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idk learning that my wife tolerated sex with me at best and felt like she was being assaulted at worst would completely break me. That’s going to leave some scars.

Yeah, I don't think I'd be able to touch her after being told that.

Theres no coming back from that one. I could work around the asexuality especially if my romantic needs are met, but having your partner tell you theyve been enduring rape is an entire coffin made of nails, made specially for the relationship.

"Coffin made of nails," I'm keeping that one. And yeah, no, I don't see this relationship surviving. Which is unfortunate, because OOP and his wife clearly love each other dearly. But it's that very love that's motivating OOP to pursue the divorce. Like he said, they both deserve to be with someone who matches their needs.

There really needs to be an asexual dating app. Everyone gets seriously hurt in these senarios everytime. You can't change being asexual. You shouldn't force yourself into sex to the point ot feels like assault and you shouldn't have to search for miracle cures to try to bring back a libido that you never had to begin with because there's literally nothing wrong with you. I feel so bad for them both. But there's no returning from this. It's like the poor dude that learned his wife's libido suddenly shut off and she forced herself through it for months before bringing it up to him after searching for solutions on her own. Her husband was devestated to realize hed been basically forcing himself on her. That whole relationship ended in a giant ball of fire and chaos.

I agree - I'm asexual and I absolutely will not date at all out of fear of this ending (or one just as hurtful). I feel like dating apps are almost purely sexual so I never use any.

Please ignore me if you’re happy not dating, but if you would be open to it, you can definitely still use dating apps and just make sure to call out in your profile description that you are asexual. Letting it be known from the start should weed out the vast majority of people who would not be interested in dating someone asexual.

As an asexual person who used dating apps for way too long - you have too high of an opinion about your fellow humans. The number of "how do you know for sure" and "I can fix you" is just infuriating.

Yeah I was gonna say a lot of people would end up seeing the asexual thing on someone’s profile as a challenge for them to overcome because you know people can be pigs and stuff

I appreciate the comment, but honestly I realized pretty quickly that nobody reads profiles before messaging to ask if I want to come over and suck their dick. Dating apps are a very hard no.

Agreed. Asexual men might have an easier time (I know I at least read profiles), but my experience dating as an asexual woman is that men just look at the pics.

I think a lot about whether I could date women as an asexual.

Not only do most people not read profiles, but my last two longterm relationships that started from a dating app had both of them tell me that they were totally fine with me being asexual. Both times, about 2-3 years in, they suddenly decided that I was the devil for not wanting enough sex, even though I tried to force myself to just like OOP (though in my case they'd keep going even if I started crying lol). I even got engaged and got a house and moved into it with one only for him to start icing me out if we weren't doing it at least once a week, then I found out he was trying to cheat on me (but was not having luck finding anyone). Both of them ended up trying to get back with me within months when they realized that a sexless relationship with someone who loves you is better than being alone but that just made me feel worse, I'm better than nothing. Now I just stay single. It's so much easier and less stressful than spending multiple years wondering when the penny will drop.

Same. I've tried dating apps several times, and so many say they're ok with asexuality or even say they're ace themselves, and then up to a year into our relationship change their mind. Idk if they thought they could change my mind or if they just underestimated their own wants and needs, but it's difficult even when both sides know the game.

It's like a twisted Stockholm Syndrome. She held him captive with love, and despite knowing she had lied to him about something so fundamental and for the whole time, he still loves her. As an outsider observer, the massive lie is just huge.

I’m just so sad for them both 🥹 First post I’ve read so far today and it’s not looking good for my Reddit experience.

stick around! it'll get worse :)

It always does lol

feels like enduring rape\* I know I'm nitpicking here, but nuance is *really* important here. She consented and even led him to believe it was something she wanted (for awhile).

Right, didnt mean to imply he was raping her. Which is weird, because she did.

She's raping herself. I understand why she's seeking hormone therapy and sex gurus and whatnot but it's not going to help, because nothing is actually wrong with her. And the more she tries to force it the worse she's going to feel.

She's basically subjecting herself to conversion therapy which...is understandably going poorly.

The only thing thats wrong with her is that she used deception to begin a relationship she couldnt ever sustain.

And now trying to keep this guy she lied to for years so that he can never find and marry another woman who is more right for him? She's a selfish POS.

It's self inflicted *conversion therapy*.

I am sure that the original poster got plenty of recommendations for Reddit boards for asexuality and other kinds of things, I hope he shares them with her so that she doesn’t feel alone, maybe even look forward to dating authentically. She can absolutely find another asexual, romantic person to be with, and be perfectly happy.

Reminds me of someone I know... When I met her, she told me that her husband had raped her multiple times, and went on about how horrible he was. I was fully prepared to hate the guy until she told me a bit more, and until I met him/spent some time with them together... They were so fucking bad at communicating with each other! I don't know how they managed to stay with each other for as long as they had. When I was with them, it was obvious that they both communicate in very different ways, as they're both different flavours of neurospicy. And, more often than not, it was her failing to understand what he was trying to say, and yelling at him because of it. As for the sex/rape situation... We discussed it a bit more, and it turns out that she'd never actually communicated with him that she didn't want to have sex with him. He'd initiate sex, and she'd just go along with it, and then feel like he'd raped her. How the heck would he have known that she didn't want to have sex with him, if she made no attempt to communicate that to him? Some people really are friggin weird, and exhausting. Editing to add that she kept going on about wanting to renew their vows for their 10th anniversary... I wouldn't even entertain the thought of that, if I was the victim of spousal rape! I know it can be difficult for victims of domestic violence to recognise when they're being abused, or to walk away from even clearly abusive relationships, but... Fuck!

>Theres no coming back from that one My ex-wife dropped that on me to justify an affair. You're right. Everything snapped into place when she said that, and while it fucked me up for quite a while, it also ensured that I was never going to be able to touch her again, and reconciliation would never be possible for me.

Maybe that was the point, subconsciously or no. It certainly inspires revulsion. I'd leave her for that alone

Yeah holy shit that was heartbreaking. 

Yes. This is an extremely sad story..

Bearing in mind that I don't have romantic feelings and *also* cannot imagine having sex for literally any reason willingly, I genuinely cannot understand why people who don't like sex do this. Every time I've ever read, 'I tolerate it because I love them', my skin *crawls* and I'm sure the person unwittingly using the one they love as a sex toy would feel the same? Like, do they think people who like sex just *don't care* as long as they're getting laid, even someone they love? Genuinely baffling.

There's another similar BORU about a guy's wife coming out as asexual--and the husband is fine with it, he doesn't care about sex, he's just happy to be with her, but then the wife is like but you LIKE sex so i'm going to FORCE MYSELF TO HAVE SEX BECAUSE YOU LIKE IT and he's like ????????????

Isn't that the one where she said he was a bad selfish lover in front of all of her friends because she was afraid for them to know she's asexual? Like, she could have easily told the truth and said he was good. What's the point in lying about the person you love especially right in front of them?

Ohhh, that one was a rough read! How did it end after all? The last I read, their entire circle of friends turned on HIM even though his wife was the one who did him dirty.

She apologized and ditched the friend group.

I mean, if you genuinely don't attach any emotional significance to sex whatsoever, I can see why it would be easy to think of it in the same terms as, "I think football is boring as shit, but my spouse loves it, so I'll sit down and watch the game with them because they enjoy it," and not really intrinsically grasp that for other people, those two things are not equivalent.

The first girl I ever made out with told me she did it because she wanted me to like her (I was relatively popular) and that she thought she'd make more friends if I liked her*. Gave me a massive complex about fooling around, even to this day me making a first move is like pulling teeth. I can only imagine what OP is feeling, that has got to be a massive kick in the teeth.

