r/BestofRedditorUpdates: Asexuality Edition #3

Transcript

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I’m here with my spouse Royce. Together we are The Ace Couple, and today we are back diving into the deep, dark depths of Reddit. It has been many, many months since we have done a Best of Redditor Updates: Asexuality Edition, so let’s see what we can find today. Our first story was originally posted to r/Polyamory.

Courtney: OP is a 22-year-old woman and her boyfriend in question is a 23-year-old man. The post is entitled, My boyfriend is jealous of me having a girlfriend, even though he also has one. Having not read any of the text nor the update, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that that guy’s probably, uh, not doing polyamory well. But let’s find out.

Royce: That is a common theme in posts like these.

Courtney: I, I’ve been surprised by posts before, but let us see. I’m in a poly relationship with my boyfriend of two years. I’ll put names to make things easier to read. My boyfriend, John. His girlfriend, Sarah. I’ll start saying that I’m an asexual woman and I made it clear to my boyfriend before we started dating. It was a bit hard because he had a very old-school upbringing, but he accepted he has low sex drive, so it’s not that much of an issue. I’ve always been interested in poly relationships, and when he broached the topic about it, I was happy to agree trying.

Courtney: Long story short, he found Sarah, who I actually like. I wouldn’t say we’re going to be best friends, but she is not someone I feel uncomfortable around and it’s been mostly okay. John looks happy. He has more motivation and talks all the time about how much of a good idea this was.

Courtney: I haven’t had a lot of luck though. My asexuality has blocked a lot of possible relationships and I’ve been studying like crazy so I barely have time to sleep, so I’m part of a couple of online asexual communities and started talking to Mary and we really hit it off. We’re both ace, have a lot of common interests, and she’s funny as hell. A couple of my friends have met her, and everyone says we’re perfect together. I wanted to introduce her to John.

Courtney: Just for the record, I talked to Mary and she’s interested in me too. I wanted to tell him in person, so I told him to come earlier. He was late. Mary got there before him, and I decided to let him know her before everything. He really likes her and was singing her praises after. When I got home, he came home with me. I told him I really liked her and I could see us dating.

Courtney: He went really quiet and I got anxious. He then started telling me that he thought this wasn’t a good idea and I didn’t know what I was doing, that she wasn’t that funny, and as I quote, She’s not even pretty.

Courtney: I’m not proud of it, but I lost it. I told him to get the fuck out of my house and that a poly relationship wasn’t just for his benefit. On the next day, Sarah called me and said she wanted my side of the story. Apparently I was crazy.

Courtney: I wanted to move out with a girl I met once, and he thought she was an alcoholic? I explained to her and she went to talk to him. First he lied, but got caught. Then he changed his tune and said that she must’ve misunderstood. In short, she’s pissed, I’m pissed.

Courtney: Yesterday he sent me a message admitting that he was wrong and he had a very traditional upbringing and that came out with a very sexist idea. He didn’t like his women with another person. And he was sorry. I don’t know. I feel hurt, angry, and I can’t take this feeling like he thought I’d never get anyone. He did seem to regret what he said though. What should I do?

Courtney: Before reading the update, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say dump him.

Royce: Yeah, if not for the double standard, then for the immediate defensiveness and lying that happened right after.

Courtney: Yeah. And this is, I suppose, another data point, because I have critiqued in the past how quickly people in asexual communities online are to throw around polyamory as a sort of antidote, a solution to, here’s the key to having a happy relationship with an allosexual person. And there are plenty of ace people who are very happy polyamorous, very naturally polyamorous, and can have polyamorous relationships that flourish as much as any other. But I have gotten so deeply frustrated in the past when someone says, hey, I’m ace and I’m monogamous, and maybe I am struggling in a mixed orientation relationship because they want something that I don’t want, what do we do? I loathe when they get dozens and dozens of comments being like, have you considered an open relationship?

Courtney: And I brought up not too long ago, I don’t recall which episode this was, but I talked about how deeply unfair this can be to like actually polyamorous people, because now if you are not educated on how to have healthy relationship structures like this, if you are not like in it with your whole heart, if it’s not something that you want that will benefit you, then I do think it is potentially very selfish to bring polyamorous people into a relationship structure that you don’t want, because that’s a recipe to then hurt them, not only yourself, but you’re also hurting, like, someone think of the poor polyamorous people.

Courtney: And I don’t know, I’ve always, I’ve been under the impression, and I know for a fact some of these comments I’m referring to have come from polyamorous people. And I know because I’ve read extensive commentary that some of it’s coming from a place of polyamorous people who think that everybody can or should be polyamorous, and that if you’re not polyamorous, you just have something you haven’t unpacked yet, and you need to unpack that selfishness, and you, and I can’t with those comments and that type of person. Some of my closest friends are polyamorous, and I’ve seen long-term, beautiful polyamorous relationships that work. I know for me, that is not something that I want out of my life, and I wouldn’t want to do that to other people by going out and pretending like that is something that I want, you know?

