When I first saw #AsexualityAwareness (Now #InternationalAsexualityDay), I was a bit confused by social media posts saying things like ‘you’re not broken’ and ‘you’re valid.’ With my personal experience of being ace, I had no idea why anyone felt the need to state this. But I’m lucky to live in a country I feel is atheistic on a national level (Australia). The Christian norm that people SHOULD marry and SHOULD have kids is something I only learned about in conversation with Americans from particular (LGBTQIA+ damaging) Christian denominations. Religion has had limited impact on my life as an asexual person.
When I meet new people (in person), they ask if I have a partner (I’m also aromantic and disinterested in romantic or sexual partnerships personally. I simply do not form such attachments). I reply to said colleagues/ fellow travellers, ‘no’ or even, ‘nah, happily single’ and the conversation moves on, searching for other points of connection.
But being asexual HAS impacted my life, in ways I haven’t thought much about, given I didn’t feel its impact anywhere near as strongly as that of my ADHD, being autistic or being nonbinary.
After multiple conversations with asexual people online, I’d like to evaluate the impact and my experience of asexuality here. For all and any who relate, and to give allosexuals (people who experience sexual attraction and are in a broad sense ‘unconditionally’ interested in sex) insight into a sexual category you may know very little about.
My Asexuality as a Teen (circa the early 2000’s)
My Asexuality in a (Baptist) Church
I went to church as a teenager. One that very much encouraged people not to engage in any sexual activity until marriage (and then with your marital partner). Other teens had boyfriends or girlfriends. Other teens found sexual restraint a challenge or debated at which level of sexual activity you technically ‘lost your virginity.’
But it was easy for me. I didn’t date. I didn’t feel sexual attraction or even really experience sexual desire (even a romantic desire to be intimate that way) at all. I also didn’t watch or read sexual content because it was foreign and just not part of my life experience. Sex avoidance was easy for me, as I was sexually disinterested.
[SideNote: I stopped attending church at seventeen when I realised I believed humans should fundamentally treat each other with decency and respect (as actual Jesus taught), but I disagreed about ‘original sin’, Satan & hell’s existence and Jesus -aka late Roman empire onwards western religion- being the sole path to ‘salvation’/ heaven.]
My Asexuality at High School
It may not surprise you that I was also sexually oblivious. By my last year of high school, sometimes my friends would laugh or think I was being very cheeky when I said things I thought were innocuous. I had no idea they were interpreting my choice of words in a sexual context.
Some good friends began to recognise this. They would tell me I was being ‘dirty’ and gaze patiently and knowingly at me, often with a smile, until I made the connection. Then I’d be appalled by their sexual mis-interpretation and a bit embarrassed the first few times. But they kept up it and I’d just burst out laughing and swear at them and they would laugh with me.
In hindsight, my high school friends may have noticed I was asexual before I did. They made my lack of sexual awareness part of the humour we shared and our bond. I would call it a positive experience. I felt acknowledged as different and accepted.
No one asked questions, because my lack of awareness —and by extension interest— was obvious. And I was very much one of those teens who was just myself, just different from a lot of people in so many ways (I now use labels: asexual, aromantic, nonbinary and neurodivergent). My friends loved me as I was and my asexuality didn’t really come up outside that circle.
Lack of Sexual & Romantic Feeling
Up until now I’d had ‘crushes’. You know, when you’re attracted to someone’s personality and looks and feel a bit funny in the tummy when they’re around? But that was all. I liked talking to those boys. In hindsight, I could happily have been friends with them. But when one offered me his hand to hold one day, I wasn’t fussed. When he flashed me his chest across the classroom, I took a good solid moment to notice that under his grinning face was his hands, and they were holding up his shirt. And I thought, ‘Ah. You have a six pack. That’s nice. Good for you.’
I just hadn’t experienced sexual attraction, or desire, or even the romantic desire to hold someone’s hand. Kissing scenes in movies confused me, because people would look at each other and then just kiss for no reason. As I started watching more adult television, it was the same thing with sex. They’d just start making out and taking each other’s clothes off for no reason. (To this day, rarely do I see kissing or sex scenes coming unless its a slow burn).
So Dating?
During high school I happily ‘decided to focus on my studies’ instead of boys. I was aware —it was obvious by the final year, when a lot of my friends had girlfriends or boyfriends— that having a romantic and sexual partner was the norm. All fiction and media and my every experience of society told me ‘you will want and seek and find someone to love and have sex with and be your partner in life.’ So at this time, when a friend said she was ‘focusing on her studies’, that was a happy excuse for me not to have to think about romance or dating or sex —because why would I? They didn’t interest me.
Asexuality at University
The excuse of ‘focusing on my studies’ could apply here. And I did have one crush at Uni. But by now I was aware that it was just an excuse. The idea of having a partner sounded nice, but I was fascinated by studying archaeology, writing epic fantasy (the seeds that later grew into the tree that is my debut Ruarnon Trilogy). And I just mostly wasn’t meeting anyone I fancied dating. And it didn’t occur to me to bother spending time seeking them.
So I shelved the ideas of romance and sex both, finished my bachelor of Arts, did Honours in archaeology, realised my dream of travel in Europe and Egypt, then did a Dip Ed.
Asexuality & Alienation From Allosexuals
I lost touch (swiftly) with my allosexual and romantically attracted high school friends when I finished high school. It was sad, but they’d often hang out with their partners, and be all couplesy and all that final year I just felt like we were drifting down completely different paths in life. I didn’t relate to their romantic or sexual attraction, their desire to be with partners etc. I couldn’t connect with them and their partner with me and my (nonexistent) partner. It isn’t easy to be that one single person in a friendship group that’s largely made up of couples.
