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Painless discovery stories?


verily-forsooth-egads

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verily-forsooth-egads

I feel like the discussion on this site tends to focus on the negative aspects of asexuality and self-discovery. Some of that is necessary and to be expected; after all, people come here for support. This thread is dedicated to celebrating the progress we've made toward visibility, and discussing the different variety of experiences that come with identifying as ace at a young age.

I'll start. My path to discovery was in the form a few months of minor confusion due to different types of attraction, not unaware asexuality existed but convinced I was too young to know and it was too rare to hope. One day I finally noticed all my friends lusting after celebrities, and after a quick Google search to figure out when that stuff was actually supposed to start, I began to consider asexuality, and identified immediately.

Your story doesn't have to be perfectly smooth every step of the way to fit here; if you find yourself failing to relate to a lot of the discovery hurdles common among most on the site, you're my target audience.

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I found out about asexuality a few months ago on another forum. It somehow got brought up in a thread, and I made a somewhat off hand remark, due to me not knowing about it. Someone posted a link, I read through it, thought about it for a week, and then joined AVEN to find out more. The more I read and interacted here, the more it seemed to make sense.

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butterflydreams

My discovery of it was mostly smooth though I wouldn't call it perfectly clean cut. There's a lot of self doubt, but otherwise, the discovery made me pretty darn happy. I had actually been sitting on the term "asexual" as it applied to people for more than a decade. My understanding of it during that time was not quite correct, but something deep inside me knew not to just toss it. Then, about a year ago, I considered applying it to myself. Kind of in a "throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks". That first time, I was dealing with horrible depression, and I didn't have the mental strength to deal with something like this, so it was shelved once again. This time, for only 6 months. When the depression finally started to break, it just popped into my head, and I thought, "yeah, that's it".

I will say that because I'm older (read: independent adult, who does what he wants when he wants), there are fewer things people can try come after me about. How could anyone tell me I'm too young to know? Am I too young to pay taxes and rent a car? I'm fortunate that I can skip most of that. Really, the only bumps are the self doubt and thinking about how my past retroactively snaps into place with this new self-knowledge. It snaps into place pretty well. Which makes me happy :)

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I had no problem considering myself asexual when I first discovered the term on tvtropes almost 4 years ago. Prior to that, sexuality was just something I never really encountered much throughout life (other than seeing it nonsensically depicted in the media all over the place)

The identification difficulty came afterward, when I realized that asexuality did not mean everything that I assumed it to mean (a total lack of anything sexual) and that the label explained too little to be of much use to me on its own. I've since tacked on nonlibidoist to my personal label which comes a lot closer to painting my picture, so to speak, but still not quite there.

I've not regretted any of the steps I've taken with regard to discovering my identity (and in truth, this was actually going on well before I knew about asexuality). I like understanding things, in general.

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I had some past experiences, before discovering asexuality, that were negative. They were on the painful side, but without those things happening...I probably wouldn't have understood myself quite as much as I do now. Without those incidents, I probably wouldn't have questioned my sexual and romantic orientation.

I came across the term asexuality and the site AVEN earlier this year...I don't remember when now. March or April perhaps? I honestly don't remember what triggered my exploration exactly, but yeah. I lurked for a while, read up on things, and I thought, "Omg...this sounds just like me. This is me." A friend of mine came out as identifying as agender in May or June, and that really urged me on to start talking to them about my possible asexuality. They're also ace, so they could give me a lot of insight...I asked question after question, and soon I really felt like a light bulb went on! I felt an immediate feeling of relief. : ) And just as important was discovering the lithromantic label. I couldn't believe that this existed...that I wasn't just a cold jerk...that I wasn't all that strange. I am who I am, and even without coming out to anyone yet (besides my friend), I feel a change within me.

So yeah, there you go! :cake:

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i had some bad events leading up to it but the actual moment itself was a "OMG EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE NOW" moment

i was at home getting ready for class, listening to this radio stations morning show and they started talking about asexuality. and yeah i think i stared straight ahead at a blank wall for several full minutes before i could move.