Courtney: But then we do, and I, I think we fail to talk about certain feminist issues in an appropriate way in the asexual community sometimes, because we’re, we’re so far down the unpacking all of the isms and all of the cultural norms. That sometimes I think we blow past some of the more basic, like, we blow past the feminism 101 and we’re like, okay, we’re way past that. So we almost come full circle sometimes to like, now you’re forgetting that actually sometimes cis straight men are actually terrible to women. And we have gone so far down unpacking this that we almost forget that basic concept.

Courtney: So having recently made the case that it can be very unfair to polyamorous people to pretend to be something you’re not, or at least before you’re ready for it. I think everyone should unpack monogamy and some people will learn things about themselves in the process, but I do think you have to want to go down that path and you can’t just throw yourself into the middle of it and risk hurting yourself and everyone else in the process. But here we have a woman who was really excited about the prospect of polyamory. She’s like, I’ve already thought about this. I’m absolutely ready, for sure, 100%.

Courtney: And it still turns out that her boyfriend was just being an asshole, and he was being sexist, and he wanted more girls, but he didn’t want her to be able to have the same freedoms or the same options. So that’s actually like number one reason I’ve said before, and maybe I’ll make an entire episode about the concept of advice. in general and internet advice, but I try to say and I try to live by not being an advice giver. Because the blanket advice, open up your relationship, do polyamory, is not good advice for everyone. And I’m wondering if we had a totally different situation, if we had an ace woman who was, was maybe on the fence or had some reservations, hadn’t thought about polyamory, wasn’t as open to it, but went online and said, hey, my boyfriend thinks this, and I’m asexual and he’s not, and he wants to open up the relationship.

Courtney: Depending on where that’s posted, there’s a strong possibility that everyone’s gonna be commenting being like, yeah, actually you’d be really selfish not to let him sleep with other people. Yes, for sure you need to open up the relationship if you wanna have a re, have something with an allosexual person.

Courtney: I know for a fact she would see things like that. And if this was someone who didn’t want a polyamorous relationship to begin with, who took that bad advice only to then still find out this guy is an asshole and he didn’t even really want a healthy polyamorous relationship either.

Royce: Yeah, while you’ve been talking, I’ve been scrolling through comments to try to pick things out, kind of avoiding things about the update, but, uh, because there were a few people who were commenting as they were reading. But one person did point out that if we look through this story, the boyfriend didn’t apologize until the girlfriend he was sleeping with got mad at him.

Courtney: Yup. They both gotta leave him if I’m being honest.

Courtney: Update one week later. Let’s find out what can happen in a week. I asked if we could talk on Tuesday since I didn’t have class the next day. He agreed and we decided to meet up at his apartment after classes. I texted his girlfriend Sarah to let her know I’d be talking about the situation and she asked me to call her after. I wasn’t sure I’d like to talk right after, but said I’d text her if I wanted to be alone or in silence. Talked to a friend who lived close by if we could hang out after and talk, because this kind of thing always shoots my anxiety through the roof and having someone to- I trust around helps a lot. I get to his house and even before I could say anything, he started to apologize.

Courtney: At first it seemed okay, but then he said something like, oh, I was being really stupid worrying about you in another relationship. You won’t have sex anyway, and besides, she’s a girl, so it doesn’t count. I asked what the fuck he meant with that, and he said that he didn’t have a problem with girls having sex, but that it showed they didn’t respect themselves. And you couldn’t really take it seriously, a relationship with someone who did this, but that I didn’t have to worry because I was pure and a real woman and whatnot. I was furious. Did he actually think this was right or that it would make me happy?

Courtney: But instead I asked, but what about Sarah? He answered, oh, she’s not seeing anyone else right now. I said something like, what if she was? You’re in a poly relationship. She might fall in love with another man and they might have sex. At this point, I was completely sure I’d be breaking up, but what he said after made me lose a portion of my faith in humanity. He said, I like Sarah, but everyone knows she’s not a girl to get married with. I mean, not even her parents wanted her. She’s adopted.

Courtney: What the fuck? I was speechless. I don’t know if he thought my silence meant I agreed with him, but he kept talking. You know, she even got adopted by another couple and they sent her back. This all just shows there’s something wrong with her. I like having fun with her, but I’d never even think about spending the rest of my life with someone like that.

Courtney: At this point, I said I was done. I told him he was the most disgusting person I’d ever seen and that he was the lowest human I’d ever talked to. He then tried to stop me from leaving, but I made it clear that if he didn’t let me leave, I’d fuck him up so much his grandsons would feel, lol. He let me leave.

Courtney: I cried the entire walk to my friend, which freaked her out since I almost never cry. We opened a bottle of vodka and ate the curry she made. I love this girl. And I cried a lot. Well, guess who calls? I’d forgotten to text Sarah and she got worried, so I was crying my heart out, half a bottle of vodka in, and talking to her. I said it all. I don’t really remember what she said, but I knew things were bad.

