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How old were you when you first thought you might be "different?"


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As some of you know, I'm a sexual woman who is writing a book for Young Adults with an asexual main character, so I'm here to learn more about asexuality. Something I've wondered about is at what age a person starts to get the feeling they might be "different" from most of the people around them. Not the age that they realize they're asexual, necessarily, but just when they begin to get that first glimmer of something being different about them.

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I didn't go through thinking I was different until I was 17, shortly before discovering my asexuality. However there were times beforehand when I was thinking about stuff and suddenly realised that my perception wasn't "normal". I wouldn't be able to give an exact age, but at some point from early to mid teens maybe?

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IgirisuNoSeijoki

the first bits, before I really thought about what it might mean, were probably around... 14-15 maybe? I didn't quite think different as.... well, more of a "Am I thinking about these things because I'm interested, or because everyone else is and i want to know whats up" sorta thing.

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Guest Sheka4

I didn't realize I was ace until I was 17, however there were periods of my life where I recognized that I may have unconsciously recognized that I was ace as early as the age of 5.

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The Great WTF

I think I first noticed it when I was nine and the other girls in one of my dance classes were doing this stupid "write your crush's name on your arm" thing. I had never had a crush in my life, still haven't, so when they started to bug me about it I finally threw out the name of my favorite Digimon character to shut them up. I found the term asexual when I was eighteen.

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Basically, having been Catholic for my whole life, I equated sexual attraction with lust and assumed that good Catholics just didn't feel either of those. I assumed that people were always talking about a combination of aesthetic and romantic attraction, not sexual attraction. Then one of my friends came out as asexual and another came out as demisexual, and I started reading up and realized that I was ace, not just Catholic. (Although I am still Catholic.) So, basically, I didn't realize that my experience was that unusual until I was in college and had friends who knew better.

Thinking back, though, I probably would have figured it out a lot sooner if I'd known about asexuality at a younger age. And when I mentioned being ace to my ace friends, they basically said, "Well, yeah, of course you are." So there were definitely signs.

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CherryAllen

I realized I was asexual last year, but I knew I was different when I was around thirteen or fourteen. When all my friends in school had boyfriends and I didnt I felt left out. I use to "date" guys but I had no interest in them at all, barely talked to them. I guess I knew I didn't fit in and just wanted to be normal, so I pretended to have crushes and whatnot and said yes to going out with guys just so I would fit in. I stopped doing that at fifteen or sixteen, so I discovered and identified as asexual at eighteen, leaving two years of confusion in between, and am now currently nineteen

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Elluna Hellen

When I was twelve, but that is more for the aromantic side of things. I realised that other people began to have crushes and I didn't and figured I was different.

As for the asexual side, I didn't really realise that was THAT different for most people until I figured out what an asexual was. Before that I just figured people my age didn't do sex much yet anyway. And I didn't figure out about asexuality until I was over 20. Whoops. :P

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chair jockey

I realized, despite myself, that I was different when I read _The Three Musketeers_ at age 6. The D'Artagnan-Constance-Milady triangle drew me like a magnet and I think the execution of Milady traumatized me. I knew even then that I wasn't having the standard emotional reactions to the romance in the story, but, as I was living in a monocultural collectivist society, where everyone is ethnically and culturally the same and there os only one "right" way to do things that people know about, I regarded anything nonstandard as "wrong" and didn't want to think of myself as "wrong," so I basically spent the next 36 years lying to myself about the fact that I was indeed different. It wasn't until I discovered the concept of human asexuality at age 42, in 2010, that I could begin to relax and accept myself instead of repeatedly telling myself that I was something other than what I really was. I still have habit-based residue of fetishes and kinks adopted and reinforced in my desperate, flailing attempts to find out "what turned me on"--which in fact is nothing. But those habit-based distractions are slowly fading, and I continue to get better.

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AsexualSquirrel

Woo ace characters, we need more.

