Interlude: Graysexual?

Interludes are short segments between regular episodes with no editing but WITH leather creaking. It's a chance to hear a little more about what's going on in my life. And I've been thinking about the asexual umbrella.

Transcript

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Welcome to full cow, a podcast about leather kink and BDSM. My name is edge My pronouns are he him, and I'm your host. And this is another interlude, the episode between episodes offered raw and unedited, but with leather creaking. And, you know, the interludes are always a little bit of a balancing act for me, on the one hand, they're so easy to do, because I put on some gear and I sit down and I start recording. And I talk about what's going on in my life. On the other hand, I sit down and start recording and talk about what's going on in my life. So there's always this balancing act between wanting to be open and honest and sharing my experience in the belief that others can benefit from that. But at the same time, wondering when I'm oversharing. And how much of my life I should be keeping private. This incident in particular, I am struggling with that. But I am taking a leap of faith in the belief that I'm about to talk about something that maybe some people need to learn about. I believe I might be gray sexual. Now I need to start by defining that term because what I have discovered, as I've done this inner exploration is that no one's heard of it, including my therapist who is very hip and sex aware. So in the spectrum of sexuality on the one hand, on one end, you've got allo sexuality where just you know, regular people, they get horny, they have sex, they enjoy sex. Way at the other end, you have people who consider themselves asexual who may have an aversion to sex or just may not have any interest. And all the stuff in between is the gray sexual area. And these are people who might experience some sexual attraction, sexism, very important. Maybe they're sexually attracted, but not strong enough to want to act on it. And it's a large umbrella term under the larger umbrella of asexuality. And lately, I've been wondering whether or not this is a term and identity I need to move into. All of that is complicated by the fact that, I mean, lately, I've had very low libido, just figured out with my doctor that it was low testosterone, my testosterone was in the double digits to give you a sense of how low so I was prescribed testosterone replacement therapy, and I'm hoping that my libido issues as well, as I've just been down a little lately. I'm hoping all of that is about to get corrected. In fact, I'm recording this on Saturday, April 8. And probably I am hoping by the time you are hearing this, that the testosterone issue will be resolved. That doesn't resolve the larger issue because the truth is that even before I was feeling down and had zero sex drive and thought something was wrong, and should I increase my antidepressants even before then, historically, I've had a pretty math relationship with sex. And when I'm using sex in this episode, because I've discovered through multiple partners that sex is defined differently by different people. Sex for me is genital sex, so sucking fucking anything that centers upon a genital orgasm for one or both partners. And the truth is, if I look back at my history, sex has never been that important to me at all. I've never been easily wired in any way. Like my butt is a fortress, many people have tried to get in. Some have succeeded, sort of, I've never found it pleasurable, normally driven to fuck people. I've done it for people I care about or I'm really interested in or if there's a boy who really wants it. And if you can get me hard, I will. I will drive it in there as best I can. But I've never like looked at a man and thought, oh, wow, yeah, I really want to fuck him. I'm just not wired. Easily speaking. I'm not even super wired. orally speaking. Yeah, it feels great to have my cock sucked. But it's not something I need. It's not something I fantasize about. I don't look at a guy and imagine shoving my cock down his throat. That's not how I operate. And occasionally, I might want to suck a cock. But, you know, in the way that I might want to have like a banana just like a craving like, oh, I want to have a little banana. That just struck me. So even before these issues of low libido, I have had a tenuous relationship to sex as I'm defining it. And that's never been something I've brought into focus. It's never something I've centered for consideration. And that's something I'm starting to do now. You know, historically, I would just in my different relationships, they've not had a lot of sex in them, and I often felt broken, I felt like I'm very different from many others because of my relationship with sex. And that's been a struggle. And it's made relationships hard. It's made playing hard. It's made a lot of my life hard, because I always felt like I was just different than others. And I didn't understand entirely why. But I could understand that people wanted sex in a way that I just didn't want sex. I just didn't care about it that much. In the past few months, well, I would say in the past year, as I've been exploring new relationships, I've been describing it as you know, sex isn't important to me, I get I'm really interested in using kink as a pathway to pleasure and intimacy. And