Courtney: I woke up, went home, showered, and ate. Slept a lifetime. Wake up to my phone ringing. Sarah is calling. Apparently she was furious and left her hometown on Wednesday and went to John’s house. It was apparently a shitshow. At first he tried to deny it, but got caught in his own lies and he- that he tried to justify.

Courtney: Finally she broke up and left. Turns out she went home and realized she forgot her key at her parents’ home and her roommate was traveling. She called me and I invited her to spend the night. Opened a bottle of wine and ordered some pizza. So that’s it.

Courtney: Sarah is okay. John is fucked because Sarah’s family is very influential on the area he intended to work in. And I’m fine, I guess. Pretty much shocked, and I’m not sure if it has sunk in yet. So yeah. Have been better, have been worse. Thanks for the advice, guys.

Courtney: So the language I wanted that I was hinting at earlier came to me while I was reading that. The word that we often lose in conversations about sex and sexuality in the ace community is that for a large percentage of people growing up in the patriarchal society that does currently exist, as much as we do talk about unpacking it, as much as we should, there are far more people out there who still view sex as a means of control. And that is something that I want more ace people to be able to say more often and think about and analyze when they too try to enter into a variety of relationship types. Not everybody is an asshole, not everybody is abusive, not everybody is coercive, but sex has always been a weapon of control when wielded by someone like this. She said traditional values, grew up in a traditional family, but this is patriarchy.

Courtney: This is hierarchy. This is a man who is using sex to control the women around him. And that’s why as a blanket baseline, if you do not intimately know the person and everyone for whom they may or may not have a relationship with, on a very close, confident level, I don’t think anybody should ever be giving advice that remotely approximates more sex, more sex, and sometimes a blanket open up the relationship. It might not be telling the ace person to have more sex, but it’s saying more sex for the other person, that’s what you need, that’s what will fix it. And there are just too many potentially very dangerous variables when sex can be used as a means of control that I don’t think it’s safe to be flippantly throwing around advice like that. Because that’s how so many aces, even if they haven’t been given it directly, start questioning themselves and what they want and start fretting about the fact of like, oh, this is what I’m gonna have to do if I ever want a relationship with someone.

Courtney: Either I’m gonna need to have sex with them even if I don’t want to, or, I’m going to need to let them have an open relationship, even if that’s not something I’m ready to pursue right now. And then the system has done the work for anyone else. Now all of a sudden we do have people who are being coerced societally, even if it’s not on an individual basis.

Courtney: I’m happy they both left this trash man. That’s for the best. I really hope she and her ace girlfriend are gonna work out. It sounds, that sounds lovely if all of her friends think they’re perfect for each other. Wonderful scenario.

Royce: Yeah, that’s a relationship upgrade. I did see near the end of that post, there are like highlighted comments from the other places that this were posted, and OP did make a comment that said, unfortunately, a pro-level revenge of the three women in this story being in a relationship isn’t going to happen, but the three of them are remaining friends with the bond from all having like gotten away from this guy. So got out of a bad relationship with a good friend and a girlfriend.

Courtney: Yeah, this is how bad and ugly, like one example of how bad and ugly it can get when she was open to this.

Royce: Yeah, let’s see, she was, well, in a poly relationship with my boyfriend of two years. So I don’t know when the poly aspect started, if it was like that at the beginning.

Courtney: It wasn’t, because she said that he approached her about it.

Royce: Right. But it is still just shocking to me that, um, it takes two years in a relationship to hear someone say things like this, because clearly he’s had thoughts like that the whole time and has just never said them out loud.

Courtney: Yeah, and this is one ugly example of a guy who doesn’t actually want what it takes to maintain a polyamorous relationship. He wants to have sex with women he does not respect without any ramifications.

Royce: Okay, next one. OP’s asexual roommate demands that she stop sexting her boyfriend while they live together.

Courtney: What?

Royce: That was my thought. Um, this was originally posted to r/relationshipadvice. And the story goes, my ace roommate doesn’t like me sexting with my long-distance partner. For some background, I have been with my partner for around three and a half years. About two years ago, I started college, moved two and a half hours away, and met my current roommate. My partner accepted that I was moving so far away from home, and the two of us visited often last year, but we didn’t have that option this year due to COVID restrictions.

Royce: So naturally, because we’re both adults, we started sending each other nudes and sexting every once in a while.

Courtney: Mm, don’t like the “because we’re adults.” Don’t like that language. You’re not wrong, you’re allowed to send nudes, by all means.

Royce: Along with FaceTiming daily and sending each other gifts in the mail. I’m just wondering, where is the point where it’s going to be obvious that this is happening?

Courtney: I want to know, yeah, how does the ace roommate even know?

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: I feel like sexting is such a-

Royce: Private thing.

Courtney: Easily private thing. Okay, yeah, let’s find out.

