They’re interested in s*x parties, but not in me.

Monogamish advice #38

This is a tough one. What do you do when your partner seems interested in sex with other people but not with you?

Welcome to the 38th advice column. Have a question? You can ask it here. If it’s a good one, you may be answered in the next issue <3

<3,

Sarah

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My partner and I moved to a new country where we don't know so many people and there hasn’t been opportunities to find new partners.

Since then, my partner stopped playing with me.

I tried to not take it personally, but I have a hard time dealing with the feeling of rejection in general. I raised this issue in weekly check ins we have and they told me that they don't have any libido when they don't have multiple partners. I am hurt that I am not desired by my partner when they don't have other partners to have sex with.

Yesterday, we had another check in about it, and they suggested that we buy sexy lingerie for me. But when I tried to involve them with buying said lingerie today, they didn't seem interested. But a few hours later, they came to announce that they have been searching for a sex party in London and they are going to one in a couple days when we will be there. I thanked them for letting me know but I was hurt how little excited they were to buy me sexy lingerie but took the time to look for going to a sex party after the discussion we just had the day before. It felt inconsiderate.

We had a fight they are not talking to me.

I don't know what to do.

Sincerely,

Unsatisfied

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Dear Unsatisfied,

First let me just empathize with you for a moment. This is hard. It f*cking sucks to not feel desired by someone we desire, love, and who may have desired us in the past. Someone who’s clearly capable of desire but for some reason is just not feeling it with us.

I know what it’s like to want sex or touch that’s not be reciprocated. I’m not sure what genders you identify as (if any) but it’s a special type of sting especially when you’re female and your partner is male and you’ve been taught that men are always in the mood and always want sex and that you should be this illusive object of desire, always chased, always wanted.

Either way, this hurts. Plain and simple and there’s no getting around that.

Before I get into any direct advice though, I want to first give your partner the benefit of the doubt here. Since we don’t have their voice.

They said they’re not interested in sex with you “unless there are multiple partners” around.

That’s perhaps unusual but maybe that’s just the goddamn truth as they see it right now.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to explain and impossible to control our sex drives and how they work.

If they’re not interested in sex right now, I hope there is space for you to be understanding of that, whatever the reason.

And when it comes to the lingerie / sex party conflict I can also see how that makes sense.

They had suggested you get some lingerie to spice things up, and then you tried to bring them into the process of getting some and they weren’t so interested. I’m thinking that maybe when they saw you were actually doing the work to fix the situation, they got spooked that their suggestion would not actually increase their libido in the end.

So instead they went off and decided to research what they think does work: going to a sex party, meeting some fresh energy.

To you it seemed (understandably) they were ignoring you to focus on others but maybe this was they’re way of solving the problem for you both.

But whether their take is understandable or not is not the real issue.