that remains very true. So I have certainly an awareness of this, but I wasn't calling it gray sexuality. And that's what shifting is. And I'm really starting to think about whether or not I should be terming, this gray sexuality? Why does it matter? Well, you know, all the roles we have top bottom, dominant, submissive puppy, slave mistress, pony, whatever your role is, ideally, it's enabling that when you connect and step into that role, and when you built it into your identity, it allows you to express yourself more authentically and in ways that are understood by others. So part of me is desiring to connect with the self. So I can kind of rid myself if this feeling that I broken, and that I can find a community of others like me, and then I won't feel so weird. If I'm in some sort of online discussion forum filled with gray sexuals, they'll get me in a way that I'm not sure a lot of the people around me get me and that's really appealing. Now, the downside of labels and identities is that as much as they enable, they can also constrict. And I want to be cautious about stepping into something that might place limitations about how I think about myself and how I think about relations. Because it's all very complicated. First of all, it's complicated, because we move in and out various aspects of Shaq sexuality, as we age and through our lives. So some people come to leather late in life, I've met guys who discovered their butthole in their mid 50s. And now it's just the the source of pleasure. I've met people who had high sex drives, and they have low sex drives and all these things. So, so I'm not sure if they've always been great sexual, nor do I want to assume that I will always be a great sexual, if I even am, that's a question still to be answered for me. But I do want to find a way of talking about myself, to make sense to myself and to connect with others. I'm cautious, you know, I'm cautious for a number of reasons. First of all, I'm tired of coming out, I've come out as all sorts of things from my life, the last thing I need to do is be coming out as a gray sexual, telling my friends in gray sexual describing myself as gray sexual online, explaining what that is, again, and again, and again, coming out is an energetically exhaustive process, because it requires you to say who you are, and explain who you are, when the hope that it's accepted, and that you don't have to justify who you are. And I'm done. I'm so done of coming out in my life. So I'm resistant to this notion of using this term. Because it just means a whole nother process that I don't know that I want to engage in. So while I find it very appealing in that I can find community, I can eventually get people to understand how I am wired as I encounter them in the world. That's all appealing, but it's also it's exhausting. Think about just exhausting to think about. So I may just go keep saying yeah, I'm not that much intersex, which is so very true. Like, I'm just not intersex period. This is complicated by the libido issues going on. Certainly, I've not always had what I would call a variable libido. But I would say for the last 1015, maybe 20 years even. I've had a sex drive of libido that runs either very high or very low. And that is independent of my testosterone levels. I happen to know for a fact. So I could have relatively normal or slightly low testosterone and suddenly have a period where I'm really horny, and vice versa. And in my 20s I was so horny all the time. Right? I was in my 20s horny all the time. But even if I go back to that period of my life, it's not like I ever really wanted sex because of that horniness. I love to make out. I love leather. I love cooking. I love to play my tits are exceptionally wired. And I like usually jacking off in a scene. And I like the other guy to jack off and for me, it's easy peasy. We're all done no muss, no fuss, no lube everywhere that's always fit. So even when my libido is historically very high, it's been a different relationship with sex. And it's even more complicated now with my variable libido and, and then there's like physical the BDO libido, like I want to have sex and then I think there's a kind of cuddle libido like, I want to be cuddled and then there's a kink libido. I discuss in a recent interview about how I'm feeling disconnected to my leather. First of all, obviously, that's related to my low testosterone. So fingers crossed on that. But it's also that there's a different kind of horniness related to leather that has its own variable cycles. In fact, what I will tell many boys is that the satisfaction you will come you will receive from being in submission or being tied up or being beaten. You would not get that if you orgasm that 1000 times. So if you're horny to get tied up, you can check off all you want into your dick is raw or your vaginas raw or whatever, genitals you have a raw, you can check off all you want, and yet still have that horniness for bondage. So, all of my libido is a fairly variable, my cuddle libido, my sex libido, and my leather libido. But I think because the libido is coming back, I'm hopeful that my leather libido is coming up, coming back. And then this just leaves this sort of sex libido. You know, so here's a little bit of what it's like for me, and why I'm working through these issues around race sexuality. So I'm at the gym, I see a hot guy. So I do feel some sexual