Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Hi Doc,
I recently found your blog and love how informed and sensitively written it is! I’m hoping you can give me some guidance on my complicated situation.
I’m a 27-year-old woman who has never had sex. In the past several years, I have come to terms with the reality that I may be demisexual or some degree of asexual (and maybe aromantic as well?). That said, I’m interested in dating (men, primarily) and exploring sexually and romantically. At the same time, I have a lot of anxiety about being so inexperienced — my dating history is pretty spare, and I often ended things before they could become physical — and though I have some sex drive, I rarely experience sexual attraction. Additionally, I’m generally pretty uncomfortable with physical touch/intimacy, and I’m not sure how I might go about becoming more comfortable with it.
On top of that, because of course that’s not all, I have pelvic issues that make penetration difficult. Fingers are fine, but anything larger is a challenge. I’ve done some physical therapy to work on this, but I’m not yet at a point where I could comfortably have penetrative sex.
All of this stuff has made me feel really insecure and scared when it comes to dating, which is not the energy I want to bring when meeting new people. How do I tell a potential partner about all my problems without scaring them off? And is it unreasonable to ask for patience regarding these matters?
Thanks for listening.
Bundle Of Nerves
Let’s start off with the most immediate and easiest-to-ask question: you’re always within your rights to ask people to be patient with you, especially where sex and intimacy are concerned. That’s something you can and should be willing to ask for from anyone you might want an intimate relationship with. Sex and intimacy are a multi-player game after all; for it to work and work well, everyone needs to be onboard and willing to play.
The question that I think is underlying what you’re asking is “will people be willing to be patient with me?” and the answer is… maybe. Some people will, many people won’t, and a lot is going to depend on factors that nobody can predict. There’s no telling, for example, how long it might take for you to become comfortable with physical intimacy or how much time it would take to get to a point where penetrative, vaginal sex would be possible. Some people may not want to wait, especially if there’s no definitive timeline. It also would depend on how important a sexual connection is for your theoretical partners; most people are allosexual, and that means that sex will be a priority for them.
But what that means for you is that many people simply aren’t going to be right for you, not that what you’re asking for is unreasonable. A lot of dating is about vetting potential partners for compatibility; after all, the whole point is to spend as little time on dates with people who just aren’t a good match for you. Since you’re on the asexual spectrum, you’re more likely to have a better time with someone for whom sex isn’t necessarily a priority either. That may mean that you’ll be passing on more people than going on dates, but that’s better for you overall than trying to force yourself into being someone you’re not or to make a relationship work with someone who simply isn’t compatible with you.
Now in terms of how to become more comfortable with physical touch and intimacy… that’s a tough one. This is something that I think would be best worked on with a therapist or body-work specialist, especially people who are more informed about sexual issues and intimacy. You might also look into areas where you can work on graduated levels of physical contact that you control – a massage therapist might be a good starting point, for example. You could ask that they limit the massage to certain body parts – upper back and shoulders, perhaps – and control the level and intensity of the touch. Again, however, I think it would be good to do this while under the care and direction of a trauma-informed therapist, rather than trying to DIY it yourself. If you don’t have a therapist already, you may want to visit the referral directory at the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists; they have a list of certified professionals in your area.
But another thing to consider is that – again, contingent on your comfort with physical touch and intimacy – sex isn’t limited to penetration. The wider your definition of sex, the more forms of sex and sexual intimacy are available to you. Oral sex, anal sex, mutual masturbation, frottage/sexual rubbing (including between the breasts, buttocks or thighs)… these are all forms of sex and sexual pleasure. While penetration may be off the table (whether for a while or for good), these are all ways of having sex with a partner that don’t involve PIV. While a lot of cis straight men may prioritize PIV, that once again simply means that they’re not going to be compatible with you, and thus not someone who would be a good romantic or sexual partner.
Now one thing I would suggest is that you prioritize on the things that are going to make you feel confident and comfortable with actually dating and putting yourself out there before you actually get on the scene and start looking for partners. As you say: nervous hesitancy isn’t necessarily the energy you want to be putting out there. But more to the point: the more empowered you feel to actually start looking, the more you’ll feel empowered to ask for what you want and need and to give the wave off to the people who are wrong for you. It’s much easier to hold onto your standards when you feel comfortable in your own skin. The last thing you want is to feel that you have to compromise in ways that might cause you emotional harm in the name of Having A Partner, and that confidence is attractive in general.
Being confident and comfortable in yourself means that you’ll also feel more confident in laying out not just what you’re looking for, but what you are and aren’t able to give. Like I said earlier: you want people who are compatible with you and to wave off the folks who aren’t. Being up front with being on the ace/demi spectrum will be important, as it will help folks understand where you’re coming from. The people who know what those terms mean will be folks who will be far more likely know whether or not that’s something they can rock with. The ones who can’t will self-select out of your dating pool before it becomes a concern. For the folks who don’t know or understand those terms, the easiest way to explain it is that you’re a slow burner who needs time to build connection and comfort before sex and sexual attraction become a thing; again, the folks who aren’t going to be cool with that will dip out sooner rather than later, which is a good thing.
