So I identify as a female asexual biromantic. What does that
mean, you ask? Well, asexuality is characterized as just not feeling sexual
attraction towards other people. And that’s it. You can have sex/masturbate as
much as you want and still be asexual. (There’s a difference between sexual
attraction and sex drive that people often overlook and never talk about.) I
also like to go by my romantic orientation, biromantic, as well. And finding
this out has been a wild ride, let me tell you (in fact I’m going to).
My whole life I just assumed I was a heterosexual (I mean,
most everyone does really) but just like really bad at it. I never really had
crushes in school, I remember actually pretending to have one in first grade
because these two girls that I was hanging out with during recess at the time
were doing it. (It wasn’t the best situation, I really only hung out with them
because they were the only ones in my class that I knew at all.) I literally
just picked the same guy as one of the other girls, and then they decided that
only one person could have a certain guy and just had me sit to the side while
they talked about boys or like whatever. I developed a great relationship with
woodchips.
In sixth grade a guy asked me out. There were several issues
that I had with this, first of all he got his friend to ask me for him. I mean,
guys if you’re going to ask someone out, do it yourself. And it was in the
middle of lunch, which isn’t the best one-on-one time. So me being me, I
thought it was a joke and practically yelled “no!” and she went back to him and
told him and found the whole thing hilarious which I didn’t really appreciate
because as I said I had no idea what was happening. Classic.
I’ve also had strange encounters with crushes, I tend to get
crushes only after I think the guy might be into me a little. Which sounds good
in theory, but I tend to misinterpret his body language and everything falls
apart. In eighth grade a guy asked me to our first fancy dance. My main
reaction was “uhhhhgee”. I eventually said yes. It didn’t end up working out
since he got a girlfriend and didn’t tell me so we didn’t go together but ended
up awkwardly dancing together anyways (eighth grade was weird man) and were
even friends all through high school! And as a result of this, I had a bit of a
crush for about a year after he asked me to the dance.
There have been a few more like that. And when I say that I
mean like 2. I had never been on a date, and didn’t really even appreciate
beautiful celebrities until halfway through high school. I thought I might have
been slightly homosexual for a while because I had some feelings for my
friends, I just wasn’t sure that I wanted to like have sex with girls (or guys
really, I didn’t question my feelings much). I wasn’t too bothered by things
like this, I kind of just wasn’t concerned with my orientation. In a like fuck
labels way. I didn’t see the need to specifically pin down my orientation. I
also had absolutely no idea what asexuality was. I knew it existed, but I only
knew the biological definition of cells splitting in two.
And then a few months ago I hit on this article explaining
asexuality (it was done through a comic, I think it’s still floating around)
and it smacked me across the face: this article was talking about ME. It
explained so much. Now I knew why I asked my mom how early humans knew sex
would lead to reproduction when she gave me the talk, and why I almost walked
in on my friend having sex when his girlfriend was over. Because the
rationality behind having sex was just something that I didn’t understand at
all!
Being asexual is pretty nice, fundamental Christians don’t
seem to have a problem with us which is a nice bonus. Really the main problem
is that no one knows what asexuality is (and this is coming from someone who
didn’t know anything about it either until she realized she was one). Which is
why I haven’t come out to many people, I just don’t want to have to explain it
to them. And there’s other problems, like the fact that asexuality is
characterized by a lack of attraction, so I tend to be in a lot of doubt about
it sometimes (honestly whenever I feel like this I remember the aforementioned
almost-walking-in-on-my-friend incident) (then I wonder how I missed the signs
earlier). And another problem is realizing that everyone thinks completely
differently from you, which can be a little alienating.
But the nice thing is that I now have words for what I am,
and how I feel. And as I said, I came out to a few friends and they have all
been nothing but supportive about it. (Full disclosure: I was a little drunk at
the time. Pro tip: don’t do that.) I haven’t come out to my family because I
can almost guarantee that they won’t know what it is, and that it won’t affect
our relationship in any way. I still want to tell them at some point, I just
have literally no idea how to do it. I’ll get around to it eventually.
What I would really like to see is more asexual awareness
out there. The average person has no idea what asexuality is or what it means
to be asexual. And this is a part of someone’s identity, it should be more
widely known!
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