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What did you think was "wrong" with you before you knew the word asexual?


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WhenSummersGone

I didn't think I was broken, maybe different, and I just thought people were trying to fit in or were making sex bigger than it was. I felt more chill and laid back about it. I understood relationships better because I'm romantic but didn't understand sex that well. Turns out I'm just not in many situations where I want to have sex.

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In school, the friends I had, and even the girls on the sports teams, never talked about sex (that I remember) and although some of them must have had boyfriends the question was never put to me why I wasn't dating yet, so I never had a real crisis of "What's wrong with me?!" thing.

I was really shy and anxious (still am, to an extent) so I think I figured that must be why I wasn't interested in dating. I thought movie actors were cute, and I think I had a few crushes in high school, but I never had a desire to do anything about it. My focus has always been finding more friends, not boyfriends.

I didn't date in college, either, although I remember thinking that I was supposed to meet guys in college. Every so often I would wonder if I might be lesbian, but I never had a crush on a girl. Dating and boyfriends and sex seemed so foreign to me, a far off thing that might happen some day, but nothing I particularly desired or even thought about much. There was a moment in a creative writing class where for a short story we had to write something that involved a relationship, and during the feedback session someone said that the relationship seemed unrealistic, and I realized it was because I had no knowledge of how those things worked. And it's weird because I read a lot of books, including typical teen fair like Christopher Pike, and there's relationships in those. I just remembered this now - in middle school, a friend asked what books I liked, and I told her Pike, and she said her mom didn't let her read them because - and she lowered her voice - "because there's sex and stuff." And I told her that's not why I read them, I liked the sci-fi/fantasy aspect of the stories. And that's true - I think the sex and dating stuff went in one eyeball and out the other.

After college, at some point I remember writing in my journal that I thought I might end up dying an old maid. The thought didn't really bother me. Ever since I was a young teen I knew I wasn't going to have kids, so I wonder if that had factored into how I thought of how I was - that I wasn't interested in dating because I knew eventually that would lead to kids (although it doesn't, of course, not every married couple has kids, I'm not really sure what I was thinking at the time). At some point in my mid to late twenties I came across the term asexual on livejournal. I found it interesting, but I don't think I necessarily identified with it, just became aware of it and thought it could be a possible explanation. I'd also heard that a bear at the zoo wouldn't mate because he had an injury to his nose that prevented him from smelling pheromones. I have a nearly non-existent sense of smell, so I wondered if that could explain it, too. But again, I wasn't asked often if I had a boyfriend or whatever, so I was never forced into thinking why I was different than others. Boyfriends seemed something far in the future, something that might happen eventually.

That changed a bit a couple of years ago, when a coworker asked me out in front of customers. In a moment of awkwardness that seemed to last forever, I suddenly realized with clarity the fact that no, I didn't want to go out with anyone. I think that's when I thought the term asexual really did apply to me.

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Well I went through a few different stages of what I thought was "wrong" with me.

My parents have always told me that girls find guys repulsive, so when I first started down the sexuality path I thought that I was the wrong gender because I really didn't want to find anyone attractive (certainly not in a sexual way). I was adamant and open with everyone that I wanted to get a sex change to address that issue.

Well, I figured I couldn't have a sex change at eleven so I just gritted my teeth and bore this 'attraction' crap, which leads me to my first (and really looooooong) crush. My mother was always asking me whether it was 'lust or love' that I felt for the female in question. During this phase I thought I was a gross sexual pervert (I can distinctly recall the three times I felt sexual desire for this girl ^_^ ). By this stage, I've realised my parents were wrong (either gender can find the other repulsive) and am over the sex change thing.

To prevent this happening ever again I gave a very wide berth to anyone who I found romantically interesting, so I would not get sexually attracted to any of them. I believe there were two more crushes after my first crush. I annoyed both of them to the extent that they both told me I had to leave them alone or else. I considered that a victory. By this stage I was starting to research asexuality and think about whether that was me.

Then, my best friend came along who is a girl. She is lesbian. She taught me that it is safe to be around girls and I won't necessarily feel sexually attracted to them. She also taught me seriously for the first time that not everyone is sexually attracted to the opposite gender. I really appreciate her for that. I now have female friends that I am really close to - and I have her to thank for that! A side note, one of them told me I'm "the best guy friend ever because I never need to worry about you hitting on me!" ^_^ that's too true.

