if you're on vacation, be on vacation. just stop posting these old posts, or have your minions stop. we'll live without it, just like we live without the sonics.

I hope this guy hooked up with my ex, because they were made for each other.

Hey, I can make funny faces at subsections like "demisexual" all I want, but I appreciate if the people are out and honest about their need to not participate in activities versus implying otherwise.

Yeah, it's a repeat. But it's a message that needs to be shouted from the rooftops (because I bet most minimally sexual people don't read sex columns).

Dan seems unnecessarily hostile toward this guy. One problem is that most people need to experience at least a few different relationships and/or sexual partners in order to fully realize how sexual they might be and how their needs compare to those of others. I doubt many people with low libidos are intentionally entrapping hornier partners in bad relationships just for evil kicks, as Dan suggests.

If he gets married and has a gaggle of kids, chances are he will have a similar sex drive with his wife until the kids hit middle school (although I think the exhausted mom still wants to feel lusted after by the husband even if she has no desire for sex).

Y'all are way to hard on Dan for posting re-runs. Not all of us catch every column.

@5 - indeed!!! Over and over.

@6 - Dan is a proxy for all of us frustrated people (I have been in a past life). When you're the rate limiting step, you don't notice so much how much you're constraining others, because you're getting all you want and no more.

Even after noting that he doesn't fit into a false dichotomy/binary, NSNA doesn't do the obvious: recognize a spectrum/grey area and talk about finding someone on his same frequency/wavelength. He could have proposed a new label. Instead it's: how do I get someone with a higher sex drive to be satisfied with me. Dan's response was perfect.

@6: They're outright asking how to achieve a scenario where they can snag someone who doesn't meet their needs and whom they can not meet the needs for.

This is a bit odd-sounding, though-

"will a normally sexual person accept a partner who is able to have sex but does not wish to for certain reasons, e.g., a lack of confidence or stamina"

Uhhhhhhh, perhaps you should address your insecurities before declaring them offlimits for discussion by encoding them into your identity? I mean, our insecurities are us, and there are no easy solutions much of the time, but identifying as "asexual" because it's easier than changing your level of confidence/body image/"stamina" (if there are underlying physical problems they can be worked around so that some amount of affection could be exchanged beyond the occasional kiss) does not bode well for the longevity of any relationship.

Off the bat I'd be more worried about the lack of self-love than I would the lack of desire that springs out of it.

Disclaimer, blah blah I'm probably reading in too much, blah.

I wonder how one knows he or she is minimally sexual, until the issue comes up as a point of contention in a relationship. Dan always makes it sound like people walk around with gobs of self awareness and a clipboard with questions to check off when they are dating, and I've rarely found that to be the case. (When I do meet someone who treats first-second dates as if they were interviews, I get totally turned off to that person). People often meet, discovers common interests and attraction without even considering saying something like "by the way, I think I am minimally sexual. How high is your libido." And if they did say something like this on a first or second date, they would be showing the poor judgement Dan is always saying that that kind of too-early blurting suggests. People tend to assume that what they're like is what everyone is like unless they know from past experience (maybe with more than one partner to buttress the concept) that they're really on an extreme end of a spectrum. What you are is "normal" for you.

And what is "normal" when it comes to libido or interest in sex, anyway?

I'm just about to break up with a nice guy who's probably minimally sexed, but who has never realized that he is, because all the women he's been with have been not very interested in sex, either. I know that my libido is somewhat higher than many women's my age, but I don't think of myself as being crazy highly sexed.

I think Dan is conflating 2 issues here. My understanding is that the majority of sexual-desire discordant couples were not always discordant... NRE (new relationship energy) and a decrease in sexual desire over time are very real and common phenomena. I don't think that "minimally sexual" people are necessarily looking for "minimally sexual" relationships. I think that people get bored, life happens, kids drain you, and the importance of sex diminishes for some people over time. Telling this person to find someone who knows and expects this to happen is probably not going to yield a lot of success... no one plans to lose interest in sex, and most people who eventually will lose interest in sex are very interested in sex at the beginning of a relationship.

8/9 -- He's not asking how to "snag" anyone. He doesn't have a "normally" sexual person on the line that he's stringing along. He asks how normally sexual people would feel about being with someone like him, possibly because he doesn't think he's ever met anyone else on his area of the spectrum or doesn't know how to go about finding one. After a bad experience in the asexual community, he might feel like "normals" are the default option for him.

@10 -- And no, you're not reading in too much. I also found it weird that Dan didn't address how the dude's "lack of confidence or stamina" might be related to his supposedly minimal sex drive.