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I've probably had one of the easiest discoveries ever. I never thought there was anything wrong with me, even when I had no idea asexuality was a thing. It might be because I never wanted to feel any sort of attraction to other people. I'm not the type of person that wants or likes to have a lot of friends, talk to people or be in social situations, thus my few friends never found it weird that I was completely disinterested in both sexual and romantic relationships.

It’s only been two years since I found out asexuality was an actual thing. I don’t remember exactly how I found out, but I remember being slightly surprised that there was a word for what I was. I did tell my roommate the exact moment I found out. “Hey look, that’s me” and she just went with it. My other friends have all accepted it too, which is really cool.

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  • 2 weeks later...

First i want to thank you guys for sharing. It's nice to know that it's possible that i won't necessarily end up targeted like a lot of people on here have been.

My friends don't understand, neither has any of my significants. But I've had no negative reaction. Some of my friends were actually more sure i was grey ace than i was. I have not told my family (besides my sister) and i'm not going to because they didn't accept me while i thought i was bi. And i feel no desire to try and justify my new sexuality. especially cause i know how it would go and it would still end with them believing i'm straight and this is just another phase. I had to go through some awkward moments of not being able to perform, even had a panic attack once, but other than that it was fine. Good accepting friends for the win. Even if they don't understand.

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ranting ferret

a superpower of mine is to expand on all stories. i'll try to not and focus on the goodness of finding asexuality.

i got pissed off about having been taught literally nothing about sex/sexuality growing up. enough to start learning on my own. i sent questions to a friend with a sex therapy degree. after constant discussion about attraction, etc. she suggested i check out aven. commence mind blowing reading and overly excited cross-research to confirm it.
i'm stilling figuring out where i fit within the asexual graph, but i know i fit in it. the relief of knowing has been so big to me, it's taken weeks to sort through! i know that i don't have to feel sexual attraction to anyone. i can stop trying to find the missing piece or the correct information or science journal or psych article about it in order to understand. i still read up on it, but i can go back to researching in order to know, instead of digging around trying to fill up something i missed growing up.

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It took a little while before I got comfortable identifying as asexual. I ended up stumbling upon asexuality through Google. I'd look up phrases like: "No interest in sex" and sooner then later, asexuality came up in my searches. I've had 2 prior relationships prior to my discovery. Both ended on good terms, but when the phrase "Let's take our relationship to the next level" came around, I was confused. I had no idea sex was an expectation in a relationship.

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At first I didn't consider myself an ace because I was poorly informed about asexuality, so I just dismised it as an option. But then I accidentally stumbled upon a blog post about asexuality which was really well written and explained - and that was the moment I went "oh, but wait". After that, everything pretty much just clicked for me.

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thatotherguy57

Several years ago, a friend of mine commented that I may be asexual, but I had no idea what she meant. I didn't look it up at that time, but the comment stuck with me because it didn't make sense. I ran across a video on asexuality by chance on YouTube back in late December or early January, and something clicked. I sat down and did a lot of research on asexuality. During the course of reading up, something clicked, then something else, and suddenly, everything fell into place. I've never considered myself to be normal, and I wear that I'm different on my sleeve, it's something of a defense mechanism. I revel in being enigmatic to the people around me, but at the same time, I've tried to understand why I'm so different from everyone else. While reading up on asexuality, everything suddenly made perfect sense. The big question I've pondered for my entire life was finally answered.

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I am currently still learning what my asexuality will entail, but so far it has essentially been painless to me personally. It took me longer than it should have due to being poorly informed like a few others in this thread. Now that I am exploring this, I am already starting to feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin though it has only been a few weeks. I haven't told anyone yet, and I am not sure when I will, or if I will, because to me it doesn't really seem all that important. If I do though, I know at least the larger percent of my friends will accept it without question(It is a very small group), however my family may turn out to be a different story, but I am in my late twenties so it wouldn't make much diference to me either way they look at it.

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