#shoutout to worms & kienan for the help answering this

[ciaran-archive]

Hi, this is anon who had question about your lovely fic hold me without hurting me and consensual non-consent; this may be a bit of an uncomfortable/silly question i'm springing on you and im not entirely sure i worded it carefully enough, so please feel free to disregard it if it becomes so;

i don't know myself very well i think, but for the part [Did he, though? Did he want it? It didn’t matter, he decided. It wasn’t about whether he wanted it but whether Odasaku cared enough to give it to him.], I was wondering if it's normal to feel this way about sex? and i guess with that, is it also okay to go through with it anyways, or can that have repercussions?

thanks for your time, and for sharing your exceptional writing!! all of your fics make me feel like im being put back together? they're indescribable.

[nsfw text]

sorry for the late reply, i wanted to ask friends with actual sexual experience for their thoughts. i personally don’t have any sexual experience.

firstly, i think it’s fine to feel that way, and whether it has repercussions depends on how careful your partner is and how well you’re able to understand and communicate the boundaries you do have. i can’t speak to what’s normal, but i can say that doesn’t necessarily matter. you have your emotions about sex, and you can’t make yourself into something different very easily, so it’s better and healthier to work with what you have. certainly there’s nothing inherently wrong or broken about that approach.

secondly, no interaction is ever going to be 100% safe and guaranteed to not harm you. this is especially true with emotional or physical vulnerability on the table, and i think it’s good to ask yourself what the consequences might be for doing sex in this way, and decide for yourself whether you’re okay with those potentials?

like, if you don’t have feelings about sex itself but you do like the idea of someone having it with you - that’s not the end of the answer. because you might have sex and realize you didn’t like some of what you did, or that you don’t want to have it in that way again, or you might feel distressed or upset about your reaction or lack thereof, or your partner might feel that way. you can’t predict everything, but you can try to think about this and talk about it with your partner and make sure that they’re not going to do something shitty like refuse to stop, or get mad at you for not reacting the way they wanted you to. basically, making sure that you’re both on approximately the same page regarding each other’s needs and expectations, as much as that’s ever possible.

and within yourself, it helps to think less about sexual interest and more about how are you’re feeling about your personal autonomy in this moment. you can choose sex for any number of complicated reasons, as long as you’re choosing it. because if you don’t have much of a choice and are being dragged into it, you might feel resentful and angry and hurt later. you don’t have to worry so much about whether you’re aroused or into what you’re doing if you don’t want to, but you could think about why you want this and what you’re getting out of it, and how you want it and where your boundaries (and how you’re going to communicate with your partner if those change in the moment). 

lastly, there is a possibility that even if you don’t have too many feelings about sex itself and chose to have sex for other reasons, and didn’t expect to feel bad afterwards, you might feel bad. and that’s okay, you’re allowed to feel bad. it doesn’t mean you aren’t equipped to make that choice, or that you fucked up, or even necessarily that your partner fucked up (though it’s possible that one of you made a mistake, because people do that). feeling bad is information about what happened, and not a mistake in and of itself.

i would suggest looking into kink/bdsm articles online, especially those written by disabled, asexual, and autistic people - people with nonstandard relationships to consent, physical sensation, and sex. you may not necessarily relate to it, but at the least it helps to see the way other people contextualize and explain their experiences. 

i hope this was at all helpful. please stay safe and let me know if you have any further questions, i make no promises except that i’ll do my best <3 and i’m so glad my writing resonated with you. it means a lot to hear that!