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"So you have to decide between a life without sex or a gruesome death? Tough call."
Phillip J. Fry, Futurama

Alice and Bob are in love. However, thanks to a curse, Curse Escape Clause, Applied Phlebotinum, Clingy Costume, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, or some other reason, they can't consummate their love. Often only the sex act between the cursed character and the one they love is forbidden—they could probably boink anyone else if they wanted—though it's not uncommon for the cursed character to be forbidden from having sex with anyone without dire consequences. Contrast No Sex Allowed, where nobody at all is allowed to get down and dirty.

Bob and Alice may or may not still try to see each other, sex be damned, but as a general rule, this leads to the end of the relationship. This is a guaranteed source of Unresolved Sexual Tension that can never end, not to mention Celibate Hero.

Some couples will try to break the curse, find a cure for the disease, or try to otherwise circumvent whatever is keeping them from consummating the relationship, but due to Rule of Drama, Finagle's Law, and Status Quo Is God, Failure Is the Only Option in many such cases. However, there are also many cases of the trope being ultimately subverted.

This happens a lot to Succubi and Incubi. See also Nature Adores a Virgin and Courtly Love. Often leads to But I Would Really Enjoy It.

Contrast with Vow of Celibacy — "Prohibited from Having Sex, Ever," and Asexual, where someone doesn't experience sexual attraction in the first place.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Alice 19th: Not sex, but close. Mayura, jealous over Alice and Kyo's relationship, curses Kyo so that if he ever hears a word of love from Alice he will die.
  • In Bizenghast, Edrear has an irremovable exoskeleton, which means he can't have sex. Word of God is that it is supposed to deter shipping between Dinah and Edrear (didn't work), but he does shed every three months.
    • M. Alice LeGrow is adorably naïve if she expected such a ploy to actually work.
  • Vaguely used in Black Bird (2006). Later on both Misao and Kyo are given permission because of a curse Kyo receives. For whatever reason, if they don't have sex, Kyo dies.
  • Implied to be Kusanagi's hangup in the Blue Seed OVA Time Skip, almost causing him and Momiji to break up because he becomes distant. It's never really resolved in the end either, just sort of alluded to that they will attempt to find a way to work around it.
  • In A Certain Magical Index, while Touma Kamijou is very Oblivious to Love, it is pointed out it would be very difficult for him and Hyouka Kazakiri to have a relationship. She's an artificial angel, and as a supernatural being, would be erased if she touches his Anti-Magic right hand, Imagine Breaker. Technically, he could just wear a glove.
  • Chobits uses this as a source of drama: penetrative intercourse with Chii will activate her reset mechanism and erase all her memories, destroying her feelings of love in the process. In the anime, it's vaguer, but apparently "only the one who is just for me can ever come inside."
  • Explicitly stated in Death Note: Shinigami can't have sexual relations with each other or with humans. Of course, there is a reason for this: If a shinigami falls for a human and then saves him/her from dying, they themselves die. According to How to Use: XXXVI, it's stated that it's both forbidden and actually impossible for shinigami to have sexual relations with humans. This double-emphasis may have been in an attempt to prevent speculation or curtail human/shinigami shipping, though you can guess how well that turned out… XXXVI also says shinigami cannot have sex with each other, though it is not clear if this is impossible or forbidden.
  • In Fate/Prototype: Fragments of Sky Silver, Assassin/Hassan of Serenity is a Poisonous Person and she can't turn it off, meaning she can't touch most people without fatally poisoning them. She tends to fall in love with and get clingy with people who are immune to the poison. This carries over into her appearances in Fate/Grand Order.
  • In Fruits Basket, thirteen members of the Sohma family transform into animals from the Eastern Zodiac (plus the Cat) if they're hugged by someone of the opposite sex who isn't cursed themselves. Naturally, this has made having romantic relationships with the opposite sex difficult, so sex would make things even more complicated. There are ways around it, though, if Shigure's little rendezvous with Ren is any indication.
  • GaoGaiGar: While they couldn't mention anything explicit given the age of their target audience, cyborg Guy Shishioh's relationship with his girlfriend Mikoto is visibly strained by the fact that the only flesh-and-blood part left of him is his head. It's subverted by the last episode.
  • Actually enforced in High School D×D by Fujimi Shobo, otherwise a series with as much Fanservice as this one would have already gone into a much different direction. Then again, this series is definitely "Rule 34-friendly."
    • An In-Universe example with Koneko. As a Nekoshou, Koneko can bear children even at her age. If she did, both she and the child would likely die. Issei tells her they should wait, and she agrees.
    • Also gets Played for Laughs in regards to Irina. She'd like to have sex with Issei, but as a Brave Saint, committing the sin of Lust would lead to becoming a Fallen Angel—and her wings start flickering just from her Covert Pervert side showing through, so simply being creative is out. Until she can find a workaround, she settles for making sure nobody else gets in before she does. Michael has since created such a workaround for her in the form of a room that is essentially a pocket dimension where the angels' rules wouldn't apply, meaning she and Issei could have sex in there to their heart's content without any risk to Irina's status as an angel. But again, the trope is still enforced by the publishers so don't expect that to change much.
  • As they are taken from The Kouga Ninja Scrolls, both Ninja Scroll and Basilisk have female characters named Kagero who have poisonous traits associated with sensuality. Ninja Scroll's Kagero's body absorbs poisons, and since she finds poisoned foods and drinks for her chamberlain, her body is so heavily laced with toxins that even kissing someone would kill them. Basilisk's Kagero's breath turns into a toxic vapor when she's aroused, which she uses as a weapon for assassination.
  • Kimihito in Monster Musume can't sleep with any of his roommates. The extra-species exchange bill forbidding sexual relations between exchange students and their hosts. Unfortunately for him, they're all in love with him, and more than willing to ignore the rules. Then they become the test for the inter-species marriage act. So while he might not get in trouble for it, he still doesn't want to sleep with any of them before he picks a wife. However this law seems to have been dropped in later chapters, as there are several other human/extra species relationships that are very openly sexual.
  • My Balls: The premise is that a guy had a superpowerful demon sealed in his right testicle, so he has to avoid having sex or ejaculating in any way for a month, or she will be released and destroy the world. This is the cue for every hottie in Hell to come banging on his door.
  • Played straight in My-Otome, thanks to the limitations of their Applied Phlebotinum. Akane and Kazuya come this close to averting the trope after eloping, but they keep being interrupted at inconvenient moments, culminating in him getting dragged back to his home country and her getting arrested. Finally, someone arranges a way for them to stay together as master and Otome, but then flat out tells them that this trope still applies.
  • My Wife is a High School Girl plays this one for laughs. The male lead legally marries his student but her father forbids the act with a written contract until she graduates. It is strongly suggested on the anime's last episode that they finally did it, although this is left open to interpretation by the fact that the girl had often fantasized about this kind of thing before only to be rudely interrupted just like that last time. Even funnier, most of the frustration is on her side. Her husband seems to have few problems waiting for her to graduate.
  • Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo (don't confuse it with the former) features a character who would lose her powers when she kisses. This may be a case of G-Rated Sex, though the series never says that sex would do it.
  • Overlord (2012):
    • Momonga, a.k.a. Ainz Ooal Gown, is currently in the body of a skeletal lich, so he can't have sex because he lacks the equipment to do so. This understandably frustrates him, especially given that one of the multiple Nazarick denizens obsessed with him is the gorgeous Albedo.
    • This trope even ends up causing mild problems for Albedo, who can summon a magical mount that cannot be ridden by virgins. Unfortunately, she is madly in love with Ainz and refuses to have sex with anyone else.
  • When Yuuta from Punchline gets aroused twice in a row (which isn't hard as he gets so just by looking at panties) his nose bleeds and he faints. When this occurs, his power levels go through the roof and this causes an asteroid to hit the Earth and cause the end of the world. Luckily he can go back in time to stop the events from happening.
  • According to Word of God, Zelgadis from Slayers will injure anyone he is intimate with, because of his stone body.
  • World's End Harem: Fantasia: Justified during the year Arc spends preparing for Lati's ritual to grant him the power of Macht: one of the conditions is that he abstain from sex, which turns out to be because she needs his male essence to be at the absolute maximum for the ritual to work (apparently riffing on the myth that masturbation reduces male potency). Downplayed afterwards: Arc avoids having vaginal sex with his harem due to the heightened risk of pregnancy from his Macht, though nearly anything else goes.
  • In Yuria 100 Shiki, Yuria is a Sex Bot programmed to become the unquestioning love-slave of the first person to insert the proper hardware, something she'd prefer not to happen. The alternative is no sex at all. She's a Sex Bot programmed to have sex…

