Dear Sasha: I'm a 22-year-old male who doesn't think about sex nearly as much as other guys my age. I have a girlfriend of two years who I love very much, but for some reason I really don't think about sex all that much. I underwent some therapy with a psychologist about a year ago because of an extremely sensitive situation that dealt with my mother's health. It seems that that situation kinda threw me into an anxiety frenzy for a while. The anxiety has since gone away, however I now find myself with a low sex drive. What can I do to alleviate this? I've had multiple discussions with my girlfriend (who's under the impression that I just don't want to have sex with her). But I know this is not the case because I really don't think about sex that much to begin with. » Chris

Dear Chris,
"I can't speak that much to asexuality following a traumatic event," says David Jay, who is the Web master at the Asexuality and Visibility Education Network (www.asexuality.org/info.htm), "though I could potentially see a decreased interest in intimacy, which might lead to a decreased interest in sexuality. I don't know much about trauma or anxiety, so I'll avoid talking about them and speak to the issue of Chris' non-sexuality in his relationship with his girlfriend."

David Jay's answer is so thoughtful that I'm not even going to pretend to insert my own little quips to break it up a bit. It applies to so many relationship dilemmas as well, and does point out one thing I've always felt: what a poorly designed structure the ego is.

"In my experience," says Jay by e-mail, "it's not that relevant whether someone is full-on asexual or just having some sexual downtime, issues arise when they find themselves in sexual relationships without much interest in sex. Usually if one partner feels that they're "not being sexual enough" then sex is being taken too seriously (and what fun is serious sex?). If you get trapped into thinking that sex is the way to be passionate or intimate then inevitably it'll make one partner feel unfulfilled and the other feel pressured. Sex is not the way to do anything, it's one way to do a whole slew of things. If couples, or triples, or more, explore different methods of being intimate, passionate or what have you, it will take some of the pressure off of sex. Not having sex won't feel so unfulfilling and having it won't be so stressful. The key is to ask why sex is so important and then to try and turn it down a notch or two."

Dear Sasha: I'm gathering, since a recent experience with my wife, where I was "caught" watching porn on late-night TV, that porn just isn't the same for women as it is for men. If any visual medium interests women, what is it? We already know women are the main target group of romance novels; they eat up the literary, thrive on the spoken word (as in pillow talk), flourish with a mere compliment, and without a doubt, have more than their share of full-fledged erotic fantasy. With all my half century of experience, all my powers of observation from a sensitive soul and true interest in the subject of what makes mankind's opposite gender tick, if there was porn for woman, what would it look like? » Call Me What You Will

Dear Call,
Holy cow, what flowery yet iron-fisted ideas! Let's talk about the kind of porn that came out about 10 years ago that sought to address (primarily) heterosexual women's sexual needs.

One purveyor of this genre is Candida Royalle, and she did indeed change the landscape and focus of modern pornography, if only by suggesting that women want to watch it. To me, this is her greatest legacy. In Royalle's pornography, there's an emphasis on real orgasm, on real-ish women and on storyline. While many of us find this kind of pornography too slow-paced and solicitous, other women rejoiced. And other women couldn't have given a shit because they were too busy watching gay porn. Do you get my point? Your wife might not like porn, and perhaps she has some very good reasons for this, but there really isn't one kind of visual stimulant that all women find satisfying.

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