I’m an #asexual #trans #lesbian, which is a particularly cursed combo for reasons I won’t explore here. But suffice it to say I therefor have reason to explore the nuances of what kinds of touch I enjoy, and in doing so I’ve observed that, for me, I experience episodic desire for #SensualTouch that is disconnected from my episodic experience of being horny. I’ve taken to describing this as feeling #SkinThirst.
Some disambiguation: I distinguish being skin thirsty from being chronically touch starved in the same way that wanting to get some sunshine in my hair is different from a chronic vitamin D deficiency - one is an experience I have episodically that might last hours to days, and the other is a long-term lack of something important. Both can be true at the same time, but I mean different things by them.
By way of illuminating the difference from being horny, I’ve observed that when I’m horny, masturbating and having an orgasm can satiate that need. By contrast, feeling skin thirsty cannot be slaked without someone else touching me. It may fade in time on its own, but masturbating does absolutely nothing for it, because my needs for sensual touch are not addressed by sexual activity, except coincidentally. Additionally, I get horny and skin thirsty on TOTALLY different frequencies. I’m horny maybe once a month. I get skin thirsty at least weekly, and often more frequently than that.
And when I say I get skin thirsty, it means I CRAVE focused, intentional touch. Preferably in large quantity. I’ve described this as “making out in such a way as to get a hard R rating.” However, for me, a romantic component isn’t actually required, it is possible to get what I need platonically.
Here are some of my previous threads about this - there’s some fabulous discussion in there, and I was surprised to find how many people experience skin thirst as disconnected entirely from their experience of feeling horny OR that there was a connection, but not one that was entirely one-to-one.
This thread is where I spoke about my explorations of the term “skin thirsty” plus some feedback about it: https://chaosfem.tw/@Willow/113530303076465658
Here are many additional folks responding to me asking for input: https://chaosfem.tw/@Willow/113602672233337549
And this is a poll about it with more comments: https://chaosfem.tw/@Willow/113626166762795325
I continue to post about it with the hashtags #SensualTouch and #SkinThirst.