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Asexuality and my mother


ashpenaz

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I had an abnormally close relationship with my mother up until she died about 8 years ago. We were essentially married, sharing a house, bank accounts, etc. I used to blame my gender-nonconformity on my domineering mother and absent father--the classic set-up. But now that I identify as asexual, I think I have the cause-and-effect backwards. Most guys have a strong sexual urge and, realizing they can't have sex with their mother (Freud notwithstanding), they move out of their family into a sexual relationship with another woman. If you're asexual and don't have a strong sex drive, like me, there's nothing pulling you away from your mother. I had no particular urge to seek out another woman. And my mother, who was probably also asexual, didn't really need to date other men after my father left (shortly after I was born). So, we never really got away from each other.

 

Yes, I know this sounds weird, and trust me, I'm in therapy. But I don't want to blame my mother for something she had nothing to do with. It's not her fault I'm asexual. And it's not her fault I had no particular drive to leave home. I was wondering if other asexuals had similar experiences with their parents.

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Under your theory, it would explain sex but not the undesiring of a relationship. Asexuality is strictly not desiring sex with anyone; nothing more; no relationship is a different orientation. And if you were to recoil with it effecting that too then it wouldn't stand its ground because aro aces (short for aromantic asexuals) are a minority.

 

And personally, no, i have no such relationship with my parents nor heard other asexuals mention it.

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Diamond Ace of Hearts

**starts looking for his own place**

 

Ha, no. I'm close to my mum but not that close.

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I guess I think most people leave home to get married or build a sexual relationship. If you're asexual, you don't have any reason to leave home. Independence, yes, but that comes with loneliness. I would think there are a lot of asexuals who stay with their parents and become their caretakers, as I did.

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

My mother was probably Ace or Grey -A, and I spent most of my life with her. I left only to return after my short disastrous marriage, and we stayed together with my baby daughter, until she died in 2010 and my daughter was all grown. It's ok if it works!

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I was very close with my mom but I couldn't live with her.  I was her primary care giver for the last five years until she died in 2010, but I did it from 80 miles away and took care of most things on the weekends.  I think she was ace or grey-A too, and never experienced any sexual desires or romantic relationships after my dad died in 1985.

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On 2/20/2017 at 3:59 PM, ashpenaz said:

I guess I think most people leave home to get married or build a sexual relationship.

Really? Maybe it depends on the culture?

 

I think lots of people (sexual and asexual), in the US at least, do leave home to be independent, marriage and/or sexual relationships are incidental to that. I know that is true for me and for many people I know.

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I love my parents, and I'm not going to project anything onto to them, but I couldn't wait to get out on my own. 

 

Living at home certainly didn't stop my idiot brother from knocking up his girlfriend. He moved out after that. 

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Since it's difficult for asexuals to form intimate relationships, I'm guessing that many of us end up sticking with the one major relationship we're given by default--our mother (or father, or maybe both). I needed basic companionship, and so did my mother, and since no one was coming in from the outside for either of us, we clung to each other. Not healthy, but, it is what it is.

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You keep making generalizations that don't seem to be very accurate. Maybe it applies in your case, and that's fine. But, from what I can tell, most asexuals do not share the same experiences as you. Are you trying to reassure yourself by saying most asexuals are in a similar boat as you? Well, sorry to rock the boat, but many of us are on dry land.

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Just for my benefit, are you able to adjust to life without your mother, and, if so, how? My mother passed away in 2011, but I've lived with my father and brother for decades in the same apartment and feel too habituated to survive anywhere else.

 

My mother suffered severe psychological damage by being born in a war zone (Second World War), spending the first two years of her life during a war, and then finishing growing up in a country that was rebuilding from post-war devastation. The total absence of health and safety as concepts at her job didn't help, as she spent time working at open etching vats for printed circuits that just wafted their fumes into the air. There are likely other things that affected her, such as a father who had been traumatized by his experiences as a soldier in the First World War and partly took it out on her. Late in her life I asked her why such an intelligent woman had risked having a child. She replied tearfully, "Because I thought love would be enough." When I hear the song "Rockabye" I get furious. I'm linking it for convenience.

 

 

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