    Comedy 
  • This is parodied by Uruguayan comedian El Bananero in his "trailer" for The Impotent Hulk (warning: in Spanish, NSFW), where Bruce's situation is that he hulks out whenever he's excited, but when he goes to a shady doctor to try to solve this situation and have normal sex with Betty, he ends with his privates sadly lost to the cause permanently, which prompts him in a semi-permanent Hulk state out of horny frustration.

    Comic Books 
  • Astro City:
    • Beautie can't have sex for a fairly simple reason: she's a robot based on a child's fashion doll, with the appropriate, er... missing bits. For her part, she seems to treat the whole issue as less of a tragedy and more of an annoyance, usually informing any errant Robosexuals point-blank that it's not going to work.
    • Steeljack is made of solid metal, making him super-strong and weighing him in at 800 pounds. Needless to say, your average woman isn't going to be able to handle him in the bedroom. That said, he can indeed have sex; he just needs to have an equally super-strong partner.
  • The Authority: Jack Hawksmoor is fully capable of having sex. However, the process that turned him into the God of Cities also did unspeakable things to his genitalia, to the point that the first woman to see him naked post-conversion threw up on the spot. He eventually hooks up with the Engineer, who has her own set of body issues
  • The Awesome Slapstick: Played for laughs when protagonist Steve Harmon is thrilled that high school beauty Barb Halsey loves his alter-ego, Slapstick. His Black and Nerdy friend Mike then points out that his Slapstick form lacks the requisite equipment...
  • The Darkness: Jackie Estacado had this problem ever since he turned 21 and acquired his powers (and takes his frustration out on mob goons using Darklings and actually dropping a rabid one down in a Mafia Boss's pants) until they went autopilot and humped an unconscious Sara Pezzini. Usually, bearers of the Darkness are male and when a baby boy is born, the current owner drops dead. Luckily for Jackie, Sara gave birth to a girl. There is a loophole, that Darkness bearers can create constructs for this purpose. However, this took a turn for the worse when it was revealed that The Darkness intended for this loophole, to encourage the Estacado's to eventually create a construct mate that could bear children. The resulting being would be purely of the Darkness with no human "weaknesses." Once it was born the Darklings mutinied to the creature's side as it tried to become a Self-Made Orphan. It went about as well as you'd expect, but left Jackie without access to his powers for quite some time.
  • Fantastic Four: The Thing has had several lovers since his transformation (the main ones being Alicia Masters and Debbie Green) and this has been addressed a few times. The (overall) interpretation is that he can't have sex because he lacks genitalia, and Stan Lee himself has said that he never really thought about how the Thing could have sex being a giant rock-covered dude and didn't really consider it important in the first place. This is lampshaded in Rise of the Silver Surfer, when Johnny asks how Ben and Alicia manage a physical relationship, joking that he doesn't want to learn that she died under "a rockslide." All Ben is willing to say is that they have some arrangement worked out.
  • Justice League of America: In Justice League of America (Rebirth), Caitlin Snow, formerly Killer Frost but now simply 'Frost', has this as part of her general Blessed with Suck powers that lead to her former villainy. Much like Rogue from X-Men, Caitlin's unable to touch another person without harming them; in her case, to even stay alive, she must drain the body heat of living creatures as she no longer produces body heat herself, and she can't turn this off like the previous Killer Frost or other ice-related characters. As well as being generally quite traumatic for her mental health, its shown that it effects her sex life as even when she shares a room with her Love Interest, Ryan Choi, he sleeps on the floor because they can't share a bed together without her uncontrollably freezing him to death. As such, the two remain chaste, though despite this Ryan still stands by her.
  • Irredeemable: The Plutonian . He's Nigh Invulnerability — so much so that simply touching his hair would cut a normal human's hand. The Plutonian went so far as to acquire a power nullifying magic candle so he could spend a night with his lover which plays a critical role in his eventual defeat at the end of the series.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes: Wildfire doesn't actually have a body, having been turned into an Energy Being by a Freak Lab Accident. This puts severe stress on his romance with fellow Legionnaire Dawnstar. Eventually, he learns to create a solid body... but it's still made of energy, and Dawnstar gets burned trying to touch him. This is the point where he tells her to just go.
  • Megalex: Seems to be the case with Princess Kavatah, at least as of Volume 1. A noble general tries to touch her romantically, and he bursts into flame. She believes it to be a curse.
  • The Outsiders: In Batman and the Outsiders, Heatstroke and Coldsnap are lovers who are members of the villain team the Masters of Disaster. Their motivation for committing crimes is to earn enough money to find a cure for their "condition" that prevent them from touching.
  • The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior: In the last issue, with his dying breath, the evil wizard Zardeth punishes Moltar and Lavour for betraying him by restoring Moltar's humanity, but leaving Lavour still a woman made of living magma. And this just after Lavour had finally realized that she genuinely loved him. Fortunately, Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid, so they don't have to avoid each other entirely, but they can never touch.
  • The Sandman (1989): Dream and Nada. It's forbidden for a mortal and one of the Endless to be lovers. When Nada spurns Dream after breaking this, he condemns her to hell.
  • Superman: The villainess Anguish has Intangibility. Though she can be solid for periods of time, she at one point complains that it is very difficult to turn her power off, even if she wants people to touch her.
  • X-Men: The comics have many mutants with a mutation that makes sex impossible. Examples include Rogue and Wither, who respectively hurt or kill whatever living things they touch. Their partners would effectively need full-body condoms.
    • In Rogue's case, the problem isn't insurmountable: there have always been characters immune to Rogue's absorption power (e. g. the Avengers' Wonder Man in her debut story) and also quite a few who could protect themselves through their own powers (e. g. Magneto in Age of Apocalypse) or through a machine (e. g. the apparatus Joseph built as a Christmas present). Another way out was exposing Rogue to the powers of mutants (e. g. Leech) or machines (e. g. the one used in the "love grotto" story in Uncanny X-Men #350) or mystical devices (e. g. the Siege Perilous) that can strip mutants of their powers, at least temporarily. And then, there's the number of powerfully telepathic characters around. In any case, with some help from Professor X and Danger Rogue finally learned to control her absorption power and now can have sex if she wants. Which she eventually did in X-Men: Legacy #249 with Magneto.
      • In Mr. and Mrs. X, she wears a collar that gives her headaches but suppresses her mutation so she can consummate her marriage to Gambit.
    • On one occasion, where the X-Men were in the Savage Land, where mutants powers are neutralised, Rogue realised she could touch people. Gambit made one of his usual leering suggestive remarks and was totally shocked when Rogue replied "You've been after this for years but now you'all gonna GET it!" and jumped on him and gave the most frightful seeing-to. He was still shaking and crying when they got back to the X-Mansion. When Cyclops asked him "So, how was it for you?" Gambit replied "Oh, c'est horrible! Quand ca femme a fait a moi! I will NEVER feel clean again!"
    • Wither was a bit more tragic, however. When he thought he lost his powers after many other mutants did, he melted his crush's arm off. One of the few people who was immune to his powers was the vampiric villainess Selene, who then seduced him into her service. His classmate Mercury was likely immune to his powers, being made of liquid metal, and had a crush on him - but he didn't reciprocate.
  • XXXenophile: In one of Phil Foglio's comics, one of the main characters is a priestess (to the god of contraception) who's under a curse that will (apparently — it's never actually shown) transform anyone she has sex with. She's also immortal and has been unable to have sex for hundreds of years. It's revealed that the reason for this was so that she could resist the curse of a MacGuffin that causes anyone to touch it to become uncontrollably horny, because her long pent-up frustration is greater than the Macguffin's power, allowing her to hold it without being overcome. After she finds it and returns it to her god, her curse is modified so she can choose one day a year it's not in effect. Presumably, this would help her for the next task she needed to complete for him.