Yay, now we're up to my first actual girlfriend :unsure: . I'd known her for years and she said she liked me, so I agreed to date her because we were familiar and comfortable with each other. If we made a scale of asexual - greysexual - sexual, then my ex is somewhere a long way this side of sexual on that scale. However, because it was a long distance relationship, the only way we could engage in sexuality was through text messages and Skype. I actually kind of liked exploring the sexual world in that indirect way. It allowed me to see what other people did, without actually doing it (which would have been gross). The couple of times we got together and performed sexual acts, I cried my way through (literally) and tolerated it. I absolutely refused to have actual coitus with her even when she offered multiple times. By this stage I am starting to realise I am likely asexy.

Well, I suppose it was inevitable she cheat on me and subsequently "lose her virginity" with a guy who tries to make me jealous by detailing the sexual acts he performs with her. Although I have explained to him multiple times and linked him to the Wikipedia article on asexuality, he seems to not understand the concept and thinks I am gay. Hmm, nice to see she picked a smart one too ^_^ . A few days later I joined this forum when I realised I really am asexual.

Anyway, reading all your stories has really shown me that this is who I am - I hope my story can help make someone else feel at peace at last too.

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LovelyDragons

I am still debating with myself whether I am really asexual or more a demisexual with major trusts issues. But never really thought that something was 'wrong' with me, but I just had a lack of interest in sex which would come with the years. As a child I never was busy with love and even up till now, I can't find it fascinating. It is more the society and the people around me which forced me to think about it. "But why don't you want to have sex with me/him?" Questions like that. Before I started to read about asexualty, I mostly 'blamed' it on trusts issues for not feeling interest towards sex :) Now, I starting to understand that it could be something else.

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I've always had sex during the first 1-2 months of relationships, because you are "supposed" to, and after that it just get's harder and harder to force myself. For a long time I thought it was natural for the sex drive to increase and decrease over time, although mine never seemed to increase once it took a dive. Then I thought it was my body's way of pointing out that I had fallen out of love, but was proven horribly wrong. And then I thought it was a chemical imbalance related to serotonin.

Now, I've just stopped debating the cause of it, both with myself and friends. I'm not happy or completely at terms with it yet, but it is what it is :)

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I have thought myself many things through my life all negative to understand my failure to the point I have lived with the daily thought of suicide but now with finding the word asexual I am starting to level out, but it's not over yet, I won't totally accept the word until I have exhausted all my questions.

First I discovered twenty six years ago I was totally sterile

Then five years ago I got told I had mild autism, some ADD and dyspraxia

And then three years ago through my own research on autism hastened by the appearance of a curious chest lump I discovered with relief I was not the male I was trying to be for I was in fact an XXY where I am happy claiming the gender description of inter sex. as it matches both the internal and the external combined

(Where chest lumps are a worry for xxy as xxy has the same risk for breast cancer as women)

And in these past three years I have grown to accept the feminine in me that I have always viciously oppressed through ignorance and there fear, where I am actually starting to dislike the male I am and so thoughts of transgender are with me, where really it should not matter what I am given sterility, but I have to be happy in myself of which I never have been.

But I have a theory on possible asexuality given infertility where it exists unaided by modern science as in what's the point if one cannot complete the cycle, better to exclude those that are not designed to and allow the fertile to connect with the fertile to ensure human survival, where human science and nature don't communicate with each other, which may explain all the other variations once believed to be choice or deviancy by the oft religious, mechanisms exist within nature to ensure the best species survival as if perhaps the farming of genes is the purpose of life.

Where xxy and all the other variations I believe are not disorders but in fact just like xx and xy, designed by nature for whatever purpose nature has for us and the failure to understand our human purpose beyond procreation is the failure of mankind to look beyond what motivates it, where perhaps no wonder humanity chases it's tail repeating the same mistakes ad infinitum with sex on the brain, where it is interesting to observe of those once fertile and now passed it the insights they have on life which go on ignored, for really we should be listening to the old people, before their mind has given up in disgust.

But of transgender, it's curious for my desire really with that is to align the external with the internal, a hybrid body to fit a hybrid mind, so others may know what I am and not treat me as the male I'm not.

