What the actual f am I

[DUK]

Hello everyone,

 

I'll admit up front that I haven't read every post ever posted on this site, or anywhere near it. I'm in one of my panicky periods, honestly, with the need to do  something, and google searches by the bucket load aren't helping.

 

I'll try to describe myself and my issues briefly, and I would appreciate any and all thoughts more than you guys can know, because, as I said, I'm in a panicky period, and answers of any kind really tend to help ground me, even if it only really helps me figure out where to direct my research at next.

 

Who am I, then:

 

I'm a cis woman. As a kid, I was a complete and utter tomboy. As an adult, I'm still more likely to wear jeans and t-shirts than anything else. Only reason I even wear mascara is the whole adult with a job thing. 

 

As a teenager, just into puberty, I would get really attracted to guys (and sometimes girls as well), and some part of me really wanted to act on it, but I never did, even when the opportunity was there. Later, after puberty was over, I would panic and make up excuses and basically run away when anyone initiated anything sexual or even really intimate. I've never had sex (and the thought of it frightens me). I've never had a kiss I enjoyed (no matter how romantic the guy or how silly the girl). Nowadays, when someone tries to ask me for a coffee or anything like that, I make up the best excuse I can think of and walk very quickly in the other direction, and then avoid anywhere I think I might run into the person again.

 

At this point, I think it's important to add that I've never been a victim of sexual abuse of any kind.

 

I love hugs and cuddlings, though only with people I really know and trust.

 

I have had crushes, and wanted to do things with them. In the grips of puberty, it was mainly guys around me, who I knew personally. In my late teen years, it became all about 'safe crushes', as in celebrities and fictional characters. One thing they all had in common? I'd never meet them face to face or have actually try to figure out how anything might actually work, At this point in my life, I'm thirty years old and I don't think I've even had a crush for about five years.

 

I've worked for years as a preschool teacher, and at some point in time, I realised I don't particularly want to have to deal with kids in my free time. Realising that led to the realisation that all my previous fantasies about boys (as a kid) and men (as a woman) had always led to the end point of children and a family, and once I'd dealt with the fact that I may not want kids, I didn't even know what the big deal about relationships even was.

 

I'm not a very sociable person. I don't have many steady friends and my most stable relationships are with my parents and sister. I've lived in four different countries in the past five years, and I have a hard time building a real connection with anyone, so perhaps I really should just see a mental health professional about a borderline personality disorder. I really don't even know, but I'm so damn clueless I figured I might as well ask here first.

 

What confuses me more than anything is the way I connect with fictional characters. I'm not a very visual person, so sex scenes in porn or a film don't do much for me at all, but I do sometimes appreciate well-written smut (though not nearly as much as I did five-ten years ago; these days I'm more likely to scroll through it to get back to the action). I guess I like smut and romance in a weird kind of way. I empathise with the characters and follow along on their journeys and feel their feelings (perhaps more than I should) but those romantic and sexual feeling don't really exist in my own life. I feel so much for those characters, though, that their romantic and sexual problems are far more acute to me than my own ever were, even at the height of puberty. Aside from just empathising with the characters, I get stuff in my own weird, intellectual kind of way. I can imitate and imagine feelings I've never actually felt, not really, and I can bring myself to tears that way. But at the end of the day, I'm too pragmatic to let it get to me for long.

 

TL:DR: At this point in my life I'm a thirty-year-old highly pragmatic woman. I don't want kids. I don't see the point in a relationship without kids being the end point. I haven't had a crush in more than five years. Attraction, to me, is purely aesthetic and only with 'safe people' (who I will never have to actually meet). The thought of getting naked with another person actively frightens me, despite having no sexual trauma in my past. I really don't know how to explain the rest briefly.

 

So I guess what confuses me is whether I'm somewhere on the aro and/or ace spectrum or if I'm really just a sociopath who hasn't realised that's what I am yet. Any kind of hints or points towards further research would be much appreciated, whether you're qualified or not. I'd really prefer not to be a d*mn psycho, but none of the quizzes or tests I've tried so far for ace and aro have fit me at all, only confused me further. So yeah.

