Asexual Men Musings

[Guest]

I've always felt like the whole concept of men being super sexual beings is a meme that's internalized in order to gain perceived respect for your status as a "guy" for some reason. It kinda sucks because men and women alike expect you to be this way, but they don't want interest to be shown immediately because then you're a pervert.

 

But then it really hits the fan if you're not that way at all. Now you're not a man AND you're a loveless human being.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Guest
Added "not" to final sentence

[will123]

I'm just glad that the females that I've told, haven't had anything negative to say about my asexuality. They never said anything like there must be something wrong with me or (after I told them I was a virgin) that I didn't know what I was missing.

[Bronztrooper]

I'm picky about who I come out to irl, so I haven't had any real issues, but it seems like people just love to assume I'm a 'typical 20-something year old straight guy' and treat me as such.  The only people I actually try to hold a conversation with are those who don't do that.

 

Doesn't seem to stop anyone from doing so, though.

[will123]

The girls I've told are long time friends that probably noticed I never made any advances towards them. One girl (I heard from her ex) had told a mutual friend that my lack of a girlfriend was due to me being picky. If I was straight that would be the case. In my area there aren't many 'single' females my age that I'd want to be chummy with.

 

When I came out to her, she said it was OK and glad I was content to not have to deal with 'pairing up'.

[will123]

I've noticed a lot of folks think of themselves as bisexual before they find out about asexuality. This even if they never had sex (or were romantically involved) with a person of their gender.

 

Can anyone expand on this? I always thought I was straight though I never had sex with a female before I found out about asexuality.

[Philip027]

People think they have to be interested in something, so if they regard both genders equally they interpret that as being bisexual.

[Verb]

4 hours ago, will123 said:

I've noticed a lot of folks think of themselves as bisexual before they find out about asexuality. This even if they never had sex (or were romantically involved) with a person of their gender.

 

Can anyone expand on this? I always thought I was straight though I never had sex with a female before I found out about asexuality.

I fell into this camp. 

 

My logic was that I wasn't any more or less interested in guys than I was in women, so I reasoned I must be equally interested in both and therefore bisexual.

 

That was a crazy time.

[Iam9man]

49 minutes ago, Verb said:

I fell into this camp. 

 

My logic was that I wasn't any more or less interested in guys than I was in women, so I reasoned I must be equally interested in both and therefore bisexual.

 

That was a crazy time.

Same here.

 

@will123 You may find the below thread helpful. Several of us explained how/why we considered this. In a nutshell: felt the same about men & women (sort of) 😊

 

 

[Bronztrooper]

On 3/27/2020 at 12:03 PM, will123 said:

I've noticed a lot of folks think of themselves as bisexual before they find out about asexuality. This even if they never had sex (or were romantically involved) with a person of their gender.

 

Can anyone expand on this? I always thought I was straight though I never had sex with a female before I found out about asexuality.

 

On 3/27/2020 at 12:08 PM, Philip027 said:

People think they have to be interested in something, so if they regard both genders equally they interpret that as being bisexual.

Yeah, pretty much, though aesthetic attraction came into play for me as well (though I didn't realize it at the time).  I used to wonder if I was bi with a strong preference for women (I knew that being bi wasn't a 50/50 split of attraction since I knew a girl who was bi but preferred girls) but kept defaulting to straight because I was pretty sure I didn't want to sleep with any guys.  With girls I thought that I wanted to, but in a passive sense, if that makes sense (not to mention that I bought into that whole "sexual awakening" BS), though now I'm pretty sure that I don't want to sleep with anyone except in the most literal sense at most.

[will123]

@Bronztrooper

 

I 'shared' beds with two girls back in the 80s. One instance was the girl and I were unattached at the time and on a group trip for a weekend. Looking at the numbers, it made sense financially for us to share a room with another couple rather than the two of us share a room with two beds.

 

The other time was I invited a female friend for a weekend trip to the US with my brother and his girlfriend.

 

Nothing happened in either situation. 

 

A couple of years before I figured out I was asexual, I spent another weekend with a female friend. I booked the room with two beds. Imagine our collective shock/horror when the room had only one bed. Luckily they were able to correct the mistake.

 

Phew that was close!

[Bronztrooper]

I've only really shared a bed with my sister and my half-sister, so I haven't shared a bed with any friends.

 

Though, tbh, I prefer having a bed to myself.