    Fan Works 
  • In the Harry Potter fanfic The Amplitude, Frequency and Resistance of the Soul Bond, Sirius warns Harry and Ginny that due to their soul bond, if they have sex before they're seventeen, something very bad (implied to be them losing their magic permanently) will happen. This is a Take That! to many other soul bond fics, where Harry and Ginny have to have sex (or at least touch) on a regular basis to remain healthy. Turns out Sirius was lying because he didn't want two underage kids having sex. They still decide to take it slow, though.
  • In the The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time fic Blood and Spirit, Sheik explains to Link that the Sheikah are forbidden from having romantic relationships because they believe that such emotions cloud their better judgment and rational thinking; thus, they reproduce via birthing mothers, whose sole purpose in the tribe is to bear the children. As a result, the Sheikah children are raised by the entire Sheikah community rather than by their birth parents.
  • In The Flash (2014)/Supergirl (2015) crossover Call Me Kara, Kara can't have sex with Barry without her literally snapping him in half. This is averted when Winn builds her a red sun radiation bracelet which nullifies her powers.
  • In Coming Back Late, Harry and Hermione can't do anything physical together because even though she's estranged from Ron, their magical marriage vows are "till death do us part." After Hermione is killed and Harry brings her soul back from behind the Veil, this obviously no longer applies.
  • In the Wicked fic Not Completely, Altogether Here, Elphaba's allergy to water extends to bodily fluids as well. She can't even be kissed without being burned. This serves an annoying obstacle in her relationship with Glinda. They bypass it after Elphaba commits a Heroic Sacrifice. She no longer has allergies as a spirit.
  • Queens of Mewni:
    • Complications following childbirth rendered Asteria infertile and she was advised to never have sex again to not exacerbate it. This put a strain on her marriage to Orion since they could no longer be intimate sexually.
    • Galaxia tries to curb Venus's Really Gets Around tendencies by magically forcing a chastity belt on her. She's forced to take it off when it starts making Venus ill (although there's some debate on whether it actually did or if Venus was faking it). Undeterred, Galaxia tried again with a chastity diaper from Quest Buy, but this backfired in a number of ways: Venus decided to own it and 'paraded sexy' with it throughout the castle to titillate everyone, her brother Planet decided he wanted to wear a diaper too, and it turns out she could remove it anyway. Fed up, Galaxia gave up on changing Venus's slutty ways, only saying that any consequences were now on her.
  • Paul agonizes over this in With Strings Attached, since he's way too strong to dare make love to Linda any more. He is extremely happy when he's depowered at the end of the book.
    • Unfortunately, as we find out in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, while he lost the strength, he didn't lose the sense he would harm Linda if he just hugged her, let alone had sex with her. It takes him a ways into the book to reveal to the others that their marriage almost collapsed because of it.
  • In the Maleficent fanfic Your servant, Mistress, Maleficent and Diaval. Though they're both human in the fanfic, Maleficent is freaked out by the very thought of it. As they're both into BDSM, that is not the problem it could be for other couples.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Bent, the main characters are a gay couple in a concentration camp. They are incapable of touching each other, standing within a foot of each other, or even looking at each other. What they can do, however, is have incredibly emotional and vivid verbal sex.
  • Irena Gallier and Oliver Yates from Cat People (1982). Irena is a werecat, and she and her brother can only sleep with each other without transforming into deadly panthers. However, both of them give in to their urges during the course of the film.
  • In Bringing Up Baby, the hero's Disposable Fiancé mentions that their marriage is only meant to solidify their working relationship and must entail no domestic entanglements of any kind.
  • Frank and Lonette from Cool World, because 'noids' and 'doodles' (humans and toons) can't have sex without disastrous consequences.
  • Implied in Date Movie for Jello, at least in terms of anal sex. Her ass is absolutely 'enormous', enough to knock over countless shelves and tables worth of stuff. Her ass is large enough to make any guy's mouth water...however, as shown in her first scene, she sharpens a pencil by sticking it in her butt...so any guy who may attempt to actually have sex with her in that area would probably be in for quite a night of pain and a lifetime of regret...
  • In a deleted scene from Hancock, Hancock gets propositioned by a prostitute and takes some convincing to give her a chance, when he does, he warns her that no matter what he has to pull out. When they climax, Hancock throws her off hard enough to send her into a wall, because his... ahem, bullets come out with enough force to put holes through the metal roof of his trailer. No wonder he stays celibate.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • The 2008 The Incredible Hulk movie had Bruce and Betty almost start, at which point his wrist-mounted pulse-reader starts beeping. Bruce stops Betty, explaining that he can't get excited or else he'll Hulk out; she responds, in a disappointed tone of voice, "Not even a little?" And yet one never heard Bruce Banner say "You wouldn't like me when I'm horny."
    • Avengers: Age of Ultron has Bruce state to Natasha Romanoff that he "physically can't" have children, which alludes to the 2008 film regarding his dilemma with Betty: if he gets too excited, he'll hulk out, which is why he physically can't have children, as he explains to Romanoff.
  • Romeos: Lukas can't, due to anxiety over potential sex partners' reacting poorly to his body. Nor can he wear less than three layers, or take off his shirt at the beach. At the end he overcomes this with Fabio.
  • In Sin Takes a Holiday, Sylvia and Stanton get married purely out of convenience, and one of the terms in their agreement is to keep it an "in name only" marriage.
  • In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Ilia and Decker can't have sex because Ilia is a Deltan, and sex with a Deltan is so intense that humans just can't handle it.
  • In the X-Men Film Series, Rogue can't have sex or even kiss someone ever. It tends to be hazardous to their health. In X2: X-Men United, multiple characters point out the inherent problems faced by Iceman and Rogue.
  • The Lobster: David and the Shortsighted Woman are in love, but live with the Loners, who forbid all sexual contact and romantic relations between members.
  • Boys on the Side: Robin, due to being diagnosed with AIDS. She meets a man who's willing to even so, saying he'll have protection, but Robin won't risk him being infected.
  • In Dogma angels have Barbie Doll Anatomy, so they can't have sex or even masturbate. Bartelby comments that it adds sexual frustration on top of whatever other issues they might have.

