Reasons

A bunch of signs that say "yes" or "no". Image source.

This post is part of the October 2023 Carnival of Aces. The topic for this month is "Asexuality, Sex, Erotic Contact, and Physical Intimacy."

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One of the things I like the most about the asexual community is that we see "not having sex" as a sort of default. People can choose to have sex if they want to, nothing wrong with that, but it's the sort of thing where we wonder what the reasons would be, for choosing that. We can (and do) endlessly discuss those reasons. But you don't need reasons to not have sex, that's just normal, right?

Personally, I do have sex with my husband, but it definitely feels to me like a decision. It's not like "well I do that because of course I do"- no, I really thought about it and made a choice. And I can definitely understand that people would choose to make a different choice if their circumstances or preferences were different. This is all very intuitive to me. I find it so weird when non-asexual people are confused about why someone would not want to ever have sex. Like, why is this confusing? (It's not confusing. Sex is what's confusing.) I really don't feel comfortable with that the assumption that "of course everyone wants to have sex"- even though I do have sex. I had to think through this and figure out what I wanted, and it's alienating to me when people talk about sex like it's so obvious, like it's unimaginable that this would be an actual decision.

Anyway, I've written up a list here of various categories of reasons one might choose to have sex. For most of these categories, they include a whole range of things, from healthy to problematic to so coercive it's nonconsensual. In many cases, I can't exactly draw a line to divide the "good" reasons from the "bad" reasons, or the consensual from the nonconsensual. Sometimes it's hard to even figure that out for yourself.

Here they are:

1. Curiosity/ trying new things

A positive interpretation of this one is that you are curious and freely choosing to try sex. A negative/coercive interpretation could be if you feel like you're not allowed to say you don't like sex if you haven't tried it.

2. You want society to see you a certain way

For example, society says if you have sex a certain amount, then you are desirable/fun/wild. And society thinks it's bad to be a "virgin." (I personally think society should get over itself.) 

Or the church tells you that a "real man" wants sex all the time, and a "good wife" has to fulfill her "wifely duty" of having sex frequently enough to meet her husband's "needs."

3. You want your partner to see you a certain way

Maybe you like it when your partner desires you and thinks you are sexy. 

Or, toward the more problematic end of the spectrum, maybe you constantly fear you aren't good enough, and you need to have sex in order to make it worth their while to be in a relationship with you. 

Or you've heard lots of warnings about how wives have to have sex with their husbands enough, or else the husband will cheat because all men are like that, and you're terrified your husband will cheat on you. (Fact check: Most men are not like that! If you meet a man who is like that, you need to NOT MARRY HIM.)

(Maybe we could even categorize sex work under this reason? You want your partner to see that you held up your end of the deal so they need to pay you.)

4. You want to see yourself a certain way

Maybe having sex makes you feel like you are sexy/powerful/fun. Maybe it's a way to prove that you are "normal." Maybe you like the feeling of being desired.

(I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide which of these reasons are healthy and which are problematic.)

5. Indicates something about the relationship

For example, you see sex as meaningful because it symbolizes a certain level of love/ intimacy/ commitment. 

Or, it means you're over your ex if you have sex with someone else, or you're comparing your current partner to your ex and you feel you need to do more sexual things with your current partner, in order to prove something about ... something? 

Or, you've internalized the idea that in a long term relationship you're "supposed" to have sex, and if you're married you have to have sex some number of times per week (or else people will have concerns about your marriage being unhealthy), on the wedding night you have to "lose your virginity", etc, various relationship structures/milestones where you're supposed to have sex because that's what people think that relationship type "means."

(And that sounds kinda problematic, like "we're having sex because that's what we're supposed to do, and I never thought about if I actually want to or not"- but it doesn't have to be interpreted that way. This category can include more positive perspectives, such as: maybe you do genuinely feel that it makes sense to have sex because you have a certain type of relationship / level of commitment. Here's an analogy- imagine someone who is very excited to wear a wedding ring after they get married. Yeah, it's because they've internalized the cultural ideas about how the ring symbolizes their love and commitment- but there's nothing inherently harmful with that belief in and of itself. Just because you've "internalized cultural ideas" doesn't make it automatically a bad thing. I think symbols are great, actually. It only becomes harmful if you're forcing people to do things they don't want to because you think everyone has to believe in the same symbolism as you.)

