Lifelong sexual anhedonia: erections work, touch feels normal, but zero pleasure. Anyone else born with this?
Hi everyone,
I'm 20M and I've never experienced any sexual pleasure. Not as something I lost, it has always been like this. My very first ejaculation already felt like nothing. As far as I know I've never taken any medication that could have caused it.
What it looks like for me:
- Erections are easy and strong, from visuals, touch or just thoughts
- Genital touch feels completely normal (pressure, temperature, pain) but has zero erotic quality. It's like being touched on my arm
- No felt arousal, even with a full erection
- I feel the point of no return and the contractions, but the orgasm itself feels like nothing
- I do feel attraction to women
- Everything else I enjoy normally: food, music, sport etc (depression partly caused by this condition, not the other way around)
- Hormones checked: testosterone above average, prolactin normal
My working hypothesis (not a diagnosis):
The signals clearly reach my brain: I feel the touch, I notice the erection, I feel the ejaculation. What seems to be missing is the step where the brain attaches pleasure/reward to sexual input specifically.
There's a known condition called "specific musical anhedonia": people who hear music normally and enjoy everything else, but get no pleasure from music, linked to weaker connectivity between the auditory cortex and the reward system. I think mine could be the sexual version of that. It would also explain why my desire feels like a direction rather than a pull: if sex never felt rewarding, the brain never learned to want it.
Why it's like this, I don't know. Possibly something innate, possibly something I was exposed to before birth (still need to ask my mother).
Honestly: I don't expect to find a solution. The sexual medicine guidelines call this "primary anhedonic orgasm", but almost nothing is known about it and no medication has been shown to reliably help. I'm not posting for a cure. I mainly want to find people who actually recognise this, because most people either think it's in your head or that there's an easy fix.
So my questions:
- Does anyone else have this lifelong, rather than after medication or illness?
- Did any tests or doctors ever find anything?
- How do you deal with it, in relationships or in general?
To everyone here dealing with this: because it's so rare and so few people truly understand it, I see you as family. Even if it often feels that way, you're not alone in this.
Thanks for reading.