attraction. But it's just sort of like, oh, that's a hot guy. And because I have such a fraught history with sex, I think, well, that's a hot guy, but he's gonna want me to have sex with him. And I don't really like to have sex. So I'm not even going to move into the arousal that I'm feeling. Or that's a hot guy, but he's gonna want me to fuck him. And that's not really something I'm into. So why should I even open up that door towards that arousal? That's what it's like, for me in my gray sexuality. It's not that I don't feel any sexual attraction. It's that I don't feel the impulse to act on it, it doesn't feel important enough to act on. Now. I will say there are things about my level of libido I've learned, which may really unlock things in my sexual libido. Whatever I know my love their libido is that a lot of times, it's the right man, and I'm suddenly horny to use him, there's a certain look in a boy's eyes that makes me want to hurt him. There's a certain way of relating to me and calling the call forth my dominance, and I have to use them. So so it's not just like I'm not leather horny, it's the person who will make me leather. Horny is not around. It is conceivably true. The same with sex. It's not that I don't want to have sex, it's that the person I want to have sex with isn't around. And who that person is, I do not know. All of this is, you know, it's not weighing on me. It's not like I stay up at night wondering whether or not I'm Grace, sexual or teasing these things through. But it's definitely more centered in my analytical overthinking monkey mind, in part, because ideally, I would like to have another relationship. And I'm super aware, I am acutely, painfully aware of the fact that people who fall in love with you kind of expect to have sex with you. And that's completely reasonable expectation. But it's I'm not sure it's an expectation I can meet Well, I'm not sure to expectation I can meet in a way that would make most allo sexual, normally sexual people, I'm not sure it's an expectation I can meet in a way that would make them happy. So part of why I'm teasing through all this besides the low libido, besides the really sharpening my idea of kink versus sex and all that is that if I'm going to look for a partner, I really have to lay some things bare at the beginning and say this, this is who I am. This is how I'm wired. I show love through cuddling. I'm more than happy to take you on many kink journeys if we connect in that way. And, and I don't, I'm fine if you go out and have tons of sex. I'm not a super sexual person. I'm not going to be able to offer you a lot of sex. And that's scary. You know, it's scary because it's hard enough trying to find someone. It's really hard trying to find someone and to add yet another tick box another hurdle Another thing about me that I'm afraid will be rejected, it's just like, Are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me. So I'm gonna wrap this up. That's where I'm at, I'm not in a hurry to reach decision around my gray sexuality, my general plan is, first of all, to just pay attention to my body, to my desires, and to my thoughts around this. But beyond that, you know, I still need another week or two before, I know my testosterone levels have returned. And then I'll see what happens with my libido then, and then I just need that time for quiet reflection, I have blocked off the next two weekends with zero social plans, they'll be my first time without social plans of any sort, in months, and as an introvert, it's something I desperately need. And that's also time for me to be reflective and to sit with myself and to think about what I think and to think about what I believe and to think about what I feel, so that I can really reach something true and authentic for me at this point in my life journey. Because that's what I need to bring to the table whenever I meet someone, or if there's romantic interest, I have to bring all the authenticity I have available. And that's what I'm working at. And, hey, a couple of takeaways, first of all, now you know what great sexual is. Second, I really want to underlie this notion that there are many different libidos that interact in complicated ways. So, you know, if you're horny, but you're not filling into ledger, that's great if you're into other but I'm feeling horny, that's all great. And this notion that, that our our entry points and exit points through various modes of sexuality can change across time in our life's journey. So whether you're hyper sexual right now, or asexual, or gray, sexual, or demisexual, or Allah, sexual, and all the same things, I might go and throw out a bunch of terms about kink, maybe your bottom, maybe yourself, maybe your dominant, whatever, whatever, whatever, these things can shift over time. And that's a little disorienting, and a little annoying, but it's also beautiful, it's absolutely beautiful that we can grow and change. And I don't want to say evolve, because that suggests a linear progression, but that we can continue to grow as human beings. And I'm really all for that. I'm so grateful for your attention to so I thank you all for listening. And I hope wherever you are in your life journey related to leather or sex or anything else, I hope they're blessings that you can see. And if not, I really invite you to sit in gratitude and find them because I'm pretty sure they're there. Thank you