On Being Asexual

I came out as asexual to my friends in 2020.

It took me some confusing, stressful weeks during high school and one awkward breakup to find this label.

If DC is reading this by some slim chance (probably about the same odds as me winning the lottery without buying a ticket), I hope you are doing well, and I forgive you for not accepting my identity; I should have informed you better. And I'm sorry it ended that way.

At the time of writing, I have exactly 1 previous relationship. It lasted about 8 months, in my last year of high school. I eventually ended the relationship because he kept asking for sex.

"When are we going to do it?"

I didn't know what to say at first. I honestly didn't know. I felt that sex is not something I wanted, or even thought about consciously. I wanted to say never? But that felt a bit cruel; and that's not normal? Normal people have sex in their teen years. It's a rite of passage. But I don't want to have sex at all in the foreseeable future, so there must be something wrong with me... Because that's not normal...

I told him I didn't know.

Was it wrong of me to be like this? What could be the cause? Was it the way I was brought up? My culture?

Researching on the internet during sleepless nights brought a new term to my attention. "Asexual". Someone who does not experience sexual attraction, or only in certain circumstances.

Is that what I am? Is that a bad thing? As a 17 year old, I felt very conflicted about this label. It kinda fits me, but it sounded like a bad thing. It sounded... abnormal? It wasn't good to stand out.

In the mean time, the nagging didn't stop. What could I say or do to make him understand?

"I don't think I want to do it",

"It's not something I'm interested in",

"I think I'm asexual".

He didn't believe me. He told me that it wasn't a real thing.

This was devastating. I doubted myself even more, but I wasn't going to change my mind about this. Not after all this. I can't provide what he wanted, needed, from me.

We couldn't be in this relationship anymore.

But my formal was coming up. And he already bought tickets. I had to wait.

He was my date for a very awkward formal. I was actively avoiding him to spend time with my friends, and he noticed.

I broke up with him the week after over messages. I asked him if he wanted to be friends still, he declined. Then I blocked him on every social platform, deleted photos of us together.

I felt bad about such a sudden breakup for a little bit, but after a while, it was like a switch had been flipped. He shouldn't have doubted me. I told him exactly how I felt, gave him a term to do research about; he was upset because I couldn't give him what he wanted. Nothing to show for his efforts. That didn’t sound like someone I’d like to be with.

Enough about my past. Let’s talk about now. Being ace is funny sometimes; when my friends talk about sex, I almost always have a moment of ’Oh, yeah’ as I am reminded that it is something people do, all the time. It’s just not something I think about.

Other times it can be isolating. It is hard to find a person who accepts the fact that sex is not going to be part of the relationship. I know that sounds a lot like friendship, but friends don’t share the rest of their lives with you. Naturally, my friends will prioritise their partners over me, but friends are all I have. At this point, I’ve accepted that I’m going to be by myself for the rest of my life, especially as a first-gen immigrant & an only child. We can talk about how I feel about that another time.

I don’t know what sexual attraction feels like. When I say ‘that person is hot’ compared to when an allo person say the same, we probably mean different things. Do allo people really see someone, and want to have sex with them? That’s how sexual attraction was described to me, but I have no idea whether that is accurate.

Sometimes I use the fact that I am ace to scare off 'friends' with ulterior motives. This hasn't happened a lot, but it's always men. It is polite to give them a warning before they walk straight into a dead-end.