    Literature 
  • Partial trope in The One Who Waited, Alice and the Boogeyman can technically never have sex, except at the very end, when the act of doing so kills Alice
  • In For Love of Evil, Parry has become a Friar in the Middle Ages. He has a very strict celibacy oath to which he must adhere to remain a friar. He had a beautiful, intelligent wife (Jolie) who was murdered, and is now a ghost. He still has a very high sex drive. One night, he has the opportunity to have sex with Jolie, thanks to the intercession of a willing female host. Suffice it to say, his intense performance that evening sets the plot of the entire rest of the novel in motion.
  • In Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series. Stile's wife has been prophesied to have one child by her second husband. So as long as they don't consummate their marriage, Stile remains safe from death. They eventually do consummate after the third book, and they have their son, but since the prophecy does not specifically mention imminent death after that son, Stile and his alternate reality counterpart, now trapped in opposite worlds, continue to be major characters for the rest of the series.
  • Joshua from Dora Wilk Series would really like to have sex with Dora (opposite is true as well), but Guardian Angels are forbidden to have a romantic or sexual relationship with people they guard. Subverted in All Stays In The Family when Archangel Gabriel proposes that he can free Joshua from his Guardian position, but by then Dora's with Miron and Joshua is just too nice to pursue her.
  • Cal Leandros is so afraid of impregnating the human he loves (he doesn't trust birth control at all) with his half-evil-fairy sperm that he will only boink other species that he's biologically incompatible with.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • Thomas can no longer even touch his beloved Justine — or even a scarf she made by hand—without being burned, because they truly love each other, and true love is holy water to White Court vampires like him. He's free to do anything he wants with anyone he doesn't care about and in fact drains the life force his demonic side needs through acts of lust. Eventually subverted when Justine figures out she can have casual sex with other people, temporarily eliminating the protective effect of having last had sex with her true love Thomas until she sleeps with him again. Cue the threesomes.
    • After Susan becomes a vampire, she can't have sex with Harry because she can't separate her desire for him from her desire for ripping out his throat and drinking his blood. Understandably, this puts a slight damper on their relationship. However, they end up getting around it by tying her up with enchanted rope (It wasn't planned that way: he tied her up because she was losing control of her bloodlust, but then their feelings for each other took over).
    • After Molly becomes the Winter Lady, she discovers that the mantle will actively enforce this by lethally attacking anyone she tries to have sex with or they try to do the same to her, since having a child would destroy the power of the mantle. And take note that the Winter Mantle actively fills her with lustful feelings... that she can't act on. Maeve, Lily, and Sarrisa are likely in the same boat.
      • Molly may be a partial subversion. What she was told was (This is) what will happen every time you attempt to be with a man. General consensus is that women are acceptable (Maeve was involved with one) and non-humans (Fae) may be. She'll still have to deal with the desire though.
  • Georgina Kincaid of the Succubus books is a succubus who can't date anyone she likes without sucking his life force.
  • This is an occasional problem in Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who... series, where the protagonists are "shellpeople", very handicapped humans who operate as the "brain" of a LivingShip (or city). Each shellperson is an immobilized body on life support sealed in a metal shell, so it's not possible to get physical traditionally. When a shellperson and their brawn fall in love, "fixation" and trying to crack open the shells can result, which inevitably kills the people inside.
    • In The Ship Who Searched one shellperson deals with the problem by commissioning a remote-controlled full-sensory android body, opening up the same possibility for other brains. It's so expensive that this is an Awesome, but Impractical solution for many of them, though.
    • The short story The Ship Who Returned, wrapping up the setting, returns to the original protagonist Helva, whose brawn Niall was fixated and longed to crack her shell but had enough sense not to actually do so. Niall had bought Helva one such Remote Body expressly so they could have sex, but Helva refused to use it. She loved Niall but did not see herself as incomplete and found the idea of being "outside" of her shell uncomfortable and repulsive. Between the expense and the arguments, this was the lowest point of their relationship.
  • Confessors from the The Sword of Truth can have sex, just not with anyone they actually like, because they accidentally release their power while lovemaking, and it would essentially destroy their lover. This causes much drama for Richard and Kahlan in the first book. Once this is resolved, they have another problem because of some prophecy that she'll give birth to a male Confessor (who are Always Chaotic Evil).
  • Subverted in Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series. Michael Finn, a humanoid alien cyborg, believes he can never have sex because his superhuman abilities would cause him to accidentally injure or kill whoever he has sex with. One of the other characters points out that he can still administer oral sex and be given handjobs.
  • Discworld:
    • Wizards traditionally aren't allowed to have sex because the eighth son they conceive will be a sourceror, a living magical power source capable of destroying the entire world by accident. They don't seem to have heard of non-procreative sex. It's implied, at least in the earlier books, that sex uses some of the same circuits as doing magic does, for wizards at any rate. In Mort, it's noted that once Igneous Cutwell starts spending time with Queen Keli of Sto Lat, he doesn't do any magic any more: this is clearly a big hint that they are getting it on instead. (The Discworld Companion suggests that this is psychosomatic, pointing out that if magic cared whether you have sex, Nanny Ogg would be a washerwoman.) It's actually worse than not having discovered non-procreative sex; a sourceror will only be born if they're the eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son. So in theory, there's lots of sex that can be had before they have to stop, and some wizard could never have a problem. This is mentioned in some of the early books, so there's a good chance it's the kind of canon that can be safely ignored. Mostly, though, wizards don't have sex because they usually find magic more interesting. The Light Fantastic spells out in no uncertain terms that casting magic is, itself, like the most powerful and intense orgasm imaginable.
    • This is then possibly averted in Making Money, where it's revealed several necromancy students only want to be necromancers because they get the official skull ring which they claim is a "babe magnet." Technically it's only marriage that's forbidden. There's presumably only a problem if all eight children are with the same woman.
    • In Unseen Academicals it is mentioned that Professor Macarona, at Unseen University on exchange, has apparently left a trail of angry husbands and at least one angry wife in other cities he's visited. Not his wife, you understand. Apparently, celibacy is an Unseen University tradition rather than one that necessarily applies to all wizards, and there are indications that even UU is occasionally willing to look the other way as long as you're not too blatant about it.
    • In the first book, Rincewind is described as looking like an "apprentice enchanter who had run away from his master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering taste for heterosexuality." Make of that what you will. In The Light Fantastic Rincewind knows what orgasms are — he's had a few. Sometimes in company. His first use of real magic is compared to a good orgasm, and most wizards can use magic when they want. The tendency towards celibacy is pretty deeply ingrained in at least some of the wizards. Rincewind at one point finds himself as the only male on an island and is rescued by a boat of half-naked Amazon babes, who tell him all the men of their village have died and they need him to procreate, saying they will give him everything he wants. He's literally drooling in anticipation of the satisfaction of his desires. But thanks to a few crossed wires after months of isolation, he asks for potatoes.
  • Played on a villain in Exiles at the Well of Souls, when the sexually-perverse and licentious Antor Trelig is transformed into a Makiem, a frog-like alien race. Makiem don't copulate at all, they just release gametes into the water once a year without any physical contact. Karma's a bitch, eh?
  • In Isaac Asimov's novel The Gods Themselves, it is emphasized a few times that Earthborn and Moonborn people suffer from a slight sexual incompatibility due to Earth people's tendency to subconsciously move as in normal Earth-gravity during moments of abandon—an "Earthie" would be very likely to injure their partner in the lower gravity of the Moon. In the end, it's implied that the protagonists can work something out.
  • One of the protagonists of In Conquest Born, Anzha, is a starship captain and telepath who comes from a race with an deliberately low libido. However, she is a perfect storm of recessive traits and one of the many ways she differs is her normal-to-elevated sex drive. She makes it to a sexually frustrated maturity before discovering that her problems in the bedroom are much worse than she imagined. Telepaths have conditioning instilled in their minds as a means of control, and part of hers involuntarily burns out the brains of her partners when she's turned on, making it impossible to actually consummate.
  • The titular Cat Girl of The Nine Lives of Chloe King technically can have sex, but her claws pop out when she's aroused, and they apparently have some sort of venom on them, so it's not recommendable for her partner. Apparently, she can have sex with others like herself. It's indicated to be a curse on the Mai. At the end of the books, the curse is broken. The TV series never made it that far.
  • Cal from Peeps has a sexually-transmitted parasite that gives most people who pick it up vampiric traits, something he didn't figure out until his ex-girlfriends went crazy. This is eventually subverted when (a) it turns out that passing on the parasite is a good thing, (b) the craziness can be cured easily for those that it happens to, and (c) the girl Cal likes eventually picks up the parasite from his cat (cat breath is another vector) instead.
  • The hitek, a near-future offshoot of humanity from Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future, are unlikely to survive having sex, as their bodies are so crippled by the accumulation of genetic defects that they need constant life-support to function. A hitek couple in the book require the approval of their physicians to even make the attempt, and when the female dies of heart failure from the exertion, the bereaved male crawls back into his life-support cocoon, never to emerge again.
  • In Louise Burton's Hidden Grotto novels (House of Dark Delights, Bound by Moonlight), there are two characters in love who may never touch—Elic, a dusios (a type of sex-changing incubus), and Lili, a succubus. They find ways around not having sex with each other…
  • Subverted for The Narrator and Marianne Engel in The Gargoyle, as the loss of his penis in a fire doesn't stop them from having an active (if somewhat one-sided) sex life.
  • This trope heavily figures in The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. Jake Barnes is very much in love with Brett Ashley. She even reciprocates! However certain practical (and metaphorically mental) issues preclude any consummation.
  • In the last book of The Emigrants tetralogy Karl Oskar and Kristina can no longer have sex since they have no reliable birth control and if Kristina gets pregnant again it will lead to her death.
    • Ashley and Melanie have the same problem in Gone with the Wind. Unfortunately, self-control only goes so far....
  • Neal Shusterman's Scorpion Shards features an otherwise-Ordinary High-School Student who is cursed to somehow suck the soul out of any girl he kisses. It also makes every girl he meets fall madly in love with him, but that's not much comfort.
  • In The Vampire Chronicles, once you're a vampire, you can't have actual sex. However, everything else practically becomes a substitute. Even the pattern on a carpet can bring rapturous pleasure to one's enhanced senses. In one book, Lestat does manage to have sex (twice), but only after swapping bodies with a human.
  • In a Polish vampire trilogy Nocarz, this can happen to a vampire couple if one of them gets neutralised with Sator's anti-symbiote vaccine. The victims not only lose their vampiric traits but also react with deadly allergy to any physical contact with a normal vampire (it's implied this effect will pass with time). Knowing this, Vesper assigns his human friend to provide medical first aid to the neutralised vampires, as any other member of the team would kill them with barely a touch.
    Echis: How could I argue with you, when you could kill me just by spitting in my face?
    • After Icta gets neutralised, Vesper imagines her having a normal life, but decides that Echis would make a better husband and protector than him. It's implied that it will work out in the future, unlike the rest of his hare-brained plan.
  • There's a cat character in Clare Bell's Clan Ground series who's like this. He's half Unnamed, and as most of the Unnamed are dumb, brutish, unintelligent cats, he fears passing on his Unnamed genes to any potential offspring. So, he leaves the clan during breeding time each year.
  • Every time Laurent and Thérèse try to have sex after they get married (or even try to sleep for that matter) in Thérèse Raquin, they are haunted by memories of Thérèse's first husband Camille.
  • In Warrior Cats, medicine cats are forbidden from having kits, so they aren't allowed to have mates. That's not to say they don't break the rule, but for the most part, they adhere to Clan standards.
  • In Tales of Kolmar, Kantri have incredibly high internal temperatures. A human once helps one of the Kantri deliver a baby, has to reach in and turn it, and the flesh on the human's arms is so burned it comes off in rags. Humans and Kantri are not sexually compatible. The very idea that they could be is seen as absurd; there is a prophecy of human-Kantri children spelling the end of the world as we know it, but someone outright says that there might as well be a prophecy warning them to beware of a bull and a butterfly. So when the Lord of the Kantri falls in love with a human woman, they can't consummate. Until he's turned into a human himself.
