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Okay, I'm taking bets.
(1) Coping mechanism for inability to get laid that backfired hilariously
(2) Serious Madonna-Whore Complex where he cannot feel attraction and respect simultaneously, so cut out the former
(3) Closet case
A fourth choice: It's his version of "It's not you, it's me." because he doesn't have the balls to pull the plug himself but has to explain his lack of romantic and sexual interest.
Regardless, DTMFA.
As Dan has said in some of his college-campus appearances, the only thing that keeps you from killing your partner sometimes is remembering that you'll want to fuck them in the future. Someone with no sexual attraction for his partner is lacking an important motivation for powering through the inevitable rough spots.
Well, those of us that are a certain age remember how it turned out. For the rest of you: not well. Dan's right, DTMFA, he's crazy as a pet coon.
You're drunk Dan. Go home.
Terrible advice (as is the norm for drunk advice).
Everyone saying she should dump him... um, she said sex is good and there really aren't any problems at all, other than her dislike of what he said.
If anything, she should just ignore it. If it's not broke, don't fix it.
What is this madness. Is this boy trying to be feminist friendly and he just got it all wrong.
Tell him he's being a dick LW, that finding himself sexually attracted to people is Aok, and telling you how he lusts after you is imperative.
I'm a feminist and permission is granted.
Oh the other hand....
It's a drunk question.
Exactly.
@17, can't stop thinking about trans men, huh? They "bother" you, do they?
I think if he was using it as an excuse for his lack of attraction to her specifically she wouldn't praise his not ogling other women. Incidentally, LW, your appreciation of him not ogling other women might be indirectly reinforcing his ummmm condition(ing). It seems that you'd like him to be attracted to you and only you. Sometimes. Perhaps when you feel like it but not at other times.
The interesting part is in the "good sex life" bit. Does he seem attracted to her when they're having sex? Does he initiate? Or is it just a duty/relationship cost he performs for her? In the latter case he might be tad asexual.
(4) DinKenai's It's not you, it's me.
(5) Says it, but it's not true. He felt guilty but wasn't successful.
(6) Ironically pointing out the problems with some definitions of feminism.
(7) Said it in conversation as a badly articulated thought that was going through his mind and never meant it to be taken so seriously.
That said, I love Dan's spin-off into "don't stick your dick in crazy" even if it doesn't apply to this letter as well as some others.
The contradiction in the letter: They do have a healthy sex life, but NFS doesn't feel that Boyfriend is attracted to her. Is that because of what he said or because of something else?
This guy interests me because it's bringing back memories. I've referred before to a guy I dated 25 years ago who was horrible in bed. I did eventually dump him but not until after feeling horrible guilty because I was having so much trouble convincing myself that I was allowed to dump someone for being horrible in bed. He too seemed to have this idea that there was something wrong with being attracted to me. So he kissed and cuddled and respected me, and every time I told him that I wanted sex, he'd talk about that and not do it. Bleah.
I dated someone who had a similar, bizarre attitude toward objectification. He only watched porn with "close-ups" and didn't fantasise about people he knew because he felt that would be degrading to them. (Whereas I only fantasise about people I know, or the occasional celebrity whose body of work makes them a familiar personality, because I fancy people, not body parts.) Unlike your ex, this guy was extremely attentive and an excellent lover. His strange view on the appropriateness of sexualising someone didn't apply when that someone was sexually interested in him.
The toon is indeed looney. You can do better, letter writer.
"Oh, I respect women, so I don't lust for their boobies. Look at how much I respect women, guys." I always thought the point was to respect women IN SPITE OF lusting for their boobies, to view them not as pairs of tits but as complex, thinking, and frequently interesting people who just happen to have pairs of tits attached. (And in keeping with Dan's disclaimers, my apologies to women who have undergone mastectomies, or who just happen to be superflat.)
The LW's boyfriend makes your average internet whiteknight look like a perceptive and well-adjusted heterosexual male.
And hey, "he has conditioned himself to not feel sexual attraction for women". Wouldn't that be ex-straight therapy? SUDDENLY THIS IS A GAY ISSUE TOO.
"He has conditioned himself to not feel sexual attraction for women." HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT??
And, while Charles's writing benefits greatly from sobriety, I do believe Dan writes better while under-some-influence.
"sometimes I want to feel that he is sexually attracted to me. I think attraction is important in relationships; is it enough that it's not sexual? We do have a healthy sex life, but this has made me considerably less confident in myself."
Instead of dealing with his feelings honestly, he treats ALL women, including his partner as unworthy of his interest/respect.