Royce: Well, my roommate is asexual, defined here as isn’t attracted to people sexually but still romantically and aesthetically, and is sex repulsed. I’m bi and obviously into sex, but this difference never caused issues between us. I feel like I’ve done my best to respect their feelings and not make sex jokes, and I’ve avoided talking about my sex life with them. Well, a few days ago I went to show my roommate a meme I had saved to my camera roll, and one of my nudes showed up at the bottom of the screen as like a preview of the other pictures in my camera roll. I didn’t do this on purpose. I want to make that clear. I normally delete my nudes out of my phone basically as soon as I take them because I’m terrified of anyone accidentally seeing them who isn’t supposed to.

Royce: Turns out I missed that one. My roommate was pissed. For about a day, they were insisting that I had shown them something sexual on purpose, but eventually they accepted that I didn’t. Now they’ve moved on to demanding that I stop sexting my partner and sending nudes to him because it makes them uncomfortable. Since this is a shared space room between the two of us, they think it’s disrespectful for me to do this because they’re sex repulsed. They don’t want to think about me taking sexual pictures of myself every time I go to shower or change my clothes because, quote, it’s disgusting. They claim it’s like if they were to bring peanuts into the dorm and constantly eat peanuts around me because I’m allergic, but I don’t think that’s a good analogy.

Courtney: Mm.

Royce: I don’t feel like I necessarily did anything wrong, even if I do feel bad that they accidentally saw my nude and I want to make it up to them somehow. This continues, but I want to pause ’cause bad analogies irritate me.

Courtney: Yeah, that doesn’t work.

Royce: ‘Cause like, this is like someone with a peanut allergy not wanting to think about someone leaving the room to go eat peanuts.

Courtney: Yeah, a peanut allergy, like, if it’s bad enough, can be life or death.

Royce: Right.

Courtney: It can mean I need an EpiPen right now if, you know, you get the oils on something that I touch.

Royce: But the, the idea of it’s your fault for me thinking about the fact that other people have sex.

Courtney: Yeah, I can feel for someone having a nude like pop up when they weren’t expecting it and don’t want it. Like, I, I can on some level empathize with the shock and upset that might cause. But yeah, claiming at first that the roommate did that on purpose doesn’t sound fair based on what we’re being told. It sounds like that got sorted out, but yeah.

Courtney: When it comes to what other people do, and when it comes to our own personal thoughts, you cannot and should not control what other people do outside of your presence when you’re not actively there. You can set boundaries for yourself while you’re in the room. I think it’s fair to say like, yeah, please don’t undress and take a nude while I’m in the room. That’s a very fair boundary, clearly, but if just the fact that someone else has sex is something that you keep spiraling on over and over and can’t not think about that, that is something you have the responsibility to work on.

Courtney: Being able to control your own thoughts and emotions is easier for some than others. There are certainly some types of neurodivergence disabilities that can aggravate these issues. I mean, spiraling thoughts in things like OCD might be something that is at first out of someone’s control to do. But if these thoughts are so upsetting that the only way you can think to do it is to control the behavior of others that does not directly influence you, that is something that does need mental health support to overcome.

Royce: Okay, so this continues, and this is a, let’s see, there was something that was mentioned of this being a shared space. This sounds kind of like a dorm room. There’s just even less private room when you have two people living in a single room with a shared bathroom than in like an apartment where you each have separate spaces.

Courtney: Dorms sound just absolutely terrible. I know some people who didn’t mind it, some people who became friends with their college dormmate, but the prospect of just being put in a small room with two beds with a stranger? Absolutely not.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Horrible system. I hate it so much.

Royce: I was in a dorm for a year. It was fine. But there were certainly people in my year who had gotten randomly paired with someone they really didn’t get along with.

Courtney: Mm-mm. Terrible system.

Royce: Anyway, I’ve been swallowing my anger the last few days because even though I want to make it up to them, I don’t like that they’re trying to dictate what happens in my romantic relationship. On top of that, they’re sort of a shitty roommate. And OP goes on to describe them just basically not helping out with any of the things that you need to do to keep a space clean and maintained and whatnot. I was planning on living with my partner next year because of that. Our semester ends in three weeks, so I should confront them and, so should I confront them and tell them, no, I’m not going to stop sexting my partner, or should I just tell them that I’ll stop in order to keep the peace? My partner says that my roommate is being ridiculous, but as angry as I am, I feel like I do need to make it up to them somehow because obviously it was upsetting to them.

Royce: Either way, I don’t want to stop sexting my partner, but I’m beginning to wonder if I actually have been disrespectful to them this whole year. What should I do?

Courtney: You should neither say you’re going to stop nor say you’re going to keep doing this. I think the only correct answer is, I will do everything in my power to make sure that that accident does not happen again. Outside of that, anything that happens in my phone or my private time is my business.

Royce: None of your business.

Courtney: It’s none of yours.

Royce: The update: for better or worse, this situation has come to an end.

Courtney: Well, which is it? Is it better or worse?

Royce: A few hours after I posted originally, I decided to make dinner in the kitchen dorm, in the community dorm kitchen, because my roommate was getting off work and I thought that things might go over better if we both had food. I didn’t time it right, so I wasn’t done when they got back to the dorm, and so they came to find me. Usually I’m in the dorm when they get back, and so I had texted them already that I was making dinner in the kitchen in case I wasn’t there when they got back.

