Hey there! Biromantic asexual (graysexual?) here, constantly questioning my own identity and trying to figure myself out, just thought I'd spark a discussion with y'all about what asexuality is to you. (I would start a discussion like this for aro and aro spectrum folks, but I'm not aro so I'd feel kind of appropriative :c but if anyone on the aromantic spectrum wants to start one, please feel free to!)
Friendly reminder that while everyone is encouraged to post here, ace voices do kind of rule supreme in the world of being ace! So please, everyone be kind and respectful of others and yada yada all that good stuff c:
Due to the nature of the discussion, parts of this thread may verge on being mature/18+ and may trigger sex-repulsion. Peruse at your own discretion.
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To me, it's simply not experiencing sexual attraction. I'm not sex-repulsed, I just don't look at people and think "I want you in my bed". I don't have the visceral response of wanting to have sex with people I find attractive -- personally, I'm a little weirded out by my own lack of response, because I feel like I'm missing something in a joke that everyone else is laughing at.
I'm in a committed romantic/sexual relationship right now, and it's odd to me, because The Boyfriend is allosexual. He's literally attracted to me on a level I can barely comprehend, and I confuse myself when I try to. (Obviously he's attracted to me romantically and platonically, too, but still. Weeeeeeird.)
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So, other ace and ace spectrum folks, what is asexuality to you? Those non-ace who have experience with ace and ace spectrum folks, how do you interpret or understand it?
Different Flavors of Asexuality
11 posts in this topic.
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So I am for sure an asexual. I do not want a sexual relationship in any way, shape or form. However, love for me it like those cute moments, not filled with passion, lust, or desire. Maybe walks in the park, swimming, gaming, being chill together. Maybe that's what I want romantically but I cannot stand those scenes where people get undressed.
I want someone to like me because of me and not because of the aspect of intercourse.
As I said, I am asexual, but my romantic orientation is still questionable. I found out my sexual orientation fairly early but I'm still confused. What should I do? -
I'm basically like @NympheaLily. I'm attracted to people romantically, and sex does not sound the least bit appealing to me. And, like her, I love all the thoughts of cute, romantic moments spent together with whoever I'm dating. Which isn't anyone at the moment. (In fact, I haven't even dated before.)
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I have a normal sex drive, I am the standard heterosexual, and I have no special leanings for romance or gender outside the norm. However all of that is stuck behind a wrought iron gate. I don't pay attention to anything sexual, nor romantic most of the time unless I am around a person my mind has accepted as a possibility, which could take a year or more. I could be in a happy and stable relationship with them, but until my mind has fully accepted them, they could be a dolled up plank of wood for all my drives are concerned. I simply can't be attracted to them. Which means I am demi-sexual as far as I can tell, a grey area within the grey area.
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Well, they promised me that asexuals were dragons and I’m very disappointed to discover that I’m not. If that’s not a problem then I don’t know what is.
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But, yes. I’m repulsed by the idea of sex. The issue with me is that I have no idea if I’m asexual or I just feel so dysphoria in those areas that sex is just an awful thought in my mind. It’s hard to tell for me.
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For me, I've been questioning for what feels like forever now, but I don't think it's even been a full year. I'm almost positive I'm asexual at this point (the idea of sex doesn't excite me, and I don't experience sexual attractions or sexual desires). It was always kinda a possibility for me, and for a while I thought I was gray-sexual. At first, I thought I was bisexual, but that didn't feel quite right, and now the label I'm most comfortable with is biromantic asexual.
It's still something I'm wrestling with a lot. I'm not sure how I feel about this, and whether or not I believe that homosexuality is wrong. Either way, I'm currently in an environment where coming out would ostracize me from many of my friends and could potentially jeopardize my safety. Anyway, the main point in all of this is that I am asexual. And that's okay. -
I remember seeing this thread a while back and moving past it. I've considered myself asexual for a long time, which is part of why I was really taken off guard when I found myself started to really like this girl who was a close friend of mine. I knew I wasn't gay, I also knew I wasn't straight, so I thought, maybe like, some odd flavour of bisexuality? But I still kinda knew that what I felt for her, while very strong and all encompassing, had little to do with what I've believed to be sexual attraction.. Like, it's hard because I hear people talk about crushes that they get and people they like and I had never felt the same thing. For this girl, it is something bone-deep.. So I recently found out what demi-sexuality is. I felt that same feeling of finally having a space to fit in that I did when I admitted I was transgender. It just all lined up so well for me. I didn't initially feel this attraction to this girl, that came later after we started to become the best of friends. It came after I felt fully comfortable being myself with her and knew that she felt fully comfortable sharing anything with me. But it is such a strong feeling that I've had a difficult time imagining that it was ever different. So yeah. Demi-Sexuality, a flavour of asexuality if you will, is pretty great. And I am super happy to be able to find a place I am comfortable.
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The idea of sex never appealed to me, and I've never felt aroused by 'attractive' people. My idea of love is cherishing a person for the happy moments they bring me. In other words, I love people in a more platonic way-I enjoy spending time with them, doing an art project together, talking about favorite TV or movie programes, going on a hike, things like that.
