Moderators, if I'm posting this in the wrong place, please feel free to move it to the correct one.

Am I the only guy who gets an erection from engaging in (or even thinking about engaging in), kink play (in my case, gunge or spanking) with another guy but (2) isn't interested in engaging in actual sex acts (except possibly jacking off) with the other guy?

If anyone else has - or has had - similar experiences, have you ever tried to explain that boundary to other guy(s) you played with? And, if so, how did you explain it to them?

Thanks for any experiences or insights you care to share!

I'm similar, and I say it in some of my profiles, as I'd like to discourage people who are more interested in sex. I'll say something like "I'm more interested in kinky and messy play than vanilla sex." I find that I'm not as excited by traditional sexual acts, but want to enjoy BDSM and messy play instead.

Thanks, Burrowbear! Anyone else have any experiences or insights to share?

You may be on the Ace Spectrum.

I consider myself to be, also.

I'd rather not be an active participant in sexual activity. But that doesn't mean I don't get aroused. I'm just hyper-specific in my turnons.

I've heard that in kink culture, Aces are over-represented, because it's the kink that turns them on, not the sex. I have no data to back that up.

While I can't tell you what you are, might I recommend looking up aegosexuality, and seeing if that describes you?

Yeah, some of this is familiar - it's not that I'm totally uninterested in penetrative sex, but I really have to know someone well and feel good around them to start getting in the mood. General tactile touchy stuff, hands etc comes a bit easier. But there are times it's made me a little hesitant to arrange sessions with friends as I worry there'll be a mismatch of expectations.

Yeah, exactly the same for me. Love WAM - it turns me on. I find men attractive - they turn me on.

But I don't actually want to have sex.

It's been a very slow realisation for me that I'm probably some kind of ace. But now I've figured out what I want (or rather DON'T want) I feel like I don't have to beat myself up about not wanting to participate in sex.

It could be that you guys are 'sides' ...

For me, it's taken a very long time to reach that decision ... and being a 'side' isn't a hugely known term - with the term having only come out a year ago or so.

Being a 'side' basically means into lots of different things and some forms of sex - touching, licking, kissing, oral, etc, just no 'anal' element.

So I would suggest there's a difference - albeit a small one - between being a side and being an ace.

I've been struggling with finding a term for it until recently.

This was me in my 20s.

I used to view my sexuality as a combination of three things - WAM, gay and asexual. WAM came first: as a young child, I used to find it frightening and upsetting when people were slimed on TV, then something flipped and from the age of 6-7 I was fascinated and aroused by seeing men being gunged or pied in the face. Around the age of 14/15 I realised I was gay and started having feelings for guys. I started coming out to people at university when I was 20/21. But something wasn't right and I didn't understand it or have a name for it. Although I had strong attraction towards men, I never had even the slightest interest in either anal or oral sex, and had zero interest in male genitalia. I never dreamed about sex (still don't) and never watched porn because it didn't arouse me (ditto). I thought this was perfectly normal and that sex was something that happened in relationships, that people slept with each other if they cared about them and as an expression of love for each other. I didn't realise that other people had this thing called a sex drive which meant that they seek out sex, they're aroused by genitalia, they're aroused by porn, they think about sex, dream about sex etc. When I was 25 I heard about asexuality and the asexual community for the first time and suddenly a wave of understanding dawned on me - it hit me like a ton of bricks. I actually felt very down about it, certainly at first, because having this new understanding of my feelings (or lack thereof) made me realise that I had a fundamental difference to other gay men that would make it very hard for me to connect with and form relationships with them. I found penises unarousing, offputting and hard to look at, and the idea of having one in my mouth or ass (or vice versa) was horrifying and gross. I hadn't even enjoyed kissing guys the 3-4 times I'd tried it, it just felt wet and strange. I was a virgin until the age of 27 and perfectly happy. However, for my own personal development and future happiness I knew that I couldn't stay like that.

I also found out at the age of 25 that I needed surgery on my dick to correct pinhole phimosis, which I underwent 18 months later. (Because I never looked at porn, it took me till the age of 25 to properly realise that my dick didn't look like other men's or work the same way.) So until 2010, I'd never seen the head of my own dick because the foreskin was almost completely sealed.

It feels heavy talking about this because I've moved a long way beyond it now. Once I got my dick fixed I was more confident about connecting with guys, and I had two great relationships in my late 20s (one with a wammer, one with a 'normal' gay guy) that opened me up sexually. They were both "sides" too, but the lack of penetrative sex was never a problem and we had a lot of fun together. I discovered I enjoyed being physical and sexual with another man, and that I really liked kissing and was good at it. I also realised I preferred WAM sessions when they had a sexual component, even if just first base. One gay guy I used to have pie/gunge sessions with a decade ago wouldn't kiss or cuddle and I found it frustrating.

Being a "side" still, I mainly looked to date gay men who were either wammers or asexual. Makes sense to try and connect with people you have a lot in common with, right? So I started getting involved in the asexual community and went to a few meetups and conferences. My main takeaway from that time is that every single asexual gay man I have spoken to was a kinkster, and just as piboiva says, that's why they're asexual - "it's the kink that turns them on, not the sex". It would be fine if they were open and at peace with it, but in my experience a lot of men use the asexuality label as a way to run away from their kink and hide from it/stay in denial, instead of dealing with it and ultimately embracing it. A lot of guys in the asexual community are like this and closeted - they identify as asexual publicly because they're ashamed of their fetish and/or because it's easier to explain to people. When talking with other asexual men, I was always quite open about being into WAM, which is why they felt able to "confess" their own kink to me, often with a lot of shame. So that's why I'm not active in that community anymore - that and the fact that I wanted to continue to develop my sexuality so as to be more able to connect with other gay men; to integrate, not put myself in a silo. I'm sure the etiology of female asexuality is completely separate, but the men are almost all paraphiliacs. I left because it started feeling like a giant closet for ashamed kinksters, and only a couple of asexual guys I met were actually at peace with their fetish and had successfully integrated it into their identity/self-concept.

Flash forward to the 2020s and I'm very happy in my own skin now. I have generally had better experiences dating 'regular' gay men than either wammers or greysexuals/asexuals. I'm sufficiently comfortable and experienced to be able to show other guys the ropes, whether first-time wammers or a newly-out older guy I dated last year and had the best sex of my life with. And I enjoy performing oral sex now, something I never thought would happen. What made a lot of the difference was getting the Gardasil 9 HPV vaccine which protects against various cancers that can be transmitted via oral sex. Once I was armed with that, I felt much less anxious about it.

So my advice overall is that labels and communities are important but shouldn't be a straitjacket. I'm really glad I'm not in the same place I was 15 years ago, when I didn't even enjoy kissing and was strongly averse to dicks. I made a conscious decision to keep developing my sexuality and broadening my sexual repertoire in order to be better able to connect with other gay men, and it has paid off.

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughtful responses. It's felt really good over the past day or two to look at the ace spectrum and realize that there are shades on that spectrum that really reflect the way I'm wired.

I know labels aren't supposed to be important, but there's something incredibly liberating in knowing there are others with the same basic wiring, and that there's a simpler way of explaining that wiring, when relevant, in a simpler, more succinct way.

This thread has resonated so much!