I love the sex life my husband, Fantastic Mr. Fawkes, and I share. We have great compatibility and we have really sexy sex, despite being VERY different, sexually. How so? Well, for starters, he’s totally vanilla with zero interest in power dynamics, and he’s asexual, aka ace. I’m a kinky pseudo-hypersexual. How does that work, you might ask? The answer is: very, very well.We have excellent sex: it’s easy and fulfilling, grounding and pleasurable, it’s everything we could want it to be and it has been that way for two decades. That alone seems like a lucky thing because sex is such a stumbling block for so many couples, but we are extra lucky (read: hardworking within our relationship) that our sexual opposites attract.
When he came out Ace
He recently came out/began openly self identifying as ace and has not made any further distinctions, so I won’t label him within the ace umbrella, but he is certainly not devoid of sexual wants or needs, as many people presume ace folks are. We have talked about our sexualities at great length over the years, and taken a very communication-forward approach to sex (among everything else). We have spent a lot of time investing in understanding each other’s points of view and we are both very proud of that.
Gaining language
In the beginning, before we had the vocabulary to express everything as we do now, there was a time where I struggled with the contrast between us. I’m younger than he is and my “number”, (of sexual partners), even back then, was well into the double digits, but he had never had sex or really been very sexual with anyone. Being so young at the time (my late teens) and not very worldly, I was afraid that he’d need to sow his oats elsewhere and inevitably leave me for someone better or more his speed. These feelings prompted me to open up about my non-monogamous nature and to my surprise, it really resonated with him. We have always had an open relationship because we are both non-monogs, but as an asexual person he has never had the interest or drive for dating or hooking up with other people, so to this day, I remain his only sexual partner. He uses his polyam latitude for other pursuits he might feel “selfish” for making time for away from our relationship. Where I have other partners, he has very committed hobbies and high priority friendships, and it all works out perfectly.
Perfectly mismatched
I’m a bit of a sex glutton, myself. It’s hard to imagine a perpetually horny sex blogger being so into sex with an ace partner, but mostly his ace-ness just manifests as a neutral to low priority towards sex. He doesn’t dislike it or do it just for me, but sex is just not on his mind the way we think of cis men having sex on the brain at almost all times. It simply doesn’t occur to him. He’s very affectionate and cuddly, very demonstrative and loving, and when we do have sex or engage in sexy play, he’s very present and enjoys himself, but he just isn’t motivated by sex. He doesn’t ever feel the “need” to come, is highly attentive to my pleasure, but is also not even a little bit submissive. He’s very confident and enthusiastic once things get started, but he just doesn’t “require” sexual activity the way a lot of us do. This means that initiation is often left to me to spark his interest, and although that was harder when I was younger and less versed in the nuance of attraction, it’s not an issue because we are so intimately familiar that just a touch or a kiss or a look starts the ball rolling.
Supportive, always
Learning about his sexuality in real time, along with him, has been so bonding. I want to be his biggest supporter in this, like everything else we share in our lives together, and it has been so humbling and amazing to be the person he shares his asexuality with so openly. So many cis men struggle with toxic masculinity and the labels they face, but not him. I am so proud that he has the character to not only not buy into cishet male patterns of destruction, but that he is fully himself, while allowing me the space to be whole myself too.