Also under this category, maybe you expect sex to magically fix your relationship problems. 

(Maybe sex work should be categorized here actually? If you have made a financial arrangement where one person is explicitly paying the other for sex, then the structure of the "relationship" requires you to either have sex, or forfeit the money.)

6. You like seeing your partner enjoying it

Maybe it makes you happy when your partner is happy. Or, a more problematic spin on this one would be, you feel like you're obligated to do it to make your partner happy.

7. Emotional/ romantic intimacy with your partner

I've heard lots of people say that one of the main reasons they want to have sex is for "intimacy." And that sex in marriage is very important because you need it in order to have emotional intimacy. (? Yeah I can't explain that one but apparently that is how it works for a lot of people.) I have even heard the idea that some people have a natural desire to express their love to their partner though sex (which was really surprising to me, but yeah I guess it's a real thing).

Or, to put a problematic spin on this, maybe it's the only way you can get your partner to pay attention to you at all.

8. Physically it feels good

Maybe you choose to have sex because physically it feels good. (And I would strongly advise, if it hurts then don't do it! I wish I had known that, I wish I had known to stop immediately if it hurts- instead I had internalized a lot of Christian marriage advice about "men need it, so the wife has to do it even if it hurts, come on it doesn't take very much time, surely you can endure pain for a few minutes for the sake of your marriage, life is full of annoying tasks we have to do even if we don't like them, that's just the way it is" ugh gross.)

9. To have a baby

This would require that one of you has eggs and the other one has sperm.

10. Sexual attraction

I'm very vague on the details of this one...?

11. Sex drive

Yeah I am not the right person to ask about this one either.

(For the last few items on the list, I haven't put many details, but I expect that these categories also span the whole range from "healthy" to "problematic" to "nonconsensual.")

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I'd like to point out that, for many of these reasons (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, maybe 7?), they're not even about the sex part of sex. Instead, they're about the cultural ideas surrounding what sex "means." If society had arbitrarily picked some completely different activity and assigned those meanings to it, then many of these reasons would apply 100% to that activity, I wouldn't need to edit them at all. Only a few of the reasons have any relation to the fact that sex means doing stuff with each other's genitals.

So for the reasons that are "not even about the sex part of sex," there's not necessarily any difference between aces and allosexuals (ie, between people on the asexual spectrum, and people who are not). An ace person could choose to have sex for those reasons (or feel pressured to have sex for those reasons), just the same as an allosexual person might. 

(Or, in reality there are differences, but they're along these lines: Maybe because of influence from the ace community, the asexual person would know that they're not "required" to have sex, so they feel less pressured by other people's expectations. Or, alternatively, maybe because the asexual person doesn't have any intuitive understanding of wanting to have sex because of sexual attraction, they might believe that everyone is doing it because of peer pressure, and be more likely to be pressured into it themselves. So, the differences are more about the context that they are coming from, rather than a simple connection between biological desires and choices.)

And for the remaining reasons, which do depend on the fact that sex is about genitals, each of them might apply to some aces and not others.

So, there's my list of possible reasons to have sex. Within each category, the specific circumstances could be healthy or unhealthy. I didn't categorize them in relation to consent, or which ones are good or bad, because I feel that there's a continuous range and it's hard to say where it crosses over into being unhealthy, and then where it crosses over into being nonconsensual. That's something you have to figure out for yourself, by analyzing your feelings, and it may take a very long time to figure it out. (If your partner is explicitly threatening you or something, that would make it nonconsensual, but there are also many cases where a person might feel threatened or pressured by the reality of their circumstances, or cultural ideas they've internalized, and it's hard to label that as consensual or nonconsensual. Only the person who's experiencing those feelings themself can really make that call.)

I very much believe that having sex is a choice, not something that everyone should just be doing automatically (??? what a bizarre idea), and I appreciate that the ace community treats it that way. Like sex is an unusual concept, and you're free to choose it if you want, but there's much discussion to be had about why on earth people would choose that.

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Related:

The Gap Between Fantasy and Reality 

Bucket List (a post about being a sex-favorable asexual) 

6 Ways Purity Culture Did NOT Teach Me About Consent

And this post from Siggy: 20 narratives of aces who like sex