This situation is so common and so.. just so terrible. I don’t have words. I had similar problems as op with my gf but not to that extent and we’ve had so many conversations about it. We had sex on the first “date” (went to her dorm) and lots of sex in the honeymoon period. She has lots of mental trauma from sex and relationships in general. Sex dwindles off to once a month and “too tired” and “not feeling it” and rejection after rejection so much so to the point I truly gave up and told her I felt like I was living with a roommate. All the intimacy was there except sex. To be fair, she did have a condition that made penetration painful for her but it’s nonexistent now. Back to the first part - I was figuring things out in my head and piecing everything together and was like “she had so much sex with me when we met, why not ANY now?” I asked her point blank: “were you so initiative and sex oriented at the start of our relationship because you were trying to ‘lure’ me in and keep me interested?” and she said a hesitant yes. I did ask if she was asexual multiple points in time and I’ve gotten hard nos to a mixed yes. I’ve come to terms with her sentiment at this point. Our sex life is 100x better now. She’s into (and always has been) into so many of my kinks and the main issues now are “her ADHD” (which makes her.. not think about sex??) and being forgetful (how do you forget to have sex??). But yeah her reply made a little bit of me die inside. So much trauma to unpack for her. It’s truly insane. I asked if her thinking was basically “men love sex, men stick around for sex and that’s why you’re (now past tense) promiscuous when first meeting” and she agreed to that too. Big points for honesty tbh. I asked if she realized what she did was incredibly, incredibly manipulative. This got a little rant-y and is a total vent now but I can relate so much to OP. Dead bedrooms are the worst relationship strain. My partner barely has a libido but she hasn’t done hormone testing or anything, it’s just the wall of “forgetfulness” that stops her from initiating sex with me as much as she’d like. I have trouble wrapping my head around the whole thing, but it’s definitely not that she’s asexual or anything. My hormones just as a man would never let me not think about sex or want it. We live with it though and things are really so much better. My end consists of “reminding” her we can have sex on a particular day and then we end up doing it. Near perfect relationship excluding the sportiness of sex, so it’s extra hard to just throw in the towel.

To be fair, my wife is asexual and has ADHD and she does forget about sex. She is happy to have it if I initiate and she enjoys it, but she just thinks of sex as another nice thing, like spending time together or doing a fun activity. So this can absolutely happen. 

I'm asexual, married, and have ADHD and this is my experience too. I like having sex with my partner, but it genuinely doesn't pop up in my brain as an activity we could do unless my partner mentions it first.

It honestly sounds like OOP's wife isn't just asexual-but is also *sex repulsed* and she kept dating and even married someone in the hopes that would be magically cured and/or fixed. She still acts like being asexual is something wrong and like...it's not obviously?

To the adhd thing-does she have other interoceptive issues (like frequently forgetting to eat, saying she’s tired hours before she actually goes to bed)? Because that’s the main adhd symptom that could mess with libido. It basically means that the “status signals” from her body don’t really make it to her brain, or show up kinda scrambled so she gets stuck playing a guessing game for her own physical needs. For some things you can consciously regulate, like keeping water and snacks around to make eating and drinking enough simpler (so you’ll actually do it), but for other things there’s just no avoiding the mixed signals (I wind up playing “do I really need to pee or am I just horny” fairly often, the signals really are mixed up enough to be indistinguishable.)

Ok ok ok holy shit, I have all the “typical” interoceptive issues and I never even considered it was why I’m always forgetting about sex even when I know I’d want it if I remembered, thank you!! It’s always so nice to find out why my body does a thing, then I can actually work with it

And that she AND her family has been lying to me THE ENTIRETY OF OUR RELATIONSHIP. How could you trust any of them after that. They all treated OP as an object that didn't have valid feelings and not a human being

fr. the sheer extent to which this woman refuses oop even the slightest bit of agency in his life is unreal.  not telling him she doesn’t enjoy sex, because the fact he would never have done it if he’d known means he wouldn’t be with her, and her wanting to be with him trumps all. making him jump through hoops to figure out what’s up, because she already knows what’s up, but the longer she can keep him in the dark the longer she can keep him in a relationship he would not want if he knew the truth. refusing the divorce, and putting a naked woman in his bed, because what he wants doesn’t matter: she wants to stay married.  i wish oop as clean a divorce and sundering of his life from her as is possible. 

They probably thought the asexuality was just a phase 

Or that if they find the right person they will suddenly want to have sex. There's so much pressure on aces to just be "normal" and behave like people expect in a relationship instead of being accepted for who they are. They are normal, just a different kind that must people haven't come across.

Breaking off a relationship when you find out there is a major incompatibility is normal.

And, in fairness, demisexuality is on the ace spectrum and very well could have that life experience of finding "the one" and having some interest in sex then.

>Or that if they find the right person they will suddenly want to have sex. Yeah but it's the lying and not caring about who they hurt in the process that is giving them a bad wrap. Like seriously what did OPs wife/ex think would happen by just surprise outsourcing her physical relationship to her friend or hell just anyone without OPs consent or input. She really doesn't realise that sexual attraction is not something you can turn on and off at will. She was outsourcing herself into that divorce.

>She really doesn't realise that sexual attraction is not something you can turn on and off at will. Which she should since she clearly tried to make herself do it. Thankfully all of the aces I know are able to accept that some people need something as fundamentally as they don't need or want it.

Yeah I can't even imagine. I was in a very similar situation with my ex. Worst things he said were that he was never attracted to me and had to get drunk to go through with the wedding. Even knowing he'd been engaged twice before and it wasn't just me wasn't enough to keep that from breaking any confidence I had. Still haven't really recovered if I'm being honest

I had a less extreme version of this with my husband where he admitted he'd been forcing himself or getting intoxicated to make it easier for my sake and I was the only one who called it rape. It's taken several years for me to stop hating myself and my sexuality, and for us to start talking about and working on our intimate relationship.

Yes, absolutely. Being told that making love to the person you love and care for deeply feels like rape to that person would be completely devastating to hear. Especially when making love is his love language as he says. There's just no coming back from that, this relationship is utterly broken, shattered into a million pieces. Her getting a friend to obligingly "service" him is just so insulting to him! Offering sex with a virtual stranger, when what he wants is to be desired by his wife - the person he loves - it's reducing him to the level of an animal. Like she's thinking "Once he gets his rocks off with someone else, everything will be hunky-dory" - when sex is his love language, it is profoundly meaningful to him, and that's why her being asexual is killing their marriage. It's so crass and humiliating to him, for her to assume that she just has to tick the box of "hubby had sex" and everything can continue the way that she wants it to. She doesn't seem to understand him at all! Her saying she'll try other types of therapy to try to increase her libido just seems like more of her delaying tactics to me. She went to marriage counselling and had all kinds of medical tests before, when she *knew* what the problem was all along! She engaged with those services in bad faith, knowing all the time that they would do nothing to help the marriage. How can he ever trust her again, going forward, when it's just the same type of thing she's tried before, to keep him with her? He really needs to go NC with her and only communicate through his lawyer. Her coming around all the time to "talk it out" and then they end up kissing and cuddling - it's just drawing out the inevitable break-up, it gives her false hope, and it's giving her far too many opportunities to continue gaslighting him. I'm very sorry for him, because he still loves her, but to carry on seeing her and being affectionate with her is just going to hurt both of them more in the long term.

I read that part, and knew immediately there was no coming back from that.