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For my extremely low drive, I thought it was because of a medication I was on at the time that could affect sex drive. Since I was a teenager at the time and at that point in my life where I was supposed to be very into sex, at least the thinking of it. Of course then I stopped the medication and my drive never increased. It still hasn't.

For the sexual attraction part, I thought I was just extremely picky and could only be attracted to a certain type/shape/size of girl. As there were certain girls I found pretty. And since those particular girls were so rare in my area. I just assumed that was why I was never attracted to anyone.

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SneakyHobbit

I just assumed that all girls were like me, in my friendship group only one of my friends was sexually active and I thought that was partially due to her abusive boyfriend when she was 13. I knew about asexuality when I was about 16, but I never applied it to myself. I thought that asexuality also meant you were aromantic as well. I knew that I wanted a relationship, so I thought I couldn't be ace. I thought that most people were like me and didn't feel any major sexual urges.

When I joined Tumblr I noticed a lot of people had a strong sexual attraction to celebrities, and although I felt a sensual and aesthetic attraction towards them, the thought of sex just repulsed me. It was then (at the age of 20) that I realised that I was different and that I must just be a late bloomer. But upon reading what sexual attraction feels like, I figured out that I must be ace because I'd never felt it once (even with my crushes). Although, at times I still wonder if maybe I am just a late bloomer because when I came out to my mum she said that she was a late bloomer.

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Well, I'm quite young right now, so up until a while ago, I just thought everyone my age was way too young to be attracted to people. Turns out I was wrong about that; my classmates were actually even starting relationships…in the sixth grade. I was extremely oblivious for the longest time…

And earlier this year, even, I thought people my age were too young to be physically attracted to people. (And that my sixth-grade classmates were just trying too hard to act older, which was also true anyway.) And again, I was wrong about that. It just turned out that I just didn't get physically attracted to people.

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gilnokoibito

Until I got into BL/yaoi I never really had any interest in sex or porn and hated watching the uhm more sexual parts of movies but I was curious about kissing and dating. But by the time in high school that I'd had my first kiss and dated once...I really...didn't like either nor get the point. And when my bf wanted to do anything more I just wanted to run away. It was then that I realized I didn't see relationships like most people did. I just wanted a really close and committed friendship more or less. No kissing, no hugs, no sex. I noticed everyone around me, being the hormone-ridden teenagers they were, were not like that at all! I mean, I had a libido, but the thought of actually having sex or even letting someone touch my body creeped me out and I just couldn't understand why anyone would actually want to do those things with someone! I mean to me, there was NO reason to ever want that!

At first I thought that perhaps I just hadn't found the right person yet, I tried imagining what sort of person that could be. But around that time I also began to wonder if it was some psychological issue I had and started researching things of that nature. But as more time went on I realized that even if I found Mr.Right I still wouldn't want those things! So obviously something had to be wrong with me right? I researched and researched and eventually began to think I had a personality such as schizotypal personality disorder and was even later diagnosed as being on the schizophrenic scale (higher than most but still low though, so probably schizotypal or schizoid personality according to the few sessions I had with a psychologist at the time.) I thought that would explain my lack of sexual attraction since those disorders can cause difficulty getting close to people but I later realized by joining online forums for people with schizotypy and schizoid disorders that it wasn't very normal among them to not want sex with someone and most of them thought I was weird for not wanting it. So I pretty much went back to page 1.

And then one day, randomly and out of the blue after almost giving up on figuring things out and just figuring it was some sort of strange quirk of mine, I thought to Google 'Asexuality.' Why? I still don't know! No one ever told me about asexuality before and the only place I can ever recall hearing the word 'asexual' before that was in biology class. But I did. And I landed on AVEN. And low and behold after reading through every FAQ and going "That sounds like me!" and then through several forum posts and thinking "That's exactly how I feel!" I realized that what I was had a word! Hallelujah! XD

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I grew up in the early 80's, way before anyone had any idea that there could be anything other than just gay, straight and bi orientations, and at the time I had no idea why I was different. The first thing I noticed was when my female friends and I began to get close to puberty - all of the sudden they had no interest in playing in my fort and running around in the woods and riding bikes around the neighborhood anymore. It was extremely confusing to me when they started going nuts over boys, and to me boys still had "cooties". Well, those friends soon disappeared and left me behind and alone, I guess because we no longer shared any interests. For a little while I played with some kids who were a few years younger than me (and therefore not yet interested in anyone that way), but they were too immature for me. I just felt lost at the time. I ended up going to a private school in my middle school years (mostly because the public school I would have had to go to had a really bad reputation) and there I met my best friend, but she was like me and had no interest in boys. The other girls in the school were nothing but a big clique, so neither one of us ever had much to do with them.