  • In Tim Dorsey's Serge Storms books, Johnny Vegas is always interrupted, sometimes by incredibly unlikely things, just before he's about to have sex.
  • In Dave Duncan's "A Man of His Word" books the Sultan of Arakshit, Azak, is cursed so that he can't touch a woman without burning her badly. Even after the sorceress who cursed him dies the curse is not lifted, cutting his wedding night short, marking Inosolan and leading to a lot of frustration.
  • Undead in Kevin J. Anderson's Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. novels apparently do retain the ability to have sex. Dan, however, can't have sex with his girlfriend Sheyenne because she's a ghost, unable to touch anything animate. In Unnatural Acts, they find a stopgap solution: Sheyenne can manipulate inanimate objects, so she wears gloves to hold Dan's hand or possesses a blow-up doll for intimate relations.
  • In Spider Robinson's short story "True Minds", the great romance novelist Philip Rose and his wife Dr. R.V. Walton cannot have sex for very tragic reasons. Decades ago she took the opportunity to join the research team on a space station, only to find out that one of the downsides for humans living in that environment for too long is that they can no longer survive on Earth. Even worse, Philip also has a congenital heart condition that ensures he would never survive the difficult trip to space. The only contact the couple has had with each other for most of their married life is through a monitor. Both are absolutely committed to each other as well, so they refuse to have sex with anyone else. This is even more frustrating for Philip since he's a famous romance novelist with many admirers who have offered themselves to him.
  • One minor character from Sewer, Gas & Electric is a war veteran who lost his private parts in a battle injury. His VA medical coverage provided for installation of a prosthetic scrotum, but thanks to a conservative-hyped law banning federal funding of anything possibly usable as a sex toy, an artificial penis wasn't included.
  • In Gil's All Fright Diner, Duke the werewolf implies this trope applies to him to dissuade Loretta's seduction attempt. It doesn't really—his transformations aren't triggered by sex, and there's no risk he might change and harm her—but Loretta is very unattractive and he doesn't want to offend her by rejecting her advances for that reason.
  • In the Coldfire Trilogy, the Hunter cannot have sex without violating the terms of the pact that made him immortal since doing so is technically an act of procreation and life.
  • The Film Noir Monster Mash Fifty Feet of Trouble, features the jaguar people, clearly based on some famous feline-based monsters. Whenever they get horny they turn into a jaguar and proceed to try to kill anything near them. And pretty much everything gets them horny.
  • Worm
    • Newter's bodily fluids are contact hallucinogens, to the point that even trace sweat on his skin can render someone incoherent. While it's his main weapon in a fight, this poses certain difficulties in the bedroom.
    • Tattletale also avoids sex because her Hyper-Awareness power would cause an extreme case of Too Much Information.
  • Jessica Christ suffers from this, since God absolutely refuses to let his daughter have premarital sex (and never mind that Jessica was herself conceived out of wedlock - that's different because He says so!) and will strike her potential lovers with impotence if necessary. She eventually discovers a loophole, though: sex in a dream does not count, and she can invite angels, of which her boyfriend is one, into her dreams at will. God grumbles that He could close that loophole if He wanted to, but agrees to let it stand.
  • The "glorifieds" (believers in Jesus Christ with glorified bodies) in the Left Behind book Kingdom Come are physically unable to have sex with anyone, and along with that cannot father or bear any children, but on the positive side their minds are now so focused on God and Jesus Christ, having experienced the greatest joy ever, that they do not need the pleasure of sex. At the end of the story, the "naturals" who lived to the end of the Millennial Kingdom as believers in Christ also become "glorifieds".
  • The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries: When the series starts, Sookie is a virgin by choice, because of the A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read factor. She picked up enough nasty thoughts in her day to day life. She didn't want to see what was lurking once she got intimate with someone. And she also didn't like the idea of just banging some idiot just to get her rocks off. A good part of the reason that falls for (and eventually sleeps with) Bill is, as a vampire, she couldn't read his mind (and she finds out later that she was immune to vampiric glamour). She later finds out other supernaturals could keep her out as well.
  • Forbidden is more a case of "can't have sex for the foreseeable future", since Lochan and Maya are brother and sister. Incest is illegal, and having sex is the technical definition of incest. By restraining from that, that are able to convince themselves what they're doing is ok; that they're not being selfish or endangering their younger siblings.
    So I keep repeating to myself, As long as we don't go all the way, it will be all right. As long as we don't actually have sex, we're not technically having an incestuous relationship. As long as we don't cross that final line, our family will be safe, the kids won't be taken away, Maya and I won't be forced apart. All we have to do is be patient, enjoy what we have, until perhaps one day, when the others are grown up, we can move away and forge new identities and love each other freely.
  • In Jude Deveraux's "A Knight in Shining Armor", the hero and heroine avoid having sex because it triggers time travel, seperately them permanently.
  • In Six of Crows, Kaz and Inej are this trope, due to trauma. Kaz has an extreme aversion to skin contact due to being left for dead on a barge full of corpses and using his dead brother's body as a float to get to shore, and Inej is a former prostitute who was trafficked and forced to work in the pleasure house.
  • Dune: Leto II following the events of Children of Dune can no longer have sex due to merging with the sandtrout to become a sandworm hybrid. When he falls in love in God-Emperor of Dune with Hwi Noree and proposes marriage to her, he assures her that she won't have to physically consummate the marriage with him (by this point his transformation has progressed to the point he's more sandworm than human) and that he's fine with her taking lovers.
  • Catwoman: Soulstealer: Implied to maybe be the case for Ivy, as she mentions even if Harley wanted it, they might be unable to have an intimate relationship since contact with Ivy's skin could be dangerous, as she emits toxins.
  • Night Huntress: Leila can't touch humans without risk of electrocuting them, and although there's no danger of stopping a vampire's heart — since their hearts don't beat — constantly being electrified for a prolonged period of time would burn them up eventually. Then she meets Vlad Tepesh, who has pyrokinetic powers and thus is immune to being burned, and loses her virginity to him.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Angel had one night with Buffy, which enabled his Curse Escape Clause and led to his infamous Face–Heel Turn as Angelus. Angel has moved on to boink other women he doesn't love, but he can never close the deal again.
    • Played with on Angel with Cordelia and her beau, the Groosalugg. She has reason to believe that having sex will lead to her losing her precognitive powers; after spending time bemoaning, her response is to find a magical prophylactic so that won't happen.
    • Angel eventually has the characters work out that Angel's curse isn't the No Sex Allowed curse they originally thought but is, in fact, this trope played straight. In series 1, When Wesley and Cordelia discuss the idea of Angel and Rebecca Lowell having a relationship, Wesley points out the curse's requirement is "perfect happiness" and also points out how rare that criterion actually is. In series 2, Angel can get away with having sex with Darla, who he has complicated emotional ties to because he experienced "perfect despair" with her. In series 5, Angel doesn't lose his soul by having sex with Eve because he doesn't trust her and they were under a mystical compulsion. Wesley reiterates that "perfect happiness" is very rare and most relationships are formed from "acceptable happiness" instead which is why Angel can have sex with Nina without his soul being endangered. As a result, the only people Angel can't have sex with are the women he regards as his true loves (and the ones he truly wanted to be with): Buffy and Cordelia.
    • Becomes a running gag throughout Angel, with Angel himself having to clarify more than once that he's "not a eunuch."
    • And then there is Gwen, whose electric powers are always on, forbidding her from touching people. At least if she wants them still alive afterwards. She eventually gets around this by obtaining an electronic Power Limiter and immediately tries it out by shagging Gunn.
  • Every pairing in Lexx suffered from this. Afflicted characters included a dead man who lacked certain parts, a severed robot head with no moving parts, and an alien who was "smooth round the bend". And that was before the plot device of the ship's coveted key — a symbiotic energy life-form — abandoning its host at the height of ecstasy...
    • And the writers loved to taunt the audience with it, too; when 790 gains a working arm, thus becoming a robot-head-with-arm, he tries to get his new hand in Xev's pants… but she's too tired from previous events to care and 790 loses the arm shortly thereafter. 790 would again come close to getting some actual action when Prince arranged for his head to be attached to the body of a moth breeder who had the key to the Lexx, as well as going through the United States military's service record to find the most well-endowed soldier to volunteer an equipment transplant to the moth breeder's body. Before 790 could get his freak on, his head was knocked off, leaving him bodiless again, and Xev went to "find" the moth breeder.
    • In an earlier episode, 790 attaches himself to a headless cyborg body found in a prison ship. However. reactivating the body causes 790 to be intermittently possessed by the personality of the body's previous owner, a Depraved Homosexual Scary Black Man rapist who immediately sets his sights on Stanley.
  • Dark Angel loved doing this to Max and Logan. At first, they couldn't do it because Logan physically couldn't (he was paralyzed from the waist down). Then Logan gets better, but Max has been infected with a designer virus made especially to target Logan's DNA—so any skin-to-skin contact with her would kill him. Then the show was canceled.
  • Pushing Daisies: Ned and Chuck. His power allowed him to bring her back to life at the cost of killing a bystander, but she will die if he even touches her, let alone if they attempt sex. That said, later episodes imply that they've come up with some...interesting ways of getting around the "no skin contact" issue.
  • Alisha from Misfits can't have mutually consensual sex with anyone due to her power (she's basically a walking Love Potion, whoever touches her is overcome with uncontrollable lust).
    • At first, she doesn't see the problem with her ability, which basically means she can have sex with whoever she wants and given that she's a Femme Fatale that works out great for her until she's almost forced into sex by two men due to accidentally touching them. As from then, she realizes that forcing people into sex without their actual consent is not right and does not have sex anymore. Until Seth takes away her ability in the Series 2 finale, that is.
  • In season 2 of Torchwood, after Owen dies and is resurrected, becoming a moving, thinking corpse, he finds that he can no longer have sex. This is the time that Toshiko finally confesses her feelings to him…
  • In Alphas Rachel's Super-Senses leave her prone to Sensory Overload, making sex at least very difficult. She finally does manage to get around this, and it's strongly implied that it was mostly a case of finding a partner she trusted enough to let herself become totally vulnerable and helpless with them.
  • Nick and Natalie in Forever Knight, because sex and feeding are very much tied together for vampires, and Nick is mostly unable to control himself once he starts feeding. He knows he'd either wind up turning Natalie or more likely, that he'd kill her. Unfortunately this is exactly what happens in the Downer Ending for the series.
  • In Legend of the Seeker the main characters, Richard and Kahlan can never consummate their love, as Kahlan's Confessor powers would be unleashed in the throes of passion which then would leave Richard "Confessed" or a slave to Kahlan's will. There are numerous flirts with intimacy, but the trope holds fast. Until the second season finale, that is, when Richard and Kahlan discover that she can't Confess him because he's already so deeply in love with her that it makes no difference.
  • In Haven, Nathan Wuornos has Feel No Pain, and the only person he can feel is Audrey Parker and her past incarnations like Sarah Vernon. He can have sex with other women, but it's obviously not very enjoyable. Jordan McKee inflicts agonizing pain on anybody who touches her bare skin, so only Nathan can touch her (Audrey can too, but both girls are straight).
  • Being Human (UK) features a strange case with Mitchell and Annie, who have two problems: first, Annie is a ghost, so the only way for them to touch each other, not to mention have sex, is for her to possess Mitchell's partner. The second problem is that Mitchell's a vampire, who, in the show's universe, are walking metaphors for drug addicts, and finds it hard to separate sex from feeding (and he very much doesn't want to drink human blood). Eventually, they decide to forgo sex altogether. It's not clear whether it works as Mitchell dies pretty soon after.
  • Saibra from the Doctor Who episode "Time Heist" effectively suffers from this, because she involuntarily shapeshifts into anybody she touches directly, and it turns out Screw Yourself is a very uncommon fetish, or more disturbing in reality than people expect.
  • In iZombie, after Major learns the truth about zombies, he and Liv try to resume their relationship (broken off by Liv after she became a zombie). However, a single scratch or an exchange of fluids can transmit the zombie virus. At one point, they consider trying it safe, using a condom. However, Ravi tests several condoms and determines that the virus can still get through, so they have to keep it chaste. Until Major becomes a zombie himself, that is.
  • In American Horror Story: Coven, Zoe Benson's witch power horrifically kills anyone she has sex with; she finds this out the hard way in the opening scene with her boyfriend. However, she puts this curse to use in the first episode to vengefully dispatch a rapist, and much later in the story, discovers that she can indeed safely have sex with anyone who has died and been resurrected, such as Kyle and Madison.