@6: Looking at friends and former partners, I see a lot of low-libido pre-marrieds as semi self-closeted. A bit like, "Dude, how could you not know you're gay and marry a woman!?!" there has to be cluelessness at a minimum, and often a big serving of denial to ignore all the signs. If ALL your partners wanted more sex, who's the common factor? If you're having to work at being sexual, how is that going to get better after years of marriage?

Just having the discussion (before shacking up, marrying, procreating, etc) would be great. There should be a check list: kids? How many? religion? City/burbs/rural? sex once a day/week/month/year? Agree or agree to disagree. Or be kind to all concerned and split up sooner rather than later.

@12 Which why you shouldn't rush into a lifelong commitment before figuring out each others lows and highs.

@11 I enjoy flirting occasionally but not NSA sex so I avoid situations or direct them gently to a polite end if I realize that they're heading in that direction. So that hopefully both I and the person I flirted with got something out of the interaction without them feeling lead on. In all likelihood it would be perfectly fine for him to go out on dates and etc, but if it ever reached the point that sex was about to become a major part of the relationship then it would be fucked up not to say something or find a graceful way to bow out without hurting the other person.

@nocutename: regarding your breaking up with the nice guy: I'm just curious, have you ever considered having more than one (consenting) partner? This is puuure nosiness on my part, so answer only if you care to, but it strikes me as an elegant solution. Guy in question is nice, and if the problem is nothing more than frequency/kinkiness of sex--easily solved! But I don't recall you ever expressing any inclination that way and I guess I'm curious why you would rule it out (if indeed you do).

@LateBloomer: I'm kind of monogamish, in that I understand the desire for novelty and variety on occasion (and share it myself), and I don't think that most people can maintain strictly monogamous relationships over the long haul, so I kind of believe in adopting a policy that says when (not if) someone has an outside encounter, the original relationship should be able to continue. And I'm a big believer in honesty, which of course means that extra-relationship sexual encounters aren't examples of "cheating," so the sense of betrayal that comes with having been cheated on doesn't exist.

I have had multiple (consenting) partners--not in some sort of triad, or quad thing, but just because I was casually dating all of them, and sure, it is great fun. But it's not a condition I think I could sustain indefinitely. Ultimately, I like the emotional intimacy that true coupledness allows for. I'm mostly monogamous, in that I tend to form romantic attachments to one person, and don't want to outsource my sexual needs. Novelty and variety are great, but for me they only work in the context of a little occasional extra fun on the side of something I regard as already completely satisfying. I want to have a good sexual relationship with the person I'm romantically involved with. I'm not polyamorous by nature; although I've had multiple romantic/sexual relationships going on simultaneously, those were when I was dating in a casual way. But once I get more emotionally involved with someone, I don't want to continue to date other people, too (at least not at first; 10 years and routine might change that!). For me the intensity of the romantic bond comes from the deepening exclusivity of the relationship. If I stay involved with multiple partners, none of the relationships go very deep--I'm always being distracted, as it were, from the pair-bonding that takes place when it's just the two of us.

And while I don't mind my partner having the occasional extra-curricular enrichment activity, I would be terribly hurt and upset by him having an emotionally intense relationship with someone else. (This is why I would prefer that my partner actually see a sex worker: no chance that the relationship could turn into anything other than a professional one of client and service-provider.) I would feel much less threatened by a one-off encounter than I would by an ongoing fwb thing. And if I have really great sex with someone about 3-4 times, I tend to fall in love with him, so for me, one-offs are probably better extras as well. Better still might be some kind of shared experience: a threesome, a couples swap (in the same room, so we can all be voyeurs and exhibitionists); a sex club or play party.

Last week, AFinch said he "didn't see the point" in paying for sex; speaking only for myself, I don't see the point of having a romantic asexual relationship while simultaneously having a mind-blowingly great sexual but emotionally unfulfilling relationship. I would end up falling for the guy with whom I'm having the good sex. I would end up leaving the "main" boyfriend, and hurting him and feeling shitty about myself. If the sex-god wasn't interested in me in real romantic partnership I would be heartbroken. Just for me, this scenario probably wouldn't work.

@LateBloomer: tl;dr: I'm not so good at compartmentalizing.

@12: " I don't think that "minimally sexual" people are necessarily looking for "minimally sexual" relationships. I think that people get bored, life happens, kids drain you, and the importance of sex diminishes for some people over time."

Uh, what's the "neurotypical" balance term to minimally-sexual? Anyhoo, as I've always heard, people who are "minimally sexual" actively seek less sex than the baseline in the context of their relationships. Otherwise they wouldn't need to distinguish themselves by "minimally sexual".

