Being Asexual in a World That Keeps Asking Me to Prove I Can Be Loved

First blog on FriendRewind LFG!!! This is copied over from my SpaceHey account :)

I've known for a long time that something about sex was different for me. I didn't have the word for it. This one's gonna be long, so grab a snack and enjoy the read.

I remember being in middle school and feeling genuinely uncomfortable whenever sex education came around. I didn't just feel embarrassed in the normal "oh god, we're talking about sex in class" way that plenty of teenagers probably did. I was squeamish. I didn't want to hear about it, I didn't want to participate in the activities, and I especially didn't want to do any of the classwork associated with it. There was this visceral feeling of Please get this away from me that I couldn't really explain.

At the time, I assumed I'd eventually grow out of it. Surely something would change when I got older. Surely I'd eventually understand what everyone else seemed to understand about sex.

I didn't.

TMI WARNING: We're Getting Into Medical Stuff

There's another part of this that I've never really known how to explain without getting uncomfortably personal.

I've been afraid of tampons for basically my entire life. The idea of putting anything inside of me has always terrified me, and that isn't completely disconnected from an experience I had as a little kid involving a medical procedure where I had to be awake while my bladder was filled. I don't remember exactly what the procedure was called, but I remember the experience itself, and I remember being a child who was absolutely fucking terrified.

So when I eventually started putting these pieces together—my discomfort with sex, my reaction to sexual education, my fear of penetration, and the fact that I simply didn't want sex—it started making sense.

I remember explaining some of this to my mom when I was trying to figure myself out, and her response was basically, "It's not the same hole."

Technically? Sure. That's not the point.

The point is that my brain doesn't experience these things as completely separate little boxes. I had a traumatic medical experience involving my body when I was a child, and ever since then I've had a very strong aversion to the idea of things being inserted into me. Telling me that sex and that medical procedure involve different anatomy doesn't magically erase the fear response attached to it.

And honestly, I wish people understood that more generally about asexuality: you don't need to find the one single reason you don't want sex for your lack of desire to be legitimate.

Eventually, I Found the Word: Asexual

At some point, I discovered asexuality and suddenly a lot of things about myself clicked into place.

I'm panromantic. I can fall in love with people regardless of gender, and I absolutely experience romantic attraction. I want romance. I want affection. I want to be someone's person. I want to kiss someone, cuddle with them, hold their hand, fall asleep next to them, go on stupid dates, exchange gifts, make inside jokes, and have somebody I can look at and think, that's my fucking person.

I've just never wanted sex to be part of that equation.

And that distinction is incredibly important to me because sex and romance are not the same thing.

Unfortunately, living in a society where those two things are constantly treated as inseparable makes being asexual while still being romantically attracted to people feel like playing a game where the rules were written specifically to fuck me over, and they have, royally, multiple times.

I Am Not "Withholding" Something From My Partner

One of the hardest things about dating as an asexual person is that I've repeatedly had people tell me that they're okay with my sexuality.

I tell them upfront.

I don't hide it. I don't spring it on them months into a relationship. I don't make promises that I'm going to become sexual later magically. I tell people what I am and what my boundaries are, and I try to make it extremely clear that sex isn't something they should expect from me.

And yet I've repeatedly ended up in relationships where that supposedly wasn't a problem until suddenly it was.

That's what fucking hurts.

Because eventually the conversation becomes some variation of, "I knew you were asexual, but I didn't realize what that actually meant."

And I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that.

I can't trade my body for someone's love.

I can't force myself to have sex because I'm afraid they'll leave if I don't. I can't convince myself that if I just try hard enough, tolerate enough, or compromise enough, eventually I'll become the kind of person who can provide what they want.

And I refuse to believe that this is what love is supposed to be.

Then There Was T

This is where T comes into the story, because I think it's important context for why this has been hitting me as hard as it has.

T is someone I genuinely believed was my person. We had been incredibly close before we ever became romantically involved, and when we started dating, I thought I'd finally found someone who understood me. Someone who knew my boundaries, knew I was asexual, and loved me anyway.

And I still love him.

That's probably the worst part.

Our relationship didn't end because I stopped loving him. We still have feelings for each other, and that's made the whole process of trying to figure out what we're supposed to be now unbelievably complicated. We're trying to figure out whether we can go back to being friends when we were so deeply in love with each other, and neither of us can just flip a switch and pretend that nothing happened.

But recently, T told me something that hurt me more than I think he realized.