For me I had little things when I was 9/10 and was upset by the fact that everyone seemed to find anything regarding the frikity-frak insanely funny. Then when I was 14 and started high school, literally everything is about that and once again I didn't understand the fascination. I'm almost 19 and just recently realized that I wasn't just "odd" or "a late bloomer"

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Forever Dreaming

Like in(k)onstant above, it's been a slow and difficult progression. I'm 42 now, and this is the age at which I have accepted the only thing that makes sense about my reality. A feeling of being not-quite-usual extends all the way to my early childhood, but the first instance of practically-tested asexuality was my first girlfriend: she was frequently naked and all I could do was say, "This is nice but can I just play with your hair." I thought there was something broken or disconnected in my mind and I tried so very hard to get over it. I learned how to be sex-favourable and it worked to an extent, but trying can only get you so far when it's not truly who you are.

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I'd have to say, I was about 8-10 years old when it began. I had a friend who was boy crazy, and I just didn't understand it. I had little crushes, but only because I liked their personality. I had a little kid (a couple years younger than me) who had a serious crush on me, and he used to find me on the swings and belt out Jimmy Eat World's "the middle," to try to serenade me. I just looked at him like he was a nutcase, because I didn't know why he was acting like that. As the years went on, I never could really pick up on flirty behavior, unlike my friends. I dreaded going to sex-ed class, and talking about female hygiene. I hated it when people would talk about other people's bodies sexually, it weirded me out. I started puberty a bit late due to my illness, but still found that none of those feelings came with it. It was at about 15 when the aesthetic attraction kicked in. I'm now 22 going on 23, and the whole sexual attraction thing is still a mystery, and is very elusive when it comes to close relationships. Since my brain is estimated to stop growing at 23 (womens usually stop growing around 22-25), I don't think the whole sexual attraction thing will ever come.

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I think I realized I wasn't quite like my peers in middle school, so maybe 12 or 13. I thought it was just because I was a late bloomer, or I had so many other things going on in my life that I didn't have the time to be interested in crushes or anything like that. And when I did finally get a crush on someone in high school, there wasn't anything remotely sexual about it.

I'm 25 years old now, and I didn't really begin to question my sexuality until I was 18 and in college, and even then, I didn't really discover asexuality until a few months ago. But I've known for a long time that there wasn't something quite right with me.

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I remember pondering it in a big way around age 4, but I didn't conclude that I really was fundamentally different until around age 9. Autism and maybe gender variance were my two big clues, not anything to do with sexuality. I didn't realize there was such a thing as sexual desire between people until I was almost eleven, and I was absolutely flabbergasted when I did.

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Maybe 7 or 8. I clear as day remember when I mentioned to my mom. "I feel...different." "How?" "I don't know...just different."

I didn't have the words "aro ace" until I was over twenty.

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thatotherguy57

I've known I was different as far back as I can remember. I wrote it off for years, due to the fact that I don't usually see things in a conventional way, and I had a very good understanding of sarcasm before I turned 10, and was a cynical old man by the time I turned 14. I recently started to wonder if my late grandmother picked up on my asexuality when I was child, as she always asked me, starting around kindergarten, when we visited "do you have a girlfriend yet?" My response never varied, it was always "I'm waiting until after college". Every time I saw her from around age 5 to her succumbing to dementia about 5 years ago, when I was about 26-27, she asked that same question.

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A Place With A Tree

There has been many invindual moments when i have thought i was different, but until i turned 14 i never really thought that much about it. When a kid i was a tomboy so everyone accounted my lack of intrest in romance and boys into that. After 12.. I had some issues with my bio father and developed misandry (hate of men). So again, gives the perfect excuse. Somewhere around halfway of 14 i quess i came into realization that not all men are assholes (my dad, i mean) and i was so calledly cured. Still no intrest. I thought that maybe i was bi for a while because i found both sexes seemed as egualy dissintresting. Then i did some random googling after coming acros term pansexual and found asexuality in progress. Realized that not being intrested at all was a sexuality of its own.. and Tada! Aro Ace at age of 15.

