For almost fifteen years, and especially since the birth of our youngest child, who is now eleven, my wife and I have struggled with the compatibility of our sex drives.
As a younger man I enjoyed the surges of desire that I felt when I looked at my wife, but when I learned that this feeling was rarely reciprocated, I was quite understandably heart broken, after all, shouldn't my wife find me sexually desirable.
This subject has been percolating for years between the two of us, and unbelievably it wasn't until yesterday that we were actually able to come to an intellectual dialectic.
I love sex, my wife on the other hand would be perfectly happy if we never had sex ever again.
Her reasoning, for the first time, was supported by her discovery that there are actually people in the world who do not desire sex, at all. She referred to them as Asexuals.
I had heard this term before, and I will freely admit that I thought it was a cop out, a way to avoid something that I adored, sex.
However, after a lengthy and emotional conversation, my wife and I were able to reach a point of understanding, and it was in large part due to her discovery of a website called The Asexual Visibility And Education Network.
The forums, articles and chat room all offered support like I have never seen. The growing community gathering under this banner comes from all walks of life, and it bears explanation that sexuality as well as sexual desire, all fall within a very broad spectrum.
Consider this, we now see gender being constantly redefined to support how people wish to express themselves; so it must stand that sexual desire falls into this same way of looking at it.
Society at large would have us believe that the only way for people to feel about sex, is that it is normal and that we should all be at it like rabbits.
How many times in your Facebook feed alone, are you presented with an article on how it is good for you to be having sex daily?
How many articles in magazines revolve around the best ways to get the most out of your sex life?
Imagine now that you feel absolutely no desire what so ever. What kind of pressure must that person feel, what kind of pressure must my beautiful wife have felt for over a decade of our marriage, to perform so as to meet these high expectations placed upon her.
Since my wife came to me and told me that she believed she was asexual, I have spent time talking to other people about it on the chat rooms available at the site mentioned above, and they agree unilaterally, that this topic needs to be put into the public domain.
How about we include this discussion with sex education at school. We could help kids at a crucial stage in their development, completely avoid years of crushing expectations. No more name calling or being branded frigid, just acceptance that we all run at different speeds, and some of us do not run at all.