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Reevaluating past experiences


Claire1983

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For those of you who have discovered asexuality later, do you ever have trouble analyzing past experiences?  I'm in the process of questioning things and while many of my experiences line up with what I've read, but some others are kind of fuzzy and it's hard to be sure exactly what I was feeling at the time.  Since I didn't know about asexuality at the time, it's hard to be sure if I was sexually attracted to certain people or mistaking other forms of attraction for that.  How do you deal with that?

 

I've had sex before and most of the time it was kind of a disappointment.  There was one guy who was the only one I slept with more than once.  I was interested in him romantically and that experience was somewhat less awkward, possibly because I knew him better than any of the other guys I've been with.  I'm trying to figure out where this fits in, if it might contradict the idea that I could be asexual, or if I was mistaking one type of attraction for another.

 

Any advice on how to analyze things you can't remember very well?

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This was very hard for me at first, yeah. It wasn't just about the sex that I'd had, though (which wasn't much) - it was how much I was interested in sexual things from an outsider's perspective. How could I come to terms with being asexual, and telling people I'm asexual, if I was so interested in sexual topics?

 

There are a couple of people I've had sex with more than once, and there are reasons I have happily avoided them since things sort of broke down, though not on angry or heartbroken terms. The reason I wanted sexual relationships with these people had more to do with fitting a certain image or living a certain storyline than pursuing any intrinsic need or desire. I was contorting the shapes of my feelings to fit unrelated beliefs. The types of attraction I felt weren't really about what I wanted or was attracted to as much as they were about creating a narrative.

 

It took until I was 30 for me to even think I might be asexual. Coming across this thought put my past into a context that made a lot of sense to me. It sounds like you're in a similar boat - you've had sex, it wasn't great, but if you really asexual then why did you have sex? The choice to have sex doesn't always come from sexual attraction or intrinsic desire for it. If your sexual experiences in your past were unimpressive and disengaging and didn't fulfill anything for you, I don't think that contradicts the idea you could be asexual. That is at least the conclusion I've come to about my own orientation.

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4 minutes ago, Snao Cone said:

 you've had sex, it wasn't great, but if you really asexual then why did you have sex? The choice to have sex doesn't always come from sexual attraction or intrinsic desire for it. If your sexual experiences in your past were unimpressive and disengaging and didn't fulfill anything for you, I don't think that contradicts the idea you could be asexual. That is at least the conclusion I've come to about my own orientation.

Most of my experiences I can easily say were not out of sexual attraction.  I lost my virginity because I was 23 and I thought if I just went ahead and got it over with I wouldn't be so nervous about it.  All of them were alcohol induced, but there's just one or two that are throwing me.  In some cases there was a strong romantic attraction, but it's difficult to be certain that that was the only draw.  Obviously I wasn't paying  much attention at the time so it's tricky to separate out my feelings 10 years after the fact.

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I'm 40 and am just now starting to accept that I'm gray-a. Part of me accepting that it came from reevaluating my past sexual experiences. Through the lens of asexuality, my prior experiences suddenly made sense. Like you, I had sex for the first time when I was 19 because I refused to go into my 20's as a virgin and wanted to get it over with. I didn't really want to have sex, but it was about being able to avoid the social stigma of being a virgin. After that, the next time I had sex was when I was 35, and again it was "here is an opportunity and I probably should so that  my friends will quit giving me a hard time because it's been 16 years". In those years, I never felt like I was missing out on anything by not having sex, and that was kind of a "well duh, you're asexual" moment for me.  Sex just isn't a big deal for me.

 

That being said, I've tried to not examine every interaction I've ever had because, like you, I don't remember them fully. I figure the ones I don't remember just don't have anything to contribute. Rather, I've focused on the ones I do remember, and more importantly, how I feel now. That's been evidence enough for me to feel comfortable saying that I'm asexual. 

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11 hours ago, Claire1983 said:

Most of my experiences I can easily say were not out of sexual attraction.  I lost my virginity because I was 23 and I thought if I just went ahead and got it over with I wouldn't be so nervous about it.  All of them were alcohol induced, but there's just one or two that are throwing me.  In some cases there was a strong romantic attraction, but it's difficult to be certain that that was the only draw.  Obviously I wasn't paying  much attention at the time so it's tricky to separate out my feelings 10 years after the fact.

I relate to this so much! I used alcohol to lower my inhibitions to have sex, mostly for the purpose of getting experiences over with. There's one person in particular whom it might seem like I was attracted to (sexually and romantically) but when presented with the opportunity for both of those things, I didn't feel like I wanted it. It still took me a few years to consider I might be asexual, but that was out of unfamiliarity. Looking back, my experiences make much more sense through the lens of me being asexual (and aromantic). Going forward, the things I want in life are compatible with asexuality. That's ultimately more important to me than validating my past.

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1 minute ago, Snao Cone said:

Going forward, the things I want in life are compatible with asexuality. That's ultimately more important to me than validating my past.

