Scarleteen

Hey all.
i have a bit of a complicated past when it comes to sexuality and i've always struggled with huge amounts of shame concerning my sexuality. however for the first time in my life i'm with a partner who i trust and i feel loved and i've started truly feeling comfortable and confident in myself and my sexuality, and i've had a pretty high sex drive because of it, because, i mean, sexting with my partner rules. it makes me happy. we flirt constantly and we talk about sexual things a lot and it's nice, it's fun. but lately they have not had as high of a sex drive as me and whenever they are not horny when i am, i get extremely timid and my brain immediately reverts back to feeling ashamed, sometimes to the point where i get really emotional and cry. i don't know how to control these emotions. i know that it is not wrong for me to feel horny, i know that nothing is perfect and it's okay that we will feel different things at different times. this is okay. and of course i know i dont need their approval or their permission to touch myself, but it's just not as fun without them, and having their assurance helps with the shame a lot. and i just, feel awkward about telling them "i'm gonna go jerk off now" or whatever, it feels... wrong, i feel like somehow i'm disrespecting them by having a high libido. and whenever situations like this arise i clam up, and end up not being able to pleasure myself properly anyways, with the anxiety and the shame stuck in my mind, and i am left feeling weird after.
i don't even know if any advice can help me but i guess i mostly just need to get this off my chest. i will talk to them about it, too, but i need time to clear and organize my head about it first, because i DON'T want to come across as complaining about them not being horny enough. i don't wanna make them feel guilty or pressured. never. they have every right in the world to say no to me, at any time, for any reason. and i respect that. and it's especially hard for me because i have had bad experiences in the past where people made me feel pressured for not having a high enough libido for them so i always feel like i'm turning into a monster when things like this arise. i inherently have negative associations with one-sided horniness so i feel like a bad person whenever i am horny and my partner is not. i feel sick or evil and like somehow i will hurt them as i have been hurt in the past. i just don't want to make them uncomfortable. i love them. i want to find a way to balance my desires with theirs.
i am certain this will work out eventually, but for now i'm left sometimes feeling a little nervous and ashamed for my high libido and i have difficulty curbing those feelings. anyway thanks in advance for reading! i am new to this forum but seeing other people on here talk about problems that i've had has made me feel a lot more normal and human so maybe sharing can help someone else if not me, idk.
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Hey there, eep. Welcome to the boards. I'm glad you've found us. I think we can potentially be one place you can start to feel more comfortable when it comes to all of this, including whatever amount or frequency of sexual desire you have.

I'm really sorry to hear the way you've felt about it in the past, and I can certainly understand that you have. There's a lot of historical and still current cultural demonization against wanting sex, period, let alone wanting it at a level that anyone considers "high" or "a lot." As someone who's very well versed in the diversity of sexuality and desire, I'm personally never really comfortable using those terms because I find them pretty meaningless, and I also know that they can result in a lot of lousy feelings for people, especially those who find themselves on either pole of that spectrum. So, if you want to, I invite you to throw them out, and we can talk about this without them, but if you want to keep using that framework, that's fine by me, too. This is about helping you out and what works for you.

I don't think that anyone is disrespecting someone else by wanting to be sexual when they don't (so long, obviously, as you're not, as you aren't, forcing or coercing someone else to be sexual with you). I don't think it's any more disrespectful to end a phone conversation to go masturbate than it is to end it to go take a run, have breakfast, go poop or go to school. Can you recognize that your desire for sex and their desire for sex may overlap sometimes, and may certainly have something to do with each other when both of you desires sex *with* each other, but that on the whole, they're simply separate things? It sounds super clear that you know they shouldn't feel any shame or anything else yucky when they *don't* want to be sexual and you do: any chance you can apply that same thing to yourself on the flip side?