I quess earliest moment of realizing i was different was when i was 6. You know, girls for first time getting boyfriends in preschool, talking about crushes and idolizing them but still at same time being afraid of boy germs.. It was really really confusing to me.

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Never really assumed I was 'the same'. My first memory of being different was political. . . my parents were lefties and we lived in a moderate right neighborhood. So it was donkey vs. elephant (or Stevenson vs. Eisenhower). Subsequent discoveries that I was different were not surprising. Differences in sexuality didn't manifest until a decade later.

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I didn't really realize how different I was until I was in my first relationship at age 24. Until that point, I thought the idea of sexual attraction was merely something exaggerated in the media, not something that most people felt all the time.

I did think I was "different" than my peers starting as young as preschool or younger but not from asexuality. I've been different my whole life in so many ways that not being interested in boys never registered as more unusual than anything else. I noticed girls talking about getting crushes around 10-12 or so, but I just thought they were being silly (mostly because my older sister and her friend would giggle and play games about different boys, but never anything serious, so that was my perception: girls talked about boys because it was something funny to discuss, and maybe interesting to imagine being married to someone one day. I just figured I had a different sense of humor.).

I didn't have any close friends in high school, or else I think I could have definitely figured out I was different sexually by then.

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Lady MacBethany

I knew throughout high school that I didn't experience the same interest in sex and relationships as my peers, but I figured it was just a developmental thing and that I would "grow into it." This last year, my senior year of high school, I realized that I was not going to change any time soon. Then, I read about asexuality (I already knew what it meant, but had never considered the possibility of being ace myself) and I discovered that I had similar experiences as people in the ace community. Once I understood that I didn't have to be repulsed by or afraid of sex and romance to be asexual, I knew that I fell into the "asexual" category.

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There has been many invindual moments when i have thought i was different, but until i turned 14 i never really thought that much about it. When a kid i was a tomboy so everyone accounted my lack of intrest in romance and boys into that. After 12.. I had some issues with my bio father and developed misandry (hate of men). So again, gives the perfect excuse. Somewhere around halfway of 14 i quess i came into realization that not all men are assholes (my dad, i mean) and i was so calledly cured. Still no intrest. I thought that maybe i was bi for a while because i found both sexes seemed as egualy dissintresting. Then i did some random googling after coming acros term pansexual and found asexuality in progress. Realized that not being intrested at all was a sexuality of its own.. and Tada! Aro Ace at age of 15.

I quess earliest moment of realizing i was different was when i was 6. You know, girls for first time getting boyfriends in preschool, talking about crushes and idolizing them but still at same time being afraid of boy germs.. It was really really confusing to me.

That's how I flew under the radar for so long, too. Same issues. Tomboy, bio father, most boys I've had to deal with in schooling were jerks, etc. i also briefly considered lesbianism and I was like naaaaaah. I don't remember how I found asexuality (specifically being aro ace), but eventually did find AVEN and went...huh...yeah. yeah, that's me!

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I had crushes on guys as early as 7 years old, had one that lasted from 2nd through 4th grade. haha So I'm fairly sure I'm not aromantic.

But around age 12 is when I realized I was different (actually, I just thought everyone else was crazy and pretending to be overly sexual). I didn't understand why everyone wanted a boyfriend so badly, why being single was so difficult. Early childhood crushes are all incredibly innocent... I think around age 12 is when I realized that other people had a much, MUCH larger urge to be in a relationship than me, and the nature of that desire seemed different than what went on in *my* mind (or, what *wasn't* going on in my mind).

I kept this mindset through high school. Then in college, I got hit on by a bunch of jerks, so I thought maybe I didn't like guys "that way" cause I'd had so many jerks approach me. Maybe if a nice guy approached me, I would change my mind... Haha. Nope. XD

At 23 was when I finally discovered asexuality and life suddenly made sense.