    Mythology & Religion 
  • Implied by Jesus in the Gospels in His reply to the Sadducees' question about whose wife a woman would be of the seven brothers that each married her in turn and left her childless when the resurrection takes place, saying that those who are worthy of the resurrection from the dead "will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like the angels in heaven."
  • In the Mahabharata, Pandu kills two deer who are having sex, who turn out to be a powerful sage and his wife. As he dies, the sage curses Pandu to die if he has sex. He still manages to have (legal) children when his two wives each hook up with gods, but eventually he gets so consumed with lust that he forgets about his curse, leading to his death and one of his wives committing suicide.

    Tabletop Games 
  • A Downplayed problem for Manes in Genius: The Transgression. Manes can have sex just fine within a Bardo, or with another supernatural creature as a partner, but intimate contact with a regular mortal triggers Havoc as the universe realizes that they aren't actually supposed to exist.
  • Ravenloft:
    • Darklord Ivana Boritsi has turned both herself and members of her entourage into ermordenung: living humans whose bodies are permanently saturated with a deadly poison. Ermordenung can't touch anyone normal without killing them, and Ivana cranks up their frustration by using a different poison to create each one, so they'll kill each other if they touch their own kind. Bitch. (To make this worse, the leader and most powerful of the ermordenung, the first who received this "gift", was Nostalia Romaine Ivana's best friend as a child, and it was with her help that Boritsi seized control of Borca, using Natasha as an assassin to kill her mother, the previous ruler. Despite this, Natasha and the others are still utterly loyal to her; of course, when you work for a darklord, you tend to be just as evil as your boss.
    • And any attempts Jacqueline Renier has ends when she inevitably turns into her wererat form and kills them, she can't control this. She also arranges for her sister's lovers to be murdered before they can consummate their relationships out of jealousy (and to keep Louise from usurping her power). Jacqueline's curse only applies if she actually loves her prospective partner. She can have all the casual or hate sex she wants.
    • Sir Tristen Hiregaard of Nova Vassa isn't a straight example of the Trope, but he's to Renier similar. He can have sex if he wants (and he has several sons from his Arranged Marriage to show for it) but any woman he actually loves is in mortal danger. A curse he suffers from transforms him into a fiend called Malken (the true darklord of Nova Vassa) a madman who targets any woman Hiregard loves. (Unlike Renier, Hiregaard isn't malicious and doesn't truly know that he is Malken, but he does know that there's a dark presence inside him, and tries to avoid becoming attached to women because of it; it's often hard to find any who are attracted to him nowadays anyway, as they tend to remember what happened to his previous lovers.)
  • Teenagers from Outer Space strongly recommends that the GM derail all attempts by players to get further than, say, first base, by having circumstances interfere in whatever silly fashion they GM can devise, because endless UST is funnier.
  • Subverted in Warhammer Fantasy with the Dark Elves. To save his life, the Witch King Malekeith had a magical suit of armor fused to his body that grants him to strength to fight and makes him hard to kill (both in the background and in-game). However, he believes only a male wizard using dark magic can kill him, especially since most of his protection doesn't protect against magic. So he has every male sorcerer in his empire killed off, forbids males from learning magic and has them hunted down, and has all sorceresses married to him to ensure that they do not have a child (he's fused to the armor, it ain't coming off). It's a subversion because many of the Witch King's Brides take on male lovers, and sometimes have children in secret.
  • In both Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Werewolf: The Forsaken,, werewolves mating with each other tends to have bad results. The Apocalypse gave us Metis, the sterile, deformed offspring of Garou mating—the only "upside" is that they're born in the Wolf Man Crinos form, giving them more power. The Forsaken changes it so that the child of two Urathra is a unihar, a vicious, powerful spirit bent on killing its parents and any werewolves that get in the way. Though this is more "Can't Have Sex With Own Species"; werewolves haven't gone extinct yet because they're interfertile with humans (and, in Apocalypse, wolves). The second edition of Werewolf: The Forsaken quietly did away with the unihar, so two werewolves may freely have sex; the result is an unusually powerful wolf-blooded. Any wolf-blooded has the potential to go through First Change; the offspring of two werewolves is even more likely to do so.
  • In Warhammer 40,000, having sex (or any excessiveness of pleasure) as an Eldar will result in your soul becoming the newest sex toy for the Chaos God Slaanesh, lord of sensations and excess. This is one of the reasons they are a Dying Race. Dark Eldar avoid this by offering the souls of others in place of their own to placate Slaanesh while they indulge themselves. Natural born Dark Eldar are called "Trueborn" and are still rare enough that they are treated with great honor and privilege. The vast majority of Dark Eldar are Vatborn, clones though till considered useful members of society, and what labor the Vatborn can't or refuse to do is done by billions of slaves.