Royce: And well, Things were only okay for about 5 minutes. As I was beginning to finish up, I casually said something to the effect of, I know you just got off work, so you can have some of this if you want. I don’t think I’ll eat all of it by myself. To which they replied, verbatim, I don’t share food with people who disrespect me.

Courtney: Wow.

Royce: I tried my best to take your guys’ advice and be calm about this, so I apologized again about the picture and said it was a really embarrassing thing for me as well, so it would be best if we could just both forget about it. Again, they were insisting that because they’re ace, it’s disrespectful for me to have a sex life while living with them, essentially. I kept trying to politely ask if they could explain why they were feeling disrespected in more detail, because I was struggling to understand how I was disrespecting them. Well, they wouldn’t answer that question directly, and it escalated.

Royce: Basically, they kept yelling at me about how I was acephobic and how awful I was being. I eventually finished cooking and was trying to get them to just go back to the dorm so we could talk about it in private. They wouldn’t let me out of the kitchen and kept yelling.

Royce: The RA got called on us. So the RA had us both speak to her separately and then came to our dorm to talk to us together. Basically, she just wanted us to find a different solution that was fair to the both of us, and my roommate refused to budge on their demand and kept yelling at me and at one point stood up and got in my face, and the RA had to make them leave the room to talk to her privately again. I’m not sure what they spoke about, but my roommate’s parents came and picked them up, and then Monday they came back and packed up all their things and moved out while I was in class. We haven’t spoken since, but I have texted them saying I hope they’re doing okay.

Royce: But yeah, there’s the end of that story and friendship. It’s not the way I would have preferred things going, but it’s for the best.

Courtney: Yeah, that’s upsetting because unfortunately there are going to be outlier situations with anyone who belongs to any given marginalized identity out there where they will be the boy who cries wolf and calls something bigoted that is not. I do even appreciate that OP added an edit after all this.

Royce: I was considering getting to that too. I don’t know what the comments were like on the original post, but yeah, I glossed over, um, some of this in the beginning, but obviously the roommate was asexual. They were also non-binary, and they were, and there’s an edit at the end saying that OP does not believe anything that happened here had anything to do with either aspect of their roommate’s identity and specifically mentioned to the commenters not to use this story to justify their own prejudices against ace or non-binary people.

Courtney: Which is a good addition to have, because unfortunately there is so much actual rampant acephobia that there will be some people out here who read something like this and be like, this is why ace people are fucking annoying, and oh my God, I hate aces.

Royce: There are a lot of comments that were from people who were ace and/or nonbinary who were like, oh God, I cringed reading this.

Courtney: Yeah, yes.

Royce: Like, oh no, I’m preparing myself for the backlash.

Courtney: Yeah, yes, exactly. Our next story was originally posted to r/AmITheAsshole. Am I the asshole for telling my wife she shouldn’t have married me if she expected intimacy? Hi, I’m a 29-year-old man and I’ve been married to my wife, 30-year-old woman, for two years.

Courtney: This Thursday, I was watching TV on my day off when my wife came back home from a sleepover with her best friend. I went to ask how it was and if she had fun, but she immediately started yelling at me that she deserved way better and I was a pathetic excuse for a man that couldn’t even fulfill her needs. I asked to calm down and stop yelling at me. I asked her where this was coming from because she never told me she felt this way. I asked her to sit down so we could talk, but she refused. She stared at me for a while and said her friend Amelia helped her realize I wasn’t enough for her and I wasn’t good enough and she could do better. So I just asked her what was the point of even marrying me and she shouldn’t have married me if she expected intimacy. She didn’t even answer me. She went to our bedroom, packed a bag, and left.

Courtney: And I’m left here feeling stupid. Honestly, I didn’t know, Who to tell about this? I feel so embarrassed, if that makes sense. I don’t even want to tell my friends. I feel so ashamed and inadequate. Relevant info: I’m asexual, which my wife knew before we even started dating. I’ve never been comfortable with intimacy after being sexually assaulted when I was younger, which I thought my wife understood she was okay with and was happy with me showing her love in other ways like dates, flowers, long talks, etc., which now I know wasn’t the case.

Courtney: My wife’s sister has been messaging me saying that I’m condescending and that I’m dismissing my wife and that I’m an asshole. I think we might be heading for a divorce. Am I the asshole? My wife has never acted this way before. It felt like there was a stranger in my wife’s body. Sorry if this post is a mess. My thoughts are a mess. Wow, yikes.

Courtney: I think I’m just gonna read the update before commenting on that.

Royce: Yeah, go ahead.

Courtney: The next day. I want to thank everyone who reached out to me and gave me advice. Even if I didn’t respond to your DM, I read it. Thank you to the people who shared their experiences and stories. It helped more than you know. I want to start by saying my friend did end up managing to drive to see me, and he’s currently here right now. He took some time off for me.

