So, story time, apparently, because my insurance hasn't come through yet which means I am yet to schedule therapy and as such am about to severely overshare and expose myself publicly on the internet for the sake of feeling a little less lonely I guess. Go grab a seat and some popcorn 'cause this one is gonna be a long one - very very long.
This is about my sexuality (aroace) and how I came to terms with it and where I am now.
TW: mentions of bullying (I guess,I don't really see it as bullying but I was told it was bullying so there), aphobia, masturbation (you have no idea how long it took me to just straight up write that word), periods, and general aro ace queer confusion.
But why not just talk to some ace people near you, if you are in such need of understanding you'd turn to strangers on the internet ? Well, there aren't that many ace or aro people around me and the few that I know are not that great to talk to, not because of their sexuality, mind you, but because they make very uncomfortable jokes and are all cis boys which normally wouldn't be a problem except that I grew up around no men and am kind of akward - especially considering I am one of the very few girls in our major, so internet strangers and possible exposure it is.
Therefore, our story begins when I was about nine and going to Adventist school - because it was cheap and the closest to my house, not because I myself was Adventist - when children started talking about dating and kissing, mostly for jokes but still sometimes seriously. When one of the girls had her period before anyone else and got caught with socks on her bra it was a pure scandal.
I couldn't understand it. I mean I understood why people would want to date and be with significant others more than the typical child that age, since I read a lot and I read anything I could get my hands on, and not always necessarily age appropriate books since adults tend to believe all books are inheritenly good for their children without checking the content.
What I couldn't understand is why would anyone be so worried about things like that so early. In all the stories I saw and the books I read the characters were at least teenagers before they started being interested. That coupled with adults around me saying repeatedly that children were being oversexualized and that it'd be better if they just focus on their studies led me to make a bet with my friends that I would never date or kiss anyone until I was sixteen. Best decision I ever made.
So as the years passed my friends and everyone else arround me started freaking out more and more about crushes and who had kissed who and when they asked me all I had to do was remind them of that bet and they'd leave it alone. Sometimes a few kids would ask me things like whether I wanted to be a nun or why was I actually trying to keep that bet, but mostly I could just completely forget about it.
However as I started getting older - at about 14 - my relatives started noticing and though at first when I told them about my no-dating-until-16 plans they thought I was very smart and concentrating on the right things soon enough I'd catch my aunt and my mom having conversations about how "something must be wrong with that kid" and "you should take her to see a doctor". My aunt suggested I might need hormone therapy.
My friends kept telling me about people who they thought had crushes on me - which usually made me panic because I didn't know how to reject anyone if they were right, kids at my school started asking me increasingly invasive and mean questions ( " have you really never kissed anyone?", "are you just in love with yourself?", "were you abused?", "are you afraid of sex?", "do you even know what a penis looks like?") and my mom kept trying to make me interested in someone.
She would try to make me look at scenes that made me uncomfortable in movies and TV, tell me stories about her sex life, show me pictures of famous people and point at random people on the street and say "aren't they cute?", anytime anyone showed even the slightest bit of interest she would practically throw me in their direction. She asked me if I wanted therapy, if I thought I needed hormonal treatments, if I was a lesbian - totally cute of her but a little off the mark - at one point she even took the whole sapiosexual thing that was going around facebook and convinced me that the reason I hadn't been interested in anyone was because I hadn't met anyone who was intellectually stimulating enough.
At about 15 she asked me if maybe I could be asexual. I think she meant it as a joke but I looked it up anyway and lo and behold there was the answer all along. I pretty much came out immediately to my family and my closest friends and was met with the usual "you'll find someone some day", "it's just a phase", "maybe you should just try it, just to check" but eventually that started to die out and they started to accept it.
I guess part of it was that they thought things would change by the time I got to college and to be honest I was still pretty unsure, but when people asked me inconvenient questions about why I never went out with anyone now I had an actual answer which, of course, led to even more invasive questions from my classmates but I tended to be pretty good at taking it in stride.
I think it was meant to be a joke of sorts, go ask uncomfortable questions to the innocent nerd and see how she squirms so we can laugh about it later, kind of how some boys will make fake crushes and pretend to ask girls they think are ugly out or keep ironically complimenting them to make fun of them, because if they believe it it's funny she was gullible and if she doesn't she can't do much because they can just say they were trying to be nice.
But I pretty much had a policy to always smile and be nice to people and answer them honestly even when you knew they were being purposefully hurtful unless you were in a dangerous situation, because a lot of the joke got lost then, specially when it was obvious I knew what their intentions were and tried to dialog anyway. And though the questions never stopped while I was in High School the jokes did. And I kind of even became sort of friends with some of those boys? They asked me to tutor them, we were nice to each other, we talked about tv shows so I suppose things got better.
At 16, even already wearing the label ace, I was finally without the bet excuse for not dating and without it to hide behind I was forced to really confront my feelings. My friends mostly seemed pretty ok with my identity and didn't pressure me much but they did keep trying to get me to "be mature" and say or do things that made me uncomfortable - but then again these things weren't always related to sex, sometimes they were just trying to get me to swear - or making dirty jokes that I didn't want to hear. At that point my mom had moved on to trying to convince me to at least try to touch myself and telling me how good sex felt and that I'd really be missing out.
But even though I now didn't have my self-imposed silly rule and a very close friend who I really liked was actually interested I still felt no need to be intimate with anybody. There was not a lick of desire anywhere in my body, but I was still pretty conflicted. I knew I had never had a crush or felt lust for anybody but I had always loved romance books and movies and I squealed when two characters got together and I loved cheering for my friends in their love lifes and going to weddings - I could go to a wedding every weekend honestly - and I had always generally been a hopless romantic "in love with love" type of person.
