Sexual Intimacy

Wondered how many of you w/SPD have gone w/o sex for over a year whilst having a partner? (I understand this topic is not of interest to many w/SPD, it is not meant to be incendiary or insulting towards anyone w/SPD).

Partner A (male) claims to have no sexual desire, yet reports he has not lost his attraction for his female counterpart.

I know most people w/SPD have periods of no sexual need, are asexual, are often celibate for years, but is it common to co-habitate and not have engaged in sex for almost 2 years? To the typical person looking inward from a neutral, external standpoint, the answer may be "no". But within this group, I am sure the responses would/may be different.

Activities engaged in are movie watching, going out to eat, sleeping in same bed, playing board games, but sexually speaking, the partnership is devoid of sexual intimacy. BTW, even when Partner A was younger (he is now in his mid 40s), his sexual desires and need for coupling was very low). I was the main sexual protagonist, we never had sex multiple times in a day, but we did have sex. As he has aged, it has become noticeably apparent that 1. his sexual libido has decreased, 2. He rather engage (sporadically) in covert sexual behavior, 3. He is just not sexually attracted to me (even if he claims that is the not the case).

Thoughts (if any)?

sorry, this will be a long write off but i hope it answers your question as well as my experiences that may be relative, since it's important i convey my experiences and feel heard / supported properly, and hope it can create a better understanding on mental / emotional / physiological impairments / and personality / personality disorders, etc.

i'm a straight male. i have never been in an actual intimate relationship, though i fantasize about it, but see it as unrealistic and requiring too much capacity, and not practical, and not something i would discuss personally, but something that just needs to come through "naturally". i have severe depression, as well as schizotypal PD that is 100 percent managed by regular sexual release ( masturbation from porn usage majority of the time ). if i do not not engage in this regularly every 24 hours at least, then the severe depression then becomes fatal, and i'm unable to do even basic things like eat food, sleep, drive a car, etc. the sexual release manages my brain chemistry, hormones, stress, physical and emotional pain, emotions, etc. obviously if i abstinent from it over 24 hours or so, there's a steady but quick dysfunction in my brain chemistry, hormones, and things i mentioned, so one major thing is that eventually i can't even manage to eat food ( despite being hungry and wanting to eat ), i just become extremely sick and trying to eat food feels like as if you're food poisoned and trying to eat something. i usually do sexual release twice a day, once in the mid day usually and the second time right before bed.

i usually can't fall asleep if i only had sexual release once in the mid day and try to force myself to sleep at night without the 2nd sexual release right before it, and so eventually, after stress fully sitting in the bed for like an hour, i engage in masturbation and ultimately the sexual release. sometimes it may even occur in the middle of the night where i get up and need to have the release, and then i'm fine after that and can get back to sleep. surely elevated prolactin and stress levels are to blame, combined with sexual thoughts mandate the mechanism to do release. sometimes i'm lucky enough where i'm not really affected by these and can manage to fall asleep and stay asleep well till the next morning, but eventually, my body being out of whack shows itself and the severe depression becomes fatal where i have to do the sexual release to get me back and alive and functional.

the abstinence thing isn't something i get myself into ever, it's only something i found myself in like 2 or 3 times. one time which was basically necessary was when i was coming off latuda which caused me severe side effects that eventually caused me to get hospitalized from it's so called "Side effects". the drug shouldn't have ever been prescribed to me, and neither of any of the anti psychotics, because it was pretty much blocking something it shouldn't have, in this case, dopamine. it was prescribed to me because a past naive psychiatrist thought it would be helpful for me because i mentioned i struggle with "anger". it was naive for her to prescribe it because anger can be caused by many different things and there are different types of anger. my anger is due to severe depression combined with a personality disorder, and unfavorable living circumstances from both ongoing and past, etc. the latuda ###$ me up for 3 days of taking it and not only did it even worsen my brain inflammation, swelling, and physical and emotional pain, i could barely do anything at all, eat, sleep, etc. it did in every way torture me and didn't do 1 thing positive. i never even understood how this drug would help ANYONE, regardless of whether it's supposed to treat some specific "Symptom" or not.

i was rushed to the hospital on the third night after the "Side effects" made it fatal. as i was lying in bed just trying to sleep to another day, the restlessness and agitation and stress and ###$ up nature the drug did to me eventually caused me to get up so agitated, that i got up and started having crying spells, screaming on and off, while having convulsions of some sort, with my head jerking violently on and off here and there, i remember my mouth / tongue had become really dry right before the more severe symptoms showed up, and i of course had difficulty breathing in the process. luckily my mom was around and rushed me to the hospital while i was just sitting very difficulty trying to just survive basically. at the hospital, they said they couldn't really do much but wait for the drug to eventually leave my system but that they were able to give me ativan and some anti nausea medicine which seemed to help somewhat keep me more contained. after some time, they let me know if i was ok to go and i was like, let's see, and i was ok enough to go, still my brain was messed up or w.e. for the next day or two, i didn't engage in sexual release because i drew the connection that since sexual release lowers dopamine right after and you were taking the latuda which block dopamine, preventing it from getting back to a functional level, it created a fatal effect ( considering i was doing it rather compulsively around 3 times per day when i was on it ), so to be safe and let the drug leave my system, i tried to extend the amount of time as much as possibly i could to let the drug leave my system and let my brain's dopamine or w.e to get back to a more functional / healthy level, and then go back to doing it when i know it's safe to do and feel ok, and so i did, and i was back to my "normal" brain functioning after a few days or so.

