Strangely validating experiences as an Asexual.

[Clearly~Dust]

So recently I was sitting in my roommate's room looking at her old high school yearbooks with her when she started to tell me a story about this guy.

 

Apparently, she saw this dude in the hallway and was so immediately very strongly sexually attracted to him. The funny thing is she 1) didn't know him at all, 2) was not aesthetically attracted to him AT ALL, and 3) [the most important piece of info in this story] was a virgin at the time! She said this went on for about a week. Every time she passed by him she would just be so sexually attracted to him. Like WANTED-TO-BE-WITH-HIM attraction. 

 

I just sat there for a bit before telling her that hearing her talk about this was so strangely validating because I've neeeeevvvverrr in my life experienced anything like that. It just kinda sent home "yeah. I'm definitely Asexual because that is sexual attraction at it's purest and I've never felt that way about anyone before."

 

I mean, I know I'm asexual. But when you have your family telling you that "females are different when it comes to sex. They don't start wanting it until they've had sex. You're putting too many labels on yourself. You're just making things harder for yourself." It gets kind of hard to validate yourself. 

 

So, yeah. That was my strangely validating experience.

What about you all? What have been your strangely validating experiences, or just validating experiences? 

[Moenalie]

My experience is rather in the norm I guess ?
I just kept on thinking i'm an allien for the entirety of my life not being sexually or aesthethically attracted to anyone
wich I first thought 'maybe i'm a gay' but it didn't work either as none of the existing labels were feeling 'correct' to me
At some point I was discussing the topic with some people on discord and one guy suggested that I might be asexual and directed me to AVEN
that's pretty much when I got my 'insight' moment of ''oh okay,that's why''
Still struggling to accept it as an acceptable way to see things but managing ; )

[ExanaZen]

I remember reading something on Tumblr about asexuality, and then I looked it up because I was curious. I hadn't thought much about my sexuality, I just thought I would grow in to it or something. But then I read about it and it all felt right and that's when I realised that I was ace. It's not the greatest story, but there it is.

[fiѕh]

I get tired of the "females are different" thing and I'm not even asexual or female, it's just it's bs. Some women are different from men that way and some aren't, and sometimes it's the other way around. I've met a fair share of both in either sex. It doesn't matter. If anything it's like... a tendency. No way it's a "you're female so that's just how it works for you" kind of thing. There's been a few discussions here on aven as well about how women are different and many of them might be mistaking something completely normal for asexuality. I mean, everyone I see defending that point on here is awesome and smart and has a few good reasons, but I still think it's bs and internally start rolling eyes. If it was hot box I'd tag one, but I'll spare you that   

[Ldlelee]

When I first thought I might be asexual, I had doubts. What really cinched it was when I thought I had a crush on a guy who was twice my age, but when I hit Google for advice, all of the answers were basically SEX SEX SEX SEX. I was mortified; my feelings didn't lean that way at all. I just wanted to hang out with him all of the time, to travel places, to kick his ass in Mario Kart, etc. (It turns out he was a squish, not a crush.)

 

I've realized now that everyone around me is thinking about sex all of the time. I thought that looking at someone and wanting to have sex with them on sight was a joke, but evidently, it's not.

[Laplace]

The idea that women don’t want sex until they have it for the first time line of reasoning just sounds...not r***y per se, but I feel like it’s almost implying that men in particular (though it could apply to any potential partners) have this magical ability to flip some sort of sexual switch in women by having sex with them. I’m a guy so I don’t know the female experience, but that idea sounds like BS. I don’t think sexual attraction works in a fundamentally different way simply because of what gender you are.

 

On the topic at hand, I feel the fact that I’ve often been ostracized (to an extent; I wasn’t a complete loner but I was not even close to being remotely popular) has really made it easy to accept that I am asexual. It never hurt when people tried to insult me about being a virgin or told me to get laid, and, after learning about asexuality, all those experiences really reinforced my identity. So thank you but go jump off a cliff bullies from school, you really made identifying as asexual very seamless.

[StreetlightDawn]

I had a very similar experience, though it wasn't with someone I knew. I was in the school cafeteria and a girl at the next table was talking to her friend about a guy.  She kept reiterating that this guy was not her type, was SO unaesthetically pleasing to her, but yet she had this crazy overwhelming desire to have sex with him. This happened yearsssss ago but this moment has stuck with me because it struck me how much I. Cannot. Relate.

It still took several scenarios like this to happen to me before I finally realized I was asexual.  Kinda like I needed a bunch of clues to solve the mystery.  Until then, I kept waiting for the same thing to happen to me. That I'd look at someone else and just be overwhelmed with sexual desire. It never happened, and honestly I'm a little annoyed with myself at how long it took me to put 2 and 2 together.

[A-Scale]

First of all, huuuuge agreement with the whole "women just only feel sexual attraction when presented with it" or "men turn a switch on in women that makes them wanna have sex". Like, yes. Dear god. Is that BS.

As for my own experience?
I've always just been like "yeah I don't want to have sex." It's never been of interest to me, and in all my experiences of crushing on people there has never been anything sexual about it, ever. Romantically yes, perhaps, but even then it isn't very typically romantic, or what society claims is "romantic" (perhaps because of the extreme sexualization of romance)

However, when I discovered the whole concept of "asexuality" as an orientation, and looked into what people's experiences were, I found myself simply CONTINUALLY saying "That's me. That's my experience. Yes. Precisely that."

It was one of those times in life where you find a mindset that hits so close to home. I was just filled with giddy laughter.

[Bryophyte]

6 hours ago, Gareki said:

I've realized now that everyone around me is thinking about sex all of the time. I thought that looking at someone and wanting to have sex with them on sight was a joke, but evidently, it's not.

Same. Sex is pretty heavily censored in children's media, like Disney films and children's books and tv shows, so I feel lied to and greatly betrayed by society of what most people think of romance and relationships. If it weren't for the internet, I would have never realized just how sexual everybody around me is!

[awkward_pterodactyl]

I always thought sexual attraction was more of a trope than a real thing. It happened in books and movies for the sake of the plot and it was something of a running joke between real people. But when I got a job, everyone would talk about hooking up with this person and that person.. and it wasn't because they liked the person, or found them aesthetically attractive, or felt obligated by relationship, it was because they just wanted sex, and would find people to have it with. Then, I found mentions of asexuality around on these here interwebs and just kept identifying so much more with everything asexual than all the unrelatable sexual talk and joined the ranks of the aces.

[ecogirl92]

I didn't even know asexuality was an actual thing until about a couple years ago. When I came across it I thought: No Way! Because literally in high school, my closest friends nicked named me 'the asexual tree' because I was an ecology nerd who had no interest in dating or relationships, or any type of physical relationship whatsoever. I always just dismissed it as being focused on school and getting into college, starting a career. I figured once I gave it my attention, that the desires, the physical/sexual attraction would surface but they never did. Even when I first learned about asexual orientation I just kind of dismissed it. If I was or wasn't didn't really matter to me. I would have to say I don't think I had a single validating moment, but just a gradual validation over time.