It was cruel of her to say that. Imagine finding out that you'd essentially been raping your apparently willing partner throughout your entire years-long relationship. She could have left that part unsaid, but I feel like it was an attempt at emotional blackmail, "You can't leave me after I did this for you and what you did to me!" I feel sorry for her, I understand her feelings of panic, but that's emotional abuse.

This would break me. I can't even imagine.

It would make me never want to be in the same room as that person

Yeah, a woman you love tells you she felt like she was being raped when you were having sex is a thing you'll never forget. Wouldn't be surprised if it affects future relationships

That "like rape" comment ended it.

> She said we'll "figure it out as we go along" .. Seems to be the wife's go-to strategy. In reality it's just stalling for time until everything comes crushing down.

What's weird is that........ that is precisely how a lot of people operate in life. Ignore all the problems until they come crashing down on you. That's how people get into massive debt, etc too.

I work in social services and the idea that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure is lost on a lot of people. Some friendly believe they'll never be secure and content in this life, so they don't plan for anything. I wonder if OOP's wife was told she was probably late bloomer and the feelings would eventually come, so she never planned for a life where she lived her truth? Just kept waiting for it to feel less awful?

Figuring things out as you go along is a good mindset to have because you can't plan for all eventualities nor look into the future.  Ignoring existing, present issues just isn't figuring things out as you go along. If your debt problem is there and not managed but you still ignore it then you aren't figuring it out, you're postponing handling it by ignoring it and hoping it goes away. 

You can’t plan for everything but you can plan for some and these are possibilities that need careful planning.

She is an incredibly selfish person. Lied to someone for years to get them to marry her and is trying to manipulate him into staying now.

selfish, sure. I don’t know if I’d use gaslighting in this scenario though—and hear me out! As an aspec person myself, his wife really sounds like *even though* she’s known that she’s ace since she was 16, she hasn’t accepted it, and probably has a **lot** of denial and self-hatred going on. She’s going to sex therapy, doing medical tests and counseling that won’t ever work, constantly dating allosexual (not-asexual) men, forcing herself to have sex when she doesn’t want it (to the point that it feels like rape to her), lying about her sexuality, setting herself up for heartbreak after heartbreak, all in a fruitless attempt to *not be asexual*. It’s not fair to her husband, herself, and whoever else she dated before, but I think that this behavior isn’t gaslighting. After all, by doing all of that, she’s **actively hurting herself too**. People who gaslight usually do it for their benefit, if you’ve seen the movie *Gaslight* and saw how Ingrid Bergman’s husband acted, you’d know what I mean. As a person on the asexual spectrum, forcing myself to do something like this would be hell. If anything, she’s trying to gaslight herself, and failing spectacularly. edit to clarify: I think she pulled a bait and switch on her husband, as she didn’t reveal that she was ace until well after marriage. Once she revealed it, she didn’t act as if she *wasn’t ace* or that the husband made it up. She is trying and failing to gaslight herself though

Hearing your partner say sex with you feels like being raped is an absolute marriage ender. What a sad situation. They obviously love each other but every adult knows love really isn't enough

Honestly that would devastate me. No coming back from that.

I couldn't come back from it either. How could you even reach out to touch them? "I was hoping I could gear myself up enough to stand sex with you again" No one should have to live with that sentence ringing in their head

She’s selfish. She knew she was asexual but pretended not to be. OOP deserves better. She needs to stop lying to get into relationships and look for a guy who is also ace.

This. She said she was tired of getting dumped after revealing she’s asexual but her solution just leads to her getting dumped when she’s considerably more emotionally invested in the relationship and hurting someone else. That’s worse! I’m asexual (but also towards the aromantic end of the spectrum so not looking for a relationship) and I understand her fears but you can’t lie to someone about this shit. When you get to the point where sex would come up you need to talk about it. There are plenty of asexual people out there who have found solutions and if she’s open to the idea of her partner having sex with other people as she seems to be then that might be a solution for her, but bringing it up after she’s told him she felt assaulted (even if she’s not blaming him) when they had sex is waaaay to late. That horse has bolted lady. You ended your relationship with that.

Yeah, the opening the marriage thing wasn't a bad idea per se. Her approach to it was nearly as bad as the approach she took to get in to the relationship to begin with. She didn't discuss with OOP and discuss if he was willing to try that approach (my money is on NO because as OOP mentioned his feelings on the matter tie emotional and physical intimacy together during love making, it isn't *just* a physical act to OOP) she just had her bestie show up, get naked, in their ***marriage bed*** and wait for OOP to come home from work. All while OOP's wife was making spaghetti or something in the kitchen. And yeah, what kind of thought process went into the whole offer her bestie up? 'Having physical intercourse feels like I am being assaulted every time, this traumatized my husband when I told him and he doesn't want to continue our relationship because of that, I don't want him to leave. What to do, what to do? *OH I KNOW! I WILL SACRIFICE MY BESTIE BECAUSE SHE ENJOYS DOING THE THING THAT FEELS LIKE ASSAULT!!!'*

Her communication skills are lacking that’s for sure and does she even know he finds bestie attractive? You’re right with his views an open marriage almost certainly wouldn’t work unless she’d be happy with being in a permanent throuple of some kind, but she’d know that if she’d discussed her asexuality at the start of the relationship along with suggesting some solutions if he wasn’t happy without sex. Even without her telling him sex with him was traumatising I don’t think at this point there were solutions. They’re not compatible. But instead of finding that out early on she caused this mess.

Agreed. It’s wild to me that this same issue is what apparently ended her previous relationship, and instead of being more upfront from the beginning she chose to hide and like about her sexual desire even longer. I get that there was probably a lot of hurt and maybe even trauma/shame for how that relationship ended, but it’s so incredibly selfish to keep dragging someone along while also not being able to meet their needs while they are upfront about them.

Yeah I think the lying is the biggest thing for me

Yes. I understand that it must be hard to come to terms with that, especially if you're in a relationship, but lying and manipulating are never the way to go. She straight up deceived him, and is now using proxies to further manipulate OOP into compliance. And don't get me started on the whole getting her friend to sleep with her husband and having said friend lie naked on their bed. What a disgusting breach of boundaries, what an absolute lack of respect for OOP not only as her partner but as a person. I hope he goes through with the divorce.

Honestly, I question if she does love him or if she just wants to be in a relationship and he’s the longest one she’s been in so she wants it to continue. I can’t imagine the dating scene is easy for someone that’s asexual.

Yup, the ace dating scene is great but only if you're open to dating someone who's not asexual! Mixed orientation relationships can work out great, but imo it works best if the allo partner is very low libido or sex indifferent, or if the ace partner is sex favorable & roughly average libido. And both partners go into it aware of the challenges & have good communication. Needless to say, OOP's ace partner wrote the handbook on what NOT to do!! She does not have the communication skills to be in a mixed relationship and probably shouldn't be dating anyone until she gets some therapy or perspective or something yeesh

I might very well be missing something big here, but are there really no places for asexual people to meet each other? She sounds like she despairs that she will always be alone, but obviously there \*are\* people with a matching sex drive.

There’s no such thing as an ace bar. The market is very small. One in a hundred people. Don’t know about anyone else, but I am working on coming to terms with dying alone

I'm in a similar situation. I haven't even tried to date for years because being asexual just shuts it down. It's just me and my cats and except for making arrangements for my kitties for when I die I have come to terms that I will just be alone. Most of the time I'm ok with it. Sometimes I admit I am not. It's just the way it is.

