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How old were you when you first thought you might be "different?"


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MissLunarWolf

Well I knew I was different from a very early age... although I didn't know why. When I was 6 or 7, girls thoughts boys were cute, and boys thought girls were pretty, and I couldn't give less of a damn. When I was about 13, going into high school; some girls started talking about having sex, as if anyone cared. I thought that their friends were pretending to care, because thats what friends do. I thought that everyone (for some strange reason) wanted to act like adults. That those same people were picking up smoking, drinking, and sex, because they wanted to seem "cool", and that this "fad" would blow over... It didn't... and I still never gave a damn. It was only in University, when I had my first long-ish term boyfriend (that I never ended up having sex with), when I though I was the weird one. It was when my ex was surprised that I never masturbated, and that I should. I thought, "I should? Why should I?". He told me that it was natural, and that everyone did it, and that I should too.. but I never did, nor did I have a desire to do so. (Possibly TMI...) So I tried masturbating alone a couple times, and it "worked", and I saw the "appeal". But shortly after, I broke up with him, cuz it didn't feel right with him anymore, and I didn't feel comfortable with him pressuring me into things I didn't care to do. Things that would eventually lead to me having less clothes on, and in an uncomfortably awkward situation. And after I broke up with him, I stopped masturbating, because I had no urge to do it. It was shortly after that, and after some heavy contemplation, that I decided to google search: "Why don't I want sex?" That led me to discovering Asexuality: and what I can only call a wave of laugh-cry of emotions, at realizing 1) That I was different 2) BUT that I wasn't broken

But by this time, I was already 21 years old.

Something that happened to me, and something that I've noticed happen to other asexuals (but I'm not sure if this is a common thing), is that sometimes, kids will have that super close best friend, who feels the same as you do. And later in life, they both find out (separately, through different resources and experiences); that they are both asexual.

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It wasn't until I was 19 that I became sort of alarmed (I remember thinking at the time that my sexuality was like a blank) and discovered asexuality. I think growing up I was really ignorant about the whole situation, kind of detached I guess. I didn't think about it that often.

It's easy in hindsight to look back and see all these really asexual things but I didn't notice it at the time, apart from feeling awkward in those situations. (I think I saw it more as me being socially inept) It's true that I felt alienated from my peers (aside from my close friend), but I wouldn't say that was solely because I felt awkward having "who's hot?" conversations with them.

It's only this year that I've started learning more about asexuality (and other terms like aromantic) and thinking about it more seriously.

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mustardblood

For me I was somewhere around the age of 12 when i started realizing i was a bit different than my friends but it wasn't until i was 15 when i started to realize that there were others who felt the same as me.

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I had a little aha moment in at the age of 13, that went "sexy... so like people look at attractive people and think about sex? this is not a thing I do" and then i went and googled stuff till i found AVEN

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I have noticed the first time I was different in that aspect of my life when I was about 10 to 12 years old when my classmates were asking who was my crush. I made up the attraction so they would stop pestering me about it and also to secretly belong. In high school, I had some crushes but never led to anything because I didn't know how to interact with the person in that way. I was jealous my siblings were losing their virginity while mine was intact and questioning why I wasn't like them and what I was missing out on. Then, with some help with my mom, we figured out that's there was a possibility I was asexual. I found out last February and came to terms with my own sexuality, identify as grey-sexual. The virginity issue doesn't bother me anymore and I take personal pride in figuring out who I am. I hope my insight helps build your character. I find your research interesting and ironic at the same time because I am also writing a book about my main character discovering that he's gay when he starts feeling romantic attraction to his best friend. So you're a sexual woman writing about a asexual character and I'm an asexual writing about a gay character. Funny how life works that way. Anyways, good luck on your book.

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I first considered the option when I was a senior in college, but it wasn't until four year later that I found asexual as a term. I'm a bio major and I only knew it in term of sponges and amoebas. I knew people who didn't date until college, but by the end of college, I realized I couldn't keep expecting it to happen later. (I was chronically ill in high school so dating never showed up when stairs were considered a major accomplishment). A friend of my sister's is lesbian and from Georgia and talked about how social ingrained responses were and how growing up she made herself look at boys and be able to answer questions on who was hot to not out herself, and I realized in many ways I did the same but about sex in general. It was my brother who introduced me to the term since one his friends is an ace. I told my twin and she was like yes, of course, so that was nice. So in short, 21 as idea and 25 as term.

