Did you think you were broken or normal?

[GreenRose]

I thought that something was wrong with me and I was born broken most of my teen years. Then I learned about asexuality and I realized I'm not broke I was just part of the 1% born without sexual attraction and nothing was wrong with me.

[Striped Sweater]

I hardly talked about relationships and never talked about sex with my friends (still don't, really), so I thought I was pretty much what one would call "normal." I didn't realize I was an oddball until I was 19. No identity crisis really, but I do feel a bit lonely now and then and wonder what people would think of me if I told them.

[Mycroft is Yourcroft]

I always felt like I was normal, and that everyone else was just playing grown-ups when they talked about all that stuff and boys. I was always considered super innocent and cute, because I never operated in that way ^_^

When I got my first boyfriend I realized that I was unusual, but didn't think anyone else would be 'like' me. Luckily I identified as Ace when I was 17 so when the world had just started sexualising around me (at least, from my 'innocent' point of view, I just didn't notice before then), so I never thought I was broken or otherwise, just different.

I kind of like being unusual, even if it might cause issues later when/if I come out, because, issues or not, I like the idea of being a part of the measly 1% ;)

[SexNotHaver]

I feel a bit like a piece of paper that has been folded too much. I'm not 100% sure why.

If I am 'odd', it's the boring kind of 'odd' rather than quirky.

[purplekitty]

I knew I wasn't normal, but I wasn't overly concerned about it. I knew it was normal for people to want romance and sex, but I did not realize until later how much other people actually liked sex. All I saw was that many people started to obsess over certain people at school, some to an extreme degree. I liked some people too, but it was kind of minor and I realize now that since sex never crossed my mind, I must have been pretty weird (relatively speaking). The only thing that hinted to my asexualness (and made me realize something was off) was that I occasionally yearned for a relationship with someone who didn't want any sex. At the time, I was convinced that it was almost impossible to find someone like that, so I just decided to forget about the whole romance thing.

[Arethusa]

I felt mostly normal, with the caveat that I knew that I was rather out of the ordinary for never having masturbated (successfully, at any rate-- the times I tried were out of curiosity rather than any urge, and nothing really happened). Still, I thought I was straight; what else could I have been, right? Plus, at the time I was experiencing crushes on members of the opposite sex, and hanging out with people who didn't tend to talk about things of a sexual nature very much at all, so I just thought I was straight. I still sometimes struggle with the implications of the creeping realization that I'm not, though recently it's been more 'what the hell do I do with all this time that's been freed up in my life' than 'yikes, I'm in a hopeless position, aren't I?'.

[Excandesco]

As someone who used to be sexual, when I "became" asexual I knew I wasn't normal. I felt broken and after coming to understand asexuality. I realise in my case I still feel broken. However, I'm accepting it and now I just don't care.

[Star Bit]

both? i thought i wasnt normal for another reason but sexually i thought i was normal; that it would eventually happen (all the way up till the point i heard about it and thought "oh, i dont have to want it?")

[hugger]

I thought I was just really, really rubbish at being gay. Now I know better :D :D :D

[ChaosHead]

I didn't know what to think, personally. I started off being clueless about why everyone else around me was sex crazed, and then went on to thinking why I wasn't. I did have a rough time though.

This happened to me too, everyone around me was so into sex that I started asking myself why I didn't felt the same way and it took me a lot of time to find the answer. Btw I'm new here and just recently found this place

[Hermetess]

I kind of attributed to my childhood and figured I was a late bloomer and when I got older that I would finally be up to speed with my peers. I didn't really have a lot of friends in highschool and what I heard the other people talking about seemed so weird that I figured they were just partiers and what they did wasn't necessarily what the majority did. I did wonder a lot how in the world people got boyfriends/girlfriends, like there had to be a group or after school get together I was being left out of the loop on.

I did have a couple of relationships starting when I was 24/26 but they never felt right, I always felt like I was scrambling to understand where exactly we were at at that point. I couldn't figure out how long do you kind of get together for dinner or whatever then move into more intimate things and I didn't have the words for my lack of interest in anything more than cuddling.

It didn't help that my partners tend to be older, so when I'd bring up my lack of interest or that I might be asexual I'd be told that it was just lack of experience, that I didn't know what I was talking about and just needed to stop being so tense and to let the past go.