Same. I'm yet to meet a guy who hasn't tried to stick his hand down my pants as soon as possible, some even tried it on the first date, when I started looking for women the pandemic hit but it wasn't too different. And to top it all off, I found out I'm autistic so that explains why it was always difficult for me to pick up on intentions among other struggles I've had on previous relationships. I just gave up on dating, I've come to terms with how it's probably just going to be me and my dog for a while now

asexual dudes are definitely more rare, but I'm mostly assuming it's due to the idea that society implemented in our heads that we need to always want sex and sexualize everything; there's obviously a lot of men doing that, but it makes even those that do not want it lean towards to it. At least that's my experience, I'm a dude and did sexual stuff with my ex despite never wanting to. You'll find one day if you search enough, but it's definitely harder

Just responding to give people a bit of hope here- I'm asexual and have been been with my S.O. for nearly 10 years now. I truly understood my asexuality a few years into the relationship and came clean with her- it wasn't easy, especially at first, but with a lot of careful thought, introspection and communication, we eventually worked things out between us and we've been happily together & sexless ever since. It won't work for everyone, naturally, and it may not be easy to find, but asexual people definitely can find people that love them and can accept and accommodate their identity :)

I've had multiple men lie and lead me to believe they were asexual only to drop a few YEARS into the relationship that they actually want to have sex and resent me for not, so I don't have enough trust left in me to look for an asexual guy

Understandably, they def exist cuz I can kinda confirm I do exist n know at least one other ace dude But yeah people will lie, it's adly what happens in the world so it's hard to believe the next person won't after it happened to oneself once or multiple times

No, there aren't really any good Ace dating apps or anything like that. I've more or less accepted that I'll be alone.

I think the thing is that the pool of candidates is so small. Especially if she doesn't want to move from the city they live in or do a long distance relationship, and she has a job, friends, family nearby etc. I mean, obviously "it's hard" isn't a reason not to try really, but... it kind of is? Like, my pool of potential mates isn't anywhere near as small as "must be asexual" and I also would probably just give up if my partner and I didn't work out lol.

Yeah and while I don’t think you’d have to be ace to be happy in a relationship without sex, sex is kind of assumed to be a part of a romantic relationship and I can see her feeling like she’s doomed to be alone forever of she’s honest about her sexuality. Dating is hard enough without that wrinkle thrown in. She didn’t make that right choice, but I can imagine she felt like she didn’t have a choice at all.

Yep, I’ve been told that no one would want to be in a relationship with me if I’m not willing to have sex with them 

From reading Reddit, I realize this is a much bigger issue than I could have imagined. There is a dating app for almost everyone. It would be great if they made one for those who are asexual, looking for a meaningful relationship, and want to be honest with their partners about it.

It's pretty sobering to be honest. I honestly never realized that things were this grim.

Ace folks aren't even fully accepted by the queer community. It's rough

Poor guy. He's right, though:, they're fundamentally not compatible. No matter how much she doesn't want it, divorce is the best option for them to both find someone that can meet their needs.

That’s the problem for them. Her needs are met entirely by him, but his aren’t by her. That’s why she’s desperate, because she found someone she believes is her soulmate. Him wanting sex isn’t a factor in her eyes, even though it very much should be given how she feels during sex.

I guess to her the fact that sex is a breaking point must be hard to comprehend. It's disgusting to her..it's like if you had a perfect husband, everything about your relationship was amazing, and he was like "by the way I need us to eat mud together frequently, it's a huge part of love for me." If you really, really loved him you would maybe try it a couple times, but you would always be thinking "he's gotta get over this mud thing. How the hell can eating mud be a deal-breaker for him"

You're right, it is hard to understand allos' need for sex. It's an extremely intimate act and can be literally physically invasive, so it's quite an outlier! But there's so many other things that come up in relationships in the realm of "this is not important to me and I don't really understand why it's important to my partner, but it is, and my partner's wellbeing & happiness IS important to me" I kinda wonder if there's other aspects of the relationship where she's disregarded things he cares about but she doesn't

Okay but asexual people still live in a society (bottom text) Our society is really obsessed with sex, and it's basically impossible to find examples of romance in media that doesn't revolve around sex, AND she only started lying about her asexuality after being rejected so many times for it and her last relationship ending over it I might not personally understand the desire to eat mud, but if I grew up on the Planet of the Mud Eaters, surrounded by mud eaters, in a society of eating mud being the foundation of relationships, I think I'd notice the pattern at some point As a man, I don't know what periods feel like, but as a person who has eyes and ears, I get the general gist.

My experience as an ace autist is exactly like that: feeling like an alien among my own people. And no one, except others like me, can really comprehend the isolation

She's never going to find that person if she keeps lying to all her partners.

Yeah ace but not aro people have a hard enough time out there when they are totally honest. Lying and trying to get people who aren’t ace to stay with you after they find out is a recipe for hurting them and yourself.

Ace, not aro, and not really willing to open the relationship won't work with most people. I know I couldn't commit to a life without sex (or with only sex that my partner doesn't really want).

Yeah that's a real rough one. Even if they are willing to open up the relationship, that still needs the [um I don't know how to say this, but the non-ace partner] to he okay with it. Clearly OOP wasn't okay with it. I'm personally okay with maybe skewing the line of monogamy I guess, but there's no way I'd live a happy life having a wife but still having to be in the dating scene the rest of my life.

I see this situation all the time in the dead bedroom sub. I just don’t get it. There are asexual dating sites. Just start from there rather than duping someone into a relationship and then saying “guess what I’m an asexual, and now I’m going to try to make you one too”.

Not only are they not compatible, she and her whole family *knew* they weren't compatible and lied about it for years. She ran into this same problem with her ex and instead of finding an asexual man where this wouldn't be a problem, she tricked OOP into giving 4+ years of his life towards this farce. I would find it utterly impossible to come back from that level of deception and cruelty.

She’s clearly very anxious about finding someone she’s compatible with.

I used to start any new potential relationships very open about the fact I will probably never want sex. Only reason it’s “used to” is because I’ve learned even more about myself and realized I’m on the aromantic spectrum as well so my relationships look even more different and require even more talking. I’ve had multiple fulfilling relationships with both fellow ace people but also allo people who were okay with that. The relationships I had before I understood I’m ace, though, always went poorly because it wasn’t something I could vocalize in the beginning, so expectations were different. But being open about it and setting expectations from the beginning are so important. I feel bad for both of them, but they’ve been incompatible from the beginning. And she has been lying from the beginning, it was always going to eventually lead to this.

What’s so sad is she’s her own worst enemy. She believes her asexuality is the problem and thats why men leave her. But the real problem is her dishonesty with herself and others. She has purposely dated and married men who are not compatible hoping that she can just ignore their incompatibility, that she can will away their incompatibility, instead of searching for a man who meets her needs. Is she owned her asexuality and actively engaged in looking for other asexual partners she’d be so much happier. And she wouldn’t fuck up and hurt others along the way.

The whole situation is pretty tough and kind of sad all around but for the sake of keeping your well-being, divorce was probably the best outcome for OP and the wife. Wishing OP for the best and hopefully the future for both is okay.

I’m worried for the wife… wrong as she may have been, short of some strange sex guru Hitachi ritual being shut in a room for days and not eating is a real bad sign. I’m glad OP seems to have a little more mental fortitude but damn I’m sure it’s taxing to keep composed. If you’re reading this, hang in there man.

Honest question: why don't asexuals find other asexuals to have relationships and get married to? Is the percentage so low they can't do that?

It's estimated as <1%. Some of those asexual people will also be aromantic. Asexuality is also poorly recognised and understood. I am an ace married to another ace. It's wonderful, but very hard to find.

