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Late for Ace’s birthday where he’s older

My Asexy Story

I came out as an asexual eight years into my marriage at age 30.

When I met my husband, we’d been emailing for a couple of years. I had very little idea of what he looked like, just a bad picture of him in a canoe on a lake wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap. Three weeks before 9/11, he stepped off that plane in Atlanta, and I was in love. I tell this story often. It was love at first sight.

Before I met J, I’d been in relationships, though they were all very innocent. I never slept with any of my boyfriends, mainly because I never viewed them sexually. They’d all been friends I’d had no attraction to. When I was about 15, I discovered Harrison Ford in Working Girl and he became my main crush. I loved his physique. I loved how he looked.

My crushes were all like that. I never thought of them sexually. I liked how they looked. I liked chests, arms, hair, never anything below the waist. I wanted to be loved unconditionally. (Being bullied had created a fantasy of simple acceptance, and my daydreams always ended as soon as the I love you’s were said, after the great declaration had been made that I was, in fact, perfect.) I was innocent, virginal, with no sexual desire whatsoever.

But when J came around, there was… everything. Until we slept together during our first christmas, I hadn’t imagined what happened after I love you. He was and still is my first and only sexual partner. Until J, I hadn’t wanted sex. Our relationship was long distance, with me travelling from Atlanta to Ottawa once, then twice a year. We once went 8 months without being together. Everything had a need, an urgency. We never knew when the last time would be.

So it was great. We were dating and we were in love and soon enough we were engaged and we both made the move to Vancouver. He came first and I followed a few months later. Our sex life was, up to that point, pretty awesome.

That’s when the trouble began.

Until sex became an every day thing, I’d enjoyed it. I liked what it brought us, intimacy and pleasure. It made him happy. But I struggled with initiating sex. That’s when we started arguing. He would get frustrated, and I would, too, and I would promise to be less selfish, that I would try harder. Because that’s what it looked like to J, me being selfish. To me, it felt like I was being attacked for something I didn’t even know I wasn’t doing.

I cried a lot during those conversations, and I wondered what was wrong with me. How had it been that during our time apart, sex was vital and engaging? And now that we were married, now that we were able to have all the sex we wanted, I wouldn’t, couldn’t initiate. Why? It was always on my shoulders, this burden.

We were married about eight years and fighting about my lack of initiation and sex drive fairly regularly. I wondered when he would leave, if I’d had to go back to Georgia when we separated. I thought about keeping a bag packed. I was always the one in the wrong, and I was tiring of feeling like the villain all the time.

I kept trying to explain to him whatever it was going on inside my head; it was like trying to explain to an NFL player why some people don’t like sports. I could never get the words right and he never seemed to understand.

I don’t know what the first pro-asexuality blog is that I discovered. I saw the word, I saw the discussions. At first I didn’t think anything of it. Someone talked about AVEN, about this safe place for people who don’t experience sexual attraction. I had, ONCE, but J was always the exception to the rule. I also had only ever fallen in love once, too, and I was lucky enough that the experience changed my life in a myriad of positive ways.

I ignored it for a while. Until the next fight.

Everything in my life had lead up to this point. Asexuality. Not broken. I was 30, and felt like I was on the verge of divorce.

One day, I said it out loud. I’m asexual. It explained so much. I told J, I think… I’m asexual. Saying it aloud helped. Telling him helped. I was no longer accused of being selfish. He was a little more forgiving.

I said nothing more. I blogged about it, came out here on Tumblr. But I hid it, minimized my browser when he came to look over my shoulder. I was ashamed of it, in a way, because I was worried that J didn’t quite understand it, or me.

Then one night, about a year ago, we were intimate. And standing naked in front of him later, I said it all in a rush. I explained what I felt as an ace, what the sex part of our relationship means to me. I was, literally, standing in front of him, vulnerable and exposed and saying things I’d hidden inside my heart for more than a year.

When I say that my asexuality saved my marriage, I’m not exaggerating. Yes, there are still things I need to work on. And I do try. And I’m sure it’s not easy for HIM to be married to me. He’s got a libido that I don’t have and because of that, his needs are vastly different. But he’s patient, and I’m no longer the villain in our relationship. I wouldn’t trade this wonderful man for anyone else in the world because of it.

I see so many young adults on Tumblr questioning their sexuality, wondering if they are ace or demi. I wonder myself if I’d had tumblr at their age, would I have done things any differently. I don’t know. But looking back at my life, I was always ace and just never knew.

What courage and self awareness it takes to ask those things of yourself! Until I was married, I didn’t know I HAD to ask those questions.

I’m one of those older Tumblr users, way out of the typical demographic, yet without Tumblr I would never have seen that fateful post that changed my life. I wrote this originally wanting to say something about discovering sexuality at an older age. It’s harder, I think, as an older person. I think you deny a lot of yourself and you ignore a lot of signs and you get comfortable in your routine, however uncomfortable it may be at times.

In my case, I just honestly didn’t know. I didn’t know there was a word to describe myself in that way, that there were other people who felt the same way I did.

I’ve been very lucky, however, for the last 3 years.

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