He was talking about women who truly love somebody in a sexual way. true love is a very rare phenomenon, so it follows that in a sample of raped women, there may be none that meet this criterion, and, therefore, such a sample is very noisy. It is not really helpful to bring in noisy data. I personally went through a mild case of... well, almost an acquaintance rape and successfully fought two attempts of rape with physical force, one acquaintance and one stranger, and I cannot imagine having orgasms.

Physical fighting, kicking, etc., combined with threats to call the police which were empty in the days before cell phones (and even nowadays, a rapist can probably seize the cell phone) but probably contributed to my success - all of that was a very focused effort and out of character for me, as both times I surprised myself with the physical force I had - I do not do martial arts, strength train, or whatever, and am a medium frame average height woman. How one can concentrate so much to kick, bite, threaten, etc. (and in the latter case do all of it quietly not to wake up a toddler upstairs), and have orgasms is completely beyond me because in my experience orgasms require focus, so if all focus is on fighting - you get the point. In the mild case of almost an acquaintance rape I just did whatever got the guy out and expressed my being enraged next time I saw him. I cannot possibly think of orgasming in such a situation, but I am a straightforward person without twists - meaning, it is either good or bad, but not both. I have read that women have rape fantasies and cannot even reconcile myself with the term, because it is an oxymoron - by definition, rape is against one's will, and, equally by definition, a fantasy is something one likes entertaining in his or her mind, making a "rape fantasy" an oxymoron. The only explanation I can personally come up with is that people want to have something they want done to them without asking for it, and that is called a rape fantasy. ??? I do not know and it is the closest I can come up with while staying within the bounds of rational thinking. I can certainly believe that fantasies are irrational, in some people, and then the term "oxymoron" does not apply.

Going back to the topic - the question is whether there is a woman who

- is in love, long-term and not within a burst of a new feeling that may soon dissipate,

- for some reason or another (death of the loved one, or incapacity, or lack of availability - that can be due to a number of reasons, so I will leave it as stated, in broad terms) does not live with the man she loves

- has one or many, or, for the purposes of the discussion, a virtually unlimited supply of men who is/are or wants/want to be her sexual partners, and

- such man/men is/are altogether nice, helpful, appreciative, smart, accomplished, courteous, etc. - continue the list of the positive qualities

- the woman fully realizes that such a man/men is/are wonderful (see the list immediately above) and treats him/them very nicely, but is not in love with him/them

- cannot orgasm without thinking of the man she loves and cannot masturbate without fantasy either, so in the world of her orgasms the man she loves is ever present.

I have been, intermittently, in this position for 3.5 years, most recently for 1 year. I want to know if it is possible to at least go get masturbation without fantasy. I even saw a mention of a "masturbation meditation" on the Internet, and I chuckled, since though I do not meditate, I did duly note, soon after I learned the word "meditation", that "meditation" and "masturbation" rhyme, and I chuckled glad to see somebody actually made the word play! But I soon stopped reading, because they were talking about pleasuring yourself without fantasy - well, if I were able to do that, then that's what I would be doing (and not scouring the Internet looking for a solution).

Another question is whether talking about it with a current or future sexual partner will help. My current bf knows the whole story in terms of facts, etc., about most of my past and current relationships, as I know about his (this is an open relationship with an awesome man), but he does not know about the situation with the orgasms. When I started with him, I could, with difficulty, orgasm with him. Now I cannot. I tell him that Lithium dulls me sexually and that the pdoc plans to lower the dose, which is true, but a half truth. I am not really keen on telling him, not because I fear anything, but simply because it is something so private to me that I cherish the privacy of it.

Historical record shows that there must have been some women in my situation. My dad was raised, in part, by his aunt. His mother and father worked, while the mother's sister kept house. The aunt had a fiance who died in a war, and she never married anybody else. Looking at family albums, she was a woman of average attractiveness. I personally know an Israeli woman who was married young, but her husband, a soldier, died, and she has not remarried. She is a woman of slightly above average attractiveness. There were women depicted in history books who became nuns following the death of their husbands, and some were actually quite beautiful, so in all of those situations, the problem is not in that the woman cannot get a suitable man, but for some reasons cannot move on. So I am thinking that a small percentage of women are like this, so while I disagree with my first husband that it is a test of true sexual love for every woman in love, I know that it can, unfortunately, happen, and am wondering what can be done to solve this problem.

To make it completely clear - I do not even need to picture sexual acts with the man whom I happen to love. If I imagine that he is sitting on the bed, clothed, that is enough. But it has to be him and nobody else.

Yoda - I did not mean to put you on the spot or single you out with the alien fantasy. There was that long and highly illuminating thread about what people think when they are masturbating. The thread was fascinating - a real window into what is going on in people's minds. In that thread, I couldn't comprehend or relate to 99.9% of what people reported, and sex with aliens was just one example that, I thought, was illustrative. I did not mean to say that you are weird, or that other people fantasizing about aliens are weird. In fact, statistically speaking, I am weird since I am with less than 1% of posters, right?