People with the "expected baseline" sexual desires/needs may find it taper off due to life happening, pets dying, family squabbles, money/employment issues, having kids, etc. That is not the same thing as their baseline at their highest peaks being having little to no interest in sex. It's "I don't really care" to disinterest, not "I don't have time for this right now but will when my headspace frees up for you".

@19

I think you misread my point. I used quotes around "minimally sexual" because hardly anyone self-defines that way. According to Dan's response, a huge proportion of the general public is "minimally sexual," and I'd venture to guess that virtually none of them would agree with him.

My point is that the vast majority of these people that Dan would define as "minimally sexual" were most likely very interested in sex at one point. Then life happened.

It's myopic and misplaced to criticize these people for a lack of disclosure and for victimizing "normally sexual" (shudder) partners. And instructing someone who does have the self-awareness to self-identify as minimally sexual to seek out the supposed abundance of his peers is misguided and futile. This community to whom Dan is referring NSNA simply does not exist.

@offwhite and undead ayn rand: I agree with some points each of you is making, but disagree with others.

I agree with offwhite that I don't think most "minimally sexual" people have enough self-awareness to recognize themselves as such. They are attracted to people sexually, so they don't consider themselves asexual. No one has a real sense of anyone's being different from themselves (we all think everyone thinks like us, for example, until and unless we have ample evidence that that's not the case, and even then, we are still baffled or frustrated when someone has a radically different response to something than we have. Why does she do that, we think, or how can he possibly believe that?

So Dan's advise that people identify themselves to potential partners as "m.s." and actively seek out complementary "m.s." partners seems naive.

But I also agree with undead ayn rand that the kind of people Dan's talking about, the kind that the letter writer self identifies, are not people who started with normal sex drives that got drained off as the complexities and stresses of life happened. They're people whose baselines are set lower, often far lower than what we are calling (for lack of a more precise word) "normal." Their libido doesn't "return" to its original and higher state when the kids get older or the job stress lessens. Normal to them is minimal to the rest of us.

So I think you're right offwhite, when you said: "It's myopic and misplaced to criticize these people for a lack of disclosure and for victimizing "normally sexual" (shudder) partners. And instructing someone who does have the self-awareness to self-identify as minimally sexual to seek out the supposed abundance of his peers is misguided and futile. This community to whom Dan is referring NSNA simply does not exist. "
But I think you're mistaken when you said: "My point is that the vast majority of these people that Dan would define as "minimally sexual" were most likely very interested in sex at one point. Then life happened."

As I said @11, I'm dating one now. We just started dating a few months ago; the relationship is new and the sex should be at its most frequent and most exciting. There are no "life happens" issues to impede it. He's content with the very infrequent, utterly vanilla sex we have (very repressed and embarrassed, too, so I'm sure his upbringing--Catholic--is partly to blame, but I also think his previous girlfriends and ex-wife were more than happy to not have frequent sex) we have, and I am unable to take it.

@18--No, not tl, and I did read. It's very interesting to get your perspective. I'm a sucker for what motivates people, or not, especially with something as complicated and interesting as polyamory. I wasn't sure if I was being too forward for asking, so thank you for your response.

@21

I'll agree with you that there are probably a lot of people who really should identify as "minimally sexual" who simply never consider it. However, I also believe that a large proportion of people that Dan is calling "minimally sexual" used to have super hot, all-night fuck-fest style sex with their partners at one point.

Maybe we're caught up in the semantics of "majority," "large proportion," etc. But I maintain my belief that the amount of time-honored "minimally sexual" people is outnumbered by the amount of people who have really enjoyed and valued hot, wrapped around each other naked all day, call in sick for work to fuck, highlights reel sex at some point, and just prioritize it differently in their current life.

@23: Really, I only have so much ability to guess about a person's intentions. All I can assume is that the "because of confidence" should get the person to a therapist while they're single.

So this advice was generated with a find/replace from an old bit of writing on how selfish bisexuals are to date gays and straights, I wot.

Dan's advice, though perhaps not entirely appropriate to the letter's author, who was seeking help in good faith, is entirely appropriate in general. Relationships between sexuals, demisexuals, and asexuals don't mix. It is incredibly selfish, naive, and myopic for them to initiate relationships with each other and simply hope for the best.

These relationships result in years of heartbreak and devastation. To those who believe that most people don't know or understand where they fall on the continuum of desire, this post ought to help serve as a corrective for their ignorance. The more awareness we can build about sexual appetites, the more we can prevent broken relationships and persistent sorrow.

How many people out there wish they had understood the magnitude of this problem 5, 10, or 20 years ago? How much soul-crushing rejection and frustration could have been prevented?