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Why do you identify as Grey-A?


Cracticus

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I've never had full out intercourse. But I have done some things with an ex-boyfriend once and it really was nothing like I was expecting. Instead of enjoying myself I felt awkward and uncomfortable. Every time we hung out he was all over me. I realized that I honestly didn't wanna partake in stuff like that anymore. I never really had the desire to, anyway. But of course we all grew up thinking it's a natural thing that everyone wants eventually, so I assumed I would too. I went through the whole "feeling broken" phase, until I discovered I was ace.

But ace never really resonated with me as strongly as graysexuality did when I heard of it. I still get turned on by certain things, and I watch porn and masturbate. Sometimes I will even picture myself in the porn I watch because clearly it must feel good and it's also just weird in a kinky way as well to imagine myself in those situations. Other times I will picture someone I'm emotionally and/or sexually attracted to irl as another person in the porn. But I know I would never want to have sex with them. It just helps me get off. Kissing/cuddling is the extent of what I would want to do. But yeah, I do experience sexual attraction sometimes, and that's why I'm Gray-A.

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Specifics for wanting sex enough that I can actually be bothered to do it are so overly specific that I might as well never want to have sex.

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I think I pretty much fit under "experience sexual attraction and drive, but not strongly enough to want to act on them" and to a certain degree "people who can enjoy and desire sex, but only under very limited and specific circumstances".

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I identify as gray since I do in fact feel arousal and even watch porn when I decide to masturbate... I just have no desire or interest to actually hook up with another person. My own experiences with intercourse did absolutely nothing for me. My ideal relationship would be one where we both take care of our own needs and leave the other out of it.

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Squirrel Combat

I still ID myself as heteroromantic, but I do get turned on by some features on a woman. And now that I have gone out with a few women, I can say that I can get aroused, but it doesn't go any further.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I've always felt the odd one out in allosexual environment but then again the way asexuals define themselves on this forum doesn't really resonate with me either. It just feels like too much. I'm most comfortable, at least at the moment, sitting on the fence - it's a familiar spot for an agnostic like me :D

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The best way to describe my experience would probably to use the autochorssexual label. Basically enough attraction to get off on the idea of being with someone, while not actually being attached, being interested enough or actually caring enough to actually want to go there.

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Salted Karamel

Because the way demisexuality is described on http://demisexuality.org/pretty much fits me to a T, and as a demisexual I am also graysexual*.

*I don't make a distinction between "graysexual" and "gray-asexual." It's all one gray area to me; nitpicking between "light gray" and "dark gray" instead of just "gray" seems asinine to me, so I only use the term "graysexual" to refer to the whole gray area between asexuality and allosexuality, which I don't believe to have finite bounds either.

Sometimes the gatekeeping on this forum gets very intense, to the point where if you use any specific label (like "demisexual") to describe yourself you're always going to have someone nitpicking at the particulars and questioning whether you're really [insert label here]. So even as much as the standard definition of "demisexual" applies to me, sometimes simply identifying as the less specific "graysexual" can feel safer from being questioned and criticized by the label police.

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I've rarely experience sexual attraction. As much as I can recall, it happened only once to an ex-crush (former secretly emotionally-bonded). Most of the time, I don't experience it that much along with romantic attraction and I don't mind not being to date and flirt and be kissed and be 'lovey dovey' and 'do the do' anytime soon.

Also; is it still considered gray-ace (and gray-romantic) if I have a fluctuating repulsion, non-reciprocation and unsure/nonsensical/inapplicable with sex (and romance) most of the time?

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I know that I am under the asexual "umbrella" but some things don't seem to click with me, so I looked at Grey-A and Demisexual. I though at first that I'm Demisexual (I know it's under the Grey-A spectrum), but it may be too specific for me, especially right now because I'm currently going through some things and I don't know where I fit in. But I definitely feel like I'm Grey-A at least.

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blueplanetdreaming

I started out at demisexual, but arrived at gray sexual because of a variety of reasons. I discovered I was on the spectrum (as well as aromantic) after two years of marriage, and a few years of considering myself bisexual. I do like having sex with my husband, and see it as a bonding experience, and I like that it makes him happy. I do have a libido, but it's sort of aimless. However, looking back to the relationships and encounters I had before I got married, I see that I never really wanted sex from anyone I was with. It was more of a performance for me--it was something I did to make my partner happy, because that was what a good girlfriend did. A lot of my sexual encounters involved pressure or coercion when I wouldn't exhibit "normal" sexual behavior. God forbid if something ever happened to my husband and I ended up faced with dating or remarrying, my preference would be to not have sex and have a more QPR arrangement. So I don't feel comfortable labeling myself completely asexual since I do enjoy sex and have a libido, but gray sexual works as a more in-between term that covers all the complicating factors in my past and in my present sexual situation.

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I rarely experience sexual attraction and don't get the urge to have sex with other people - I've only had full sex with one person so far and that was recently, when I was 32, in a relationship with him at the time. I enjoyed it, but still don't feel like I absolutely need it. I get mild urges but nothing I'd really want or need another person to take care of.

I find it telling in an amusing way that my last bf actually asked if I felt like I needed permission to touch him, when we were sitting naked on the bed together, and I thought "Oh! You wanted me to do something to you? OK, I wasn't actually thinking about that at all but now you mention it..."

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I have a sex drive but I've never experienced sexual attraction, I think. When it comes to (hypothetically) doing different sex acts, my reactions range from indifferent to repulsed depending on what it is. I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of anyone other than myself "pleasuring" (I don't really like that word) me. That being said, I am very interested in doing other physically intimate acts (kissing, groping, cuddling) with other people. I have fantasies, sometimes with sex, sometimes with the other stuff, that involve specific, albeit usually made-up, people. In the fantasies about actual sex, I'm "doing" it to try it out or make the other person happy as opposed to because it feels good for me.

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