Courtney: Honestly, last night was a blur, and if honest, I couldn’t stop crying. That sounds very pathetic, but I’m glad my friend was with me because I don’t know what I would’ve done without him.

Courtney: He’s been my rock throughout this. He’s always been my rock. He was the first person I told when I got sexually assaulted and convinced me to tell someone and get help. He also didn’t congratulate me when it happened. Ugh.

Courtney: That paints a picture for how other people may have responded. I just wanted to share that mainly because of the other people who shared their stories with me, I wanted to share mine. We hugged for a while. I think I needed a hug.

Courtney: For this post, I’ll be calling my friend Noah to make this post less confusing and so I don’t have to write my friend over and over again. Noah came to the same conclusion as most of you guys did, that my wife was cheating on me. He asked me what I wanted to do and I decided I didn’t want to stay with her.

Courtney: I just can’t. So we will be getting divorced and I will be filing to get a lawyer. We talked about a lot of things and I admitted to him I felt isolated. Because me and my wife moved when we first got married, we moved really far from everyone I knew at that point. I have no family or friends in the area, which has been very lonely.

Courtney: Noah admitted to me that a lot of our friends dislike my wife. I asked him to explain, and he said he never liked the way she talked to me. But he didn’t want to say anything because he didn’t want, but he didn’t want to say anything because I seemed happy. He said I could crash at his place. He said it wasn’t healthy if I stayed here alone, so yeah, we’re currently packing my things right now. We also just talked about life in general. He asked me once everything’s over if I wanted to go on vacation with him.

Courtney: I think that would be nice. I feel like it is a sort of escape, if that makes sense. I just feel so drained and tired. My sister-in-law has been messaging a lot since everything has gone down, and honestly, I don’t want to read her messages. I will post an update if anything else happens. And it does not seem there have been any updates past that.

Courtney: I do like that a commenter specifically says, does intimacy equal sex in this conversation? Going on to say, I’ve been intimate with all kinds of people that I’ve never had sex with. And the OP did say yes, she was asking for sex, not emotional intimacy. And that is one of those little language quirks that does bother me because lots of people will say intimacy when they mean sex. And sex does not always equal intimacy. Intimacy can be achieved without sex. So I don’t like when intimacy is used as a synonym for sex. Especially when an ace person is involved.

Courtney: So I will say that I feel for OP. This is a big ace anxiety that a lot of people in our community have, that even if you find a relationship with an allo person who seems to get it, eventually you’ll find out that that hasn’t been the case. So yeah, absolute nightmare.

Courtney: But also, I need the allos in the comment section to calm down. I need internet shipping culture to come down, ’cause people are getting into conversations about how like, alright, waiting for part three where OP’s friend confesses his feelings for him, and then OP realizes he’s felt the same way the whole time too. This isn’t a romance novel, people.

Courtney: Stop it. Stop shipping real-life people.

Royce: Okay, this next one, also originally posted to r/relationshipadvice. OP doesn’t want to have sex anymore, nor hurt/lose her husband. The post goes, I never want to have sex again, like ever, but I do not want to hurt or lose my husband. I’ve been struggling with this for over a year.

Royce: I am married to a man who we shall call John. I saw other posts on here of others in a similar spot, and I have done a few things over the last year or so. I have been to doctors, therapists, asked around online about solutions, but my sex drive is just flat dead. Nothing brings it back. Nobody has had answers yet.

Royce: I’m in perfect shape, no body dysmorphia, hormonal levels are fine, not on hormonal birth control, don’t take other medications. Tried stupid online bullshit and snake oil, but I think deep down I knew that stuff was never going to work. We have been together for seven years, married three. We are happy. We have a home and good careers, three wonderful dogs, and our families get along.

Royce: But I just cannot stomach the idea of ever having sex again. It makes my skin crawl thinking about it. I have either been making excuses to put it off or just grinning and bearing it when he was clearly just riled up and I didn’t have the heart to look him in the eye and say, ew. I literally have a cry the next time I am alone. I was his first. He wasn’t my first. Everything was fine for over five years.

Royce: John is considerate, takes time, makes sure we both have fun and feel satisfied. I feel so awful even considering talking to him about it. Before last year, we had done it nearly every day. Over the last year, my sex drive has slowly died. I think that I just do not want to have sex ever again. Is that so odd? Why is that so wrong?

Royce: How do I approach this with John? I plan to sit him down on our next day off together, which is in five days. I have that long to decide what to do. I can’t do this to him or myself any longer than that. Is it right for me to unilaterally cut that part of our relationship out? I don’t think so, but everyone says that I shouldn’t be forced to do it just to keep my marriage, which sounds like crap based on other posts here. I know sex is important. I don’t know what to do next. He has been completely in the dark on this because I’m scared of divorce. I don’t want him to think I don’t love him or think he’s unattractive. I’m scared to hurt my best friend. I don’t want him to resent me or to feel trapped. Just any advice, please. I feel like I’m about to burn our entire lives down.

