexual experience of kink is fundamentally different from a sexual one, or not?

Well, sure, it’s fundamentally different. If you’re a kinky asexual, sex doesn’t enter into the enjoyment or motivation of your kinks or even the formation of relationships in which your kinks happen. If you’re a kinky allosexual, even kink play that happens without genital stimulation almost always carries sexual overtones to it and results in erotic fulfillment that must have a distinctly sexual tone to it.

There are kinky asexuals who do consent to sex involving their kinks, but in my experience, those asexuals have no interest in sex apart from their kinks, their pleasure is centered on the kink play and not the genital stimulation, and they obviously don’t desire their kink partners sexually, during the kink play or otherwise.

So basically, the difference between asexuals and allosexuals outside of kink still apply to kink.

Personal Addition:

I’m really interested in kink play between asexuals. I think it would be fascinating to talk to ace/ace partners who include kink in their relationship and find out how that dynamic feels to both of them, in the absence of sexual attraction/desire/energy. I wonder if kinky asexuals would feel more comfortable talking about and participating in kink with other asexuals vs. allosexuals, especially if those kinky aces are sex-repulsed/averse.

Spiritual Nonsexual Love

Since I was a teen, maybe even earlier than that, my idea of the perfect love always contained some element of the spiritual. It took me a while to begin exploring that in a conscious way, and I’m still nowhere near at a conclusion because I’m young and inexperienced with intimate nonsexual love and passionate friendship. For the most part, I’m in the theory stage; I’ve done a bunch of thinking and a bit of research–not that there’s a whole lot of material out there. (So far, only one book has anything to offer on the subject of spiritual experience through nonsexual love: Stuart Sovatsky’s Eros, Consciousness, and Kundalini. I cherish it as a resource and an eye-opener.) I’ve tried to imagine what a spiritual encounter with a loving partner would feel like, but it’s almost impossible to describe because it’s just….. pure feeling.

The older I get, the more clear my desire becomes for this spirituality through love. I believe that nonsexual love specifically can be a vehicle through which spiritual transcendence and soul to soul connection can occur between two people, if they go after that transcendence and connection. Sovatsky and the two women in “We Have Bliss,” an essay from Boston Marriages: Romantic but Asexual Relationships Among Contemporary Lesbians, both essentially describe the transmutation of erotic energy during a nonsexual, sensual encounter between loved ones that results in this spiritual bliss. Both Sovatsky and the women in the essay talk about this transmutation of erotic energy in people who are allosexual and who have to deliberately choose not to act on any sexual desire or arousal that may occur in these sensual, intimate interactions, and I’m sure for many, if not all, asexuals the experience would be different because even those of us with a libido don’t manifest erotic energy as sexual desire for others.

I actually don’t know how much erotic energy an asexual possesses, although I do believe it’s entirely possible for an asexual–even a sex-repulsed/averse asexual–to have some. I personally define “erotic” as having the potential for sexuality, rather than as synonym for “sexual.” Erotic energy, to me, isn’t sexual energy but creative energy and the energy of desire. Sex is just one form of desire, one form of creation, albeit the most primal and innate type in 99% of the human population. Eroticism doesn’t have to lead to sex, although it usually does. I actually find it exciting and awesome that I get to explore eroticism that DOESN’T end in sex, ever, because I have no interest in sex with other people. I’m excited that I get to provide these explorations of nonsexual eroticism to my fellow asexual partners, too.

I’m sure some asexuals, particularly those who are nonlibidoist, would say they have no erotic energy, and that’s fine. Meanwhile, plenty of allosexuals probably think, “How can you have any erotic energy or inclinations if you’re asexual?” Luckily, I can use myself as an example: I’m a celibate asexual with a libido, I have very strong erotic energy that shows itself most obviously when I dance (though I’m sure once I have loving relationships with other celibate aces, that eroticism will come out even more in our sensual interactions), I’m profoundly sensual and tactile at heart. I know I’m capable of orgasm, I’ve been having orgasms fairly regularly for a decade, but I have no interest in sexualizing the sensual intimacy I share with my passionate friends and partners. I want to use all of that free-floating erotic energy–when we’re cuddling, caressing, kissing each other’s bodies, breathing together, listening to each other’s heartbeat, etc–to experience something different: spiritual intimacy and bliss to the highest possible degree, a feeling of love that raises us out of our bodies into our greater consciousness.  A genital orgasm is nothing in comparison.

Being a celibate asexual means I don’t desire someone else’s body for sex, I don’t desire an orgasm given by another person, but I do desire. I even desire the bodies of the people I love, but that desire doesn’t pose sex as the object or the end. I desire intimacy, I desire love, I desire touch. I desire unity with my partners mentally, emotionally, and spiritually–even physically, as much as any two people can unite their bodies without connecting their genitals. I also want to be desired. I think that’s a sentiment rarely discussed in the asexual community so far, but it’s time we get around to it because it’s important.  What does it feel like to be a celibate asexual desired by another celibate asexual? What does it feel like to be a celibate asexual desiring another? What is desire for someone’s body like when it’s devoid of sexuality? I’m also interested in figuring out how nonsexual desire, of a particularly intimate/sensual nature, can be spiritual or how it can bring us closer to spirit, God, the divine, whatever you want to call it.

Americans have really latched onto “tantric sex” in the last couple decades, and as usual, they totally bypassed the point of authentic tantra and made it all about sex. Tantric sex isn’t about sex. Tantra isn’t about sex. It’s about that spiritual transcendence, about becoming one with God, about using the body and sexuality as a doorway to something greater. Tantric sex performed successfully doesn’t just give you a genital orgasm, may not give you one of those at all–but it does produce an orgasm of the soul. Alternatively, you could call it a “full body orgasm,” but that term still probably leaves most people thinking of the tingly pleasure in their genitals they have during ordinary sex. Tantric interaction between lovers is about spiritual sensation. It’s about consciousness.

I have the same thing is mind for my nonsexual sensuality with partners, as Sovatsky so wonderfully describes in his book. I want to experience that bliss, that profound intimacy of souls. What I’ve always wanted in my ideal love is spiritual intimacy, spiritual touch. If there were some way to have a disembodied experience where I am pure soul touching and touched by my loved one’s pure soul, that would be the ultimate for me. I don’t know how close I can get to that in this life, but I’m damn interested in exploring.

To have that kind of experience with fellow celibate asexuals….. to give each other an out-of-body pleasure, to be connected in the core of our beings, to feel love as a visceral sensation in every part of our bodies and with our souls too…. there will never be words to describe how incredible and transforming that would be for me and my partners. That’s the love I want. I want to give it and receive it. I want to experience God through the nonsexual love I share with other celibate aces, through the ultimate passionate friendships. I want that love to be a pathway to my spiritual evolution and my partners’. I want intense nonsexual passion. Passion that permeates us body, mind, heart, and soul without genital involvement. I want the kind of experiences that I can use to create a philosophy, a theory, a discourse of celibate asexual desire and celibate asexual passion, celibate asexual sensuality and intimacy.

I have an opportunity–just because I was born an asexual who wants to be celibate forever–to find out what the real potential for intimacy is in nonsexual love, in nonsexual sensuality. I have the opportunity to explore the spiritual substance of nonsexual, sensual love. I’m so thankful. I’m thankful just to have these ideas, the awareness of these possibilities.

I hope I get the chance to actually explore all of this in intimate, loving relationships with the right celibate asexuals for me. If and when I do, I’ll be sure to write about it.