In my mid and late teens I had some crushes on celebrities (and also a real boy down the street, who was utterly ignorant of me for the most part), but once I got older and gained more knowledge about what others around my age were interested in, I couldn't for the life of me understand why I didn't have those feelings.

In those years I felt like a house cat that is let outdoors ever so often, but being that it has been raised indoors and well fed, it has no idea of how to be a predator. Such a cat will feel the urge to stalk and pounce on a mouse or bird, but it won't complete the natural order of things by killing and eating the intended prey. For the cat, it seems to boil down to lack of being taught by its mother, and not lack of desire. I was like the cat in that I felt a desire to "stalk and pounce", but once it came time for the "kill" and "eat", I had no desire to do that, even though I knew what I was supposed to want to do. Imagine this cat, having caught the mouse, looking to its predatory peers and thinking "So, now that I've caught the mouse/bird, you mean I'm supposed to want to kill and eat this creature? Yuck! Why on earth would I want to do that?" That was me with any crush I had - the "stalk" and "chase" was exhilarating (meaning for real guys; for celebrities I just imagined doing it of course), but then I'd think about what other young women apparently fantasized about (based on media and culture), and I was like "ewwww - why would I want to have sex with him?" I knew this wasn't the "natural" order of things and I struggled to try and figure out why I had no fantasies or desires to have sex with anyone.

Then as I got into my early 20's I continued to feel like I was missing out on something, and I kept wondering when the "desire" would come upon me - I thought I'd wake up one day and suddenly want to seek out a sexual partner, but it never happened. Worse yet, I did search for a romantic partner because somehow I thought that if I could get to that point, things would fall into place, sort of like the cat example where if the cat can actually catch a bird, the instinct would "click" and the cat would know what to do and have the desire to do it. I had never "caught" a guy at that point in my life, so I kept on hoping that I would magically have the urge if it did happen. It was also around this time (early 20's) when I questioned whether or not I was heterosexual and not gay. However, that speculation didn't last long because I had no desire in that regard either, and not even any romantic attraction. Then, one day I happened upon a man whom I developed an instant crush on. In cat fashion I went after him, and I spent that summer in a thrilling cheetah-like chase, but on one hot afternoon I discovered to my shock that I actually had "caught" him in a round about sort of way. There's the cat, with the hapless bird pinned defenseless between its paws, and the cat is so surprised that it actually snagged the bird it can't decide what to do next. So I ended up letting the "bird" fly away (for several reasons, one of which was once I was presented with what I thought I had sought, I found that I really didn't want it in reality, that and I feared I might get pregnant or catch a disease - a very practical concern for any non-sterile pre-menopausal woman). And a funny thing happened not long after that incident - I lost interest in continuing to hunt down that particular "bird" - having expended a lot of energy to catch it (well, maybe not - this guy was the type would probably have slept with just about any woman who showed an interest in him, all behind his gf's back) and then I found I didn't want it anyway, at least not sexually. At the time I couldn't make sense of my lack of interest.

Then a few years went by, and I found myself at a new job living alone thousands of miles from where I grew up. I worked hard at that job, and never thought much about sex in any way or form, until one day I again launched into a hard crush on a co-worker. Well, at this point in my life (I was close to 30, maybe 29) I was becoming really frustrated at my lack of romantic relationships (I could never understand why falling in and out of them seemed so easy and effortless to others, and how they could do so that quickly) and I just figured I was some kind of bumbling, inept loser who just couldn't snag a guy. So I lit hard into this chase, but this "mouse" was wishy-washy and indifferent- there really wasn't much chase because I would see him for hours each day (never actually worked WITH him, just across the shop, so there was no time for any conversation to get to know him) and at lunch time it was really hard to separate him from other guys. I did find out thru the grapevine that he had broken up with his gf, so I did have a chance, but as I got to know more about him I found him to be even more wishy-washy and he had a pattern of breaking up with and going back to this same woman over and over again so I had to halt my chase of that "mouse". But basically it ended with me being depressed, disgusted and discouraged with myself - and with no more idea as to why I was having these kinds of experiences.