[ChaosHead]

I viewed myself as broken, and even tried to experiment in order to find out what was wrong and to fix it. I approached the whole thing scientifically. I had a list of possiabilities for my disinterest and I went down them as none of them felt right or sparked an interest. I'm a trooper like that ;)

The fact that I may be asexual was at the back of my mind, but it was not a concept that I grew up with, and therefore not forefront in my reasoning. Also, my silly scientific approach and my life philosophy of "don't knock it untill you try it" demanded that I experience in order to learn

I didnt really care about it though. It was no big deal to me, I just wanted to know what was wrong and if I could find that drive to insert everything into everything that everyone else seemed to have. ^_^ There is no repulsion, just no desire.

I won't say broken but I was sure there was something wrong and like you said tried to experiment and still nothing felt right until i finally found out about asexuality and something click but it took me some time to accept it but I'm still a little bit confused about it

[Leelian]

I never really felt the need to take a look at my sexuality before I went to college and got in a relationship. I was pretty okay with believing I was bisexual and just figured that my disinterest would change over time. But as I got into the relationship, I started to notice that I felt different than my peers about dating and sexual intimacy. And that really started to play a role on how I saw myself. I felt that I was a freak for lacking something that I was supposed to have, and it took a bit to correct that very flawed way of thinking. What didn't help is that all the awareness I saw for other sexualities were about sexual attraction, any information included sex. You start thinking there's something really wrong with you when all accepted sexualities involve sexual attraction or sexual desire, and you lack that sexual attraction or desire.

Now I know that I am a regular human being and quite normal. My asexuality isn't some big life-changer, it's just a small part of me. I'm still with my boyfriend and he has been very understanding, even if he didn't fully understand it at first. We do not always understand each other (I know sex is important to him, but I don't comprehend why it means so much to him when sex to me is just an act of reproduction).

[iujghewbge]

I still think that I'm broken... sometimes I just sit here and think "What is wrong with me.." The worst part is knowing that nothing is wrong and still feeling like there is. I know there's nothing wrong, but it's hard growing up this way. It's hard when people tell you that you're weird, or that if you tried to be more sexual that it would be fixed and nothing would be wrong. It's people that make me feel like I'm wrong, society makes me feel corrupt. Every teen I know is talking about sex, having sex, being sexually attracted, and I'm just not. It's like I'm left out of everything because I have no way to relate to other teens. Even when I was younger it was hard to relate to children.. boys would say things and it just surprised me. They would talk about sex in the third grade, I would be terrified, and I always brushed that off as me just being a kid who still thought that boys had cooties, but really it was just me, the same me that I am now. The asexual me, the odd one that didn't fit in with everyone else.

[Chanter]

I thought I was a gigantic prude, as did most everybody else. :P It took me until very recently to figure out that no, I'm not just a repressed snob, I'm a grey.

Honestly, I was far more worried about the bi aspect of my identity than any lack of actual sexual interest. It was my attraction to women that really rattled me growing up - small, conservative Midwestern American town, you can probably guess the rest. I was *terrified* of being anything but hetero and trying desperately to hide my own personal reality from everyone, including myself. Major denial, in other words. boy am I glad that's over.

[Monkton]

I used to veer between "Maybe there's something wrong with me" and "Maybe there's something wrong with everyone else".

[marmalade-cats]

I always felt that something must have been a little wrong with me growing up, to not have the constant interest in the opposite sex or kissing or dating or anything like that. It was only once I got into dating that I started to feel like something really was different about me, to not have the seemingly constant desire and need for sex that people around me seemed to have.

[Moony]

I actually grew up in a really catholic society where sex was never discussed, ever.

Up until the age of 15 I had barely given any thought to sex beyond what I learnt in the most horrible sex-ed class I had in 6th grade and my reaction of "eeww I'm never going to do that"

That is until I had my first boyfriend.

I tried being physically intimate with him and that went really badly, that's when I started to get really scared. He shortly broke up with me for reasons unknown and I was actually glad because I didn't know what was going on with me or if I would always be like this. I thought there was something legitimately wrong with me and I didn't know what.

That was a couple of months before I discovered that asexuality was a sexual orientation.

[Sally]

I definitely thought I was abnorma -- that I didn't feel what others felt. But I wouldn't have used the word "broken" because to me that means that you were OK before, but then something "broke". I.e., that there was some event that made you broken. I always felt the same thing (or rather didn't feel the same thing) so nothing had changed.

