Your daily reminder that exclusionists are scum
This is. Absolutely fucked up.
First of all, unless you and the other person/people in a relationship have sat down and agreed upon it, sex is generally not going to be the most important thing in a relationship, and it shouldn’t be assumed that it is. If you’re going to assume anything is the most important thing in a relationship, the safest thing to assume is that it’s communication. Because, then if communication doesn’t end up being the most important thing in the relationship, at least you’re focused on trying to communicate about what else is important.
Second of all, as someone with a high sex drive who initially entered into my now 6-year-long QPR with my aroace partner thinking that they were entirely sex repulsed and that sex would not be on the table for the relationship… actually fuck off with this attitude. That wasn’t my partner abusing me, that was us entering a relationship and agreeing upon the terms.
Fuck you if you think that just because I have a high sex drive that I can’t decide that, because I love someone with my whole heart and want to be with them for the rest of my life, I’m happy to be in a sexless relationship with them. Fuck you if you think that choice of mine was necessarily coerced or came from my partner attempting abuse, rather than two adults choosing what they want.
And fuck you if you only can agree with the above because my partner turned out to actually be interested in sex with me after all. Or because part of the things we communicated about is that I’m poly and want other relationships as well. Neither of those things specifically matter, because regardless of them I still freely and willingly made the choice to enter that relationship with terms we both contributed to and agreed upon.
Let me tell you a story. I was 16 when I first started going out with my ex. He never once pushed me, though when we turned 18 he did ask if i'd like to go away for my birthday for that purpose. I said no. He accepted that and asked me to let him know when I was ready. When I was 19 I finally figured out I was Ace. He was one of the first people I told, because I didn't want him to stay with me expecting something he wasn't going to get. He was a little dissapointed, but he said he was ok with it, and things carried on as normal. When I turned 21, he took me to Cardiff for my birthday. I again made it clear that nothing was going to happen. He told me that wasn't what he wanted anyway. While we were there, HE PROPOSED. We had been together almost 5 years, but we were still super young. In the next few months we moved in together, and bit by bit, spent less and less time together. I was seeing him less in the house we shared than I had when we lived in seperate villages. He NEVER shared a meal with me, he stopped inviting me to help at his scout group, and anytime he was off at the same time as me, he didn't want to do anything with me. Was he cheating on me? Was he just struggling to be away from his parents for the first time? I dunno, but when I brought up my lonliness to him, he said something I will never forget: "We won't feel like a real couple until we sleep together." He was trying to guilt trip me into it. He wanted to make me do something I REALLY did not want to. Something that, had it happened, would not actually have been consensual. But sure, in that 5 year relationship that started when we were kids, during which HE made the major moves, It was obviously ME who was abusive.