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DannyFenton123

When I was 13, somebody asked me who my crush was. I asked them what a crush felt like, and, well, it didn't add up.

Also, I did tell some of my friends that I never wanted to get married or have kids years before I'd heard of asexual aromantic xD

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UncommonNonsense

I'm different in a few ways, and they all came with awareness at different times.

Autism: I was aware I was ver different from other kids starting when I was three years old and put in nursery school. I had no desire to play with the other kids, didn't really want them around, and had no idea how to cope with them. I didn't even see them as *real*, individual people.. to me, they were a noisy, constantly moving, usually sticky amoebic organism that split and reformed randomly and sometimes attacked me for no apparent reason. How do you interact with something when you can't even tell where it's head is? Or if it even has a head? This only got more pronounced as I aged, until I figured out how to fake them out to a certain extent, starting at about sixth grade. I still didn't see them as *real*, not like I did my parents and extended family, but I could interact without coming across as too different and drawing their ire. It didn't help that I'm faceblind, so I could never tell anyone apart. I eventually learned ways around that, like using voice, clothing, hairstyle, gestures, gait, and habits to identify different people.

Childfree: I knew from about the age of four that I didn't want to be a parent when I grew up. I knew that even before I learned about the 'birds and the bees'. When I was told about sex, pregnancy, and childbirth, I was absolutely disgusted and told my parents that I would never allow someone to do that to me. This evolved into a phobia of pregnancy and birthing that I still have, despite having permanently surgically removed my fertility 10 years ago.

Atheist: my parents tried to make me into a good little christian, but I was always a very logic-driven kid. To me, bible stories were just stories, exactly the same as 'Once upon a time'. It bothered me that I'd get in trouble for saying that something I was imagining was real but if the adults did it, that was encouraged. The whole thing made zero sense to me. As I got older, I saw how religion was used as an excuse to deny others basic human rights, how it led to so many wars, and how people were killed/beaten/marginalized because they believed something else. I was openly questioning by about 8, privately termed myself agnostic at 12, and openly atheist at 14. This led to a lot of fighting with my mother and grandmother, but Dad was always great. He classed himself as agnostic, and he was always someone I could talk to. Eventually Mum accepted that I would never believe what she did.

Agender: I never wanted to be female. Even as a very young child, I loathed clothes and toys that were 'girly'. At the age of three, I began really fighting my mother about clothes. She was intent on putting me in pink, frilly, lacy little dresses, which I despised. I started destroying these horrible clothes so I could not be forced to wear them again. Mum finally gave in and I was allowed to choose more gender-neutral clothes. I often wanted to be seen as a boy and demanded others call me Tommy instead of the name my parents gave me. I hated and feared dolls (those horrible empty, flat, staring eyes!!) but loved toy cars, little GI Joe and Star Wars figures, and stuffed animals. And I disliked all the kids' TV shows aimed at girls. I watched the ones marketed to both genders or the ones aimed at boys. Most of my friends were boys, once I started to figure out the social world.

Asexual: Again, I had an unspoken awareness that I wasn't like others from a pretty early age. As a very young child, I knew I never wanted to marry or have kids. I was nine when my parents told me what sex was, and I was totally repelled. The revulsion only got stronger as I grew up and saw all my peers pairing off. School sex ed never mentioned any orientation other than straight or gay, and was highly biased against homosexuality. In high school I believed that since I wasn't interested in guys, I had I be a lesbian, despite not being into girls either, since straight/gay were the only options given. There was a huge amount of pressure from boys to be sexual, and even my friends thought I was weird because I wasn't interested. I didn't know that being disinterested was ok. This led to me having a few painful romantic false starts and even one relationship that nearly became rape. I didn't learn the word 'Asexual' until I was in my early 20's and my therapist suggested it when I talked to her about my wanting a relationship, but not the sex that was so inexorably linked. It really was like waking from a long bad dream. Suddenly, I knew what I was, that I wasn't broken, frigid, heartless, wrong, freakish, prudish, or weird. It was a huge relief. AVEN came on the scene a few years later, and I've been here ever since.