"Jesus fuck, I'd SO much rather be with this guy than with some neanderthal who thinks it's appropriate to touch up women on trains, make inappropriate remarks to women on the street, send "hey baby wana suk my dik" messages on dating sites, or fail to take "no" for an answer."
But lizard person/liar and someone who assaults women thankfully aren't the only two possibilities, and this isn't right action.
@32: It sounds like a lie someone tells another in order to pose as a "good guy". At best I would worry about his sincerity. At worst, he might not really see her as his equal (this have to "protect" her from his lustful thoughts!), or be able to empathize with persons outside of himself.
If this is bad enough that it's messing with her self-esteem on a regular basis, she might have a strange metric for "good sex life" and should move on to someone who actually respects her instead of feeding her lines.
Well, start off from a position of never having been sexually attracted to women since childhood...
It also helps to have money. Women are generally attracted to men with money. Like me!
I buy the best girlfriends, cuz they lika me money! you need dough? Ive gotcha covered, baby. I'll shower you with expensive gifts.
Incomprehensible.
Being attracted to and turned on by other people of any description is not degrading them. Your behavior after realizing that you're turned on by them may be degrading to them - but that's a separate issue. If you treat other people with respect, a whole world of options sometimes opens up - options which close down quickly when you don't treat them with respect.
In some situations, with some people, sexual objectification is lots of fun for everyone involved. As long as mutual consent is clearly present every step of the way, it's all good clean fun, even if it gets a bit messy.
He sounds late teens, early twenties and confused slash telling persons what he thinks they want to hear.
As Taylor says so well, Shake It Off.
LW, you got to break it to this kid that he read the text backwards. Respecting a woman and finding her desirable can coexist, must coexist for some fun to happen.
Seeing your partner as a sex object isn't a bad thing, it's even essential if you want to have good sex. The problem is when seeing someone as a sex object makes your forget the more important fact that they're also a person.
A savvy woman can fix this issue right away!
#mayihaveabonerinyourpresence?
#patriarchyiseverywhere
Venom @31: If this were the case, I'd expect "I've conditioned myself to not feel sexual attraction to women" to have been his opening line, not something that came out in conversation a year into a healthy relationship.
Phoebe @52: Right on. Definitely not DTMFA level of misguided.
I don't think the guy has to be a closet-case, or anything sinister. Just a person with a lot of hangups, which is kind of what Dan is saying with 'crazy'. People with enough hang-ups kind of end up 'conditioning' themselves to be able to do ANYTHING, let alone sex.
He may tell himself this one is about respect, but in my experience of my similar guy, it's also about control: self-control. Ogling, looking lustfully leads to boners. Boners are embarrassing. Boners are vulnerable. Better to just try to monk your way along and make your girlfriend do all the initiating until she feels ugly and unwanted and like biting you in a non-sexy way.
Well, yes. Male sexuality can be predatory.
As Dan Savage advises the parent of a gay son: “You should also regard your son, at least through his adolescence, as more of a daughter to you than a son. We tend to be more protective of our daughters—our straight daughters—than we are of our sons. Why? A sexist desire to keep our daughters “pure”? That's a part of it, sure, but there’s also this: Men are pigs, and people on the receiving end of male sexual desire/attention are in more danger than people on the receiving end of female sexual desire/attention. (In general—individual results may vary.) Testosterone is the crystal meth of hormones, a badass drug, and men are more likely to be abusive and violent. The prevalence of HIV among gay men makes the stakes higher for your son.”
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Savag…
I wouldn't pay much heed to the "conditioned myself not to feel attracted" part. I'd read it as "taught myself to suppress/control such feelings". The reasons can range from misguided notions of respect to, as Allison Cummins said earlier, vulnerability created by attraction.
I partially agree, but the latter combined with the former makes his weird proclamation all the weirder.
Why blame the feminists.
Yes, pregnancy is damaging to women. Sometimes it even kills us.
As a woman, the sexual attentions of men are much more likely to lead to the damages of pregnancy than are the sexual attentions of women.
I was just giving orgasm@63 a little dose of my reality. Lucky I've got no stretch marks, or he would have heard about those as well.
#whostoblame
it's good to see we've all come to some understanding of whos feelings are allowed to be validated based on genderism
he didn't form those feelings in a vacuum, i'm willing to bet he didn't wake up one day and decide all on his own that his male biology was and issue that needed to be suppressed for the 'well being' of the fairer sex.
Then, "ah... Dude's drunk."
And then, "Whoa there, tiger!"
They have a great sex life! She said so. I'm pretty sure her insecurity led her to misparaphrase her boyfriend's statement of his position on sexual objectification of women.
