You've raised some important issues, dear friend. Thank you for sharing personally and truthfully of your own experience. This is the only way in which we can hope to learn about ourselves and others who share our unique path. I know that speaking truthfully about orgasm and degree of erotic feeling is a more than slightly sensitive issue with most of us. From what I've heard, there is reason to doubt whether any of us can experience genuine orgasm. The process of sending back questionnaires to the surgeon at only six months post-op may skew the results quite a bit. Also when privacy is guaranteed, we express what we would not otherwise tell others. At the third New Women's Conference, we had that chance for safe sharing. Thirteen of us participated in an impromptu survey, preserving anonymity by using colored marbles to indicate whether each experienced orgasms: yes, no, or unsure. If memory serves correctly, results were 12/13 "no".

I realized before I went through surgery, as the doctor said, that SRS might result in loss of sensation, despite the contrary feedback which he received from many of his patients. Certainly I was OK with it at the time. In weighing my feelings over the years, I find I'm lucky to be rid of the liability of the cycle of desire and orgasm. I agree with those philosophers and mystics of antiquity who praised the eunuch's state of "brahmacharya". In my life, love is really love, without complication of biochemical bells and whistles.

For me nowadays, "sex" equals "cuddling" for the most part and it's hard even to remember exactly what the feelings "in former days" were like. I believe it would suffice to equate eroticism with lots of unfulfilled longings consuming entirely too much of my small energies. For physical orgasm was a momentary flash in the pan of "transcendental annihilation", crashing quickly back to a cold state. I found it analogous to a pattern of addiction in many ways: a momentary "high" and then a period of paying for it.

It's hard for me to speak about drives generally, as mine seemed consistently weaker than average in most areas of life. Oh well, half of anything is "below average". I laugh, for statistics confer no value! The point is that I'd not take any action now toward further alteration. Contentment is a fine place to stop.

We can learn much in sharing experience and thereby have something to offer to those just embarking on this path.