What If All My Lesbian Bed Death Means I’m Not A Lesbian?

I’ve been out for 15 years. I feel really solid in my lesbian identity. But I can’t seem to keep the sex going in my lesbian relationships in the same way I could with men and after my most recent breakup I’ve started questioning everything. My third relationship ended after a period of bed death. (Not total death, but where it would be monthly or every few months.) I never had bed death with men. They always initiated, which is one thing, but also it’s easy and straightforward to get men off, we could do 15 minutes before bed but with women it’s more of an event so harder to make time for. With women even though my attraction and interest remains, my appetite to have a lot of actual sex always fades. I still watch straight porn, too. However, I don’t like men and do not want to be in a relationship with a man. I love lesbians and feel like queer people are my “people.” But like what if I’m not one after all? Has anyone else experienced this? My last girlfriend was pissed at me for days when I admitted I’d had sex daily with my college boyfriend, since we’d never had a daily sex phase. But that daily sex took 10 minutes sometimes!

Summer: No, having a different sexual dynamic with women as compared to men doesn’t make you a bad lesbian. It probably just makes you a lesbian, since you have a different form of attraction to women in the first place. The life experiences you described sound like a dead-on match for Spontaneous vs. Responsive desire. It comes under other names, but it’s a partial model for explaining sexuality that groups sex drives into mostly spontaneous and mostly responsive types. Spontaneous sex drives tend to initiate sex or form desire without existing input. Men tend to have more spontaneous sex drives (but it varies a lot). Responsive sex drives usually need to be ‘awoken’ from foreplay, continuous desire, or habits before coming forward. Think of someone who really needs personal comfort, foreplay, or build-up before feeling interest. Women often lean responsive in their sex drives (with huge variance).

This model isn’t meant to be a perfect explanation for all sex drives. That’s impossible. It’s also not fixed for anyone. My sex drive tends to be spontaneous toward women and receptive toward men. I pursue women and men tend to chase me and build me up. It also changes time or in the company of different people, as you may have seen.

Basically, what I’m saying is you should Google up ‘spontaneous vs. responsive desire/sex drives’ and see if the discourse matches your experiences. It sounds to me like there’s something there that might resonate with you. If it resonates, see what that field of reading gives you in terms of answers and paths forward. But no. You’re definitely not a bad lesbian because of it.

This feels like a silly thing to be in my feelings about, but something I’ve been unsure how to express or deal with is feeling like I am not the ‘preferred type’ of anyone, including the people I actually hook up with and/or date.

For some context, I am a bisexual trans guy who is an exclusive top (I mean this in the penetration way — I don’t mind power dynamics going either way) and has not had bottom surgery. I’ve been out and medically transitioning for a long time (I’m a pre-tipping point transgender), and I’m generally read as a cishet guy (/sometimes cisbi) unless I specifically disclose. I am sexually active, but I’ve noticed that I’ve only really got with either other trans guys who generally date cis men, or with women (cis or trans) who generally date women and I… sometimes feel some kind of way about this?

It’s not anything any particular partner has said or done, but I really struggle to shake the feeling that the people I sleep with are ‘putting up’ with some parts of my identity (whether that’s me being a man, or me being somebody who tops with a strap rather than a natal dick). When I think about it, I don’t think I’ve EVER seen anyone express the desire for a trans guy to top them outside of my actual relationships/hookups, so it feels difficult to conceptualise as something actively wanted rather than just me being there/nice as a person/honestly very easy.

I do feel a little guilty over this. I know my partners’ sexualities and preferences are not my business, and I know intellectually even if they like other kinds of people that doesn’t mean they don’t also genuinely like me. Materially it doesn’t matter but… there’s this big part of me that would really like to feel like *somebody’s* number one dream type.

Summer: Hey there. I think you’re having a bad encounter with the societal valuation of trans men. The one that infantilizes trans men or brushes them aside in dating and life domains. From what I’ve seen, trans men do not get a good reception because many gay men are intensely -phobic to trans men, and many heterosexual women are still more interested in cis men. Trans women are a far more visible in porn, socio-political discourse (for better and worse), and dating.

Conversely, the fact that you do form relationships and have hookups means that there are definitely people interested in trans men. Or more specifically, you. Even though that evidence is plain to see, I get why the dissonance between your dating life and societal silence about trans men creates discomfort. I don’t experience it the same way, but my version is are they into me because they’ve got a kink for trans women? My fear shapes out that way because society openly loathes/fetishizes trans women to the exclusion of our other facets.