    Video Games 
  • Art of Fighting: It's the probable outcome for Yuri because her brother and their father refuse to let her have a love life, regardless of the fact that she's an adult and mutually attracted to Robert.
  • Borderlands 3: Tyreen mentions that she can't have sex because she keeps leeching her partners. Though given her personality, it's unclear if she literally can't avoid killing them or if she just keeps getting hungry and doesn't have the impulse control to stop herself.
  • Cultist Simulator: Longs are forbidden from having heterosexual relations, with sex being referred to as the "Detestable Act". Your character can find that this is because Longs are cursed with a near uncontrollable desire to eat their own children. Succumbing to the urge transforms them into something else entirely.
  • Mass Effect universe:
    • Quarians are generally like this with other races—thanks to their weak immune systems, sex is dangerous even between two quarians. However, Tali, the quarian love interest in ME2 actively works to subvert the trope if you're romancing her, and admits that getting a nasty cold, as a result, is Worth It. By the third game, her immune system has adapted to Shepard and the two can have sex without issue.
    • Turians have a similar issue—being dextro-amino-based lifeforms unlike most of the Citadel races (humans included), any sort of fluid-exchange could (in a worst-case scenario) cause a deadly allergic reaction in either party. Mordin also warns of chafing due to the roughness of turian body plates (they resemble birds with armor instead of feathers, an adaptation against the higher-than-average background radiation of their homeworld). Once again, you can still go with it if you're romancing Garrus, but it takes quite a bit of planning beforehand. Mordin suggests that you try not to ingest.
    • Asari reproduce by a variant of parthenogenesisnote , triggered by Touch Telepathy with a partner. This is intense for the partner under normal circumstances, but some asari, called Ardat-Yakshi, suffer from a condition that fatally burns out the nervous system of anyone with whom they mate. To make matters worse, this also gives the Ardat-Yakshi a boost to their own natural biotic ability, which proves addictive. If you replace Samara with her Ardat-Yakshi daughter Morinth, you can try to have sex with her, leading to a Nonstandard Game Over.
    • Your brittle-boned pilot Jeff "Joker" Moreau is implied to be unable to have sex unless willing to risk a shattered pelvis due to his disease. He even claims "light, over-the-clothes action" carries risks for injuries. Of course, he says this in the context of his relationship with EDI, who’s made of metal. Sex with an organic may be less risky as far as his bones go.
  • Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous: Arueshalae, one of the potential Love Interests, is a succubus who is attempting a Heel–Face Turn after Divine Intervention restored her conscience. Since she's still a demon, any act of intimacy, even a kiss, could kill her partner (though there's some Forgotten Phlebotinum involved, since the relatively common mid-level spell death ward would be able to negate this in the tabletop game).
  • Both love interests in Planescape: Torment suffer from this. Grace drains the life force of anyone she kisses. Annah heats up to dangerous temperatures once her blood starts racing. And since the main character is immortal, it doesn't matter one bit.
  • Isabella "Ivy" Valentine, the whip-sword fighter from the Soul series, swore a vow of celibacy so that she may not pass on her Malfested curse note  to any of her potential children. This wound up being a valid concern, as both of Sophitia's kids wound up with their fates cursed by Soul Edge and Soul Calibur. Ivy vents out her sexual frustration by being generally dominatrix-themed.
  • Similarly, Word of God gives this reason for why Jin Kazama of Tekken strays away from any kind of relationship, or even meaningful human contact for the most part. Being the scion of the Mishima family's cursed bloodline and having personally suffered because of the supernatural forces his lineage attracts, Jin refuses to let anyone else be afflicted by such a terrible fate—to the point that he plans to ensure the Mishima family tree and the Devil Gene will end with him in the sixth game.
  • Implied by the fandom in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 regarding Fiora after her transformation into a Mechon, yet subverted in the epilogue when she gets her Homs body back.
  • Implied to be the case for Turalyon and Alleria in World of Warcraft after Turalyon becomes Lightforged and Alleria starts using Void magic. The Light and the Void really don't like each other. Turalyon and Alleria however, really do. It is worth noting that they had a son before the events of the game however. Despite being unable to touch without pain, they remain very much in love and happily married.
    • Sylvanas Windrunner and Nathanos Blightcaller for the obvious reason that they are dead. (not according to Fanon though).