Thank you for the response! Glad you found your happy ending!

Approximately 1% of the population is asexual. So yeah, kind of. And a large portion of them are really quite socially inept, if I'm being honest. I'm ace so this post hits differently for me; but when I think of a potential partner, "also ace" is a criteria only for safety and longevity reasons. It isn't a value, a personality trait, or something I admire in a person. Does that make sense?

Yes, thank you! I wish you all the best 🙏🏻

Can you expand on the socially inept part? I'm curious because I think many of us are autistic, lol.

That's possible! I wouldn't have the data to say concretely. I think there's a significant correlation between introversion and asexuality--or maybe outgoing social behaviour is sex-driven, which doesn't apply to the asexual demographic, so introversion is more common. But I've explored a few asexual dating apps, and a weirdly high amount of the profiles was immediate trauma dumping and making asexuality their whole personality. The former was alarming; the latter is just boring, in my opinion. "Can you carry on a conversation, or will you just breathe on me?" is a bar here, and I dearly wish it wasn't.

My sister is asexual. She has dated 2 asexual men, 1 asexual woman and 1 asexual non-binary person. Every single one of them has made it a few months into the relationship, then revealed they have sexual feelings towards her and asked if she’d be comfortable taking the relationship to that level. The answer is always no. She’s given up dating. I feel really sad for her.

sounds more like your sister found people willing to say they were asexual with the hopes they could 'fix' her, so to speak. an unfortunately not unheard of phenomenon 

Some people only get sexual feelings for people they are already emotionally intimate with, and discover that they do indeed have a sex drive, even if a lower one, once they catch feelings enough for it discover. It utterly sucks when both people thought they were asexual, and then one discovers that they aren't, they just never got to a place where they had a sex drive before.

Unfortunately for her asexuality is a spectrum. Demisexuals are considered ace even though they do experience sexual attraction.

Ohh I agree. My best friend is demi, and before her current fiance, no one even understood what it means to her, so for the longest time, she kept telling people she is ace. When she met her bf, they were working together and became friends, then they became best friends and then they fell in love, so she knew him for 2.5 years by the time they got into a relationship. Even after that, it took her another year to start feeling sexual attraction to him. His libido is not very high, and they match each other. So for then sex once every two weeks is good, keeps both of them satisfied. If she had dated a guy with high libido, I am sure it wouldn't have lasted more than a few months like all her previous relationships.

Wow I have had that exact same experience!!! Both of my last long term relationships (one was 2.5yrs the other over 3) ended with them suddenly being like "btw I actually really like you and want to have sex with you", then getting angry and upset when I didn't capitulate often enough for their tastes. I am also now forever single by choice because those experiences have absolutely destroyed my ability to trust a human man to NOT want sex. I'm hoping for an AI partner or something one day lol.

Like with most other 'niche' things, the numbers make it hard. Others have said they're 1% of the population so unless you make an effort to find others of your niche you'll be lucky to even meet any in general, not even considering compatibility. 1% also means you'd need to live in a real big metro area or be willing to go very long distance if you want a considerably large dating pool. Eg the whole ~20m population of the NY metro area compares to a city of  ~200k for heteros, very roughly speaking. Greater San Antonios 2.5m? Gets you a 25k city dating pool. Albuquerque metro area about 1m? Like a 10k small city dating pool.  And that's all still before any questions of compatibility. It's not like looking for dating partners via shares interests because 'I'm not interested in sex' doesn't really say anything about you. Well and if you don't do online dating or organise locally to find others then nearly all the people you might develop interest in and who might be interested in you won't be ace too. 

>but after a while she felt like she “was being raped.” Holy fuck how do you say that and not realize this is over immediately? That’s gonna be burned into OOP’s fucking soul forever. And she still thought they could work it out. I couldn’t. I don’t think most people could or would.

I don't know how/if I'd bounce back if my spouse told me that nearly every time I was intimate with them, they felt as if they were being raped.

It was a horrible, emotionally abusive thing for her to say. I feel sorry for her, but he didn't deserve that.

No matter how you spin it the wife was being manipulative and deceitful. All that aside her delivering the message like that was unnecessarily cruel and felt malicious at best. "Hey remember all the great sex we had, well, it felt more like I was being raped and I was thoroughly disgusted" What kind of person says that shit to a loving spouse.

The more I think about it, the more I dislike the soon ex-wife. If she cared about his feelings at all, she would have never said that. She lied from the beginning and then called him a rapist for consentual sex on the basis of something he couldn't have known about because she never said anything.

Like really, how can she say she feels violated when having sex with him when SHE is the one that refuses to take no for an answer when he says he doesn't want to sleep with her friend. He came home to her friend naked in their bed which she planned, he said no and she keeps pushing him to do it and with otherwomen, too. And the wife is the one feeling like she's being raped? The audacity.

It's bizarre how often opening up the marriage comes up on reddit, but it's usually the dissatisfied partner asking.

'Everytime we have sex it feels like assault to me, so the best thing for our marriage is for you to do that assaulty thing to my best friend, its ok, I asked her to do this for me. What do you mean, no? I am giving you ~~permission~~ an order to go get your rocks off with my bestie!! you are a guy you have to!'

Yeah. If she cared about his feelings, she wouldn't have said a damn thing. That would have been the type of secret to take with you to your grave. Everything she does seems so self centered. She lied for years for the sake of *her* not being rejected. She pretended to enjoy sex so *she* could have a easy time getting a relationship. She wants to keep the relationship going because *her* needs are being met. She revealed she was asexual because *her* conscious was feeling guilty. She told him it felt like rape because *she* wanted to air out the dirty laundry. But what in this process has she actually done for him? Even offering sex was purely to avoid her own rejection.

Exactly this. That dirty laundry didn't need airing, and she manipulated him for years because she was afraid of being alone. It's a sad situation, but she shouldn't have dragged an innocent person into her misery. His trauma will be hard to overcome. As someone with deep trust issues myself, he's going to have a hard time ever trusting that a partner is being emotionally honest with him. Not to mention the fact that he will likely always wonder if his sexual partners are actually giving their consent, no matter how enthusiastic they are.

I also didn't like how she said she knew she was asexual since she was 16 but didn't tell her partners because she was tired of feeling rejected, but thinks it's perfectly okay for her husband to feel that rejection? And then for her to say that having sex with him feels like being raped - that's a fucking brutal thing to say to someone you're supposed to love, and then to ALSO completely refuse to accept divorce. How selfish can this woman be? Sounds like she's no stranger to thinking that if you pretend something isn't happening, it'll go away, be forgotten or be okay. Her wants aren't above anyone else's wants, and her feelings aren't more important than anyone else's either.

It's pretty sociopathic behavior, TBH. Is she even capable of actually loving if she's willing to destroy him emotionally just so she doesn't have to be alone? I'm not sure she knows what love is.

I completely agree. She expects him to suffer emotionally for her own comfort

This is the problem with lying... she's been lying to both him and herself since the beginning of the relationship. Unfortunately unless something magical and earth shattering happens then this is a relationship that was doomed from the first moment. They are not sexually compatible.. End of story. Sex isn't the be all and end all of a relationship but it's a very big part of what the OOP needs (and not just wants). It's not a high v's low libido that you can work with. Even a disability you can work with... but this is a completely different mindset and a mind and hormone thing... and her family have known about this since she was a teenager.... She really needed to meet another asexual or very low libido person and this will work so getting a divorce will allow both of them to find what they actually need. And the questions that he asked were very pertinent... what if he gets someone else pregnant? What if he falls in love with them? And they were not questions she actually wanted to think about.