After that, I busied myself with a self-improvement project I had begun, and I forgot about that kind of stuff for a while, until I met yet another man who struck my fancy. This one was a little different because I had business dealings with him, and again I did the same thing. I was about 32, so I figured that if I couldn't make this "kill" I was doomed. My thinking was trending towards the idea I was incel because of my last "failure", and I was determined I would end the "curse". Well, to make a very long story short, this whole event was a disaster worthy of the Hindenburg from my point of view. For some reason I could not see (until it was too late) that this guy was gay (he may have been bi-sexual because he did flirt with me, but all I knew was that at the time he had a male partner), this after he led me on a bit and gave me false hopes. That and he didn't have the decency to mention that he was already taken, and quite possibly had no interest in women anyway before I invested way too much. I felt like the most epic failure after that ended, and I thought for sure I was totally defective and incapable of ever finding anyone. I became extremely depressed (there were other bad things going on in my life at the time and it became an avalanche of grief) and I moved back home and went into therapy. This particular therapist ascribed all of my problems to sexual abuse that happened when I was a child. For a while I accepted that explanation, as I had nothing else to go on. But as time went on and I talked to other abuse survivors, I began to realize that sex abuse could not explain my lack interest in sex in both fantasy and reality. Pretty much everyone I interacted with and read their stories were able to live (at least on the outside) normal sexual lives - they got married, they had boyfriends, they had kids, they divorced, re-married, etc. And also statistics that show that sex abuse survivors are paradoxically far more likely to seek out sex, rather than avoid it. I thought I had finally completed the puzzle, but I was still missing a couple of pieces. I also just figured I was incel, given the disasters my attempted relationships had turned into.

But none of that could explain the persistent lack of interest, and the enormous time gaps between crushes (we're talking 3 crushes from the time I was 15 to the time I was 32!) where I couldn't have given a rat's behind about sex or dating or anything like that. My whole sexual history is a bit like a fossil dinosaur skeleton in some museum that has had the wrong skull on it for decades, or is just a few bones and no one has any idea of what the rest of the creature looks like or what species it is. People speculate about the fossil but no one knows for sure, and there are conflicting ideas. But one day someone digs up another bone or two and finally, after decades, the puzzle is complete. That's the way I felt when I found out about asexuality. My "fossil" is finally complete and identified, but the sad thing is I just wish I could have found those missing bones years ago and not had to spend three decades of my life struggling. People who are able to figure out they are asexual at a young age are very blessed indeed.

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I definitely felt different. I remember when someone first mentioned masturbation I thought it was so taboo, until I found out that all my friends loved to do it. From then on I somewhat felt like there was something wrong with me, which lead me to find AVEN and realize I was asexual.

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For the most part, I had enough other stuff going on that distinguished me from my peer group as a whole that I didn't really see my experience as *that far* out of line from the social norm until quite late. The one thing that should have, and to some extent did, tip me off was the fact that I would experience sexual arousal only in connection with a fairly specific fetish (which had nothing to do with sexual contact of any sort). So, for a time, while I was still under the assumption that heteroromantic = heterosexual, I thought that I could bring my "heterosexuality" in line with 'everyone else's heterosexuality' by trying to become aroused by suggestive (but still not explicitly sexual!) images of the opposite sex. You can probably guess that this effort went exactly nowhere.

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I didn't think anything was "wrong" with me - I just knew I was different from everyone else.

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BeautifullyBroken

I never thought something was wrong with me. I just didn't think people actually could look at a stranger and want to see him or her naked. It's WEIRD.

Although I did go through a period of thinking I was bisexual than pansexual--mostly because I have always found girls cute but have never crushed on one. I thought I was pan because gender DOESN'T matter to me, but if anything, I'm panromantic. I still can't look at someone and want to get laid. Not happening. Sorreh. xD

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I basically thought, as did almost everybody else, that I was a gigantic prude. I was also *terrified* that I was bisexual, desperate to be hetero. Turns out the two intersected; hello grey-bi. The sensual attraction realizations came later, and with far less drama and agony. Thank goodness.

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I was sexual before I heard of the word. It was years after I knew the word asexual, the asexual label could apply to me under certain definitions.