I don’t think you need to mention that penetrative sex is off the table up front if you’re not on, say, Feeld. However, it is something that should be talked about when sex is more of a possibility between the two of you. If you’re at a point where you’re ready, willing and eager to make out, for example, that would be the time to say “hey, before we get too far into this, I should let you know…” and let folks make their decisions from there.
It’ll be important to be honest with folks – and to remember that honesty doesn’t mean ‘doomer’. You’re not confessing to being under a generational curse or admitting some hideous crime; you’re just telling them relevant information about how your body works. If PIV isn’t going to be available, just say it’s not a thing you can do. If, on the other hand, the physical therapy is progressing well, you can tell them that it’s possible in the future, but you can’t give them any sort of timeline. But in the meantime, here are all the awesome things the two of you can do and isn’t that great?
Remember: having all these other ways of having sex isn’t the consolation prize for not being able to do PIV; they’re all amazing ways of expanding what sex means and the level of sexual adventure the two of you can share together.
I won’t lie, BON; these are challenges that you’ll be facing, and it means that you may be single for longer than you would prefer to be. But a challenge doesn’t mean that it’s impossible, and by being more mindful of what is or isn’t possible for you means that when you do go on dates, they’ll be with people who are far more likely to be the people who are right for you. It may be difficult, but I have every faith that you can navigate this and get to the place you’ll want to be.
As the sages have said: nobody said that it would be easy; they just said that it would be worth it.
All will be well.
Hey Doc,
What’s your take on heterofatalism (the idea that heterosexuality is old fashioned, harmful, and worthless) / heteropessimism (the idea that straight women are to be pitied or encouraged to explore same-gender relationships)?
I was looking to read some dating advice for straight men by straight women and most of the advice I could find was, “don’t bother – women have moved on from men and the ones who haven’t are better off alone.”
I don’t want to listen to other men about what women want, but all the women I know are either lesbians (like my ex realized she was) or bisexual leaning lesbian (most of my female friends).
Thanks!
Hard Out Here For A Straight Man
The whole “heteropessimism” thing is having a moment, with the recent opinion piece “America Has A Masculinity Problem” in the New York Times seeming to kick off the discussion. And honestly, I’m tired because so much of this covers territory that we’ve been going over for literal decades now.
My overall take is that both of these are incredibly simplistic, inaccurate and it requires flattening a whole lot of discourse into something that would fit into a tweet. Much of it follows the same pattern as discussing complex topics like “toxic masculinity”: people summing it up inaccurately in 300 characters or less, everyone treating that summary as the whole of the definition and allowing bobble-throated slapdick outrage merchants and hot-take purveyors dominate the conversation by focusing on misunderstandings and bad-faith arguments by holding up the opinion of some post from someone with fewer than 100 followers as emblematic of What Everyone Is Saying.
Some of the discourse is just a repackaging of shit that radical feminists were saying during the second-wave in the 60s –rhetoric that nobody took seriously then and take even less seriously today. The idea that “women should be encouraged to date women instead of men”, for example, is just political lesbianism in modern clothes and, again, not something that anyone is seriously advocating. The idea that heterosexuality is “old-fashioned” and that hetero women are to be pitied is, likewise, peak Tumblr discourse – the sort of thing that sounds wild, edgy and boundary pushing when you’re 18 and just discovered communism and veganism at the same time.
Much of the rest are people who (often deliberately) misunderstand the difference between someone expressing frustration and an actual philosophical or political belief, while also not being willing to contend with actual issues in ways that can’t be reduced to such simplicity that they lose all meaning.
When women say “men are trash” or Sabrina Carpenter sings “Manchild”, these are cries of exasperation and commiseration, not a declaration that Heterosexuality Is Over and All Men Must Die. It’s precisely as universal as Dre singing “Bitches Ain’t Shit” and all the handwringing over misogyny in rock and rap. It also has significantly less of an effect on the world than, say, all the op-eds about whether #MeToo has gone too far, never mind the ways that women’s reproductive rights have been decimated and prominent political voices – including Peter Hegseth and JD Vance – are talking about how women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
Call me crazy, but I think those are more concerning and damaging.
On the other hand, there’s also an almost willful focus on What About The Men that doesn’t actually want to grapple with how complex the issue is and how it’s more than just people saying things on TikTok. There’re genuine issues that men are facing, but the attention all seems to be on whose feelings are getting hurt instead of addressing that this is a systematic problem while also treating it as a zero-sum game – “women are doing X, which means that it must be at the cost of men’s ability to do Y”.