What I’m getting to is that… society’s engagement (or lack thereof) in your attractiveness is not a statement about you. The commentary and subtext out in the broader world isn’t addressed to you. It’s addressed to whom it may concern and everyone catches it to varying degrees. You are attractive to those you’ve met. You may be the first trans man they’ve been with and that has enriched their lives and yours. The lack of recognition of your capabilities and coolness is a failure for society to carry, not you.

Nico: You’re right that pickings are still slim when it comes to trans representation in society and culture — including in media or conversations around attraction and desire, and often especially when it comes to trans masc people. I don’t know if this will help, but I do personally know at least two trans men who are dating a woman or fem who mostly dated cis dudes before dating them. I also know that we have at least one story about a trans man top dating a cis woman in our members-only erotica collection here, Slick. (Keep in mind, this is erotica and so is explicit!) I also don’t know if that will help, but it is evidence, published on this here website, that trans men are seen as desirable and lovable and attractive. There is also this reddit post by a user talking about the exact same fear and being reassured by countless commenters that there are plenty of people who truly find trans men attractive and want to date them (including yours truly). I do, however, think it’s difficult both to not want people to be fetishizing trans dudes and to want some people to specifically desire bisexual trans dudes above any other identity. It feels like, to me, if that were the case with a person you were dating, that it would actually call whether they were really attracted to you more into question than if they were either generally hetero or bisexual (without other strong preferences). As a bisexual, I think if you search inside and think about all the many (I’m presuming) people of various identities you’ve been attracted to, then you might be able to better internalize that you are also desirable and that it is very, very possible for someone to be highly attracted to you.

Sometimes, also, a person’s dating history is a matter of population numbers. A lot of bisexual women end up dating a lot of cis dudes because there are more het, bi, and pan cis dudes on the planet (roughly half the planet) than there are bisexual or queer women (about 6% of all women in the United States according to Gallup). According to the same study, about half a percent of women and half a percent of men identify as trans, making up the approximate 1% of people in the United States who identify as trans (according to the 2023 Gallup poll). I’m not trying to make excuses for anyone, but I am trying to reassure you with some population statistics that offer an alternative explanation for your partners’ dating histories.

Also, maybe your concerns and insecurities around attraction and identity are topics you can bring up with your partners. If you decide to ask them to talk about this with you, my advice is to try to be to receive in good faith what they tell you — because I imagine they are going to tell you just why they’re dating you, maybe that they think you’re wonderful, attractive, desirable, and someone they value and want to be with, or something along those lines. This is an extremely difficult moment to be seeking affirming cultural stories about trans people, but I hope that you will breathe deeply and trust your partners when they tell you they think you’re hot.

Motti: Hey! Bisexual trans guy here. I’m sorry you’re experiencing this. I’m sure a lingering feeling that your sexual/romantic partners are “putting up” with parts of your identity can’t be fun to carry around. I’m glad you mentioned that this doesn’t stem from any specific action or behavior from your partner(s), but that doesn’t make it any easier to navigate.

I didn’t come out as bi until after I medically transitioned and it was definitely a shake up from the kinds of dynamics I was used to as a lesbian. When hooking up with and dating within a specific identity, it was easier to assume what someone liked about me, or at least trust that they weren’t making any self sacrifices or bending their preferences to be with me.

Going from that to being a man and being bi definitely opened up a lot of questions for me— Do queer men think I’m hot? Do lesbians and queer women still think I’m hot? What about straight women? Will they think I’m hot at the bar but then be disappointed back at my place with what I’ve got going on? Same for gay men. But then I’m like… my sexuality is not fluid. I do not have genital preference. So why am I walking around assuming everyone else around me does?

I don’t think your partner(s) are biting the bullet to be with you. Nothing you’ve mentioned here indicates to me that they’re making some kind of sacrifice to sleep with you. I think there’s probably a bit of unhealthy comparison happening here— you see who your partners have been with outside of you, and they may not look like or identify the same as you, so you see that as being an exception to a rule. Which I can understand would feel icky. But I want to invite you to do your best to flip that perspective. Maybe you’re providing them with something none of their other partners can or do. And maybe that something is strap! I know plenty of people who receive both homegrown and strap dick and don’t have a preference for one over the other (including myself).