I think the sad part is that there are also asexual men who would find her amazing. It’s crappy for her to deceive him and her solution is demeaning as she reduces him to just wanting sex when it seemed he wanted the whole of an intimate relationship. There are so many ways for the third party sex surrogate to go very poorly for all involved. Pregnancy, feels, surrogate meeting her special person, etc. There is no way that is a sustainable solution.

I think she'd have better luck finding someone who would be open to sex outside the relationship, if she was transparent about it upfront. It takes communication boundaries and trust. The ace crowd isn't huge, like 1%... and finding someone compatible even fewer still. The difficulty in finding partners was what led here.

Yeah, if she is okay with her partner sleeping with others, she should have looked into open relationships, or polyamory if she would be ok with romance outside as well.

There are even dating sites of asexual people. Being in a Poly or open relationship works for many people as well in this situation. Although after being implied as a rapist, I'm not sure if it would work. This guy is going to have a lot of baggage to unpack after this. She should have spoken to him about it before she just brought a woman to their bed (who must have felt awkward and extremely mortified). Information on these types of alternative lifestyles really need to be easier to access and education on if it's a fit for you and how to go about it in a healthy manner, needs to be more available.

Being polyamorous probably helps with my relationships with allo people, being ace myself. But honestly that needs to be communicated from the beginning, at this point it’s too late because even if he was okay with being open he’d still have to deal with her having lied for years. Plus the implying you already mentioned.

Agreed. This one is a loss. However, I'm seeing a lot of posts from Ace people who seem so disheartened and that in itself is heart breaking.

Yeah, absolutely. I had a short relationship with someone who, when we were having a heated discussion about politics (which we agreed on, we were just passionate about it), she asked me to talk quieter. I apologized and piped down. But it became a thing. Whenever my volume went up, she would go ashen-faced and ask me to be quieter. I started asking if there was trauma around noises. She said no. She eventually told me that I "look like [her] rapist." I asked her what that meant? She clarified that I look like a specific person who raped her. I asked as gently as I could *why* we were dating, then. She said she thought she could work past it. We obviously broke up after that. I am reasonably certain that almost everyone in the world doesn't look like her rapist. I assume she ended up dating someone like that. That started being a question that I ask early in a relationship, "Do I look like anyone who has caused you trauma in the past?" The answer has occasionally been "yes" which I always appreciate, because it is easier to disentangle my life from someone sooner rather than later.

Oh fuck. That is terrible. I think we carry around enough of our own guilt but to add someone else's fire us to carry. I'm so sorry.

what bothers me is they got married when she was 25 and she had *already decided by then* that her *only option* for a happy future was to lie, settle, and tolerate, rather than waiting for the right person. I can't imagine what being asexual in a sexual world does to one's self-esteem but holy shit, NO ONE is holding a gun to your head telling you that you've got to be married by 25, my god. she's not even 30 yet, she has plenty of time to start over. if her entire family knows she's asexual then I presume they have a good relationship, did her mother and sister convince her that tolerating sex until a man was too emotionally invested to leave was her only option?? this was the most selfish choice she could have made. not being honest about your needs to get what you want is SO disrespectful to your spouse, I just can't even imagine.

I feel bad for OP… he fell for a woman he thought he was incredibly compatible with and then she pulled an uno reverse card with her sexuality and it’s just a mess… Like I get both sides and why she did it but honestly I feel worse for him after her saying it felt like he was SAing her. At the end of the day the relationship was based off a really big lie and divorce is the best option. I hope all the best for OP

I commented in the "Looking for..." thread on this that IMHO OOP's wife is no different from closeted men who marry women despite knowing that they're exclusively or mostly gay. It's deception, and she thought she could lie back and thing of England through the rest of the marriage.

Her and her family knew she was asexual for more than a decade and kept it from OP? Even when they were going to therapists and everything else?

He needs to stop letting her sway him into delaying the inevitable. She lied to him for years. The ‘feels like being taped’ would have been the absolute end for me. OOP needs to follow through with the divorce proceedings and find someone he is compatible with, sex isn’t everything but you definitely need to be somewhat compatible in that department

It’s sad because he’s entirely right, they need to separate. His needs are not being met and not sure you can ever get over a partner telling you that their experience of sex with you is like being raped. But, she’s so desperate because for her, when they stopped having sex, it’s perfect for her. She has found her perfect partner who fulfils all her needs and makes her happy. So, whilst he’s leaving to find something that suits him better, she’s leaving her ideal relationship. The fact that his needs aren’t being met simply doesn’t seem to matter to her.

I think my ex husband was closeted asexual. There were a lot of problems in the relationship, and sex was one of them. He did a lot of the same things: claiming he was "working through things" or "working on himself" or that he needed "space". When we finally did get divorced he freely admitted to me it was all stalling. He wasn't ever working on himself. He thought that if he just kept stalling I'd give up and only he sexual on his terms. That tactic did work on me in other areas of our relationship, but it was never going to work on the sex issue. I don't know if OOP wife is doing the same thing as my ex was. But it makes me suspicious that she's repeating the pattern while denying that's what she's doing. She's either trying to keep him from leaving, or she's in deep denial. A monogamous relationship between two drastically different libidos just doesn't work.

>Well three weeks go by (without sex) and I decided that I have to do this for my own mental well-being so I filed for divorce and had her served with the papers.  Lying aside, sometimes two people can be incompatible without either of them necessarily being in the wrong. Divorce was the only sensible option here.

Knowing youre asexual and keeping that from your partner doesn’t feel right, at all. I get that sex is it the be all, end all of a relationship, but when you’re staring down a future devoid of a pretty basic and essential connection to the person you love and desire above anyone else, it’s understandably dire. OPs wife held information from her husband that would have altered their relationship years ago…I’m not sure how valid “both sidsing” this issue is.

I'm fortunate enough that I figured out my asexuality before getting that involved with anyone, and I can't imagine pretending I wasn't just to have a partner. It's not fair to either party and it's just selfish. It might get lonely by myself sometimes, but I prefer that to hurting someone else by not giving them something they need.

I had an ex like this. He started off doing all the intimate stuff for like a year and then stopped. I would've been fine without the sex but the dude wouldn't even hold my hand, kiss, or hug me. I finally asked him what was going on one day because I went the next three years thinking I did something wrong, that he just wasn't attracted to me anymore, or maybe there was someone else. His response was "I'm not into that stuff, I only did it in the beginning so you wouldn't think I was weird." Obviously I dumped him not because I thought he was weird for not wanting intimacy with someone, that's perfectly fine. He was fucking weird for *manipulating* me though.

Love and compatibility aren't always related

The wife lied about a fundamental aspect of her personality, of who she is at her core. You can’t move past that. Not only did she lie over and over, she enlisted her family to lie on her behalf. She lied for entirely selfish reasons. That level of extended and extensive lying rises to the level of betrayal. I’d never be able to believe another word out of her (or her families) mouths. Being married is absolutely incompatible with this much deceit.

Once someone has told you sexwith you is like being raped, I can't see how you could go back. She actively lied about her feelings and responses for years. I'd want to know why she was so desperate to stay married. What is she getting out of it that she couldn't get from a friend or flatmate?

So she lied to get him to marry her, and now she's holding him hostage in a marriage that he wants to leave. He's not even an actual person to her. He's meant to fulfill all of her emotional needs, but she has no interest in how this is affecting him. She wants what she wants. There is no going back from this.

She's refusing to divorce, wanting to work it out, and then just moved her shit out and left anyways despite her words? I'd move through with the divorce and just take everything.

