The Pleasure-Seeking Loveline ♡

Camille answers your questions, from AI girlfriends to semen allergies and how to reawaken your desire

Answering your questions from the Chelsea Hotel

Welcome to the Pleasure-Seeking Loveline, my new Q&A-style advice column. I’m so excited to talk to you guys directly, and am beyond grateful to the many people who submitted queries about all things love, sex, and desire. This installment features questions about reawakening desire, AI relationships, and what to do if you’re allergic to your boyfriend’s semen.

In addition to the written advice column, I’ve filmed two video podcasts where I address your questions with special guests—so if you don’t see an answer to your question here today, that doesn’t mean it’s not coming! I’ll need new questions to answer soon, so please submit your queries anonymously. Going forward, I’ll plan to answer them every two weeks. ♡

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How do I awaken my own desire?

Do you have any words on rousing desire again? I left a long relationship with sex so bad I thought there was something wrong with me. I can laugh about it now, but the past year I haven't felt anything sexually. Maybe that’s too heavy for an answer, but I think my situation is silly & annoyingly impossible to deal with. I’d like to know how to find romance in things after everything.

-Kyle, 18, f (?)

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Hey Kyle,

If I had you here with me, I’d be curious if you felt pressured to have sex with your former partner—whether based on their romantic advances or your own internalized desire to please them. The pressure could even be as simple as what’s driving you to ask this question: the suspicion that you should be feeling differently than you do and that there might be something wrong with you as a result.

I could be projecting here, but since you said you were having bad sex—and not no sex—it sounds like you were prioritizing someone else’s experience over your own. This can make it really hard to get in touch with your own desires. I’m saying “you,” but I really mean me because this is something I’ve struggled with in the past. At one point, I was even in a relationship with a man so bad in bed I was convinced I was asexual. Me! Asexual! I know!

Desire works in mysterious ways—but if you want to experience more of it, I’d start with accepting its absence. Even with no partner in the picture, it sounds like you’re experiencing an internal pressure to prove that you’re normal, if only to yourself. But if you can accept when you aren’t feeling desire, you’ll be better equipped to notice when you do.

You’re young, and life is long. While you may not want sex right now, I’m certain you want a lot of other things! Pursue those for now, and give yourself permission to feel however you do about sex without judgment. You know that saying, “A watched pot never boils”? You can see where I’m heading with this.

I’d also recommend exploring other forms of physical pleasure to reconnect with your body on your own terms. Take a bubble bath, get a massage if you can, masturbate, or—if you’re feeling really daring—make a pledge not to masturbate for a specific window of time. This sounds silly, but reverse psychology is a powerful thing, and sometimes, the harder you try to feel something, the more elusive that experience becomes. This is especially true of desire, which is fickle in the best of times—but there’s a reason we want what we can’t have!

After months or maybe years of bad sex, it makes sense that you wouldn’t be chomping at the bit. Our bodies hold strong physical associations, and your last sexual experiences sound really fraught. It’s scary to think that your lack of desire might be permanent, but I promise you it’s not—because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about desire, it’s that it surfaces when we least expect it.

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Help! I’m allergic to my boyfriend’s semen!

I recently I discovered I have a semen allergy. It’s characterized by an intense swelling and burning sensation localized only from my vagina to my inner labia (I do not experience this sensation on orally or on skin). Apparently it’s a rare condition affecting only 8% of women and my doctor said she’ll likely never see another case in her career. Her treatment plan for me involves exposure therapy: taking a Benadryl a half-hour before sex and having my boyfriend ejaculate inside me as many times as possible (she prescribed multiple times a week).

When I asked how this would affect conception later down the line, she said that of course I could still conceive, it would just be painful or irritating, which is why she prescribed the exposure therapy for hopeful long-term treatment. I’m really angry and irritated with my own body for fighting with me all the time, while I’m happy my boyfriend is helping me, I also resent him for how pleasurable this trial will be for him. How do I deal with my vagina being a testing ground that can offer my boyfriend intense sexual gratification (as prescribed) multiple times a week while I deal with the discomfort brought on by it?

Sincerely,
Itchy & Annoyed