That makes sense!  Thanks

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@Claire1983 I also fall into the gray area. I enjoy sex, but I could happily go without it. My wife is not asexual and she is the one who always initiates things. She's also the only person I've ever had sex with at 24. I don't have any problems with sex, but it's more about the emotional closeness that I get out of the experience. We had a lot of sex in the first few months of being together, but things were always a bit awkward, which I attributed to my unfamiliarity. Things make a lot more sense now and we're both fairly happy with how things work at this point.

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TerrysAwake

For myself Claire, it was a form of acceptance and validation. When I made time to access what the truth was,  about how I experienced and felt about my past interactions, it made it easier not having to justify how I felt about things to others. Yes, I had mistaken sex for love. During sex, I would wonder why it felt so much like a mechanical process. There's no sense in labeling where your at because that's a good spot for you, not others. It's your call.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Honestly I don't worry about it. I just find that knowing I'm Ace now explains so much. My past attractions I can mostly chalk up to being romantic and attracted to people sensually, intellectually, etc. I always balked internally at the idea of sex with anryone I was attracted to. I used to wonder if it was prudery on my part, or something else. Now I know. It all makes sense. Until things in your life make sense, I see no reason to draw conclusions about them. Once they do, then it all falls together. Bits and pieces of my life now make sense because of a few things I've learned as an older adult. Everything else is still inconclusive, and I'm okay with that too.

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I'm a man, and I've had intense, emotional "friendships" with men since high school. Usually, these ended with the other guy finding a girlfriend and leaving me behind. I thought that because I didn't want sex, these were only friendships. Now, I realize they were the equivalent of what sexual people experience as romantic partners. I felt just as strongly about the men I loved as any sexual person--I just didn't express it the way most people do. I didn't know about the relationship hierarchy then--I now know that for society, the most important person in your life is the person you're having sex with. Everyone else is a secondary relationship. But since I didn't have and didn't want sex, I didn't know how to express to other men that they were my primary relationship.

 

So, I was in love and in what was, for me, a primary relationship, and the men I loved always left me for a sexual relationship. I was always their secondary relationship, which they could abandon when a primary, sexual relationship came along.

 

I am now not going to let that happen. If I fall in love again, I'm going to make sure the man knows this is a primary relationship for me, and I am seeking a partner, even if I'm not expressing that through sex. I'm not going to go through another "My Best Friend's Wedding" scenario! :)

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It's really, really hard when you don't know anything about asexuality or even that it exists and naturally when you are young you want to be like all your friends. I was a good looking girl and did some modelling in my teens and men were attracted to me. I couldn't understand why I wasn't attracted to them.

I started going out with hard biker guys as "normal" men my age did not seem to excite me at all and unfortunately in my young mind associated the excitment of the biker life with sexual attraction.

I was married to two biker guys for a total of 24 years between them and both relationships failed in the end as once the initial excitement of their hard man image wore off I didn't find either of them sexually attractive.

I'm 56 now and I realised that I have never ever been sexually attracted to another human being. i have romantic feelings but not sexual ones.

I so wish I had taken time to sit down and work out what I was instead of leaping headlong into disastrous relationships in a bid to "belong". It was such a waste of so many years.

I'm living alone now and although I would consider having a platonic romantic relationship with another asexual (unlikely) that's it. I wish I had listened to myself from the beginning and not tried so hard to fit it.

 

 

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On 3/11/2018 at 10:57 PM, Snao Cone said:

This was very hard for me at first, yeah. It wasn't just about the sex that I'd had, though (which wasn't much) - it was how much I was interested in sexual things from an outsider's perspective. How could I come to terms with being asexual, and telling people I'm asexual, if I was so interested in sexual topics?

This was one of the main things that initially had me thinking I couldn’t really be ace.  In retrospect, my interest in sexual topics was no different than my interest in other things I haven’t personally experienced (things like that absolutely fascinate me, especially when other people are really drawn to them and I want to “get” why).

 

I also loved as a child, teen, and young adult to act out against my older, very strict parents and get away with things I was not supposed to be doing.  I later realized that while others actually liked the various things, I was in love with getting away with them.  Once I was out on my own and of legal age, doing those things (including sex) lost its charm and began to bore me.

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I am in the process of letting go of trying to make sense out of my past. I don't trust the lenses that I see the past through .Trying so hard to understand makes what is left of my life a backward looking affair.

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On 2018-04-03 at 11:03 AM, ashpenaz said:

So, I was in love and in what was, for me, a primary relationship, and the men I loved always left me for a sexual relationship. I was always their secondary relationship, which they could abandon when a primary, sexual relationship came along.

I don't want to say I was in love with the two females in the 80s but that sounds awfully similar to what I went through. I was putting a lot more 'weight/value' into the friendship than the other person. I guess I was just a placekeeper until a better 'partner' came along.

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2 minutes ago, will123 said:

 I was putting a lot more 'weight/value' into the friendship than the other person. I guess I was just a placekeeper until a better 'partner' came along.

This pretty much describes every friendship I have/had ever

 

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12 minutes ago, Andrew001 said:

This pretty much describes every friendship I have/had ever

 

Oh my God that sucks! :(

 

After '88 I pretty much gave up on seeking friendship with females.

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