Worse, it gets flattened into “who has a better message” rather than actually dealing with the underlying causes, When Fredrick Joseph says “there’s no Andrew Tate or Connor McGregor on the left” and that’s why Gen-Z men are moving to the right, he’s ignoring or overlooking that he’s talking about rapists and misogynists. The fact that there’s apparently a Rapist Advocacy Gap between the right and left doesn’t mean that the left needs to take a big breath and get more misogynistic in order to win men back, it’s a condemnation of the right. If Tate’s message is appealing, then the bigger question that people should be asking is ”why does an avowed rapist and con man have the impact that he does?” Of course, this would require things like addressing the capture of media outlets, prioritizing fascistic messages on social media, the massive financial disparity between the top 1% and the rest of the world and the lack of political will to hold people who tried to overthrow national governments to account.
But to bring it back to dating, labeling things “heteropessimism” is a cute way of diminishing actual issues by giving it a little label. Expressing despair over said pessimism and how many women are choosing not to date frames it as being unfair to men instead of asking “why are women deciding they’d rather be single than be on the dating market?” Because if you actually ask people in good faith and listen to what they have to say, it really comes down to one thing: dudes need to rise up to meet the moment. This is a drum I have been beating my entire career, and the beatings will continue until standards improve. The issue isn’t that women’s standards have become unreasonable… unless you want to explain how “I want to date someone who I actually like and can build a relationship with” is unreasonable.
In fact, I would point you to the excellent article from sex blogger Girl on the Net: “A Message To The Single Men of London: Up Your Game”. The message is fairly simple: far too many men are not willing to do things like cultivate their emotional intelligence, put in effort to actually connect with women and behave like they’re looking for a partner instead of a bangmaid. In fact, many of the loudest voices – ones prioritized by the algorithms on TikTok, Instagram and elsewhere – advocate the opposite; they want women to accept less and take on more while insisting that what men need and deserve are a combination of servant, cook and therapist who also provides hot and cold running blowjobs, while running down women who don’t fit their incredibly narrow definition of attractive or feminine.
Of course, those same voices are the ones who mock and belittle men for not fitting into an equally narrow and restrictive definition of “masculine” or “manly”, yet somehow the focus isn’t on how those masculinity influencers are even louder in declaring how men are trash. Even a glance at the rhetoric of the Tates, Hegseth, Carlson et. al. will show repeated insults and disdain aimed at men – all of them castigating men for being “soft”, “weak”, “doughy” or, worse, “feminine”. For every “Christ, why does dating have to be such a fucking nightmare” song from a pop idol, there are a dozen male voices with far more reach and – critically – far more power saying “you’re all worthless and weak and none of you are fit to call yourselves men.”
And the thing is: to take this back to your situation specifically, HOHFASM, most of the commentary that you’re focused on is easily dismissed or ignorable. Much of what you find is being surfaced for you because it’s related to content that you’ve already interacted with; the more you watch or react to posts or videos dragging men and making you feel bad, the more you’re going to find. A lesson that everyone needs to take away is that they’re ultimately responsible for shaping their online experience; if the content they’re seeing only serves to make them feel awful, then the answer is to a) block that content specifically and b) seek out and interact with content that builds them up. Yes, that can be harder to find because of the “anger performs better” nature of most social media algorithms, but it is possible to find and boost.
Just as importantly, this is a classic case of “if they’re not talking about you, then they’re not talking about you.” If the behavior you’re seeing doesn’t describe you, then you’re not who they mean and you’re welcome to disregard those takes.
I can promise you that women who sleep with men haven’t “moved on from men”; what they’re waiting for are – as GoTN said – men who are willing to up their game. Putting in effort to be someone worth dating and to reach standards that are – let’s be real – almost comedically low – will put you ahead of the game. Being a good communicator, who can treat people with respect, who know what they want and who actually, y’know, listen to the people they date will help you stand out in a very depressing field.
Are a lot of women in a defensive crouch because of their experiences? Yes… and while that may be frustrating from someone who’s trying to meet them in good faith, it’s entirely understandable. The reason why people grit their teeth and roll their eyes at Captain Not-All-Men is because almost every woman who dates men has had experiences that’ve made them far more cautious and wanting a little more care and proof before they’re willing to lower their shields a bit. If you want folks to see that you aren’t Like Those Other Men, then accepting this and giving them that time is going to be a big part of it.
But just as importantly, this is a systematic issue, and that means that part of the solution is to start chipping away at the system that supports and encourages those toxic voices and systems. Nobody’s expecting you – or any individual – to bring the whole thing down like Samson collapsing the temple. But fixing the system means more than just Not Being Part of the Problem, it means being one of the people helping to change things. This isn’t a Herculean labor; it’s often as simple as a “dude, that’s not cool” and “we don’t do that here” when other men around you are out of pocket. Creating an atmosphere and environment where shitty behavior isn’t passively tolerated but actively called out isn’t too much to ask; nor is boosting positive voices that focus on making things better.
And an important part of that is going to be not buying into the flattening of the discourse or holding up those cutesy labels as being meaningful or valid. It just distracts from the actual issue and lets the bad faith actors and grievance peddlers keep moving the Overton window and pretend that this is progress instead of addressing the problem in its full systematic complexity.
Good luck.