Courtney: So OP has not used the word asexual for herself, so I am not going to use that for her. But from our ace lens of understanding, we do know that sexuality can be fluid. People’s sexualities can change over time. And whether or not OP ever does come to understand, maybe my sexuality shifted and I am ace now. I really just want to highlight the immediate reaction of I don’t wanna have sex anymore being, I’m seeing doctors, I’m seeing therapists, I’m getting my hormones checked. No, I don’t have body dysmorphia. That is the society-wide medicalization of asexuality.

Courtney: But also good on her for over time, it sounds like this has been going on for a year, she’s ultimately ended up saying, is that so odd? Why is that so wrong? It’s not, and it’s not. That doesn’t mean your situation is not difficult now, because it very much is, but it’s not wrong. What is the update?

Royce: There are actually two updates. The first comes five days later after their meeting that was mentioned. TL;DR: did not go well. He left the house and hasn’t come back yet. I know he’s safe with his sister. I decided to talk to him sooner rather than later and took a few days off from work to sort this out. I think he might have left me over the lying to him for a year part, in quotes. I am mostly just venting, but if you have thoughts, by all means. I do not think there’s anything I can do alone to fix this.

Royce: John was not angry at first, but made it clear that he would not support being in a sexless marriage. He was also a bit annoyed that I asked if he would be okay sleeping with others. He is one of those super honest, he is super honest and holds to his values quite strongly, which is one of the many things I respect about him. There were a lot of emotions. He walked around the neighborhood a few times, would come back in and ask questions, then leave again. He goes on walks to clear his head. This is not abnormal.

Royce: He was angry after I told him how long I had kept this to himself, and to be clear, he asked for a timeline. I told him about everything. I knew he was going to be mad, but he was red in the face and absolutely silent. I’ve only seen him genuinely mad once before, and it quite literally paralyzed me to have to look at him, to have him look at me that way. John has never and will never hurt me. His eyes always made me feel safe, but in that moment I felt different. He just walked away, grabbed his things, said he was going to a friend’s house. I’ve not heard back from him since he left two days ago. I called and texted, but he didn’t answer directly. Instead, I got a call from his older sister. She just asked me to leave him be and let him sort stuff out. She asked me what I did to upset him so much, and I foolishly told her the truth.

Royce: That went just swell. I completely needed my ass chewed because that can only help, right? At this point, I just want him to come home. He’s been the perfect partner and I just want him to talk to me. He doesn’t deserve this. Should have never kept anything to myself. I’m in a king-size bed sleeping alone. The dogs are clearly confused. My plan, assuming he goes along with it, is couples therapy. That’s all I’ve got. The next update comes almost three months later.

Courtney: Ooh, big time jump.

Royce: He is leaving, but clearly trying to burn my life down on the way out.

Courtney: Oh, yikes.

Royce: John has decided to leave. Divorce proceedings are already messy because John challenged our prenup in court, and it was found to be unconscionable by the judge because I had violated it by telling him to basically cheat. If he ever wants sex again.

Courtney: Hmm.

Royce: I had no idea he had even hired a lawyer, so I showed up alone and unprepared. Why isn’t anyone in this whole thing seeing that I am miserable and don’t want him to leave at all? I do not understand why having sex is such a big deal for him. We did so many other things together, and just because I don’t want to do one of them anymore, it’s all over. Whatever happened to consent?

Courtney: Hahaha.

Royce: Now we have to fight over the house, dogs, and he is even going after business assets. We could have had an easy split, but he has decided to be petty instead. My only option to protect the business that I started during college is to use lawyers he could never afford. Our entire life has turned to shit, and I’m struggling to find out why I am having to suffer for this.

Courtney: And that’s the end of it. Okay, again, I need commenters to, uh, quiet the fuck down. The top comment, 13,000 upvotes? Starts with, I wonder why her sex drive has just vanished. I know she said she tried everything, blah, blah, blah, but I feel like there’s a giant missing reason here. Stop it. 13,000 upvotes.

Courtney: This is how most people think in society. And it is because we’ve talked historically long ago and in the recent past and going to be in the near future as well, talking about consent within marriage and marriage consummation and whatnot.

Courtney: I kind of want to read their prenup. Does the prenup actually say anything about an expectation of sexual activity? Because if it doesn’t, then that’s not written in the prenup. And the judge saying something is unconscionable is just going back to the blanket expectation that marriages must be sexually consummated. In order for them to be legally binding.

Courtney: And I just feel so bad for this poor woman saying, whatever happened to consent? She’s learning the very, very harsh lesson that from a legal basis in a lot of places, there is no such thing as consent within marriage.

Courtney: And a lot of people, many of the conservatives we’ve talked about, including lawyers and judges and congressmen, want it that way. I’m just so sad for her that she’s losing a marriage she loves, a person she loves, uh, potentially her business, many of her assets, a lot of time and energy that divorce proceedings cause. Um, her entire life is being turned upside down, but she’s also screaming, what happened to consent? Is this so wrong? Why can’t this just be me now?

