Question that's been on my mind lately

[firecat]

Have there been periods of your life when you had no satisfying romantic/sexual relationships, or fewer than you wanted to have (if you're poly)?

How many such "dry" periods have you had in your life?

How long did each of them last?

Was anything in particular going on with you at the time that contributed to the circumstance, as far as you can tell? (Possibilities I can think of include being sick, being busy, moving to an uncongenial location, being socially inexperienced, experiencing a breakup, becoming more picky...etc.)

If this period ended, what circumstances contributed to its ending?

I'll say more about why I am asking this in a future entry.

Comments

"dry" spells

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

oh yeah. in fact my current state is the longest non-dry romantic spell i've had, > 8 years. the previously longest one was 7, but 4 years of that was long-distance close friendship of which i didn't think as romantic at the time. i always get into trouble when i think of such things in terms of longevity/type -- i have a couple of TOCOTOX r'ships that have lasted for 20+ and 13+ years with some long interruptions of little contact; how do i count those? :)

my dry spells have been mostly due to me not being interested in romantic relationships, combined with a lack of people around me who would inspire a renewal of such interest. i am a very solitary person, and not interested in close relationships with the vast majority of people i meet. it doesn't bother me when i don't have a romantic relationship, even though i really get a lot out of the good ones i have, especially right now.

my sexual dry spells have been much longer than my romantic ones, and that bothers me even less. i've never had a strong libido, the SSRI has removed almost all of what little there was to start with, and i actually like it this way -- acknowledging this, and refusing to think of it as "something wrong" after thinking about it a lot has made me feel more free about sex than i'd been about it before. my partners have no problem with this either -- i feel extraordinarily lucky about that aspect of it.

i've never wanted to have more relationships than i've had at the time, that's not how poly works for me -- i'm just poly because i happen to love more than one person at a time, not because i am somehow driven to have N relationships at a time.

uhm. well, ok, i wondered about relationships before i had my first one, but i can't say that i really wanted to have one when none was available -- it was more that i was wondering whether i was abnormal that i had none, whether i was unloveable. i did go through another phase of that after my first one broke really horribly, but by then i had the above-mentioned close friendship, and i worked out how i really felt about all that relationship stuff.

i am glad i did that. it prevented me from getting into some relationships that would have been bad for me. my first one should have been a lot shorter than it was; it was profoundly unsatisfying for part of its duration, but i was young, inexperienced, and had no good role models, so i stuck it out too long and even tried to salvage it after it self-destructed with rather impressive fireworks.