 

On a semi-related note, my sister has been living with her fiance for over a year now and even though I know that there's a good chance that they get up to bedroom antics, I prefer to go on thinking that they don't, primarily because I definitely don't want to think of my sister doing anything related to that.  Whenever I've talked to her through PSN (or even her fiance), most of the time I've stated that I don't need to know what they do in private and she's completely fine with that, though her fiance took it the wrong way when I said it to him and I had to explain that they can do whatever they want because I don't really care as it's their choice, but I don't want to know about it.  Once I explained that, he understood.

 

Also, last time I talked to him I ended up explaining to him about being ace and he was cool about it, though I had to clear up more than a few misconceptions he had.  I think I did a pretty good job explaining it to him.

[WrenIsNotMyRealName!!]

Puberty sucked. I'm just now exiting it and all the sexual hormones sucked a lot. The rando boners were the biggest pain. That and the psuedo-crushes.

[Homer]

I have shared beds with friends of both genders. It's unusual because I live alone, but other than that it's completely unremarkable.

[Guest]

On 2/17/2020 at 4:41 AM, Catserole said:

While blue balls are a thing in popular culture, there isn't much evidence or research to back up the oft-cited mechanism (epidydimal dilatation) and not all clinicians agree it exists. If you're getting regular pain in your testicles and don't know why, consider seeing a doctor.

I thought blue balls is what happened to Tommy Chong when he spent the night sleeping in a ditch.

[will123]

On 4/2/2020 at 5:29 AM, Homer said:

I have shared beds with friends of both genders. It's unusual because I live alone, but other than that it's completely unremarkable.

For myself it wasn't much fun sharing a bed with a female. I just lay there awake afraid I'd do something I'd regret if I fell asleep. Last time this would've happened was the late 80s, thank God.

 

I imagine my horror of finding a single bed in the motel room (when I booked two beds) was pretty visible. 'I don't want her to think I'm trying to pull a fast one here' was accompanied by 'I have no idea what to do if she has any thoughts of intimacy'. I couldn't get it corrected fast enough!

 

This happened around '03 or '04 about a year before I found out about asexuality. We're still friends and I finally came out to her last year.

 

Like they say, guys and girls can be friends without being intimate.

[Sir Lancelop]

I hate how whenever I want to be friends with a girl, they immediately assume I’m trying to get in their pants.  I JUST WANT TO HAVE A COFFEE AND CHAT, D*MNIT!

[WrenIsNotMyRealName!!]

15 hours ago, Sir Lancelop said:

I hate how whenever I want to be friends with a girl, they immediately assume I’m trying to get in their pants.  I JUST WANT TO HAVE A COFFEE AND CHAT, D*MNIT!

Maybe your vibe is too masculine. I have only 1 male friend and the rest are females and have never had that issue. Then again, I'm still in high school. Let's go class of 2020, am I right?

[Sir Lancelop]

8 hours ago, WrenIsNotMyRealName!! said:

Maybe your vibe is too masculine. I have only 1 male friend and the rest are females and have never had that issue. Then again, I'm still in high school. Let's go class of 2020, am I right?

Yeah it probably doesn’t help that I’m a 230lb 6’1” bearded man with a super deep voice.  But yeah, I too had lots of close friends who were females in high school.  Maybe it’s a college engineering thing.

[WrenIsNotMyRealName!!]

40 minutes ago, Sir Lancelop said:

Yeah it probably doesn’t help that I’m a 230lb 6’1” bearded man with a super deep voice.  But yeah, I too had lots of close friends who were females in high school.  Maybe it’s a college engineering thing.

Maybe.

[Zagadka]

Dunno, I never had problems making female friends. Pretty much all of my best friends are women. Can't say why that is. Maybe I'm just not very masculine. I have a hard time making friends in the first place, but I get along with them.

[will123]

I have female friends, a couple of which I've known since we were teens.

 

In the 80s, two of us spent a lot of time together doing a lot of stuff (none of which was remotely romantic or sexual). People would say, "So Cathy is your girlfriend, eh". To which I would reply, "Yes she's a girl and a friend, but she's not my girlfriend". Invariably they'd give me a puzzled look. Oh well. 

[Bronztrooper]

I've never really had anyone assume that I'm dating any of my female friends, though I'm not really sure why.  Most I've had is people assuming that me, and one of my female friends are siblings (considering how I often get confused for other people, it's not entirely surprising, I guess), but that's about it.