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I knew I was different as soon as puberty hit. I had no interest in having sex like my friends did, and I ended quite a few friendships over their constant teasing me about my lack of interest. It was the early 90s, and to be a guy not trying to sleep with every woman meant you must be "gay", and as you could well imagine, to be gay in Wyoming in the early to mid nineties was a bad thing with their backwards thinking. I knew I wasn't attracted to my own gender, but I also wasn't attracted to the opposite sex either. I figured that I was just a late bloomer even though physically, I was on par with the other guys in my class.

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MooseAntlers

I thought it was normal. Kinda confusing when I found out it wasn't how everyone felt.

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I definitely thought there was something wrong with me. I read a lot and latched onto almost any possible explanation. The "repressed sexual abuse" theory seemed good for a while but fortunately I was able to get past that stage without too much trauma. Did I hate women the way a rapist does but just not quite badly enough to commit a crime? No.

I went to boys-only schools and I thought that had somehow warped my mind (girls are evil) but a few years later all my friends I kept in touch with were married, so it obviously didn't harm them. (The control group in the experiment.) It still puzzles me how they were able to get girlfriends while attending a boy's school but that's only a minor puzzlement in my list of puzzles.

I was able to dismiss the "gay option" pretty quickly, so when my Dad asked me if I was gay I could confidently say that I wasn't. But at that time, I hadn't heard of Aven, so I didn't have anything better to tell him. I hadn't quite got through the logical problem of the Kinsey scale that only has a straight line between hetero and homo. I missed group X because I never read the actual Kinsey study, only other books that talked about it, ignoring the stuff their author didn't understand. (A bit like each branch of Christianity only teaches their followers some parts of the bible and not the other parts they don't like.)

So discovering Aven was a big lightbulb moment for me. I don't have to worry about being "broken" any more!

I do still have one remaining concern: I have exactly zero female friends. This is the top of my puzzle list.

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I thought it was normal. Kinda confusing when I found out it wasn't how everyone felt.

This. 100%. I thought that all women felt nothing during sex and just faked it til they made it and only did it because they were supposed to. I didn't really get that I was in the minority until my mid-late twenties when I began to have true girlfriends in my life. O_O

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Captain Darkhorse

To be honest, there was so much that was legitimately wrong with me that having no interest in sex was low on the Figure-out-what's-wrong-with-CD totem pole.

I thought it was normal. Kinda confusing when I found out it wasn't how everyone felt.

This. 100%. I thought that all women felt nothing during sex and just faked it til they made it and only did it because they were supposed to. I didn't really get that I was in the minority until my mid-late twenties when I began to have true girlfriends in my life. O_O

I thought I was the only one who thought that! For a really long time I thought only men really wanted sex, and so because I wasn't a guy then I was pretty normal for not wanting anything to do with it.

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I didn't even know it wasn't the norm to feel like that until a friend of mine asked me if I'd already made out with my (then) bf and I was like "no" and she thought something was wrong with me for not even have thought about it at all, apart from not having done anything sexual with him, either.

Then I thought I could be gay but after a lot of (soul-) searching, it didn't fit me. So I was left with knowing I wasn't attracted to anybody sexually and felt even worse and weirder than ever. I already felt broken and like an outsider for some time.

My friend thought I might've been sexually abused but I wasn't so I just thought it was because I seemed weird and different to (some) people, I probably was in this area, as well.

Until I found out I wasn't alone.

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I told people I had intimacy issues, but really my lack of desire for intimacy wan't an issue for me, just a thing.

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asexynerdygal

I got married as a 24 year old virgin, figuring once i tried "the sex" with my husband (now ex) I'd like it.. who doesn't like sex, I remember saying to myself .. did not quite work out :D

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Honestly, I never thought anything was wrong with me. I just thought I had fantastic self-control. I was raised in a conservative christian household, so church and youth group was full of warnings against lust, and praising purity and waiting until marriage. I never really saw the temptation as an issue for me, and was confused as to why we were being inundated with messages about lust and self-control, and figured that obviously I just had more self-control than most other people.

I remember advising my boy-crazy friend after every breakup that she needed to NOT have a boyfriend, so that she could have some herself-time and recuperate from the relationship. I couldn't understand how days later, she'd have a new crush she was pursuing, and I considered it a weakness of character. Honestly, I was a bit of elitist about asexuality before I even knew what asexuality was (I'm better now).