[cavyX]

I honestly thought I was broken. Really glad I found AVEN.

[Purrtrick Sturr]

I've never really thought about sexuality or sex, because I didn't question my sexuality, I thought I was heterosexual by default.

I didn't feel broken when I found out that I was asexual, nor did I before I found out.

[Brent_S]

I'm demi. I grew up Southern Baptist, a very conservative Christian denomination. So the fact that I wasn't sexually attracted to strangers, when others were, seemed to clearly be a sign that I had cultivated a healthy (aka not sinful) sexuality. It wasn't until 2011 that I realized I couldn't be any other ways, and maybe other people were different and couldn't be any other way as well. So I actually thought all sexual people were broken. Now I know better :D

[LordTardis]

I didn't think about it much, but I grew up in a Christian household so we were instructed to be virgins til marriage, and I just never understood why that would be a problem for some people.

I never had any trouble controlling lusts or anything like that, and when I eventually had sex, my gf didn't know but it was really just because she wanted to. If it had been up to me I would have preferred to cuddle, its a lot less work/risk.

So I always knew something was a bit off I guess but I always just thought I was normal but better at self-control maybe? Of course it's easy to control what you don't have.

[letrickster]

I really had no idea I was until I heard about it. I thought I was completely "normal" although there were a few times where I was a little unsure.

[kassafrass]

I thought there was something very wrong, I often felt isolated from friends when talking about relationships, and then there was the whole "well who do you like?" and in all honesty it was always no one, but I would give them a name just so they would stop bothering me. But it was concerning, then I had a discussion with a friend of mine who asked me if I was in a relationship what would I do? How far would I go? That's when I really got into thinking. Eventually it led me to asexuality which really made me understand I was not broken or weird.

[editingatwork]

I still think that I'm broken... sometimes I just sit here and think "What is wrong with me.." The worst part is knowing that nothing is wrong and still feeling like there is. I know there's nothing wrong, but it's hard growing up this way. It's hard when people tell you that you're weird, or that if you tried to be more sexual that it would be fixed and nothing would be wrong. It's people that make me feel like I'm wrong, society makes me feel corrupt. Every teen I know is talking about sex, having sex, being sexually attracted, and I'm just not. It's like I'm left out of everything because I have no way to relate to other teens. Even when I was younger it was hard to relate to children.. boys would say things and it just surprised me. They would talk about sex in the third grade, I would be terrified, and I always brushed that off as me just being a kid who still thought that boys had cooties, but really it was just me, the same me that I am now. The asexual me, the odd one that didn't fit in with everyone else.

That sounds rough. I hope being on AVEN helps curb the feelings of loneliness, exclusion, and being broken. It definitely sucks sometimes, seeing the importance placed on sex and sexual urges, and not being able to identify with those feelings or the people feeling them. It's like you've been left standing at an empty bus station while everyone else heads off to some party you didn't want to go to anyway, but you hate the feeling of exclusion regardless.

You fit in with us, here. :) You're definitely not the odd one.

[luxurieux]

I thought I was completely normal. I thought everyone else was just making a big deal out of something that wasn't all that special.

[Ashmedai]

I thought I was completely normal. I thought everyone else was just making a big deal out of something that wasn't all that special.

Pretty much this. On occasion I thought there was something wrong with everyone else.

[AnomalyEternal]

It never even occured to me. I always put my work first and never thought there was anything 'wrong' with me.

[Ziggy_G]

Both...?

I would casually consider to myself whether I was perhaps bi or something else altogether that could explain my kinks and had passingly thought about asexuality but didnt really understand it properly, plus I have a sex-drive so i didnt think it fit. But for the most part I assumed this was how most hetro people felt. Didn't consider it much.

But I was very aware I was not romantic. I thought that I was very much broken/not good enough, I mean nobody else struggles to just be in a relationship without hating it. Kissing and sleeping beside a person and being able to stand them for long periods of time, they just make it look so easy, so effortless and natural, why can't I do that! Whats wrong with me! In fact it was the search to find others that feel the same way about relationships (aromantically) that led me to the discovery that I could potentially be asexual.

Suddenly glass shatters as I realised everyone's been having an extra element of the relationships I haven't.

fun times :)