At 17 we had to make a seminar about minorities and since my friend group had the only queer people in the entirety of the school so naturally we were assigned the LGBTQIA+ community. That was the first time I ever read about the distinction of romantic and sexual and platonic attractions and I swear it was like suddenly the entire world clicked in my brain and everything made sense. My friend's ears were probably bleeding by the time I finally stopped talking about it but I could be at least a little more grounded in my asexuality. At least I knew I could maybe still have those things I liked so much in fiction, I could still maybe one day not be alone and have someone to raise a family with, someone to decorate for Christmas with, who would help me in the bad days and who I could share good days with. Who could grow old with me so I didn't have to retire alone and helpless.
After that I was pretty confident, I was in no hurry to find romantic love and just kept thinking that if was going to happen it would just happen. But it did get me thinking about my limits. What would I be willing to do if I ever did get a romantic partner? Would I be willing to do it with anyone who wasn't a romantic partner?
I think it is worth it to note that I was reading smut since I was 13yo. This wasn't exactly because I went out seeking for it, in fact the first few times I came across it I was a bit disturbed, I'm not going to lie, but I was desperate to read new things, kindle had free things to read and sometimes those things had undisclosed smut. At first I skipped it, then I realized I was missing plot and started skimming it and eventually I was just reading it just like you'd read anything else. So despite my friends repeatedly attempting to make me more mature and teaching me the lingo I am 60% sure I was far more educated at that point (when no one had actually done anything more than kissing) than they could have possibly been.
So I did know about things and how the plumbing worked, I just didn't know if I'd ever be willing to test mine. One beautiful day, when no one was home and I was 18 and reading I wondered "maybe I could just try doing it myself, just to see if I even feel anything." And I thought I'd done it wrong, because I didn't scream or pant or do any of the things that the media usually describe, so I tried again that night,and the next day.
Soon I found that not only did it help me relax enough to sleep, something that had evaded me for years on end, I had a pretty high libido because I suddenly could recognize what before I couldn't identify as arousal, and it happened a lot, at random times, but one thing I noticed was that it never had to do with anyone. It mostly happened whenever I started worrying or thinking about sex and sexuality itself but never because of an actual person. I dealt with it pretty often, never thinking about scenarios with myself or things like that, just shadows, or colors, or movements or reading something.
But the fact that I was doing it and that I was doing it so often suddenly put my sexuality into doubt, could I really be ace with what I did alone at night? The fact that I was doubting it so much and that I had over the years built so much of my self within the fact that I am ace made it so I was too scared to even tell anyone about my libido just in case telling them would make them doubt me again, make them invalidate me or tell me I would eventually just magically wake up allo. To this day I have only ever told one person I know personally, and that was on a really bad day.
But I did do something similar to this I'm doing now and posted to AVEN and after very big welcome cakes and assurances that everything I was going through was completely normal and that it didn't make me any less ace, which felt like a balm on an open wound, I calmed down a little.
So, this one day there was a kareoke pizza party at my uni and this guy sings Moana and I sing Moana and we start talking about the merits of the translation and he ends up asking me if I wanna see a movie that night after the party (it was an in-campus party so it didn't end too late) and I as the clueless dork that I am started going around asking if anybody else wanted to come with.
Nobody did which I thought was strange but ok and so we went to the 24h room of the library to watch it and for about 2/3 of the movie I was completely immersed, not even noticing what was happening around me. However, suddenly I got the strange notion that maybe he was getting a bit too close. Like he was trying to do something. Weird.
But I thought that before and it was nothing, and I thought it was nothing when it was something so clearly I am not the best at reading signs from people. And like he was pretty cool, wonderful person really, so he offered to take me to my door and I said yes because I am terrified of walking alone at night and in the middle of the way he did a real movie move and kind of went bumping his hand with mine until he could kind of naturally hold it? That's when my brain went "oh crap."
I had until we got to the door to make a decision. I did like him. But the more I thought about the idea of actually kissing someone the more icky I felt but maybe I should just try it and see what happens? Like everyone keeps telling me to do?
So we get in front of my building and he turns towards me and I look up and I can hear my heart pounding and I just go "sorry, I'm ace." And run as fast as I can towards the door. Yup. Left him cold and did a dash and hide. Not my greatest moment.
Anyway I felt very embarrassed and kind of sorry so I sent an apology text and explained and he said that actually he was totally cool with it and if I wanted to he would love to date without needing the whole physical part. And that seemed like a good idea.
I hated it. Every single minute. Again it wasn't him. I like him, we are friends as much as we can be friends without me akwardly wandering whether I'm leading him on all the time. But the situation, it was just the worse. I just couldn't think of ever doing it again. With anyone.
So, yeah, probably Aromantic too. Which was a surprise.
But the funny thing is that if she wanted to I would marry my best friend in an instant. Not to go on dates, or kiss or for physical intimacy but just so we could officially be there for each other. So I guess my platonic attraction is pretty strong. And there are people I see that I just really like the look of, so aesthetic attraction is also present. And I usually know just by looking at someone that I really want to be friends with them.
But sometimes I still stop and go "is what I'm feeling for this person actually romantic? How do I know?". But I guess that is what being aro or ace or really just queer in general in a world that wasn't really made for you is, constantly second guessing yourself. We just need to learn that that's ok and it doesn't make us any less who we are.
Anyway, hope this helped anyone struggling in their own journey or let people who've already been through this know that they are not alone. Because you are not. We are in this together.