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Anthracite_Impreza

Since I pretty much ignored social convention and interaction most of my life I never really noticed other peoples' feelings as a kid. I do remember thinking my friend was stupid for being obsessed with boyfriends at 6/7 years old though. The moment I twigged I was ace though was around 15/16.

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It started when I was like 11-12 years old i guess, at that time i didn't give much a tought but now I realize somehow where it started. It was like, when in summer I had a really close male friend, and we like to lay together in the field and just talk and all that, and my grandparents would go crazy because it wasn't appropiate, and i couldn't understand what they meant, on why it wasn't appropiate, it was normal! Or like, in school in 6th or something like that, when people started speaking who they liked, oand all that, so i would like pretend that i wasn't listening to what they were tlking about, or i would make up something trying to guess what in hell was supposed to like someone.

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After realizing my place on the asexuality, I've been reflecting back on childhood instances that I now completely understand. Here are some examples and hopefully they can help you:

When I was in first grade, we were doing a medieval lesson. The assignment was a performance, where anyone could choose to be a knight or a lady. I was the only child who chose opposite their gender role--I chose knight. I always identified as female and hetero, but to me, being a lady waiting in a tower was boring and dull, and I wanted to be out having adventures. This became very awkward when the knights were all assigned to present flowers to the ladies in the performance. Since I'm hetero, I all of a sudden felt very strange and awkward, whereas I was quite contented before the flower presentation fiasco.

I also noticed the severe lack of me wanting to pretend to dress up and play "house" like many of my friends. It all seemed boring to me. I played with army men and had a toy gun and used to climb trees and pretend I was a sniper. I also liked building things like forts from sheets and cardboard boxes. I played outside in the sandbox. I also wore dresses. All of this seemed very normal to me.

This changed in the pre-teen years. I have also always identified as romantic. I really wanted a boyfriend, but the concept of boyfriend always meant "companion" rather than kissing, or anything sexual. I liked the idea or the concept of boyfriend without the sexual experience. Other kids were already starting to experiment with sexual things such as kissing, etc. Nobody wanted to try any of that with me. I really do think that sexual people can sense that something is a bit different with asexual people.

Early teen years were interesting, too. I had a lot of arguments with my mother about what I chose to wear to school. She insisted that I was wearing was inappropriate (not that I'm condoning this…I am full support that any person can wear what they want). Now that I realize it, I had absolutely zero concept of the sexualization of my wardrobe, and chose to wear the item because I thought the design was the coolest. I had a purple and pink vintage seventies shirt that was skin tight with a cracked egg on it and a rainbow that I absolutely loved. I think this is a big thing--the absolute unawareness of the sexualization of clothing and wardrobe. I still have this--I cannot understand why a woman would want to wear a black or dark patterned bra under a white t-shirt. I understand artistic sexualization though--such as lace that's revealing body underneath or as a political statement.

Everyone was dating during my teenage years, including me. The only difference is that I really didn't care what a person looked like. I knew this very early--like 13 years old. I always only cared about their personality. I never was pressured about sex, probably because I was dating in the "nerdy" community of people who were too respectful for that. But I also wasn't really interested in even trying it until I was at least 18.

I remember my mother having an awkward conversation with me where I was 14 about sex. She said "just…if you want to have sex, please always use a condom. I have no problem getting you condoms…just please use one." And all I could think of was "I'm only 14. Why would I ever be interested in sex?" Of course I was never that interested in sex. The talk just seemed pointless and awkward to me.

Hope that helps with your book! Best of luck!

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13 or so, when all the girls were crushing on BSB and Nsync and writing VERY sexual fanfics about them. I was sat there going "What on earth is so interesting about these guys..." and trying to "fit in" by faking an interest. I mean, I kinda liked their music, but I didn't really "get" the whole being in love with them thing. But, I faked it. I put up their posters and all that. :D lol

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