Can't get aroused no matter what I try

[Alermackle]

I'm twenty-one and didn't start masturbating until just a month or two ago. I tried once when I was fourteen and was so deeply unimpressed (couldn't feel any sexual pleasure) that masturbation simply has not interested me since then. I was not a horny teenager at all and even now, I rarely get horny. I read a lot fanfiction porn and even then I don't get physically aroused--it's more like a mental arousal where I'm like, "Wow, that's hot!!" but it does not translate to physical arousal. In the exceedingly rare cases where I manage to become physically aroused, I lose it almost immediately when I move to my bed (or, inconveniently, I am not in my house when it happens). I think I lose the concentration needed to maintain it in the process of moving to my bed. In my recent attempts where I've managed to obtain even a semblance of arousal, simply the action of moving my hand into my pants is enough to completely lose it.

I understand that arousal is not something you can force and that it also depends on stress levels and other things like that. I don't believe I am stressed, I'm quite easygoing and it actually takes a lot to truly stress me out. I don't have depression or anxiety or any other mental health issues, I don't take medication of any kind. Neither video porn nor written porn turn me on. Fantasies do not make me feel aroused, especially fantasies where I am the subject. Those actually turn me off, if anything. I have tried taking my time to get to know and feel my body, and gosh darn I sure know it now, but it doesn't do anything for me. After spending 15-30mins trying to become aroused and failing, I'll go straight to rubbing my clit, and I feel the sensation of the rubbing but no actual sexual pleasure (so it's not an issue of numbness). Fingering myself feels extremely clinical, like I'm at the doctor's office or something, but I know that the vagina is not really a good source of pleasure anyways so I didn't really expect much to begin with.

I want to masturbate and feel sexual pleasure. I don't even expect to orgasm, I know that takes time and practice. Unfortunately, the base requirement to feeling sexual pleasure is to be aroused and it seems that I cannot even complete that step. I am beginning to wonder if I am simply not meant to feel sexual pleasure. I'm very okay with my aro-ace sexuality, but before I start accepting that I also cannot feel sexual pleasure, I want to see if there's any way to fix my problem.

Thanks for the advice.

[char]

Hi, Alermackle. Welcome to the boards

I'm sorry to hear that masturbating has been challenging for you. It must feel crummy to recognize that your body isn't really aligned with your mind when it comes to arousal. You might have heard about arousal non-concordance or arousal discordance, a term coined by researcher Emily Nagoski which describes this exact phenomenon. While in many cases this happens in a less pleasant setting like sexual assault, arousal discordance can also happen in a positive setting when no one but yourself is involved. You can read more about arousal discordance here: The Great Arousal Mismatch: When Bodies and Brains Don't Line Up. Do you think this is something you can relate to?

It piques my interest when you mentioned that moving to your bed to masturbate and trying to reach the inside of your pants tend to make your arousal disappear. Would you say that there are emotional factors at play here, such as you might feel pressured to have to move to your bed, or that you may feel some sort of disconnect or discomfort? Also, how do you feel about your bedroom in general? In some cases, there are folks who don't feel too comfortable masturbating in their bed because their bed faces the windows and it gets too bright. It could also be that they work/study from their bedroom (in a separate desk) and find it difficult to become aroused because their mind is still in working mode.

[Alermackle]

Thanks for the reply Char!!

I hope I’m not misunderstanding what ‘disconnect’ and ‘discomfort’ mean here. I started therapy recently and my therapist tells me that my mind and body seem to be disconnected. I didn’t know this about myself and now that you bring up the issue of ‘disconnect,’ I think that perhaps this mind-and-body disconnection permeates more of my life than I originally thought. I’m not going to completely bank on it as the absolute cause but I think it is definitely a part of it. I am getting a little frustrated about the implications of this though, because if this mind-body disconnection does end up being a major factor for my inability to get aroused, it could mean that this is something I have to fix before I can even begin to think about masturbating again. Right?