Before I learned the term asexual in the context of a sexual orientation, I used to call myself a panda (due to their seeming disinterest in reproduction). I didn't learn about the term asexuality until I was exploring TVTropes and came across the trope listing for Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory, and it immediately clicked.

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..Wow... Those were dark days, my man. You ready to read a story? Here goes...

Well, I first started to notice my own personal difference when our fifth grade class took a course called 'Growing and Changing', which was basically an introductory level puberty/sex ed course. Everyone else was laughing at the illustrations on the second page of naked people (entitled something like 'This is what people look like naked'), but I was just sitting there, forcing myself to laugh to fit in, but not really getting the joke. As this progressed, we got to the part about sexual attraction, and I remember, word for word, what the teacher said, "So, everyone in the world, unless you have mental issues, will feel sexual attraction and arousal to other people, this is perfectly normal and natural". At the time, I figured that I just hadn't matured enough yet, and there was some very minor, joking torment directed at me (It was pretty friendly, so I wouldn't classify it as bullying) for a few weeks after I said something to the effect of 'I don't get it'.

Anyway, three years past, and I was in 8th grade. Everyone around me was already sexually interested, and many were sexually active, and the entire time, no matter what I did (And I did quite a bit), I could NOT be attracted to anyone. It was now that I really began feeling 'broken', because I had been told that everyone experiences this thing that I wasn't, unless you were messed up. I even tried pretending to be sexual, and forcing myself to tell me that I was, because of a bad teacher. At one point, I was even dating someone and we ended up naked, in the same room, about to have sex, and I stoppped her and said, "No, I don't feel anything, we can't do this".

The next thing she said was the most painful thing I have ever been told in my entire life, and has largely shaped who I am today. She said (After some dialogue between what I last said), "You are fucking broken and will probably die a fucking virgin."

After that, I really felt broken. To the few I shared this with, I wasn't shunned, but I definitely wasn't understood. They would make jokes about me when I wasn't around and I would be constantly teased because of it. I spiraled into a deep depression (which has progressed to clinical levels, although I can now deal with it fairly well). My entire life felt worthless and ruined (There were other things shitty about my life then, too, that perpetuated this). Then, I went to high school, and people were more mature about it. Still not the nicest bunch, but mature. I dated another girl in 10th grade, and she was sexual, and I still hadn't discovered asexuality yet. We ended up actually having sex, and afterward, I told her that it really wasn't all that great, and that I really wasn't that turned on by her (but rather the situation). Immediately, I thought she was going to rip me apart, as the other girl had done, but instead, she told me about this swanky new sexuality (she thought it was new... well, can't bat a thousand...) called asexuality.

And then, I found out what I was. Since, my depression has become much more manageable and life is good. I now have a polyamorous relationship (One of the girls I am dating is that girl in the last paragraph), and since they are bisexual and sexual, they can satisfy each other sexual, and me romantically. It was only very recently (about a year and a half after discovering asexuality) that I actually joined this forum, but so far, it has been pretty great.

Hopefully that isn't too heavy or long, guys. Just thought I'd share...

I can relate a lot man...except I never even bothered having sex or experimenting with relationships. don't know if that was a good or bad thing though. ....ita hard to convince naysayers in my life about my orientation when I tell them I'm a virgin....maybe they're right to some degree.

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MarieAntoinette

I always thought that I was different and a bit strange compared to everyone else, which is true tbh. When I found out about asexuality and I was like "ohhh, that's totally me!" Before that I thought I was a late bloomer or just too busy to be interested in sex and relationships

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asexynerdygal

Marie, I felt much the same.. though at 41 and still not interested I was beginning to lose hope in the late bloomer thing :D

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The word I used to describe myself was "broken" thankfully it wasn't how i thought of myself for long. In school i had amazing friends who also didn't really think about sex and dating much, or at least didn't talk about it much beyond a dirty joke. Therefore, I didn't really see it as anything of importance, it was only when we all left school and they got boyfriends and went to uni, and I got a boyfriend that it became a problem. For a year and a half I called myself "broken" because I had been head over heels for a guy and yet there was nothing i wanted less than to sleep with him. Thankfully when I went to uni i quickly became aware of asexuality and I realised I wasn't alone or weird at all.

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