He said that dating me had been difficult because there was no sexual component to our relationship. He felt trapped by the fact that he couldn't have sex or be sexually intimate in the ways he was accustomed to. He told me that because sex wasn't part of our relationship, he didn't know how else to express his love for me.

And then, at one point, he questioned whether what I felt for him was basically just friends-with-benefits.

That one fucking hurt.

Because friends-with-benefits literally implies a sexual relationship without the romantic commitment of dating. What we had was the exact opposite. We were romantically involved without sex.

We kissed. We cuddled. We were affectionate. We spent time together. We loved each other. We called each other partners. We had an actual romantic relationship.

That isn't friendship with benefits.

That's romance without sex.

But somehow, because sex wasn't included, something that I understood as romantic love started looking like friendship to him.

And I think that's one of the things I'm struggling with most.

I Wish He'd Asked Himself One Question

Every time T talked about how hard it was for him to date an asexual person, I wish he had stopped and thought:

"If this is hard for me, how do I think Mads feels?"

Because holy shit.

Do you have any idea how fucking difficult it is to date when you're asexual?

Asexual people make up roughly one percent of the population. And even within that tiny percentage, we're not all compatible with each other. Some asexual people enjoy sex. Some are sex-neutral. Some are sex-repulsed. Some are comfortable with certain forms of sexual intimacy but not others. Some experience romantic attraction and some don't. Some want relationships, and some don't.

Being ace doesn't automatically mean two ace people are going to be compatible.

So I'm already working with a ridiculously small dating pool, and then I have to narrow that pool down even further based on romantic compatibility, personality, attraction, values, boundaries, and what each person actually wants out of a relationship.

Which means that, realistically, I often have to date allosexual people.

And that's where I end up in this fucking situation.

I'm asexual, but the people I'm likely to fall in love with statistically probably aren't.

So I have to keep hoping that I'll meet someone who can genuinely accept that sex isn't going to be a requirement of loving me.

And when I finally think I've found that person, only to discover later that they actually do need sex in a relationship, it reinforces every horrible thought I've ever had about myself.

The Roller Coaster Analogy

There's a video I've seen that explained asexuality in a way that genuinely made me feel understood.

The analogy was essentially this:

Imagine you're at an amusement park. You see a roller coaster and think, wow, that's fucking cool. You watch it go around. Maybe you even watch it a few times. You can appreciate how impressive it is. You can think the ride looks amazing.

Then your friend turns to you and asks, "Do you want to ride it?"

And you're like:

"Fuck no."

That's how sex can feel to me.

I can understand why people like it. I can think it's aesthetically appealing. I can enjoy sexual content in fiction. I can even occasionally experience sexual attraction or arousal in certain circumstances.

But the actual thought of doing it myself can make me go, absolutely fucking not.

And that doesn't make me broken.

I can appreciate the roller coaster without wanting to get on the fucking roller coaster.

The Part Nobody Understands: I Still Want Romance

This is where being asexual and panromantic gets especially fucking frustrating.

I don't want to be alone.

I don't want to spend my entire life without experiencing romantic love.

I want someone to ask me out. I want someone to fall in love with me. I want someone who gets excited when they see me. I want to be someone's favorite person. I want kisses and cuddles and stupid dates and sleeping next to each other and someone reaching for my hand automatically when we're walking somewhere.

I want all of that.

I just don't want sex.

And sometimes I genuinely hate that those two things feel like they're in conflict with each other.

Because I live in a society where sex is so deeply intertwined with romance that sometimes I look at fictional couples and even catch myself thinking, would they still love each other this much if sex wasn't part of their relationship?

That's a horrible thought to have when you're someone who desperately wants romantic love.

I've had to actively remind myself that sex isn't what makes a relationship romantic.

But it's difficult when basically every piece of media around you reinforces the opposite.

And Yes, I'm Fucking Terrified of Being Alone Forever

This is the part I don't think my friends completely understand.

They tell me I'm wonderful. They tell me there are people out there who will accept me. They tell me that I'll find someone eventually.

And I appreciate that.

I really do.

But it doesn't make the fear go away.

Because my fear isn't simply "what if I don't find someone next year?"

It's "what if this is just how my entire life goes?"

What if I spend years meeting people, falling in love, getting attached, and eventually discovering that sex is something they need from a relationship?

What if I keep having to explain that I'm not withholding anything from them? That I'm not punishing them? That I'm not immature? That I'm not secretly going to change my mind if they wait long enough?

What if I keep hearing, "I thought I could handle it," until eventually I'm old and realize that every relationship I've had has ended for the exact same reason?