    Visual Novels 
  • Code:Realize: Because Cardia's body is poisonous, she is unable to have sex. Her father even warned her that she could never know love. Victor manages to find a way around it, and the poison issue is solved completely in Lupin's route. Her relationships with Impey, Van Helsing, and Saint-Germain, however, are firmly in Chastity Couple territory. They do keep searching for a way to cure it, however, and they succeed in the sequel.
  • Yasu/Shannon/Kanon/Beatrice from Umineko: When They Cry is said to be unable to have sex due to the injuries and mutilation of his/her genitals after being thrown from a cliff as a baby. This together with his/her confusion about his/her gender and sexuality makes him/her consider him/herself as "furniture" and not human. This only gets worse since each of his/her Split Personalities fell in love with a different person, and one of them talks frequently about marriage and children…

    Webcomics 
  • The Baalbuddy character of Virginia Kissless, a female Paladin whose Quest for Sex always ends in failure because her ancestors Deal with the Devil to lose his virginity came at the price of his descendant being cursed to be a virgin forever. This curse cannot be broken except by the power of true lust, meaning that she is incapable of having sex with anyone short of an Extreme Omnisexual despite being the World's Most Beautiful Woman.
  • Sam's species in Freefall dies when they reproduce, both the males and females. They also don't gain full sapience until after the species equivalent of andro/menopause. So their society is made up entirely of those who are sterile or otherwise did not breed. Nothing has said that non-procreative sex is impossible for them, but Sam vaguely refers to sexual/romantic interest as "that mammalian pair-bonding thing," implying at least a certain level of disinterest, and he thought a romantic movie was some manner of overcomplicated assassination plot.
    • And then there's the romance between Florence (a genetically modified wolf with human-level intelligence) and Winston (space-adjusted human), which wasn't explored in terms of actual physical capabilities yet, as they've decided to become an official couple just recently, but is already hindered by the setting's pre-existing laws forbidding humans to mingle with non-human mammals. Ironically, this would not apply if Florence's mind (officially classified as an A.I.) was housed in a fully mechanical body, with which the law has no problems whatsoever, showing how robots and cyborgs are a much more common and established presence in the setting than Florence's prototype species.
  • In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, it's never been spelled out, but it's been heavily implied that however effective Voluptua's shapeshifter unit that lets her appear human may be, she and Bob would not be able to do much of anything physical, even if they were so inclined.
  • Spring goddesses in MYth face their doom when they have a child since the goddess passes her powers to her child and then disappears to return to Gaia. Demeter suffers this after giving birth to Persephone and Hades is aware this could happen to Persephone too.
  • The Snow Queen in Oglaf is an Elemental Embodiment of winter who can only bring spring when she orgasms. She also has a hideously low body temperature, such that any person trying to have sex with her normally would quickly suffer frostbite on... shall we say, sensitive areas. Needless to say, Endless Winter has been a problem for the locals for a while. The town is only saved by a wandering mercenary who simply has sex with her with a strap-on while wearing a heavy winter coat. Later on, a group of dwarves solve the problem in a different fashion by inventing a high-powered vibrator, prompting one of the Queen's prior attempted paramours to gripe about how technology has made spring meaningless.
  • One early strip in The Perry Bible Fellowship is called "The Adventures of the Man with no Penis." The man takes one look at a passing attractive woman and immediately blows his brains out.
  • Dominic and Sarah from Unreality fall into this trope due to the fact that they're 13 and 16 respectively, on top of the fact that they're Not Allowed to Grow Up
  • Deepblooded (drastically mutated) crater hounds in Wurr are not permitted to mate, as stillbirths or Death by Childbirth would likely result.
  • In The Young Protectors, Kyle avoids any sort of sexual activity in his teenage years, since his first attempt at masturbation caused him to lose control of his pyrokinesis and burn his parents' house down. Zig-zagged when he loses his virginity in a fireproof building to someone who can withstand his powers.

    Web Original 
  • Part of the conceit of Lovely Little Losers, since it's inspired by Love's Labour's Lost, is that none of the main characters can have sex — or, indeed, kiss or snuggle.
  • Random Assault: Matt has a dry spell. Hasn't had sex in 4 years.
  • Way too many characters in the Whateley Universe. Fubar has been turned into a water-breathing thing like a Star Spawn. Puppet's secretions are an incredibly deadly poison and also she's on a machine to circulate her "blood" and drain her "lymph," so she lives alone in a room she never gets to leave. Compiler's nanites give her superstrength and superspeed she can't control. Diz can't even touch people because she has a force field that exerts eight tons of force all the time and she can't turn it off. Antenna generates so much electricity he's like a walking lightning storm. And there are more, just on the campus of Superhero School Whateley Academy.

    Western Animation 
  • A more PG version in Adventure Time with Flame Princess — it turns out her Emotional Powers are unstable and romance could cause her to burn through the crust and destroy the Earth. Unfortunately, neither she nor Finn realize that before they decide to have their first kiss.
  • Played for Laughs in Family Guy: in "Lois kills Stewie", Stewie bans sex after becoming ruler of the world, claiming it's "disgusting" and making said deed punishable by death. Cue Lovable Sex Maniac Quagmire making countless origami swans to distract himself from his urges.
  • In Futurama, after members of Zoidberg's species mate, they die. Averted because this doesn't stop them.note 
  • Brock Samson (of The Venture Brothers fame) can never go past second base with Molotov Cocktease (the only woman he ever loved) because of her chastity belt.
  • In Star Trek: Lower Decks, Chief Engineer Andy Billups turns out to be the heir to the throne of Hysperia, who has abdicated his position in order to be a Starfleet officer. By Hysperian law, should he ever lose his virginity, he will automatically be king, so Billups is determined to stay a virgin forever despite his mother's constant attempts at tricking him into getting laid. As far as Billups is concerned, the only lady he loves is two decks high and full of dilithium (i.e. the warp core).

Alternative Title(s): Cannot Have Sex Ever

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