Courtney: And the people online are saying like, you should probably go back to the doctor because they definitely missed something. There’s definitely something wrong here. Are you sure you had all of your hormones checked?

Royce: Yeah, this is a really, this is a particularly bad comment section. A lot of people are furious about the “what about consent” line.

Courtney: Why? Because they agree that, oh, what was the line? What was the line from the conservative Christians? Uh, marriage should be conjugal, not consent-based.

Courtney: We did a whole episode on that and other quotes like that. People who not only think it but are preaching it to their audience. I also, one comment just stuck out to me because I feel like in most contexts people would hear this, agree with it, not question it whatsoever.

Courtney: So I want to unpack it just for a moment. It says, remember folks, if your partner unilaterally changes the paradigm of your relationship, then you’re allowed to step back and reassess whether you want to stay.

Courtney: At a surface level, and for a lot of situations, I can’t even say that I agree. But what is, when we’re talking about, you know, marriage, traditional social construct of marriage that it is, yes, the social assumption is that it must be sexual. But also, what’s the most stereotypically agreed-upon, like, marriage vows that you ever hear? Like, For better or for worse.

Royce: In sickness and health.

Courtney: In sickness and in health. Like, through thick and thin, I will be your person for everything that life may throw at us.

Courtney: And this is, I didn’t even realize that this was going to, in a way, tie into my critique of the advice to just open up your relationship. I don’t know what she was reading, or if she was consulting anyone, throughout this process, but the fact that she preemptively in this conversation was like, I think I’m going to have to tell him that he can sleep with other people, ’cause I know sex is a thing he wants, so I don’t wanna lose him, but I still want to let him have sex with other people.

Courtney: I don’t know if that was something she was deeply in favor of or very neutral toward. Or if it was just a last ditch, like, I will do anything to keep this relationship, even that. I don’t know emotionally where she was at that offer, but that got used in a court of law against her.

Royce: She mentioned during the original post, something about “based on other posts on here,” which is r/relationshipadvice. So during her year of trying to figure out what was going on, I bet there was quite a bit of reading of these sorts of posts on Reddit.

Courtney: And I think it is vile that that got used in a court of law against her. I don’t think the law should be the way it is.

Courtney: Because let’s think about the big picture here. People are critiquing her for saying, what happened to consent? But from a legal basis, in order for this man to not take her to court, try to take her business, leave her, leave any other marriage agreements that they have made, she needs to have sex with him. And this man is saying, if you don’t have sex with me, I’m going to burn your life down.

Courtney: There is no consent in that system. If a judge is agreeing with him and saying this is unconscionable, then there is no consent. There is no consent.

Courtney: And that is a very real, valid concern that politically we need to be screaming about more. And that’s incredibly hard to do when so many people in the comment section agree. When people talk about consent, so many people say consent can be revoked at any time. But that logic never seems to carry through to long-term relationships, to marriages. ’Cause then like, well, you made a deal, a deal’s a deal, you can’t pull the rug out from someone. It’s rape culture. All of this is rape culture.

Courtney: Yeah, I think that’s all I’m gonna say for now. Oddly enough, it was either gonna be this episode today or talking about consent by commenting on the, uh, voice memo guy that everyone online is talking about right now. Maybe we’ll do that episode yet, because it has never been more apparent that nobody is actually on the same page about what good consent actually looks like.

Courtney: But as for today, I’m going to leave you off as always with today’s featured Marketplace vendor, Varanid Paradise, where you can find handmade maximalist beaded jewelry with a reptilian flair by an AuDHD aro reptile mom. There are so many extremely cool pieces of jewelry on here. When I first saw this shop, I originally wanted to get a bib necklace. There are these big, long, dramatic triangular dangly necklaces in a variety of colors that are just so pretty. Unfortunately, the ones that were in my color palette were out of stock at the time. You know, your purples, your blacks.

Courtney: But as I’m on the website right now, someone out there better go snatch up this dragon ace asexual pride necklace. Oh my gosh, it’s so cool. It’s got all of the ace flag colors. It’s got dragon scale beads. It’s got spikes. Very dramatic, very beautiful. What I did end up getting back when I ordered was a very cool pair of ace-colored earrings. Very dangly, also got some spikes.

Courtney: If you are looking for Pride merch in different colors, there are some other options. There are some rainbow Pride, We’ve got some bicolors, trans, nonbinary. But even if you’re just looking for fashion, there are a lot of great colors here that aren’t even pride flags. Actually, this, these Omen earrings look new. They’ve got red, they’ve got spikes, they’ve got some skull-looking things on it.

Courtney: So as always, I’m going to go ahead and drop a link to Find Varanid Paradise in the show notes on our website as well as the description box if you’re listening to us on YouTube. Definitely check it out if you’re interested in reptiles, spikes, alternative fashion, Pride merchandise, really beautiful stuff.

Courtney: And as always, thank you all so much for listening, and we will talk to you all next time.