EggplantWitch Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 I'd say I started to realise I was different when I was about 13 or 14. I remember my friends discussing crushes and I didn't get it (but wrote it off as peer pressure, they obviously couldn't really have crushes because we were only teenagers!) and I more vividly remember one girl showing me a picture of her half-naked celebrity crush and all I could think of to say was 'um, his hair is quite nice I guess?'. At the most extreme end I burst into tears in the middle of a street when I was 15 because my best friend informed me she had started dating, and since I knew she was a nice sensible girl and not a 'slut' like the others that must therefore mean there was something wrong with me. I was convinced I was broken and freakish until I was 16, when I read a comic about asexuality on Tumblr. I was familiar with the word and what it represented for months before then but never really applied it to myself until the comic author used the exact term 'broken'. And it all made sense. tl;dr: About 13. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
LiviaHyde7 Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 I was about 13 when I realised I may be different, mainly because everyone else at school seemed interested in the whole dating thing while I had a complete lack of interest in the area. For a long time I just thought something was missing in me since everyone told me I would 'grow up' soon and start dating, of course that never happened. Although it took a couple of years to put a name on what I was, I only heard of the term asexual about a year ago :) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Krista Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 When I was in 6th grade, so about age 11. All the other girls started obsessing about boys and I was like...what, boys are gross. At the time I just thought I was a "late bloomer" or maybe just a more serious person than my friends...but I finally figured out as an adult that I'm asexual. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Hardly any Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 I was pretty much sex-repulsed from 12 until 19, when I fell in love for the first time. I didn't think I was called anything, but I was pretty sure that it was unusual of me to make it through high school without dating or even developing crushes on people. Heck just a month ago I was still thinking that I'd had some kind of developmental disorder. :P Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SeriousCyclist Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 I was eight years old when I thought "I never want to get married and I never want to have kids." It was strong enough that most people would call it an epiphany. Later, as a young adult, I never understood why people liked kissing. The idea of it seemed OK, but the actuality of it was something totally different. Just like everything else. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Laurens Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 Around the age of 13 I realised something was going on I did not experience (fancying people of the opposite sex, wanting to have boyfriends and be excited about kissing). At that age I didn't worry too much though, I thought one day I would experience all this as well. Now I'm ten years older and think like f*ck I still don't experience it.. While most of my peers now already have sex. My journey towards realising I might be asexual was slow (I first heard of asexuality when I was around 20 years old). 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Slainmonkey Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 I realised I wasn't normal the classical sense when I was 13 when people I grew up with changed to became more sexually slanted, and everything started making less sense. However for a long time it was more a case of me thinking that there is something wrong with me and that I was broken. It wasn't till my mid 20's that I realised that it was all because I'm asexual. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Gintooo1000 Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 Mmmm.. my story maybe creepy lol... although I finally started to be okay with it . I'm handicapped, and that made me completely secluded from the world...no friends...just my little family...have no idea about what guys talking about when they start talking about sex... plus my disabilities affecting my genitals bad...I never felt the need for masturbation or having sex...I never felt that i need to discover this world ... I wasn't know there is something "wrong or different" till few years ago (I'm 28 yo now) . Quote Link to post Share on other sites
PastelBread Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 So like it was I think last year when I started thinking that I was different from the crowd. I was probably like 15. It was crazy because I would always hear people say things about having sex and what not when they get married and I am over here like an awkward turtle. It was just weird. When I found out about asexuality I was really happy! I found out there were more like me and that I wasn't alone! :) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
