Being Asexual Does Not Mean We Haven’t Found the Right Person Yet
It also doesn’t equal inexperience nor does it mean our relationships aren’t meaningful.
“I used to think I was asexual. Then I met my first partner, and sex felt right. Now, I love sex with anyone.”
Those words have been said to me SO many times, and always when I told someone that I am ace — that is, asexual.
For me, being ace means I don’t really feel sexual attraction, but if I do, I don’t want to act on it. Sex just doesn’t appeal to me. I still feel emotional attraction, physical attraction, romantic attraction, and I still want to fall in love and have a romantic relationship. But sex just “doesn’t do it” for me — to quote Dr Jean Milburn from the NetGalley series Sex Education.
I always get nervous telling people I’m ace. People make jokes about asexuality, and a lot of it comes from misinformation. I’ve been made to feel ashamed for being an ace. One of my parents even said that being asexual is “unnatural” and then treated me to a lecture about human evolution and how we evolved to want sex.
I don’t want people to think I’m unnatural. I don’t want to be treated differently. I’m still me.
But telling those I’m close to is very important to me. I shouldn’t have to hide this part of myself.
Yet one thing I’ve found is that a lot of people react with some form of: “I used to think I was asexual. Then I met my first proper partner that I really liked, and I found I wanted to have sex all the time, and this continued into all my later relationships. I was asexual, until I was awakened to sex.”
And I really hate this response. I’m telling this person something personal about me, but their response invalidates my identity. It makes me think that the person who says this believes that asexuality isn’t really a thing, other than it being inexperience. And it also suggests that they just think I haven’t found the right person yet — someone who can ‘awaken’ me to sex. It invalidates the romantic relationship that I’m in. In their eyes, they believe my relationship isn’t as important as their own, if I still “believe” I’m asexual when I’m in it.
So often, romantic relationships aren’t seen as “real” and meaningful unless sex is involved. I am used to hearing my relationships being compared to others — and always in a way where mine come out as lesser, because there’s no sex.
I’ve even pretended to others that my relationships have been sexual — just because I want them to see my relationships as valid, as valid as their own. And this is unfortunately how it works. When I was in a relationship that my friend thought was sexual, she was more interested in hearing how I was getting on emotionally and how I was connecting to my partner. When I told her I was in a sexless relationship due to asexuality, she wasn’t as keen to ask details in the close way that female friends often do. There were no “tell me everything!” messages — maybe because she assumed incorrectly there was nothing to tell, that you can’t have depth and a meaningful romantic relationship if there is no sex to cement it.
My asexual relationships are meaningful and intimate though. Sex isn’t the only form of intimacy.
These answer I’m used to hearing — “I used to think I was asexual, then I met my first partner” and “I just needed to be awakened to sex” — reveal something else that’s important. People seem to also equate asexuality to inexperience, assuming the two go hand in hand and are synonymous. This suggests asexuality to be a phase, something we grow out of once we’ve met either the right person or are old enough to want sex — and then we want it all the time, with anyone we find remotely attractive.
I have known I was asexual since a young age. At school, friends talked about sex a lot. I listened and joined in sometimes, but I never really got the excitement about it. I never wanted to do it myself — and I still don’t.
I was 19 before I had my first relationship, and my friends made me feel like I was behind in this respect. But I just wasn’t interested in sex — and at that point I believed all romantic relationships had to involve sex.
It wasn’t until I was 22 when I really began to realise I was asexual, first coming across demisexual as an identity — part of the asexual spectrum where someone only experiences sexual attraction once a strong emotional bond has been formed. And the whole asexual spectrum made so much sense.
This explained who I was. I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t abnormal.
And the best part was there were others like me.
Yet when I told my friend, when I was 23 or 24, that was her response: that she wrongly thought she was asexual, until she met her first partner who she ‘really liked’ and had sex. Thereby implying that I too could be ‘cured’ of my asexuality — I just needed to find someone I ‘really liked’.
Asexuality cannot be cured. It does not need to be cured.
There is nothing wrong with me being asexual. It’s not an illness. It doesn’t mean we can’t form meaningful relationships. It also does not equate to experience. A lot of asexuals have had sex — only realising they’re asexual once they’ve experienced these things and realised they have little or no connection to them.
I don’t know why I keep thinking about those words my friend said. I just do. It makes me uncomfortable and every time I see her, I feel I have to justify my relationship to her. “Yes, there’s no sex BUT…”
But I am an asexual.
Perhaps you wrongly used the term asexual before.
Or maybe she really was asexual before… Sexual identity is fluid and it can change. Asexuality is also a spectrum and it includes gray-sexuals and demi-sexuals too.
I just wish she hadn’t said that as her response when I told her I was ace as it suggests asexuality isn’t real or that the person just doesn’t know what they want and that they need to be ‘awakened to sex’.
I am not a teenager now. I know what I want. I know what I am. And I know that my relationship as a romantic asexual is just as meaningful as an allosexual relationship. I just wish others would view it that way too.