As for discomfort, I don’t really feel too much emotional/mental discomfort around masturbation. I grew up religious but I did not have much puritanism pushed on me. The teachings of my religion do not focus on things like sex and sexuality (unlike other religions like Christianity, etc...), and I didn’t receive The Talk from my parents. My parents had me opt-out of sex-ed classes until they couldn’t when I was in the ninth grade. I don’t think I really internalized any shame about sex and things like that? But there was also a noticeable absence of sex-positivity or normalizing sex. It wasn’t talked about at all and I also didn’t ask questions because it just wasn’t something I was interested in or curious about while going through puberty. So although I don’t have any shame about masturbating, I’m also not entirely comfortable either. I don’t talk about sex and I get kind of uncomfortable when my friends started talking about sex. Logically though, I understand people have sex, so I am capable of putting aside my initial disgust and rationally thinking it through.

But this discomfort is only about sex and I recognize that I likely fall on the sex-repulsed end spectrum of asexuality. I think I feel fairly normal about masturbation though? Because it’s a one-person activity and so I don’t have the intense disgust for it like I have with sex. All that to say, perhaps I do have some kind of emotional/mental discomfort with sex. I don’t seem to be able to pinpoint where the discomfort originated from though. Sorry if it this a lot of unhelpful information. But I can’t imagine some mild emotional discomfort is enough to completely stop me from being able to become physically aroused, is it?

As for my room, I feel pretty neutral about it. I don't hate it or love it, it's just a place where I sleep, I guess. It also feels like it is the only place where I can try masturbating since I live with my family. But my dad is often away as he travels for work and my sister spends most of her time in her own room, so I'm not too worried about getting caught. I only attempt it at night (as you said, the light from the window during daytime distracts me), but just having my sister in the house still puts me on alert mode. There's no bedroom = work association in my mind either because I find my bedroom to be an unproductive environment. I guess my bedroom is the only place where I am comfortable enough to do it, so there's not really any pressure on myself to move to my bedroom. It's just that it is the only place I can do it.

My original line of thought for why movement makes me lose arousal is because I lose concentration, and I need to concentrate very intensely in order to maintain what little arousal I manage to create (I imagine this intense concentration to maintain arousal is quite common for everyone?). Any movement, even the smallest one like simply opening my legs, seems to interrupt that concentration. This is just my current working theory but even then, I'm very unsure about how legit it is. It seems like I'm trying to brute-force arousal so it's very easy to lose it because it's not "true" arousal. I don't know if that made any sense.

Thanks so much ^^

[Tara]

Hi, Alermackle:

These are great observations! Great reflection on the why/causes you believe to be driving your lack of arousal. I agree that a mixture of potential body disconnection, religious influences, and any associations with your bedroom can combine to make it difficult to get aroused. Arousal is a lot of times depedent on your mind's communication with your body and if that connection isn't there it can make it more challenging. Have you explored ways of grounding and becoming more connected to your body? Gentle exercise like stretching or yoga may help.

Do you also use visualization or imagery at all? Sometimes that can be a powerful effect on the mind and trigger body responses like arousal. Have you had experience with that? Also, do you try to switch up your physical routines at all to experiment?

[Alermackle]

Hey Tara!!

Thank you so much for the suggestion!! I haven't tried grounding exercises, and I haven't tried doing any exercise or yoga/stretching since getting ostomy surgery last year, so although I am slightly hesitant about if it'll work with the bag, I'm going to try it anyways because at this point I am willing to try anything. As for physical routines, I dance with a community group twice a month and that's as far as I'm comfortable going with the ostomy because I'm not sure what'll happen if I break into full workout sweat. It's been a year since the surgery and I'm still terrified of my bag falling off mid-workout, but it's probably time to start testing its limits anyways. I hope I understood what you meant by 'physical routines' correctly.