EmpathyAce Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 I was eleven or so when I realized something was up. Everyone else felt that relationships were just so important, and I never did. I was kind of grossed out by them, in fact, and also was extremely repulsed by sex-ed whereas other girls were giggling as they pointed at the diagrams and whatnot. I started calling myself an "antisexual," not knowing what asexuality was until I was twelve. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Blaze Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 I realized I was different when I was 13, though I had some suspicion in 7th grade. I literally found out I was asexual by googling "not attracted to anyone". Haha, so I found the label in eighth grade, and started becoming really comfortable with being open about it late freshman year. It seems to get more and more reinforced over time as my friends mature. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
90snerd Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Recently, after being with my boyfriend for 8 years and never feeling "intimate" desire for him, ( or anyone personally ) as attractive as I think he is. So 30.. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Gumby Jellybeans III Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 I never felt "different". On the contrary: when I was about eleven, everybody else suddenly developed something I didn't have! Going from child to adult, it was everybody else who became "different" while I just stayed the same. I got completely left behind socially. Other kids were wearing belly-tops and hipster jeans and pumping iron and I would turn up to school dressed as a pirate. N.B. I only learnt there was such a thing as "asexual" yesterday (*facepalm*), though I've always known how I felt. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Moon Haku Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 I didn't notice at first but now that I think in that feeling of being left out because everyone talked about things that I didn't know or care. I think it was when I was 14 or something. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
LookingGlassAlice Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 I didn't really think too much about it until I was over 18. I mean I had no desire to have sex but I didn't think it was all that weird I guess, I just didn't think about it much. It's like you probably don't think about the fact that you are disinterested in something unless someone else brings it up or it comes up for some reason. I wasn't naive and it's not like I didn't "get it" because I started reading adult fiction (I don't mean like X rated, but books meant for adults like sci-Fi and horror novels) when I was about 10 or 11 and there were some sex scenes and stuff but I just didn't think about that much... I had a few "crushes" but mostly they were just guys I thought were cute, I didn't think about them that much or anything. I had a few boyfriends as a teenager but mostly they lived far away and we didn't see each other that often if at all and guys I went on dates with I just figured they weren't a match for me when I didn't feel that way. When I wondered more is after I realized how much I hated kissing and I thought I was just weird/messed up for a long time. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Randomchaos Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 18, but I had always looked at my friends who were dating and wondered why they thought it was so important. So I was probably asexual/aromantic around the age of 14. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheBeatlesPkmnFan42 Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 I was kind of always aware, since my later years in elementary. I spent Jr. High just thinking that I would be sexually or romantically attracted to someone eventually, and that it just hadn't happened yet. I wasn't aware asexuality was a thing until high school (half way throughout the first year? I don't remember), I don't remember where I first heard the term, on the internet somewhere. I noticed that the definition fit me perfectly. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mudlark Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 About 14 I think, though maybe even 12-13 at very earliest. I was very naive and had pretty much no knowledge whatsoever of any orientations outside 'straight' and 'gay', but I knew that I didn't have the same infatuation towards the opposite gender in the same way as my friends did; I just assumed they were 'girlier' than I was. I can still remember trying to ask my mum (who somehow managed to sidestep all questions and eventually divert the conversation onto something else) why on Earth anyone would actually want to have sex if they weren't even going to have babies at the end of it all... :lol: 4 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
AmoebaAlice Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 Probably the first inclination that I was different from others was when I was in early grade school. First or second grade, I was 6-7 years old and I had a best friend, who I loved. And it occurred to me one day at recess, that this was the case, that she was the best person ever, and I wanted her to know. When you are that young, it's true you may not have a complete understanding of why adults do what they do when they show affection to each other and what it truly means, but I remember knowing at that point that if you loved someone, more than you would love your family members, then you'd want to kiss them and hug and tell them you loved them. So I did. She was my age so I did not get immediate negative response as I might have had we been more of a pre-teen age but I know I definitely confused her, and that she didn't feel the same way. It occurred to me later when I was just at high school age that I hadn't felt anything like attraction in that incident, and maybe I was too young, but I think it was an indicator of what I ended up feeling later on. That sexual attraction wasn't a deciding factor about who I feel strongly for and who I end up loving. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TalkingOak Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 I guess I have always known I was different in some way but it started to become clear at age 17 when I was talking to some other guys and they where talking about how much they love women's bodies for sex reasons and I said that I prefer a pretty face because you don't talk to a woman's breasts. They just couldn't understand why anyone would think like that. Needless to say bullying followed. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Antidaeophobia Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 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. I didn't really feel different in my household or city. I was lucky enough to be raised in a fairly liberal area, and my family is very accepting of alternative forms of sexuality, and my mother raised me in such a way that when I labeled myself as pansexual when I was 13yrs old, it was no big deal. She gave me a hug, we ate some cake, and life went on. It wasn't until I had a really good friend in junior high, and I told her that I wanted to marry a girl as nice as her someday, that I realized not everyone was as ok with different sexual orientations as I thought, and she stopped being my friend. I felt like a freak, and being raised to be so honest really made things bad for me because I was so blissfully naive and ignorant, I thought everyone just got along, because I'd been raised around accepting people, and people who were gay, trans, and even asexual, I assumed everyone just accepted everyone. I admit, I didn't start identifying on the asexual spectrum until recently because I knew little about it, so when I read an article on the asexual spectrum, it called to me so much I did research, and it was like 'Oh my god' and I had to really evaluate my life and what I wanted. I think many people are confused, they think most asexuals are like Sheldon Cooper, completely confused by sexuality and opposed to it, with maybe a bit of arrogance thrown in for good measure. All the asexuals I grew up around looked and behaved just like normal everyday people, but they still had to deal with the stereotypes, just as people stereotyped me as a dyke or a slut because I identified as pansexual, and was sex positive (even though I haven't had sex LOL). Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Bob32 Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 Hi CrystalKat. First I would like to thank you for writing a books with an asexual charictor. I would also like to thank you for your dedication to getting information on asexuals right. Now, to answer your question. I realized that I am aromantic before I realized that I'm asexual. In 4th grade I realized that people had romantic interests and an intent to one day get married. At the end of 5th I suppose that is when the "signs" started. (I still think that is young... maybe it's just me) It wasn't until about 6th grade or so that I really started to notice or think I might be "different". That is when people really started thinking people were hot and dating. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MazAu Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 I'm Autistic, with a mild physical disability. I recognized myself as different at age 8, I think - discovered the word "autism" at age 9. I recognized my sexuality as atypical at age 12 or 13. At the time, I identified as a Lesbian. It was the 80s. "Asexuality" wasn't in the books in my school library, so I didn't know it was a thing. (I'm sure I'm not the only AFAB genderqueer person who identified as a Lesbian back then, and not the only asexual gynoromantic person either) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Cas° Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 (Sorry for my english, it's not my language) I guess i have always feel different in some way. In elementary school I had problem with understand the other people thoughts, why are they talking about crushes? or about kisses? I didn't get it. In my country we don't study sexual education and, for example, i didn't even know that gay exist till 12. At that age i've started thinking that i didn't liked boys, or i didn't really understand the need of talking about love and crushes. I was like: books are better and school is far more interesting than love. I had a really big passion for studying and for art. Those were the things that i thought were the most important things in my life. Not the social interation and absolutely not the sexual part of that. When I was 14 I discovered the fabulous world of the gay people (yaaaay) because I've started thinking that probably i was a lesbian. But, like with the boys, i didn't get the need of having sex. The problem was another: i fell in love with a girl. Like in a really profound way (now I'm panromantic). But stuff happened: she was in love with me too, we confessed to each other and we had a great time together (oh god i was so in love with her) but when the sex time has come I was a little bit... like no. I said to her that and she were very disappointed, and angry at me. She thought that i had a problem. She said to me to not talk to her anymore and cut off every possible relationship. At the end I discovered that she was the kind of person who had sex with anybody and THAT was what she wanted. Anyway, i made mistakes. Today, almost two years ago, I discovered Asexuality (i was 17) and i've started talking to people online and go at the gay pride with them and they helped me a lot to understand my sexuality and my romanntic part. And nothing. I'm in love with another girl now. She knows I'm asexual and... that's the principal problem. She doesn't think about me as a possible girlfriend. I'm her asexual friend and, nothing, i will figure this out. The fact that she accept my sexuality is already a big thing for me. Aaaaanyway, why i've started talking about the story of my life?? I've discovered it after different experiences, somes were bad somes were good. But I'm happy that there was people with me who helped me to discovered that. (my gay friends from highschool, i love them). Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Destan Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 I didn't notice until last year, a friend mine suddenly said out of nowhere to me "You're asexual" when I was talking to another friend. That friend who said it, meant it as a joke but turned out to be true when my sister looked it up for me and I did some further research about it. I never cared about romance,crushes and sexual stuff so I didn't notice it. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JohnDoe1995 Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 I started to notice something was different when I was 15. I noticed I lost interest in girls sexually & I don't find any girl "hot" or "sexy", & I also started to feel uncomfortable when the topic of sex & relationships came up. At first I thought it was because of my shyness, but with time I realized there was something else making me feel that way (or not feel that way). I found out I was demi last year when I was 19. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
KP501 Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 I think I knew I was different from about age 8 or 9. I always said that I would never like boys - my parents would laugh and tell me I'd change my mind when I got older. But I never did...although as I got older I hid it. As a teenager I'd talk about boys to fit in with my friends...and I'd say and try to convince myself that I had crushes. I never felt anything though - at about age 13/14 I just thought I was a late developer and that I would get that feeling later. I had a boyfriend for a year from age 16/17 but I never properly fancied him and the idea of sex (and even kissing) repulsed me. Eventually we split up because I didn't want to give him what he wanted. I then thought I might be a lesbian....and I had a few experiences with girls (which I definitely enjoyed more than with boys). I then fell in love with my best friend (a girl) and thought I was a lesbian but was too scared to tell anyone and tried to hide it. That was about ten years ago...since then I have never felt anything at all for anyone else (male or female) - I've had a few drunken sexual encounters (with both boys and girls) which were ok but I never had any deep feelings. And I've NEVER had any sober feelings of wanting to be romantic with anyone else. In my late 20s I started to think I was asexual. Then I found this site and now I think I'm homo-demisexual. To be honest, I'm still not 100% sure and I think perhaps that sexuality is a fluid and changing thing. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SwimmyFins Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 Late elementary or early middle school. I thought people "going out" (sitting together at lunch, mostly) at that age was silly. When other girls talked about crushes and hot celebrities, I didn't get it but played along out of fear that someone would think I was a lesbian, even though I knew I wasn't because I didn't like girls that way, either. I was confused for a long time but ignored it, telling myself I was just focusing on school at the moment and would be interested in dating and sex later. I kind of wanted a boyfriend to prove to myself and others that I was "normal," but I never seemed to meet anyone I wanted to pair up with. I did have a romantic crush on a guy who turned out to be gay (sigh) and strong feelings (I believe romantic, but not sure) for a girl briefly in high school. I had heard a little about asexuality, but because of these crushes and the fact that I have a libido and enjoy the *idea* of sex, I told myself I definitely wasn't asexual. Fast forward to earlier this year, when a failed attempt at dating led me to question again. At 19, I found out I was on the ace spectrum. I've been learning more over the past few months and joined this site today, woo! A tip of the hat to you for writing an ace character! TL;DR: I've known I was different since elementary school, but didn't know exactly what that difference was until recently. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
sara89 Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 I started to think about this stuff rather late.I had my first relationship with 21. But even then I didn’t worry a lot about the “sex-part”.I just thought that it was normal the way it is. With 23 –after the break up of my first relationship (mainly because of the lack of my sexual interest) I slowly found out that sex plays an important role in most people’s life. By now I got it =D Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Laurawrzz Posted June 23, 2015 Share Posted June 23, 2015 Twenty-one (last year), although the signs were all there much earlier. I think I flicked through every orientation you could think of from 17-21... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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