Sounds like he's probably a good guy -- if anything, maybe a bit naive, probably hyper-vigilant of his behavior and thoughts regarding his attraction to women, and meant his statement to be reassuring to his girlfriend.
On the other hand, maybe Dan knows this and, making a secret of his recognition that the girlfriend is massively insecure, advised her to DTMFA in order to spare the boyfriend.
Either way, Dan's definitely plastered.
I've been in a heterosexual relationship with boyfriend for almost a year. In conversation, he has told me that he has conditioned himself to not feel sexual attraction for women as he feels that it is degrading to them. While I appreciate that he doesn't ogle other women, sometimes I want to feel that he is sexually attracted to me. I think attraction is important in relationships; is it enough that it's not sexual? We do have a healthy sex life, but this has made me considerably less confident in myself.
I don't see any part of this letter that indicates "he treats her with detached disinterest." What's made her feel bad is his statement -- not borne out by the evidence of their "healthy sex life" -- that he has conditioned himself to not feel attraction for women. A statement he made "in conversation", which indicates to me that it was offhand in nature. Presumably, everything was fine for a year up until he made this statement, and now LW is second-guessing her desirability.
Phoebe @66: And female sexuality can be predatory, and male sexuality can be emotionally abusive.
Donny @79: How is saying that heterosexual sex can be damaging to women through the medium of pregnancy "blaming the man"? It's blaming evolution, or god, whichever you believe in. Is stating that mosquitoes cause painful bites "blaming" the mosquito?
Phoebe@84 I also find it cloying and PC when couples say "we're" pregnant, but the other thing I find annoying is women who treat pregnancy as some sort of proprietary experience that doesn't involve or affect the father in any way. Many (I would venture to say most) fathers are just as emotionally invested in that baby, affected by the mood swings, etc that mom endures, plan for and anticipate the baby's arrival, work hard preparing for and afterward caring for and supporting the baby for the rest of their life. Maybe we aren't pregnant, but we are having a baby.
If it was only other women, she would be content with her life, and wouldn't be so paranoid about the guy. Somethings setting off her sensors about this guy that she can't quite explain beyond this "offhand" statement and how she explains wanting to feel attractive and of interest to him is much more important than her statement that things are otherwise "normal". It would be far more likely that she's underplaying other things about him and their relationship than she's been reduced to paranoia about this one "offhand" phrase.
This is also one of these stories that would be helpful to have an update to suss out whose inference is more correct ;)
have they really hashed out this comment, and he's sticking to his guns, or was it a one-off and she's dwelling on it? what else has he said surrounding this comment?
also what constitutes healthy sex life for LW? because i cant imagine having something i would describe as a healthy sex life without perceiving that my partner is deeply attracted to me.
To me, this is the key phrase:
"In conversation, he has told me that he has conditioned himself to not feel sexual attraction for women as he feels that it is degrading to them."
WHAT KIND OF CONVERSATION WAS THAT???
Was it like this: "Hey baby, I've noticed that when we are walking down the street together you don't seem to check out attractive women the way other guy friends of mine, even other boyfriends have. It seems like I notice attractive women more than you do. What's up with that?"
If THAT was the conversation, then really there's no problem. He's also probably lying.
Or was it like this: "Hey baby, sometimes I feel like you don't really find me attractive. Do you?"
In any case, if it was THAT kind of conversation then I think DTMFA is the right answer. He will constantly make you feel insecure. Maybe if the guy is really young, maybe never had a girlfriend before, possibly has not yet learned the correct answer to: "Do I look fat in this dress?" you could clue him on to how this makes you feel and give him another chance. Basically though, sex partners DO have a need to be told by their partners that their partners (still) find them attractive. Without that verbal reassurance even good sex is not going to be enough in the long run.
Imagine if you heard every day you were a potential rapist? Sexually damaging to half of the global population?
Wouldn't you want to not not be that way?
Love, a crazy woman.
Anyway, this put a bit of a zap on my head as Dan would say and for years I had a really crummy, very passive sex life. During that time I espoused what I thought was correct feminist approach to dating that might have included bullshit like this guys line about sexual attraction. Fortunately I later learned to fucking relax and that many women actually really liked to fuck and liked it rough/nasty as any dude. That it was more truly feminist to ravish the crap out of a partner who wants you to than to tip-toe Antioch rules style around her like she's a delicate victorian flower who cannot stand exposure to your actual desires.
So, no need to stay with this guy, but you should definitely call him on his bullshit before you go, if only to put into his head that what he is doing is not pro-lady, but anti-lady. His next partner may thank you.