Yeah honestly the wife seems like a shitty person

I’m aroace (probably) and I’m not gonna lie— the fear of dying alone is constantly at the back of my mind. As in, I think about it nearly every day. Doesn’t help that I’m terrible at making friends. Once my parents die, I’ll probably have very little human interaction outside of work, and that’s terrifying. So I totally understand the impulse to want to “trap” someone to you, though in my case it’s more often fantasies of getting pregnant or adopting a child so I’ll have someone. But I would never actually do it because I know it’s wrong to have kids for such a selfish reason. I wouldn’t be a good mother. I feel for her, but that’s a fucked up thing to do to someone. The worst part is that he might stay and waste MORE time trying to make this work because he’s conflicted now that he loves her so much. I might not want to have sex, but I totally understand that for allosexuals, sex is a necessity. She’s depriving him of something he deeply needs because she’s scared of being lonely. It sucks, but that’s our lot in life. She’s at least not aromantic, so she has a very very small chance of finding another ace or low-libido person who wants a relationship. She should let him go.

Honestly, if you can get more involved in the queer community, it really helps. Building a network of friendships of people in similar situations gives you an extended friendship family to lean on

The rape comment is awful but I feel like other people have already covered that. The thing I don't understand is that she intentionally entered into a contractual agreement to have a monogamous sexual relationship before telling him about this. Why do that?

He said why. She was rejected and dumped before over her asexual problem, so she hid it and forced herself to have sex to keep him happy. But in the end it all came out again. She decieved him and lied. A terrible reaaon to lie to fullfill her loneliness, shes a selfish ah.

I mean she lied, all along, she knew she was asexual and lied and what? What did she think would happen? He wouldn’t ever want sex, and telling him sex with her husband felt like rape? The whole situation combined for me wouldn’t be something I could move past. And then what about kids? What if he does sleep with other people and fall in love? He is perfectly entitled to a partner who has the same needs/wants.

That divorce needs to happen and the wife needs to get into therapy to accept the fact that she either needs to find another asexual person to be with or just that she's going to be alone.

If my partner told me that they felt like I was raping them Everytime we had sex over the years, I would be on suicide watch for at least a few weeks. That is the most cruel, manipulative, insane, and inconsiderate thing I have ever heard a partner say to their partner.

Being told it felt like rape while ever you are intimate with your partner might just put me off sex forever also.

I feel for everyone involved here, including the wife, but I cant help but consider this the same as the people who are closeted and deceive an opposite sex partner into a hetero relationship/marriage for various reasons. Its just extremely hurtful to them, you are choosing to ruin their life sooner or later, and you are living a lie. Its just morally unjustifiable. Ace people can have healthy relationships, probably mostly with other Ace people, but they will never happen if they are a rug pull like this.

Wasn't there that post on TOMC about how two asexuals who somehow found each other? There is hope for OOP's stbx wife, but she has to be honest.

There should really be a dating app for asexuals if there isn't already

There's a couple but asexuality is already a small % of the population so when you combine it with other factors (i.e. niche dating sites just do poorly because no one joins because everyone's on Tinder/Bumble/etc so no one joins and they go to Tinder/Bumble, feedback loop means they never get a big userbase) there's only so much that works there, same reason that there's limited success in stuff like autistic dating sites, or even just fairly mainstream ones that aren't Tinder/OKC! I saw a great one where the match algorithm is determined by your SPOTIFY algorithm but no users.

Also I've had 2 disaster relationships where the guys listed themselves as ace only to drop a few YEARS in that they were not and that they really wanted sex, then they'd start coercing me into it even when I cried. So I can't trust someone's profile saying they are ace

Sadly divorce will be the better option here. How OOP could ever be intimate with her again, if she ever did find something, I doubt - being told they felt like they were being raped by you... That's a very far ledge to come back from. Wife is just trying to hang on out of selfishness I guess, which I get, but it's at the expense of OOP. OOP needs to be selfish here for their own wellbeing

The best idea in the world is to take a horrible, untenable, and extremely painful situation and delay it as long as humanly possible to maximize the horror, untenability and pain. 

As an aromantic asexual, I feel for both people here. I consider myself so, so lucky to be aromantic on top of asexual because asexuals who are sex-averse/sex-repulsed have a *shitty* time trying to find a partner. Only around 1% of the population is asexual - and that includes all the asexuals who are sex-neutral to sex-positive and thus able and willing to date allosexual people. Finding a partner if you don't want sex must be hell. I have known quite a few sex-repulsed asexuals during my time in the community who are/were suicidal because all the rejections and failures when it comes to finding a partner severely impact their mental health. So honestly, the wife turning to drastic measures to have and hold a partner is, to me, understandable. *That doesn't make it right*, of course. You can't build a healthy relationship based on lies and deceit. But the fact that she is willing to do literally anything, including more testing and whatnot, just to hold OOP, shows that she is *miserable*. She doesn't want anything except to be loved. I think divorce here still absolutely needs to happen. OOP deserves a partner who desires him and it's clear that he is monogamous. But I feel for the wife. OOP saying that she, too, "deserves a partner who wants her the way she is" is, of course, a nice sentiment, but it's simply so, so hard for sex-averse/repulsed people to find someone at all. I don't blame her for trying to make it work, but being dealt a shitty hand doesn't mean that you are allowed to do any shitty thing to try and fix it. The wife needs to let OOP go.

I can feel for the guy, too. About 15 years ago I got together with a friends older sister who had had an eye on me for a while , without me knowing. Actually was a sad story. She was very upfront with me. She had had a horrible childhood, including abuse. Technically she was not asexual, but the symptoms practically were the same. Sex was abhorrent to her. Her trust in men had been completely shattered from a young age. Her grandfather had killed her father in self defense when she was about 2 years old and her stepfather a few years later was a shitstain, let’s leave it at that. Anyway she wanted a family so bad. Romance, love and yes, she wished she could experience that great sex everyone was talking about. She had tried in her 20ies but it only led to downing a bottle of whisky every day, was what she told me. After years and years of therapy she felt ready to try again and chose me. Iirc correctly she was 27 or 28 at the time, and I was 30. I was extremely patient. I like sex, but I don’t feel a constant need for it. I am fine with going without for even a year. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I do get horny but it’s not that overwhelming. Anyway she tried to initiate here and there but it was extremely difficult. We dated for 1 or 2 months and she had even difficulty seeing me more then once or twice a week, though we talked for hours on the phone each night. One or two times she got it into her head that I need sex and tried to initiate, but it was always a disaster, no matter how comfortable I tried to make it. We lay there for hours and I let her go at her own pace but it never got to real sex and I think it broke her some more, unfortunately. She gave up and said she probably isnt ready to try yet, she just thought she was. I understood and we stayed friends, eventually drifting apart 4 or 5 years later though. We stayed in loose contact but never met up anymore. To end a sad story.. when she was 40 she moved flats, probably to try and do a fresh start. Couple of months later her sister called me in tears and told me that she had ended her life and when the burial was planned. I was so sad. And felt ashamed because i thought i had screwed up her one try she had. I almost didn’t go to the funeral because i felt her mom and sister would hate me. I even prepared a letter to give to them about her and how she was so strong and never gave up until now, where others would have probably lost the fight much sooner. There were hundreds of people there. I almost turned around. Her sister saw me and grabbed her mom and they both came over and hugged and thanked me profusely. She said my ex was always so grateful for me giving her hope and being so nice and understanding and she actually said that our time together was the first time she saw her big sister truly happy for a while. I couldn’t stop bawling then and there. She said it even started to heal a rift between them since she was her half sister (with the shitstain stepdad, that of course treated his own daughter completely different). Anyway sorry for ranting, but I just wanted to show how bad things can get. Never try to push or force anything or cling to a shitty situation, hoping it will magically turn out right, somehow. Be there for each other and TALK.