but yeh, it was the latuda's dopamine blocking aspect which primarily ###$ me up and caused increased physical pain / brain inflammation, because people don't understand that dopamine isn't just for reward and motivation, it also modulates pain ( physically and emotionally ). which is also why in the abstinence periods, when i wouldn't be able to eat at the dining table, when i engaged in the sexual release and came back to eat, i was able to eat and didn't feel sick, which is due to a complex effect on serotonin ( 5-HT released into lateral hypothalamus ) and then there is dopamine and other stuff, however, because i still felt weak and not as alive and joyful, and just feeling down still, i had to engage in it again right after momentarily and after that, i felt "ok" enough to keep going, which i believe would have to do with the dopamine being higher in some way, related to arousal, etc. i don't know if this is true or not, but i have researched a lot on sexual release / ejaculation effects, and although things are a bit unclear. i believe that some reason that explains why i feel better or more alive when i engage in the usual 2 times a day sexual release, could be due to increased postsynpatic dopamine receptor activation, maybe specifically in the lateral hypothalamus that gives a sense of well being, which is also why i'm keen on trying modafinil, because although it's not meant for treating depression, could be helpful in certain ways since it works in the same regions i mentioned, however, the serotonin aspect would be unchanged so it probably wouldn't help, and may even make things worse, depending on when i am taking it, etc, but the best way of finding out of course is trying to see how it works to see if you do benefit from it, when you could take it as being most appropriate.

This is perfectly normal. Sexual libido comes and goes with me and I sometimes feel like it is more of a chore to keep a relationship going and other times it's perfectly natural.

Maybe it's a case by case basis but I will happily flirt or tease but if one thing happens it can change the course of how I behave which leaves people confused and possibly hurt. I'm not sure exactly what trips this action but sometimes I feel really overwhelmed and I can't explain it so I'll run away or just go a bit catatonic if I feel cross questioned.

Other times, it's just not there. Maybe for months. It's gone as long as a year or more.

And this is not something to do with self confidence as I will happily be naked and have no issues around that as this has happened with people I have been intimate with before in a much more aggressive manner.

-- Sun Jul 05, 2020 11:36 am --

Additionally, I would like to add, that perhaps it's not my libido that dissipates but more of my will to share intimacy with another.

It does also seem to switch between overdrive and under drive but as I said, even in overdrive something can trigger it to stop. Sometimes even half way through.

I'm not sure there is a "common" here. StPD is a small group of people with a wide variety of personality differences. Particularly when it comes to sex. Some literature claims they can be nymphos while some claim they are more asexual. Two years is quite a long time to not have sex with a co-habiting couple in general though but it sounds unsurprising if he was never a very sexually motivated person and is now at an age where testosterone begins to decline.

Personally I don't have sex, never really have, I'm 38 years old and female, it's always frightened me and I've not really been able to face up to the reality or properly understand how it works in reality. Having said that it's on my mind all the damn time, I have an active fantasy life, which started off at quite an early age. I started masturbating at quite an early age. I don't know how much of that is to do with me being schizotypal or how much it was a self comforting thing and a trauma response. I think it was more that.

When it got time to experience the real thing there were just too many problems, firstly that I didn't attach to people really much at all and didn't put myself in the kind of situations where it could happen. Also I couldn't square up how the real experience of sex was supposed to be integrated into my life when I kind of already experienced sex in my own way and that was meeting my need and the other thing just sounded painful and weird and awkward and scary.

I also have a lot of body issues and eating disorder issues so there was that too.

I did try it once, but I had to be extremely drunk and it still didn't go well, and I found myself pretending to be a totally different type of person in that situation because I was much too scared to "show up" as me, and I don't think I even considered it would work if I was myself in that situation, it's still weird to think about now.

I've always felt like there was something a bit wrong with me for all this, because I do think about it a lot, and I think have a real need for it, not just sex but intimacy as well, but the actual physicality of that, bodies on bodies etc makes me recoil and feel repulsed. So I guess I HAVE to meet my own needs. Having said that though, I beat myself up a lot for not being normal and not being able to learn about this like a normal person (and yeah I know what is a normal person but still . . .) but if somebody else put it to me that I was inferior to them because of this it would make me incredibly angry and probably I would argue with them about it.

So it's a complex one. I don't know if this all is "typical" of STPD because sex is such an individual thing isn't it? The way I am about it is sort of unique to me. I don't know.