When did you realize you were asexual?

[~Emmie~]

So how old were you when you realize you were asexual, and when did you start to notice that you were different than your peers?

[Méshie Péshie]

I thought I was normal with the "no sex until marriage" twist until I got into a relationship right after high school (18) where the guy asked "why don't you like it? What's wrong?" and when I told him about the no sex until marriage thing, he disproved it. I started thinking there must be something wrong with me. Maybe I just needed to get used to it and then after a process, my body will learn to like it. But after 3+ sexual encounters and my present (longest lasting) relationship, I have learned that no matter how many times I put myself through that situation, I will never be ok with it.

I never knew I was different until I did my research and found out about asexuality. After trying to use it as an advantage in my everyday life, I started noticing that what I thought was normal, (platonic friendship until further notice) wasn't normal or even acceptable to others that wanted relationships with me.

It is an everyday struggle.

[Dawg4280]

23, when i found AVEN 6 months ago. 12, when I first starting masturbating but could not "get off" to anything sexual.

[Guest]

I was 24 when I realized it. Earlier called myself lesbian because I wasn't into dating boys but relationships with girls were just the same as dating boys ( Yes, I had some attempts, actually all my relationships were only virtual ones).

[Maven2014]

A few days ago, at the grand old age of 44!!!

Until that point I'd tried sexual relationships with men and women, and just thought there was something 'wrong' with me, because I just couldn't understand what everyone was so obsessed with!

I never felt revulsion, just 'oh, is that all' and I could never really get into it fully, it was as if I was watching it all from the outside. Hmmm.

[Shattered-Glass]

Not too long ago. I'm 16 now, and all this year, I've struggled with my sexuality. I originally thought I was homosexual, but I realized that I the only reason I thought of certain people in a sexual way was because my fetish was involved. I actually almost never think of people in a sexual way. The usual things that other people get off too don't work for me. I've never even climaxed during masturbation because I can't really get off to anything.

[Ficulnean]

I've always noticed I'm different from my peers.

I only figured I was asexual after I took an online quiz (as odd as it sounds, I had no inking of this before I took the test or even while I was answering it). Then I realized, "what, other people actually want sex, not just romance. What I experience is not sexual attraction, although people look nice and I get nervous around them. Sometimes because they look nice but only when that's paired with them showing interest in me. I'd get nervous then even if they didn't look nice". Then I wanted to bash my head against a computer for my stupidity. Because I never knew their was more to it than that. I thought their wasn't.

[Breathing....]

Just recently, so 24, finding out asexuality exists and figuring out it fits me. Thought about it on and off from around 10/11 (end of primary school) but it didn't bother me, figured i would eventually grow into it, until I was 15/16. Didn't think it was a 'problem' until 19/20.

[Slayerin96]

Ever since I was 16, I've felt I was somehow different from the others in this respect. But I couldn't explain it to myself and didn't give it much importance at the time, either. As time went by, I didn't notice any changes and I started thinking I was a straight woman who probably develops belatedly. This year, shortly before I turned 18, I came across the concept of asexual and started reading several things about it. At first I disregarded it, but a while later I had a conversation on the topic of sexuality with someone on the Internet, which made me look back on my life and analyse my behaviour in this regard. Then I remembered the concept I had discovered not long before and started doing proper research on it. It didn't take long to realise I identified with it. Age 18.

[That Ginger Kid]

For me I've known I was different since puberty, so like age 12. All my friends were, "Oh, so-and-so has such a nice butt!" and worse while I was still thinking boys were gross. As I got into my later middle school years and my friends started screwing around with people and I didn't have any desire to they thought I was massively weird. I got into high school and had two boyfriends, one for six months and one for two years, and both ended up dumping me because no matter how much they tried to pesuade me into it, I could never come around to the idea of anything sexual. The guy I was with for two years began to get very sexually frustrated, which is likely why the relationship died as it did; I went from being "cute" to him to being akin to his mother, whom he hates for various reasons, and "psychotic" and all. He also called me "asexual" as an insult, meant above all else he said. I had heard the term before on the Internet, but never thought it was anything like myself. And I began doing soek research only to find that it fit me unbelievably well. So I guess I formally found out at age 18, but I've felt different from my peers since 12 or so.