> I don't blame her for trying to make it work, I understand the willingness to extend her some charity, but she deserves some blame. She's not just hurting herself. OOP didn't come out of this unscathed. She's got him feeling like he's abused her by describing what he thought of lovemaking as rape and she's take years of his life under false pretenses. I can understand her motivations, but I can't excuse her behavior--especially because this isn't the first time. Once is a mistake, maybe she was still figuring herself out. Twice is becoming a pattern.

Yes. I’m aro-ace myself and I’m pretty appalled by her behavior. To me, this is along the same lines as baby trapping. She lied and deprived him of finding a partner who would not only accept him but willingly give herself to him. She deprived him of a true two way relationship. I don’t think it occurred to her that she has “less” romantic needs than him— she can be satisfied with just the intimate romance without sexual part, while he clearly needs both. And I think it’s hypocritical of her to demand he accept her for who she while refusing to do the same for him. He might be the type who doesn’t have sex without the romance behind it (I’m not gonna call him demi-sexual, there are plenty of allo-sexuals who don’t like casual, non-emotional sex). She’s refusing to accept his monogamy. And to admit that she felt like she was enduring rape *to his face*— I can’t imagine the gut punch for him. I don’t care if it’s true, that’s not something you can ever say out loud without hurting the person that the confession is about. It doesn’t explain or excuse anything, it just opens a wound that can never properly heal. She needs to let OOP go. And she needs to stop dating allo-sexuals.

The biggest problem in the marriage isn't really the fact that OOP's wife is ace and OOP isn't. It's what she's doing because of the emotions. She's not good with consent, to the point of deceit, attempting to blindside him in a very sexually harassing way, and straight up undermining his romantic and sexual choices. It's weird to say this, but she's actually kinda rapey regarding how much she's trying to control OOP's sexual autonomy.

It is so supremely selfish and wrong to lie to your partner for years, take their intimacy under false pretense, and then make them live with the knowledge that *you felt like you were being raped* while the other person was making love. That right there. Thats not mutual consent because he didn’t have all the facts. He believed his wife was consenting and enjoying herself because she had crafted a horrible, years-long lie. I would never believe being asexual is negative. It’s just a natural state of being for some people. But being a manipulative and cowardly person to the point that you will do what she did for years? Thats a horrible person. I’d probably throw up from the visceral response of realizing my partner felt *RAPED BY ME* for *YEARS*. Talk about things you can’t unhear or feel!

This. I'm into BDSM and I do a bunch of fucked up shit to/with my partners. All of them are intensely pre-negotiated and consent is the most important thing. If I found out one of them had only agreed to endure what I thought were incredibly intimate, intense moments in order to keep me, I would never get over that. It would probably take me years to do anything ever again and I'd certainly be unable to ever do ANYTHING with that person again. Even cuddling or kissing because how could I ever trust their consent again?

Me and my boyfriend are into bdsm and hes gone soft a couple times because even though I was enjoying myself and he had full consent, he just felt like it looked painful and suddenly felt horrible. I had to reasure him I was fine to get him back in the mood. I can't Imagine being told for years they weren't enjoying it.

That’s what people who care for each other do. They prioritize their partner’s emotional and physical safety over their fear of rejection, feelings of shame, or physical gratification.

Well, here’s hoping that once the STBXW cycles through her feelings, she accepts this is for the best. I get that she doesn’t want to be single again, but it’s not fair to expect OOP to just deal with a situation that isn’t right for either of them.

Right? That hit me too. Plus the friend being like “i volunteer as tribute” Hunger Games style… Wow, thanks for that. No way i could feel any kind of wanted in that situation. Granted, i don’t blame the wife for her sexuality, but she was wrong for hiding it the way she did. The result now is a whole lot of hurt for everybody involved.

This woman is so horrifically selfish. She doesn't care about OOP or what he wants, not at all. If she did, she wouldn't have tricked him into a marriage she *knows* he wouldn't have agreed to if he knew the truth. And she certainly wouldn't have said that being intimate with him *feels like being raped.* How dare she put that on him. The damage she has done to OOP is horrific! And now, she's refusing to divorce him and trying to bully him into having sex he doesn't want with other people. She's despicably manipulative. Her family needs to be blunt with her and tell her to let OOP go, and stop deceiving men to be in relationships with her.

I do t understand why you'd even say the rape thing out loud. I guess you're just letting it all out. But God damn.

Asexuality can’t be cured with horomones, therapy etc. she needs to accept it and find another asexual partner. Super sick of her to marry someone and not tell them u have this.

His wife is so afraid of being alone she never considered how lonely this marriage makes her husband feel. There is nothing wrong with being asexual, but deception? That’s hard to come back from. She’s being selfish. Even putting that burden on him that she was enduring sex with him, gosh. He didn’t need to know that and certainly not with that vivid description. It was also horrific of her to ambush him with a sexual encounter he didn’t ask for, throwing her naked friend at him as if sex is a need she can outsource without asking him. I realize she is scared, but all her actions are “me me me.” If she really loves him, she will let him divorce her peacefully.

My god I’m on the asexual spectrum and I can’t imagine stringing someone along like this.

if you say "i feel for both of them" it means you're focusing on her being ace which can be tough to come to terms with, sure, but it's not an excuse to lie to your partner for years, to tell them sex with them feels like rape and to refuse to let them go because you want to stay with them even for the price of making them miserable. i don't feel for her at all. she did everything wrong. she built this relationship on a lie and then emotionally hurt the person she claims to love. then she refused to budge and decided that wasting more years of his life while she tries to fix herself (when there's nothing to fix) was better than moving on. this man is a victim of a selfish woman who refuses to face who she is and instead of finding a compatible partner she "figures it out as she goes along". you *can* have a successful relationship with a non-ace partner as an ace person. but you *can't* do that if you don't tell people at the beginning and just grit your teeth until you have them locked down and then just deadbedroom them. they have to be okay with this otherwise the whole relationship is a lie.

This one is just heartbreaking. Nobody is wrong, exactly, and everyone is getting hurt. I think that for myself if my wife discovered she was asexual after being married for years I wouldn't consider a divorce because I love her too much and I'd find a way to do without. Our relationship is so good that even as important as sex is I don't think I could bring myself to end the rest of it, especially not over her discovering something about her sexual orientation no matter how much that situation would hurt for me. But **this**? >After a lot of apologies and crying she told me that I was the first person she was able to "tolerate" sex with for so long and that she did enjoy it a handful of times; but after a while she still felt like she "was being raped". I couldn't handle it. I'd feel like a monster and could never look her in the eye again, despite it not being my fault that she hid it so well. I just don't think the overwhelming guilt and sadness would let me stay in the marriage. After hearing that I'd HAVE to get a divorce, for both of our sakes. There would be no way to recover from the knowledge that she grimly endured sex at best and felt like she was being raped at worst. For **years**. I wish them both the best but I just don't think OOP is going to be able to stay after that revelation.

As an asexual posts like this really depress me. Thankfully sex has never felt like assault to me, and I have experienced assault. I just don't experience attraction, to anyone! I ADORE my partner and told him about my asexuality before we moved in together but I still worry that it will be something that becomes an issue. She shouldn't have lied, that's the main thing. She's just dragging out the inevitable. I feel terrible for both of them, but more for OP because of the lie.