(NSFW) What would you do, if your partner or yourself could not have intimate relations?

I would jerk off a lot. Sincerely.

I am old fashioned. I don’t care if my partner or I have a lot of intimate relations. What I care about is when my partner has an orgasm she is thinking about me. If a girl called me to her bedside and said I used a vibrator for thirty days and every time I was thinking about you, I might have sex with another woman, but I would be thinking about her.

What would I do? I’d do myself.

Ask you partner what their preference would be regarding either you or the two of you together.

Bill Clinton aside, oral sex is still considered sex. And so is telephone sex if you’re separated geographically.

If its satisfying for the two of you, what difference does it make what it’s called or who calls it what. If you two are a couple it only matters what is mutually agreeable for the two of you.

Communication is so important.

I wasn’t very afraid he would stray, but I did feel a load of guilt and loss. Sure we do other things to satisfy each other, but honestly, for me, the other things are more exhausting and can be annoying, and when things are rather one sided it isn’t very enjoyable after a while it is a chore. Eventually, if it goes on long enough, it screws up your sex life even if the physical pronpblem goes away. Especially if some days are good and you can have sex and others are bad and your partner doesn’t know when he is going to be rejected. I would say if the problem lasts less than 6 months that really isn’t a big deal, but more than that it becomes rather significant. If you have a good relationship you just do with less sex in the relationship, but for me that has been pretty upsetting. Cuddling and other forms of sex just don’t really cut it for me.

If it’s a problem with a foreseeable end, we’d either satisfy each other in different ways, just satisfy ourselves, or both. If the problem were permanent, I think I’d be up for allowing sex outside of our marriage, but I’m not sure he’d feel the same way.

If he was unable to have sex, I’d be perfectly fine. I don’t have a high libido anyway, so I could easily make do with cuddling and kissing to maintain intimacy.

If it were me that was unable to have sex, and this was the case for about four months not too long ago, I’d feel guilty. I wouldn’t be afraid he’d stray, but I know he’d become frustrated because he has a high libido. I’d be giving a whole lot more blow jobs, that’s for sure.

Sex outside of the marriage would be out of the question. Either we’d make it work or we’d separate. I’d rather not have him at all than know he’s sleeping with other women. And obviously, I wouldn’t have the desire to sleep with another man.

We don’t have a whole lot of sex now, especially for our age group. Once a week is the average. There are a few reasons for this, all my problems, and I do feel guilty. It’s something we’re working on.

Full penetration hasn’t been part of my sex life for two decades, and yet my husband and I still celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary this year. There are many other ways to be intimate.

I’m not in a long term relationship, but regardless. A man has fingers and he has a tongue, right?

Sex is icing on a delicious cake, you can take care of yourself & be close. I’ve had plenty of empty sex, it gets boring

I was in this situation a bit less than a year ago. I had found a boyfriend, it was getting serious, and I had a recto-vaginal fistula. I had tubes in the area and a lot of pain.

I didn’t handle it the best. For fear of sounding like I was accusing him of only dating me for sex, I didn’t mention that it was off the table until the first time he brought it up. I realize that was a mistake, I should have gotten it out of the way early. He was surprised; he knew I had health problems but he did not know they were going to interfere with our sex life.

He wanted to know if there was any kind of time frame. I told him no. My doctor had no estimate for when it would be healed. Fistulas tend to take a long time. I told him not to keep his hopes up for that. I did say I was totally comfortable with foreplay and maybe we could try finding satisfaction that way. I also told him I understood if he wanted to leave.

He didn’t want to leave, but he wasn’t satisfied with that answer, really. He said we could try other stuff and see how that goes (we were both virgins).

We ended up trying oral sex for awhile and it was “okay.” It did the job but he really wasn’t satisfied. He started asking me about anal. He thought he had found the magical solution to all our problems. I was really uncomfortable with the idea of anal, mostly for health reasons. He had googled and found a site claiming that people with my condition can have anal sex, but I didn’t feel safe about it at all. The fact that I didn’t have a “solid” reason to turn it down bothered him. He got really naggy for awhile, which was unacceptable to me – I thought he should accept my answer for what it was. I guess he felt I wasn’t doing everything I could to find a solution to our problem. I asked him to come over with the intention of breaking up with him. I was angry and upset.

When I saw him, I didn’t want to break up with him anymore. He didn’t want to break up either, but he was frustrated. We didn’t want to end it but we didn’t know what to do. By this point I had had the tubes removed from my vagina and wasn’t having much pain anymore, but I still had the fistula and was terrified of doing anything to aggravate it. We made a game plan. I was to ask my doctor what the risks were with having sex on a fistula and make an informed decision from there.

My doctor told me to go for it, essentially. He even consulted a surgeon friend of his and they agreed that there was very little risk. I was still scared and our first “time” ended with me crying. I’m not fully convinced I did it for me or because I really wanted sex, but rather to save our relationship. And it did. I know that was probably wrong but that’s what happened.

I’m still with him. We have sex on a regular basis with no ill effects on my health. I am mostly past the mental block I had and am not scared of sex anymore. I’m still not terribly into sex. I think I just have a very low drive. His is much, much higher than mine, and we still have a bit of trouble figuring out how to handle that at times.

@Mariah Wow! I’m so glad it all worked out. We hear so much about selfish, boyish males these days it does my heart good to know I’m not alone in being nothing like that.

Browse Fluther for interesting questions to answer.

I’ve been here, you find other ways to satisfy without compromising the relationship. It’s hard but it worked.