[romantic-woman]

I knew that i felt differently from my early teen ages, around 14 , when all people at school asked to learn about sex and i didn't want.

It got intense when i was 17 and all my friends had sexual relationships and i didn't want even to hear about this.

This was the 1st step of me becoming repulsed day by day cause of this madness which they started to have.

I first heard the word about 3-4 years ago but i was starting to search , about me and researches about "asexual people", last December when i finally came here!

[Zapstileon]

I was 17 when I realised I was ace. I was always different. Repulsed by SexEd and horrified by puberty when everyone just thought it was awesome. I thought I was messed up though, not that I simply had a different sexual orientation :D

[PurebredMuggle]

A year ago. I was 27. Felt like that is too old to discover it, but there is not much information where I live on marginalised orientations other than gay/lesbian so that's what happens. I was in fact so certain I wanted sex that I only started thinking about asexuality after I discovered demisexuality. There have been a lot of times when I've sat in a room full of people and wondered why I didn't see any of then in that way, but brushed it of as something that would happen when I met the right person. But that never happened so I'm pretty sure I'm aro as well. Kind of acknowledged that label even before I started to call myself ace, but I had no idea it was an romantic orientation back then.

[Cheery]

Very recently, actually. Couple of months. I suspected that I wasn't straight since I was around 16 or 17, as I had no interest in boys whatsoever. But I only ever really started questioning myself one or two years ago. Because I wasn't interested in guys, I figured I might be gay. But as I didn't feel any attraction towards women either, I asked myself if I was bi. But bisexuality didn't seem to fit either. Basically, I read up on a lot of different sexual identities and compared my experiences with those shared by LGBTQ people. But nothing really seemed to fit. I did stumble upon asexuality briefly, but dismissed it pretty quickly, without looking into it properly (Oh, if younger me had only looked into it a bit more). It got so confusing, I went back to 'default' and started thinking of myself as straight again, just to make things easier. But it hung around in my mind for a long time. For a while, I just 'accepted' that I was weird or immature, until I finally re-discovered asexuality and actually properly started researching. It was like a lightbulb switching on in my head, it really was.

[Elaine Watson]

I discovered about it about half a year ago - read the Wiki article, and realized I myself am that way. It took me about two hours to process it from "an odd group mentioned on Wikipedia" to "What the cuddle, that's me!". Then, of course, came the exploration of everywhere to find people like me, as well as doubting myself and wondering if my asexuality does, in fact, related to abuse - but that is not really relevant.

Originally, I knew I was straight, then I thought I might be gay, bi, pan, future-trans-lesbian, pan again, potential pervert who abstains, pan who is in practice more attracted to women - and only then came Ace of Hearts. Yeah, I know. Long list.

[nika71]

I first noticed I was different in middle school. Everyone started "falling in love" with movie stars, singers, and stupid boys in class. little hearts appeared on notebooks, people giggled instead of laughed, and everyone got very self-conscious. It's still as strange, foreign, and extraneous to me now as it was then.

[Asexy Void]

I'm 19 right now, and I figured I was asexual a few months ago when my very sexual friend started questioning every little detail about my sex life/libido, or lack thereof. I actually thought I was completely normal and that all the sexuals were crazy; no thanks to all those couples in high school making babies. >_>

[Elderberry]

I was 24. Like some of the other posters, I was always different from other children. I was a social misfit from the age of 7 onward, so I had no context for realizing that I was also different from other people in terms of sex/sexuality. I wasn't boy crazy like the other 10-year olds in my girl scout troop--which is why I quit the Scouts, but it was because I had nothing in common with their interests. In middle school, I thought my peers acted randomly and were slaves to irrational whims, but I didn't understand that they were acting on some kind of desire, I thought that peer pressure and the media had gotten to them.

I was always different, but it wasn't until I was 22 when I first had sex that I finally realized that I was actually different from other people. I regretted it so much--and not because it was with a bad person or because it hurt or anything--but because it was going against the grain of who I was as a person. It was then, it the depths of depression, that I realized that there was no one I could even broach the subject with because my feelings weren't "sex-positive" enough, and all I'd get was an earful of "if you don't like sex, you're doing it wrong!" I didn't even know asexuality was a thing until I was 24--those were a rough two years.