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I realised after a couple of hours thought that what I wrote was still full of the same old self denial which I've used for years. Decided to delete it until I could give a truly honest answer. This is a great forum, sorry to have spoken too soon.

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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 wasn't raised with any particular emphasis on what 'normal' was, so as I experimented with different things there was never a thought of 'this isn't normal.' I don't even think there is a normal or baseline for human behaviour. Just because a majority does or thinks something doesn't mean that that then is 'normal.' Rather it's simply the majority opinion or behaviour. But to say that by virtue of how many think or do things that it's then 'normal' implies that those who're different are 'abnormal.' And since abnormalcy usually assumes a problem needing to be fixed it doesn't seem applicable to human behaviours.

Majority of the world is Christian. 2nd most Muslim. So does that mean the infintesimal number of Jews are abnormal when that religion gave rise to the 2 more populous ones? Without the 'abnormal' religion, the latter ones would never have existed. So so much for the validity of 'normal' and 'abnormal.' :)

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Can´t remember exactly, around 11-13 years old though. In some way I´m still the same, although a lot has been happening between then and now.

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Mr. Quickhands

13; I had good friends, but even though I was clearly going through puberty it was obvious that I couldn't keep up in conversations about girls. When I drifted off topic, I was excluded from conversations/hangouts, and when I "faked it" I could get by but it felt wrong to me. I ended up drifting out of contact with some of my childhood friends because of that, and drifted from others just for the simple reason of distance and studies. I didn't figure out asexuality for another 6 years, but I wish I had known sooner. It's definitely made me more social; even without being "out" about it, it gives me a personal explanation for why I don't have to feel self-conscious for not "faking it".

Plus, I'm reaching the age and appearance where my tall white adult male privilege is starting to kick in, so there are significantly less people trying to "advice" me whenever they pick up on it. That sure is nice, I have to admit.

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13-14, with my first "serious" crush. It was a bit alarming, as at the time I had relatively strong feelings for that person, but I wrote it off to young age and inexperience. It was harder to do that as I got older and, surprise surprise, eventually ignoring it wasn't an option anymore. I became consciously aware of not feeling sexual attraction at around 16, but only by stumbling across asexuality and what romantic and sexual attractions are.

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I realized I was different in my sexuality when I was 14, but I didn't notice until after I discovered asexuality. I didn't notice how much sex is in the media and how much of a big deal it is to people. I thought I was straight like most people (at the time I didn't know how many people weren't straight either) since I didn't associate being straight with sex, just with liking the opposite sex. Back then, I was indifferent to sex and it was never on my mind so I never questioned or thought of the possibility that it was frequently on everyone else's mind.

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For me, it was around 13 when I thought I was different, due to not really having an sexual interest. I didn't really find the term "asexual" until 17 (now), and i've come to terms that i'd like a romantic relationship, but i'm in no rush, ha.

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quixoticalDREAMER

Junior high. 13-14. I realized that the people around me were slightly different; they way more enthusiastic and excited about the idea of romance and sex than I was. I didn't really think it was something to take into serious consideration, though. It was sort of a shrug it off thing until High school and I really took notice to the fact that maybe it wasn't them that was different.

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Pedio.phobia

I think it was last year actually (14 years old) my friends were writing sexual fanfictions about animes or bands and I would read them to make them happy but as I would read them I slowly started to realize that I wasn't really enjoying them, and when I read them I didn't imagine myself with the other character like I was supposed to, it would be just another fictional character of some sort and when I started to think about it more often and looked more into I realized that I was asexual (or biromantic) and that's how old I was and how it happened for me (:

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I have very a distinct memory from elementary school where a girl in my class asked me who I had a crush on. I had never had any interest in anyone though, so to get her to stop asking I just picked one of my guy friends at random. I thought he was kind and funny, so why not choose him to be my crush right?

I think for a lot of people (both asexuals and aromantics) its a series of small events like that that really key you in to the fact that you're different from your peers.

Little stuff like that happens in elementary school. Then come the heavy hitters in middle school and high school where its almost demanded of you to have a crush, talk about who's hot, etc.

You'll watch a movie and all someone will talk about is how hot so and so was, whereas you didn't even think about that before they brought it up. I've been trying to tell stories to friends before and had them go "Oh you mean the hot one right?" and its completely thrown me for a loop.

