Here's my coming out story. Trigger warning for abuse, and the trappings of your standard coming out stories.
I was raised in a high control religion, where attraction wasn't really taught, where women were taught how to be removed from their own attraction and feelings weren't well explained. Sex was a dirty secret, and I didn't even learn about my own anatomy until after I was married. I was isolated from knowledge on purpose, to keep me from recognizing and acting on it.
I didn't really question my sexual identity too much in middle school and high school, because of course I would be just like everyone else, right? Except when girls would talk about guys, I didn't always know how to relate. Sure, I had crushes, I think, but not as quick, or as intense as some of these other girls. I found myself making up crushes, or emphasizing the ones I had just to feel normal, to fit in, to blend, because clearly there was something I was missing.
I remember exaggerating a crush to the point where I was talking about how pretty his eyes were- I didn't actually care too much about them, but it worked. I started getting teased about how into this guy I was, and while outwardly I was embarrassed, on the inside I was elated. I managed to fit in.
And I couldn't be queer, because I could have crushes on boys! I distinctly remember a few crushes on them. Sure, they were men I would never have the opportunity to get close to, but the distance was part of the allure, right? that's what made it a crush and not a relationship.
I remember getting very annoyed at the first man to fully like me back. I had pined after him for months, and then when he decided I was acceptable to date, all I could feel was irritation and cut him off quickly.
And then there were a few girls in my life. The beautiful girls who I wrote letters to, songs to, poetry about, drew pictures of over and over again, crafted stories where I gave them the perfect boyfriends that they actually deserved, that I could craft. I didn't understand why I got so frustrated when they chose to date boys.
So I married a boy who seemed good enough. His family seemed pissed off, and threatened to hurt me if I ever left him for a woman. That was fine, because I was never going to do that. I didn't like women.
And then we immediately had marital problems, because intimacy was nonexistant. It was probably because I was just a virgin, right? We just weren't doing it right. But he didn't seem very interested in trying, because he 'didn't believe in foreplay' because it was boring. Eventually, he after a vibrator at my head one day he told me to 'take care of myself' and was permitted to do so after I made sure HE was taken care of first.
And intimacy kind of worked that way, but it felt hollow and broken. I forgot about intimacy and relied on him to initiate because I felt very little desire. He complained how unfair it was that he had to initiate, wondered why I didn't want to. Why I would say no.
I found friends in online spaces, and met a few lovely asexuals and the feeling felt familiar and clicked. I was asexual.
I came out to my spouse, and immediately regretted it. He said he 'just had to deal with a defective spouse'. Told me how much it hurt him that I was asexual. I tried to explain that I was sex positive and I was still able to perform, it just wasn't something I enjoyed very much but was happy to share with him and wanted that intimacy.
That didn't help the matter, he only got angrier. Every argument seemed to come back to how I was a defective wife. He used it as the reason why he should be allowed to explore more kinks, if I was defective anyways, it didn't matter what he did to my body, did it? And I felt guilty over my asexuality because I truly loved him, so I said yes. Hell, I encouraged it sometimes.
It didn't matter what happened to my body. I became more and more removed from it, from what happened to me. I didn't know pleasure, or attraction, or intimacy. I knew pain, but sometimes my body would climax so It couldn't be that bad, this is what it wanted, isn't it?
It was when I started journaling, and keeping track of how many times I tried to say no and my asexuality was used against me, and sometimes when I would outright say no, or that I was hurting, and how often it was ignored, I realized what was being done to me.
I left him, got the divorce. I was thrilled to not be dating for at least a year, it felt liberating to have a reason to say no, to not put myself out there.
I did eventually develop attraction to a man (Who did not reciprocate my affection, but it was enough to know that I was capable of attraction), which confused me because I was asexual, wasn't I? And this was real attraction, I was suddenly able to recognize my wants very clearly. This attraction had been there the whole time to people, I just didn't have a name for it thanks to purity culture. I didn't realize these feelings were supposed to lead to anything, and now, post marraige where I had learned what sex was for the first time, I knew what attraction was.
Of course, that also meant I had to address deeper feelings, and what attraction was. It also meant addressing the fact that I had also felt this way about women. I realized I was bisexual.
It took a while to finally start dating women, and I wasn't great at it at first. I kept expecting it to be magical, suddenly clicking into place and become easier than dating men, that suddenly attraction would pour out and I would become the sexual being I was always meant to be.
I was disappointed, wondering if I was actually bisexual. Did I ever like anyone, or were these just limerences?
I came back to asexuality, only to realize it was a spectrum, and that it was typically associated with neurodivergency. So I pulled on that thread, discovered that I was also struggling with undiagnosed ADHD.
My identity is still fluid and forming, but the more I accept it as a spectrum combining my past and my future, I'm a lot more confident in pointing somewhere on the ace and bi spectrum and saying I'm there.
I'm getting a lot better at dating women, some of the fears are gone, and I'm more comfortable approaching and initiating, something sorely needed on this side of the dating pool. I've met some lovely people and some lifelong friends.
And to my younger self, to the one first struggling with the 'unexplainable' draw to certain women, and to the one struggling with asexuality:
You both would have loved pride, and it's okay, I'll celebrate enough for all of us.
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