Dealing With Close Friends

[Zuul]

So, I have a concern with explaining to my heterosexual friends (who are... how should I say... rather committed to their sexual behavior and all that jazz?) that I am an asexual, mostly because they know I am in a romantic relationship, and I believe they have the thought that it would need to be a sexual relationship to be a proper relationship. I am hoping to go about telling my friends about myself being asexual, in hopes to expand my support network. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Mandie June]

well, here's my thing: Whether or not you have sex with someone in a relationship or not, really isn't any of their business. Now, if they say stuff like, "oh wow. you're cranky. you need to have sex" then i'd bring it up. but i mean, just announcing that you're ace and explaining the surface of what it is would be plenty fine.

I know i tried to explain it to an (ex) friend and her first question was, "how do you have relationships if you don't have sex?" i told her that first off, no one likes me enough to want to have a relationship with someone and second, i just don't (except the rare occasions we spoke of in chat).

I would talk to her about stuff, and she'd tell me, "people aren't going to be interested if you don't have sex with them." so I did. Boringly. gross. Anyway, and i told her that i did and they left. She replied, "i never told you to sleep with them."

So, that's my take on it. Who you do / don't have sex with isn't anyones business but those who you are involved with. But if they DO ask questions, feel free to answer. I don't know if that helped you at all or not, but I hope i did a little!

[The-Snowlion]

In my experience, I've been pretty surprised by who is or isn't accepting of asexuality as an orientation. You can really never be sure by someone's sexual behavior or attitudes what they will think of asexuality. For example, my very sexually open ex-roommate was super accepting and never questioned me, but her strictly "wait til marriage" friend (who generally supported the LGBTQ community) simply couldn't believe that asexuality exists.

If it's important to you that your friends understand your asexuality, then don't be afraid to explain it to them. Refer them to AVEN if they doubt you at all. They still might not understand asexuality, but explaining to them should help them understand you a little better.

Best of luck to you! Hope this helped somewhat. =)

[Zuul]

Thank you both. It did indeed help a lot.

[joseph1]

I think they might accept it easier if you don't use easily confused terms like romantic (or maybe clearly explain the differences between attraction types). When I first heard about romantic nonsexual relationships, I thought it was just asexual's way of feeling more "normal" when it was really just a friendship. However, now I understand the difference. If I was explaining to my friends I would say something like "We are more than friends, we are committed to each other and our relationship, we plan to stay together for a long time and we are each other's primary support in every way but sexually." If you take the relationship seriously and are committed, it is a real relationship regardless of sex in my (revised) opinion.