When you say visualization or imagery, do you mean things like fantasizing? With fantasizing, I've tried it but have not had much success. I encounter that same issue where it gets me really mentally aroused and I really like the visualizations that I'm making in my head, but it does not translate to physical arousal. The few times when I've managed to get an arousal response, it goes back to that same issue where I can't maintain the arousal because it requires so much concentration and the concentration is so easily broken. At first I thought it was an issue of not knowing what I liked/turned me on, but it's been the same few fantasies that have managed to get me that tiny bit of arousal (that I then cannot maintain). I think this probably circles back to the issue of mind-body disconnection/arousal discordance. Mentally, I am excited but my body just doesn't agree.

[KierC]

Hey Alermackle

I’m so glad to hear that Tara’s suggestions were helpful! I completely agree with the idea of connecting more to pleasureful sensations in your body. Dancing with a community group sounds like great exercise to me! I don’t think you need to push yourself to move more if you don’t feel comfortable or aren’t sure if you should (though, it might be worth checking with a doctor to see if there are other exercises you can do, if you’d like!). But, it might even be helpful to take some time and journal on sensations you feel that you might enjoy. Do you enjoy feeling the breeze on your skin when you go for a walk? Do you enjoy certain scents, certain tastes, certain sensations on your body? Taking the time to recognize what feels good to you can go a long way here. How does giving that a try sound to you?

I am not 100% sure if Tara means fantasizing or using media content to aid in fantasizing, but I can have her respond back next time she’s in! In the meantime, I was thinking these two articles might be helpful and relevant to your questions:

1. Take A Self-Love Roadtrip: Let Curiosity Guide Your Masturbation — The advice in this article might be interesting to you as an alternative approach to masturbation. If it’s hard to become aroused, sometimes starting just by noticing what different touches feel like, without judgment, can help guide you to even more pleasureful feelings.
2. I Feel Good: Pleasure and Fulfillment — This article has some great alternatives to exercise for feeling pleasure in your body! <3

[Alermackle]

Hi KierC!! Sorry it took so long for me to reply!!

I think journalling about that would be really good. One sensation that really sticks out to me is the winter cold, but specifically when it isn't windy. Winter is my favourite season and I know it will probably disappear within my lifetime so I like to take off my gloves and let my hands get cold, it feels nice and it makes me feel grateful for the season. I also thoroughly enjoy putting my room down to 15 degrees Celsius and getting warm under three giant blankets!! It's really fun though I'm not sure that counts as a sensation, LOL. I'm not too crazy about scents because I get headaches very easily and as for taste, I love coffee. I have two very specific coffee orders and I am always so happy when I get to drink them. I think I'm straying a bit from the original prompt, but either way I'm going to try journalling about this. I think it would really help me to connect with my physical body, just knowing what feels good in general.

I read the first article and honestly, it really helps. I recognize now that even though in the moment it didn't feel like I was trying to rush towards a specific goal with masturbation, I am probably more impatient than I realized. After going through puberty basically being uninterested in my own body, suddenly expecting so much from it without knowing much seems to have backfired on me. I'm realizing that I actually don't know that much about my physical self, LOL The way these questions are getting me to reflect on myself and my experiences is actually so helpful. I really appreciate the help I'm getting here!!

[KierC]

No worries at all, you’re welcome to reply whenever you want to!

Oh, I am SO glad to hear that the first article resonated with you, and that you had this realization that you’d like to learn more about your body. You’re so right that it can take time to get to know your body, especially when you have new expectations and desires. Honestly, getting to know your body can be a lifelong process too as we’re always changing and experiencing new sensations. So it’s a great idea to start the habit of checking in with how your body feels. It’s like learning a new skill!

But I’m really happy to hear that you’re discovering sensations that feel pleasurable to you. I was just out this morning in the winter cold with my gloves off, it’s a really wonderful sensation. Feels very alive, doesn’t it? I definitely encourage you to keep journaling and thinking about this. This is a great start to getting connected with your body more!

If you continue on this journey and would like more prompts for journaling about sexual desire and arousal, the book Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski might be really helpful too. There’s a lot of great information there about the mind-body connection and how it affects desire and arousal, and there’s an accompanying workbook that leads you through exercises and prompts to reflect on your own personal desire and arousal experiences. <3