What if I really am asking for something too rare?

What if the person who could love me exactly as I am exists somewhere, but I'll never meet them?

That's the fear.

And when my friends tell me, "You'll find someone," I know they're trying to comfort me. But they can't actually promise that. Nobody can.

That's why sometimes their reassurance doesn't touch the fear at all.

Because I don't need to be told that I'm lovable.

I know I'm lovable.

I need to know that someone who wants the same kind of love that I do actually exists.

Sometimes I Hate Being Asexual

I don't hate other asexual people. I don't hate my identity. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with me.

But sometimes I fucking hate being asexual.

Especially being a sex-repulsed ace person in a society that is so heavily sex-positive, sex-focused, and sex-favorable.

I'm surrounded by people who talk about sex casually. People who joke about it, bond over it, use it as a way of expressing intimacy, consider it an expected part of relationships, and sometimes can't even conceptualize romance without it.

And I'm sitting here thinking:

Can I please just be allowed to love someone without having to give them my body?

I don't want to have to prove that I'm attracted to someone by being sexually available to them.

I don't want my partner to interpret my lack of sexual desire as a lack of love.

I don't want to constantly wonder whether the person I'm dating is secretly thinking, How long am I going to have to put up with this?

And I definitely don't want someone to tell me they're okay with my boundaries only to eventually make me feel like those boundaries are the reason our relationship is failing.

T Didn't Know What He Was Getting Himself Into

I don't think T is evil for struggling with this.

Honestly, I don't even think he fully understood what he was signing up for.

And that's part of what makes this so fucking sad.

Because I don't think he entered the relationship thinking, I'm going to date an asexual person and eventually make her feel guilty about sex.

I think he genuinely believed he could handle it.

And then he discovered what dating an ace person actually meant for him.

But I wish he had realized that while he was discovering how difficult this was for him, I was also living through the consequences of being asexual.

I was the one who had to wonder whether the person I loved would eventually decide that loving me wasn't enough.

I was the one who had to listen to someone I loved explain that he felt trapped because sex wasn't part of our relationship.

I was the one who had to hear something I considered deeply romantic being questioned as "just friendship" because it didn't include sex.

And I was the one sitting there thinking:

What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?

Because I can't change this about myself just because someone I love wishes I could.

I Don't Want to Trade My Body for Romance

That's ultimately what this entire thing comes down to.

I don't want to trade my body for romance.

I don't want to have sex because I'm afraid someone will leave if I don't.

I don't want to force myself through something that makes me uncomfortable because I'm scared that otherwise I'll never be loved.

And I don't want to believe that a relationship without sex is somehow incomplete.

I can love someone deeply without wanting to fuck them.

I can be attracted to someone romantically without being sexually attracted to them.

I can want to kiss someone and not want to have sex with them.

I can want to cuddle someone for hours and still not want them inside me.

I can look at someone and think they're beautiful, wonderful, fascinating, gorgeous, and my person without wanting to take my clothes off with them.

None of that makes the love less real.

I Just Want Someone Who Understands

Maybe that's why this hurts so much with T.

Because I really thought he understood.

I thought I'd finally found someone who could look at my boundaries and not see them as an obstacle standing between us and "real" intimacy.

I thought I'd found someone who understood that the way I love is different, but not lesser.

And I still don't know what happens next with him.

That's the painful part of this entire situation. I still love him. He still loves me. We're both struggling with the fact that our relationship changed something between us that neither of us can simply undo. He's scared. I'm hurt. We're both trying to figure out whether we can somehow find our way back to each other without recreating the exact same problems that hurt us in the first place.

But whatever happens, I need to remember something:

I am not asking for too much by wanting someone to respect my boundaries.

I'm not asking for too much by wanting romance without sex.

I'm not broken because I don't want to have sex.

I'm not immature because I don't understand the appeal.

I'm not withholding something from someone.

And I'm certainly not impossible to love.

I'm just looking for a kind of love that doesn't require me to sacrifice myself to receive it.

Maybe that kind of love is rare. Maybe it will take me a long fucking time to find it. Maybe I'll have to kiss a lot of frogs first. Maybe I'll have relationships that don't work out because we're fundamentally incompatible, and maybe I'll have nights where I stare at the ceiling wondering if I'm going to be alone forever.

But I'd rather be alone than convince myself that someone's love is worth giving up my boundaries for.

Because I don't want a relationship where someone stays because I finally gave them enough access to my body.

I want someone who stays because they love me.

And I don't think that's too much to ask.