 

Though, I have had moments where I wanted to compliment a woman on something and then get paranoid that they'll assume I'm trying to flirt with them so I end up not saying anything.

[Skycaptain]

There's one member of AVEN who's a friend of mine is convinced that I should marry another AVENiste 

[will123]

4 hours ago, Bronztrooper said:

I've never really had anyone assume that I'm dating any of my female friends, though I'm not really sure why. 

I think in my case at the time, everyone else in our social circle was paired up, so some people figured we should be too.

 

At one point we were talking and I don't know who said it first, but here goes. My father really liked her and made a comment about us getting married. I told her this and she said, "Oh no! Mom asked me the same question about you". We both laughed. Our question to each other was, "Why do people think we'd be a perfect 'couple'?"

[daveb]

I think a lot of people like to pair up people (and even animals - witness people thinking larger animal equals "daddy bear", for example, with a smaller animal of the same sort equals "mommy bear"; like when I used to have 2 cats and one was a bit bigger. They were actually brothers, not mr and mrs cat). I have 3 sisters and we are pretty close in age. I can't tell you how many times I've been with one of them and people assumed we were a couple. Um, no; just because 2 beings of the same species are together it doesn't mean they are a mating pair or anything like that.  shakes head

[will123]

Why do I have to have aesthetic attraction?

 

I'm content in not wanting/desiring/et cetera sex with another person.

 

I'm content in not being romantically attracted to girls or guys.

 

BUT WHY DO I LOVE TO LOOK AT GIRLS? It's only going to get worse as the warmer weather approaches...

 

In light of the first two statements, why can't aesthetic attraction be absent from me? I've read a lot aces (male and female) mention how when their 'sexual' friends remark about a person's cuteness/attractiveness/hotness/et cetera, they just draw a blank. I wish I was in the same boat so to speak.

 

Any other asexual guys out there that struggle with aesthetic attraction? Care to share your feelings?

 

 

[Iam9man]

7 minutes ago, will123 said:

Any other asexual guys out there that struggle with aesthetic attraction? Care to share your feelings?

Yup. I feel aesthetic attraction very intensely, to the point that I didn’t work out I was ace until my 30s because of it.

 

The way I see it is:

 

My heterosexual male friends: “WOW she’s HOT... I’d [lewd word] her!”

 

Me: “WOW she’s HOT... I’d... I’d... nothing?”

 

I’m good with it though. Gets a bit annoying when it’s too distracting, but I see it as appreciating beauty, and I think beauty is a good thing (just not obsessive attachment to it) 😊

[will123]

1 minute ago, Iam9man said:

Yup. I feel aesthetic attraction very intensely, to the point that I didn’t work out I was ace until my 30s because of it.

 

The way I see it is:

 

My heterosexual male friends: “WOW she’s HOT... I’d [lewd word] her!”

 

Me: “WOW she’s HOT... I’d... I’d... nothing?”

 

I’m good with it though. Gets a bit annoying when it’s too distracting, but I see it as appreciating beauty, and I think beauty is a good thing (just not obsessive attachment to it) 😊

Sounds like me and my buddy. It's kind of a running joke anymore. He's the first person I came out to. If he doesn't notice a girl before me, I'll bring her to his attention with some editorial comment added.

[daveb]

21 minutes ago, Iam9man said:

I see it as appreciating beauty, and I think beauty is a good thing

Mostly this.

 

I do experience aesthetic attraction/appreciation (and sometimes envy). It can make it more tricky to realize one's asexuality. But I know better these days that I can enjoy looking and appreciating beauty, without it needing to go any further than just that.

[Bronztrooper]

3 hours ago, will123 said:

Why do I have to have aesthetic attraction?

 

I'm content in not wanting/desiring/et cetera sex with another person.

 

I'm content in not being romantically attracted to girls or guys.

 

BUT WHY DO I LOVE TO LOOK AT GIRLS? It's only going to get worse as the warmer weather approaches...

 

In light of the first two statements, why can't aesthetic attraction be absent from me? I've read a lot aces (male and female) mention how when their 'sexual' friends remark about a person's cuteness/attractiveness/hotness/et cetera, they just draw a blank. I wish I was in the same boat so to speak.

 

Any other asexual guys out there that struggle with aesthetic attraction? Care to share your feelings?

 

 

My aesthetic attraction is rather inconsistent and doesn't come into play often, but when it does it can be distracting.