 

Again, any kind of input will be much appreciated.

 

Kind regards,

H.U.K.

[ScribalMarks]

I think you are a grey-sexual ( grey-ace ) like me, someone who feels sexual attraction, but rarely or never acts on it. I also doubt you are a sociopath.

[DUK]

Thanks so much for responding. From my first few glances, that doesn't seem all wrong at all. I'll have to look into it a bit more. Still, it's already a lot better than trying to juggle the polarities of always seeing the world as a sexual place and never feeling sexual attraction at all, neither of which actually fit me. And I'm definitely happy you don't see me as a sociopath. Honestly, I'm probably just about five or ten years too old to really be well adjusted in society. But the fact that I often feel more for fictional characters than all those real people I can't seem to connect with at all and the way I tend to view everything theoretically rather than emotionally, well, kind of tends to make me worry about myself even if no one else has brought anything up. Yet, you know. There's a fair amount of people out there who don't really want to accept that you aren't constantly looking for some perfect guy who may or may not exist. Which is why my best local friend is gay and doesn't give a flying fuck so long as I keep keeping up with his drama ;P

 

I will definitely keep looking into the keywords you gave me. Never felt so old and out of touch as when I actually started to wonder about who and what the f I even am. It should be so simple. For most people, it even really is that simple. Unfortunately, I was never one of them, and double unfortunate, it took me this long to figure out that something wasn't quite normal. It's nothing that's been stopping me from living life, really. It's just... It's kind of the same as when I got diagnosed with ADHD years and years ago. It makes a mess of your personal life, sure, but it also gives you the words you need to understand yourself, so to speak, if you understand at all? It's rough and it brings you eye to eye with issues that are more easily left buried... It's always going to be hard as f*ck, but still, at least you have words to go along with whatever isn't quite normal...

[Yep, me]

If you don’t feel sexual attraction, you’re asexual.

[Apathetic Echidna]

2 hours ago, DUK said:

I would panic and make up excuses and basically run away when anyone initiated anything sexual or even really intimate. I've never had sex (and the thought of it frightens me). I've never had a kiss I enjoyed

So this sounds at least like an aversion, but probably there is some repulsion in there in regards to certain activities (using the indifferent, averse, repulsed scale for behaviours), I doubt it is only fear or shyness simply because you never enjoyed what you did. Discovering your specific aversions and repulsions can be very helpful in further navigating future encounters with other people. The indifferent/averse/repulsed reactions can be used as modifiers to sexual/romantic orientations in case you find a label that you feel does not quite fit. (there may be a positive word but I can't remember it right now, sorry). There are also the attitude modifiers of positive, neutral and negative that you can use too. I hope I haven't confused you more. These are all just things you can choose to use if you decide to go with graysexual or one of the other terms from the orientation lexicon masterlist. 

 

2 hours ago, DUK said:

it became all about 'safe crushes', as in celebrities and fictional characters. One thing they all had in common? I'd never meet them face to face or have actually try to figure out how anything might actually work

I know you say you haven't had a crush in a few years, but did you still prefer this sort of unattainable attachment? This sort of distancing from actual personal relationship may actually be more about your romantic orientation than your sexual one. I also doubt you are a sociopath, but you might be towards the aromantic side of the spectrum. Quite a few aromantics are much more accepting of romantic type connections when they are abstract fictional media, it is only when the romantic attachment is directed towards them that issues occur. 

 

1 hour ago, DUK said:

There's a fair amount of people out there who don't really want to accept that you aren't constantly looking for some perfect guy who may or may not exist.

Ahhhh, the mythical The One^TM,  we rant about that fairly often on aromantic sites. You may enjoy having a read over at http://www.arocalypse.com/forums/ which has more of a romance averse/repulsed community.