Personally, I found the term asexuality and realized it fit for me around 10th grade. Just this past year (freshman year of college) I realized aromanic probably applies to me as well.

It's really the little things over time.

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VindicatorPhoenix

I was about 18 when I starting suspecting that I was different from the average person.

Before then, I thought I was straight. I thought that my aesthetic attraction was sexual attraction (at the time I didn't know the difference, I thought everything was sexual). I would (and still do) appreciate the looks of people and even stare sometimes. I had relatives and friends who would talk about porn and stuff and they began to wonder why I didn't like it. This isn't to say that all asexuals dislike porn (some enjoy it), but it got me thinking about why I was the odd one out. I eventually found out that aesthetic attraction and primary sexual attraction were two different things and that I didn't possess the latter.

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Hmmm...15, when I actually realised I was different from other people and it was then I start identifying as Ace :)

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From 11-12 onwards I've known that I saw sex / attractiveness / hot people differently from most other people around me. I was kind of in denial, though; I attributed this to the culture at my school and figured that everyone was just pretending. At 20 I had my first real relationship, and felt very uncomfortable with sex, but thought that was just a result of my being inexperienced (and being on antidepressants). I avoided relationships subconsciously for a couple of years after that. Had a brief fling-type-thing at 25 for a few weeks, in which I also felt very uncomfortable about the idea of sex and did my best to avoid it. That was when I finally decided to confront the issue. I worked it out pretty quickly once I wasn't denying the obvious facts.

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ace_is_the_place

I remember specifically in kindergarten I felt different because all the girls liked this one boy and I didn't. I remember being accused of lying and being purposely ignored.

I didn't fit in anyway because I was going to a private school as a middle class child but it made me feel like an alien.

After that I began lying about who I "liked". Which makes me feel really dirty.

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I glided through high school without any romantic entanglements, but I never realized that I "like" people differently than the average teenager until I read about asexuality on AVEN and other places. Whenever my friends talked about "hotness" and stuff, I usually just nodded and went along with whatever they said. I tended to associate these discussions with objectification, not sexual attraction, and I saw objectifying people as a bad thing, so in my head I would dismiss these conversations as "something I don't want to be involved in."

As posters said above, there are various things that, in hindsight, point to being asexual, but in the moment I always considered them normal and never really thought in-depth about them.


Also, yay! Asexual representation!

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stanthebluefish

For years I was just thinking that there was something wrong or I just wasn't with the right person
it took me until I was 20 and my friend asked if I knew what asexual was, I bought a book, did some research and the clouds parted.

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Honestly, for as long as I can remember. I've always felt different. The only thing I can remember is when I decided to stop pretending to be normal, and that was around the age of 21. I'd left school, so I didn't feel the need to keep a social blanket around me any longer, and I finally felt that my differences were a positive. I've never looked back.

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I've always found myself to be repulsed (naturally as a a kid I guess) but it just never changed. I discovered what asexuality was when I was 15 and thought that that is what I might be. I didn't confirm it until earlier this year though

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I knew almost as instantly as I was able to communicate coherently, so about age 4. While I couldn't put my finger on what it was, or articulate it until a few years later at age 8, I knew something was up. It wasn't until I was 16 that I had a name for it, but by that time I could clearly articulate it despite having terminology for it.

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Kiss-My-Ace

I thought I was just a late bloomer for a long time. I remember in 4th grade kids kept asking me who I have a crush on and I seemed to be the only kid who didn't have a crush, so I looked around the room, played "eenie meenie miney mo" in my head and landed on a boy named Charlie, then wrote "I <3 Charlie" on everything I owned so the other girls would think I had a crush. When I was 14 (9th grade) and all the other girls started dating, I didn't see what the big deal was. My biggest moment in realizing I was different was this year (age 16), I played on the JV softball team and all the other girls started checking out the butts on the baseball team. They kept pointing out guys with a nice butt but I didn't really get it. I mean, it's a butt, that's gross right? I was the captain of the team, so the girls would include me in the conversation and be like, what do you think about that guy's buns? And I didn't see the hype, I just kind of said stuff like "umm, it's symmetrical?" And that's sort of when I realized I was different. I am still 16 so some people might think it's too early to say, but I am absolutely certain that I am ace.

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