But Uni was great. I quickly befriended a bunch of single people and at one time had a friendship group. Only four of us did honours in archaeology at my university and that became a friendship group of two (which sadly didn’t last much beyond Uni). And in my first overseas trip: I went on a Contiki tour and met lots of other single people. It wouldn’t be until my 2014 Contiki tour that I made (single) friends I’ve since stayed in touch with on social media and travelled with elsewhere. But it was the beginning of ‘finding my people’ and social circle among single people.
Asexuality as an Adult
Then I was a first year primary school teacher, renting my own two bedroom house in the countryside. I was feeling independent and challenged by teaching (having no idea how disorganised, distractible and what a hyper active —undiagnosed of course— ADHDer I was its astounding I did well those first years!) Teaching took all of my energy. The first serious, major rounds of edits of my epic fantasy took up the rest.
Have You Tried Online Dating?
I bet aromantic, and quite a few asexual people have heard this question A LOT. The allosexual, romantically attracted population (most of humanity) all seem to assume (as the media, fiction, society etc assumes) that EVERYONE wants someone to love and have sex with and be their partner in life. And when you’re in your late twenties and are showing no sign of seeking that person out, you can get a lot of encouragement to do so online.
So I did. I reached the point of intellectual curiosity about the human experience that I decided dating was something to explore. I joined a site and read testimonies of people ‘excited to wake up and see their daily matches’ with either disbelief or “Yah-NAH!” (which is Aussie for definitely not). I found looking at men’s profiles boring. (It may have been interesting if nonbinary was a thing and I could browse nonbinary profiles too, but cis men profiles bored me).
So I just let men message me because it was a boring waste of my time so why put energy into online dating? Someone did find me. We messaged and went on a few dates. I liked him.
I Don’t Reciprocate (Romantically or Sexually)
I was twenty seven by now. That nagging suspicion I’d had in high school when boys liked me that they always liked me more than I liked them was about to become clear. He was more attracted me. He was sexually attracted to me. He was very attracted to me as a person.
He wanted to hold my hand, kiss me and had I been happy to, he would have happily had sex with me early on. Holding hands was nice. Kissing was nice. Hugging was nice. But it wasn’t much more than that for me emotionally. I was still at the point of starting to like him. I didn’t mind receiving affection, but I didn’t have the emotional connection or desire to initiate it at this stage. It might me MONTHS before I liked, let alone loved him enough for that.
And it was very clear he was sexually attracted to me and that I wasn’t sexually attracted to him. He clearly liked sex, but I wasn’t ready to go there any time soon. And he was fine with that and happy to slow down.
Dating was fun, dizzying and it was interesting trying something new. But it was clear from the outset that in no respect did I feel as strongly about him. That I didn’t connect with him the way he connected with me. And it occurred to me that I may not do so. That perhaps I don’t work that way. That my suspicion relationships with men would, as I wondered as a teen, just break their hearts.
Single Life
I was lucky. He got a job he’d wanted for a long time, one that meant he’d be out of town for two thirds of the year. And we’d been talking online for two months before dating because he’d been out of town then. He was happy to keep seeing me, but it was up to me. Luckily, while much of the above wasn’t very clear to me yet, it was clear that with long distance dating I’d take ages to get to know him. That I’d rather do that in-person and wasn’t interested in a long distance relationship. So we went our separate ways on amicable terms.
What’s Next On my Bucket List?
Yep, that was my first thought when I stopped seeing the guy. I’d satiated my curiosity about dating, got a little bit of personal insight into romantic relationships, sexual attraction, romantic affection etc. I’d enhanced my capacity to relate to most of the rest of humanity. I was ready to delete my dating profile and focus my life on other things.
Which was great, because I got severe burnout that forth year of reapplying for another one year teaching contract —at that time a highly competitive, rigorous process. I moved to England to teach, travel and write epic fantasy on holidays for two years. I came to back to Australia to teach and went to New Zealand to do the same, flew home because it was 2020 and lived and taught back in Australia again.
To my surprise, I met someone else I found very attractive. Mature, smart, passionate about life, energetic and who shared my love of children. And I wondered, would I ever want to be more than best friends with this person? And I answered myself; I don’t think so. Hypothetically, would I ever want to have sex with them? And I realised; I would if they initiated it and wanted to. But circumstances (note I kept switching countries from 2014-2020) didn’t see us together and that was ok.
How My Asexual, Aromantic Life Looks Now
I’m not someone who feels romantic or sexual attraction. I don’t generally desire physical affection either. I don’t mind receiving it and I might hug people goodbye if everyone else is. But mainly I just hug my parents when I visit them and don’t feel the need to hug or be held by anyone (though it might have been nice during Long covid and Fibromalgia crashes, as being held or having my back stroked ease the feeling of fire those two conditions could cause in my back).
I don’t experience sexual desire (or any form of arousal —unless I stumble across a tv show/ book I like for other reasons that I didn’t realise would get that spicy or someone else tries to seduce me —its a rare and bold man who takes on that challenge!)
I’m as happily single as I’ve always been, with single (and yes, quite possibly also asexual and aromantic) housemates, single friends, and lots of writer friends I can interact with one on one online, without my not-being-part-of-a-couple getting in the way of our social connection.
Wherever my fellow aces lie on the asexual spectrum, and however much our experiences and exact asexual identities may differ, I’ve hope you’ve found a similar place of contentment socially (romantically and or sexually if you do either) and in your social circle.
