Yes I’ve Been on SSRIs, No They Didn’t Make Me Demisexual
Here’s how I know
Aphobes keep moving the goalposts. Not that long ago, they were claiming that asexuality in all its forms doesn’t exist. Through last year and this year, they’ve tried to frame it as a mental illness thing. Apparently, all asexuals, regardless of microlabel, either fear or hate sex due to traumas that don’t really exist because everyone these days is a snowflake who see everything as traumatic.
Side note: how they tally these beliefs with the idea that all men are sex fiends, I don’t know. Probably the same way they insist that demisexuality is just “being a normal woman” — i.e., ignoring asexual and demisexual men as inconvenient to their ignorance.
Now, just like with transphobia, they’re framing it as a side effect of using antidepressants. I fully admit to having been on SSRIs on two separate occasions for extended periods. I also realise that looking back, there are times in my life I should have been on them but wasn’t.
So how do I know that SSRIs didn’t turn me demisexual?
I got my first major crush on a friend in 1994. I was nineteen and it was probably the first time I had experienced sexual attraction. This should have been my first clue to being on the asexual spectrum (had there been much knowledge about it) as most people would have experienced it dozens of times by this age. I had no idea what was happening to me or my body.
It happened again in 1997 with no crushes between those two. She was another friend. We were arguably closer friends than the previous crush and her rejection hit me a little harder. At this point, I was still friends with the previous one too.
I met my first long-term partner in 1999. We were together for twelve years and broke up due to her infidelity. My lack of interest in sex in the latter years of our relationship was clearly a factor, but it was not the reason she cheated. I have since come to realise that I am sex neutral with an average libido with the occasional sudden and intense swing towards very sex favourable and a high libido.
Our marriage ended in October 2011 and finally dissolved in April 2013.
So when was I on SSRIs? The first time was May-July 2011 when my ex-wife’s infidelity first came to light and just as we entered couples therapy. The second was between September 2012 and February 2013 when I felt trapped in my situation, in debt, struggling to get work literally anywhere in the country desperate for a fresh start anywhere but there.
That’s a period of seventeen years where I had all the signs of being on the asexual spectrum if not demisexual specifically (even though there was no word for it back then) but had never been on SSRIs.
I want to write an article about correlation vs causation, and instances of depression among queer people (specifically, if possible, asexual people) but that will be a whole other article.
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