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Hey, y'all. I am demiromantic asexual, an ace of diamonds, if you will. To me, I'm usually your standard sex-repulsed asexual. The idea of having sex sounds pretty gross, and I have a hard time understanding that some people actually do like it. I tend to look away when I stumble across steamy stuff in movies or TV shows, and I find it annoying when I find something interesting to watch, and there's like six sex scenes in the first four episodes. However, I have noticed that it bothers me a lot less when I read it. It's like my brain kind of glosses over it and ignores it when I'm reading, so I'm not really bothered. While in film, you can't really do that. Attraction is bizarre because of me being demiromantic, so a lot of this crush stuff sometimes goes way over my head. I also don't really feel aesthetic attraction, so I'm considered one kid in the corner who doesn't know how to love people. This can be frustrating because I still desire a romantic relationship in the future, just not one with sex involved.
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I'm aro-ace and pretty sex-repulsed. I don't think I could ever do it lol, the whole concept is just so gross and absolutely bizarre to me. (Although for some reason I'm more grossed out by the idea of having sex with an amab person than with someone who's afab. Still grossed out, but it's less intense). Along a similar line, it kind of weirds me out when I know another person is sexually sttracted to me or makes comments about my attractiveness (including "hot" or catcalling or whatever). I've never been in a physical space where everyone was on the ace spectrum, but I think that would be so awesome and just comfortable in a way that no other social space really is.
That being said, while I'm solidly ace with zero attraction and fairly high sex repulsion, I do still have a little bit of a libido. Which is weird to talk about lol, but I feel like that can be super confusing for people who might still be questioning if they're ace or not, so I'm going to go ahead and share a little (all pg13 lol). There's more info online in ace spaces and in books on asexuality, but I know that not everyone has safe access to those things. So if that's something that feels relevant to you and your journey, read ahead~Spoiler
First off, libido is not the same as sexual attraction. Libido is the hormonal need for sexual pleasure/gratification, whether from another person or not, sort of an undirected sexual energy--and sexual attraction is that energy directed at a specific person, seeing someone and I guess wanting to be sexually engaged with them.
So I never feel that attraction, but sometimes I do have that "bottled up" libido and it's annoying lol. I kind of think of it the same way I do other body functions like needing to use the bathroom--it's kind of gross, and I'd rather not have it, but you can't just pretend it doesn't exist and it'll go away.
Having a libido, low or high, doesn't make you any less ace. Some aces are sexually active for their own reasons, some of which are simply for pleasure, and that's 100% okay and valid. It's your body, and you aren't harming anyone by doing what makes you happy or more comfortable with it.
For me, probably the most confusing part of coming to terms with having an ace libido (aside from overcoming chastity culture, where anything but sex with my "husband" is Big Bad) has been figuring out what I actually want? Like if I wanted to have a non-romantic partner who I could occassionally have sex with. Any (consentual, obviously) answer to that question is valid. For me it turns out to be a solid no lol. The nebulous idea of it might sound nice in my head from time to time, but the actual concrete meaning of that? Nope. Back to hecking repulsion.
The last thing I'll note on repulsion and libido confusion--you do not need to try sex to know you wouldn't like it. This is a common invalidating comment people make to aces, that "if you just try it, you'll like it," or "how do you know you don't if you've never done it?" Partnered sex is not the default human experience of sexuality. It's not a "do it until you don't like it" situation. If someone feels genuinely motivated to seek out sex, then that's totally okay. But if that motivation isn't there, that's totally okay too and they don't need to change. Libido doesn't equal that motivation or desire, so just know, if you're someone who has one, you should still never feel pressured into anything by anyone. It's still your body, your experience, your life.
...I know this is getting long, sorry, I have a lot of Thoughts XD
Just one last thing. I'm also a sexual trauma survivor. That can be a dicey thing where it intersects with asexuality. I have had my orientation questioned because of my experiences--it's a fairly common thing unfortunately for bigoted and ignorant people to asume that the only reason someone would be asexual is because of trauma, which just simply isn't the case, and even in ace spaces, there's often some push back against sharing your identity as a survivor or victim because of that harmful misconception.
Most of my doubt about being ace as I was first discovering it was just me wondering if maybe those people were right, that maybe I am just supressing something I'm afraid of, and let me tell you, that feeling sucks. Not even because of the doubt itself or being unsure, but because it makes you feel like something is so deeply wrong with you, that something bad that stole control away from you in the first place hasn't stopped controlling you and you're not as healed or as strong as you thought, that you don't even know yourself at this basic level.
It's not okay, and it's not true.
Some of the biggest harm that comes from this kind of culturally induced gaslighting is that, if other people supposed know something so intimate and personal about you better than you can, then they can dictate just about anything they want about you and you could start to believe it. That's some kind of cultural emotional abuse and it needs to stop. It's never true. No one knows your healing, your hurt, your experience of identity and desire better than you do. It's your experience. They literally have zero access to it beyond what you share, and they should believe you.
An ace friend of mine who helped me discover my own ace identity explained it really well: Trauma can affect action, not attraction. You'll be attracted to who your brain is wired to be attracted to, trauma or no trauma. Your confidence or comfort or repulsion in acting on that is another thing, and that's where trauma can be a bitch. Someone could want to have sex with their partner and feel attracted to them, but trying it is too triggering. Attraction vs action.
There's aspects of my repulsion that I can definitely connect to trauma, or that even used to be triggering, but I don't believe it's all linked to that. My absense of attraction isn't linked to it at all. I still feel like I have to choose in most spaces whether I can share my ace identity or my survivor identity, but at the end of the day, I'm ace and I'm survivor and those are both important to me, no matter what anyone else says.
Hope some of this helps ^-^
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