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Did anyone else ever waste time trying not to be ace?


kayfaraday

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I think back on my teen years, and my complete lack of interest in sex or romance and how much it hurt my “perfect” boyfriend. There was no reason not to love him or be attracted to him, but I wasn’t. It blew up in my face when he left me for my best friend and cousin, and I realized what loneliness is. I spent my adult life doing all the things to be attractive and charming and seductive, which I learned from all the women’s magazines in every aisle of every grocery store and every movie and every tv show.

 

20 years later, nothing had changed. I finally looked into being a nun for real, not as a dream or retirement plan, to escape the confusion and pain and empty feeling of romance and sex and societal expectations. Researching the spiritual meaning of celibacy, I came across AVEN on the Google.

 

So here I am! After lots of therapy I’m realizing I could have come out earlier if I had the right tools. It’s hard not to feel angry and wonder where my life would be without all the BS. So I advocate for awareness, to prevent the type of pain I felt.

 

 

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On ‎9‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 11:49 AM, kayfaraday said:

 I'm heteromantic and was surrounded by people who would have made it safe for me not to be, so I knew I wasn't gay. I craved a deeper relationship, just not a sexual one, and it was like the world would not acknowledge that was a thing.

For years I thought there was something seriously wrong with me and had many men tell me as much since I’ve never had an interest in sex but wanted a romantic relationship. I even had myself checked out by a doctor to make sure there wasn’t anything physically wrong with me or that my hormones were not messed up. I didn't find out about asexuality till I was 40 and I just wish I had known about it in my teens or even 20's, it would have saved me so much heartbreak and misunderstanding.

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I think i was a freshman in high school, for some reason i made up a girlfriend in another school try  to fit in at the school i was at. I didn't want the added attention for not ogling the girls in my classes  or talking about a girl you like to be with. It worked for about a year until i had my first crush on a female friend who was a senior. I just wanted to be around her so the fake girlfriend went away and so did my crush on her soon after, we were still friends i didn't know why i stopped feeling that way but i enjoyed our friendship why ruin-it.  i remember  crying in her arm over the fake girlfriend but it really over her and the confusion i felt at that age . I had 1 other crush that came and went too. the funny thing is i was so busy with school no one bothered me about a girlfriend. the Friend i had new me as the kid who draws ,kick-boxes and who you could laugh with and hang out at the movies with.I told my self i was a late bloomer I'll catch up eventually  (wrong again) if i had known,  i think i would be more confused as a teen back then the  late 80s schools wasn't known for having the best sex-ed  or info in general and any one different was teased and pummeled . The moral of this i was a stupid teen who wanted to fit in and  eventually stop caring and managed my life up to my late 40s not comparing my life up to others until i  needed to research  depression i thought i was in  , that's a hole norther story (sorry for the long post)

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I definitely feel like I did that, and ended up in a relationship that I looking back was probably rather unhealthy, although I didn't realise it at the time I think I was only in the relationship in the first place because that's just what people did, they dated.

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RoseGoesToYale

Before I knew I was ace, I went through a period of overcompensation in high school. Everyone talked about losing virginity and banging whoever, and I thought it was like a game, so I tried to come up with comments and answers that made me sound as sexual as possible. Like, wanting to "do" someone was just something you said when you had a crush on them. My friends and I used to play truth or dare, and they'd ask questions like "Where would your ideal first time be?" and I'd half tune out and just make things up. Years later they told me my answers were really weird and made no sense.

 

I actually heavily resisted anything sex-related as a child. I hated pop music and revealing swimsuits and the boys making stupid noises and gestures when the teachers turned their backs. I should've realized then.

 

Once I got to college, I figured out that it wasn't a game, people actually have those feeling and urges and I don't, and the rest is history.

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I didn’t date in high school, I dated quite a bit the first 5 years I was out of school, had several relationships, but none of them lasted past a year at the most, I didn’t have sex till I was 22 or23. When I was 20 I met a girl on a blind date, the minute I met her I was in love with her, I thought to my self, she is the one. I honestly could have married her the first day I met her. We dated for awhile, she went away to school. Eventually we broke up but we remained friends for some time after, till she met her husband, she obviously didn’t feel the same way I felt about her, I dated others after her by the time I was 25 I figured their has to be something wrong with me, I must have been defective in some way because they all left me for someone better, I figured that they could not see I future with me. I always ended up alone or just friends, I didn’t mind being friends, but I still felt I was defective so at age 25 I quit dating altogether, my thoughts were Iam only going to end up alone. So I didn’t date for the next 16 years. I went on a couple dates in that time, and people would try to set me with people, but I just wasn’t into it, people I knew and some family couldn’t figure out why I didn’t want to date, I just made up stories, I was to picky or stuff like that, I didn’t want to tell them that I was a failure and no one wanted to be with me.
Then when I was 40 I met my wife, we were together for 10 years, we got married bought a house I finally thought finally I found a partner, when I was 50 my wife had an affair and left me we got divorced lost my house. I was alone again, and I was convinced I was defective and vowed to never date again, looking back the sex was fair at best, I got really no pleasure from piv sex.
I searched asexuality, came across this aven the more I read the more I realized that a lot of folks on this site have had some of the same experiences I have had. It was then I realized that I may be asexual or at least demisexual, thinking about it, I liked the romance but honestly the sex wasn’t all that important to me, I even thought that maybe it was because I was still in love with the girl I met when I was 20, or because of the way my wife left me. But the fact is Iam asexual, it answered so many questions to me. Sorry for the long post.

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Nope.  I'm not compelled to behave like other people, especially when it's a behavior that I find repulsive, like smoking.

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I guess I did technically waste time trying to be sexual and change who I was...but it's hard to truly see it as a waste of time because I think I needed it to happen to fully come to terms with my asexuality. 

 

I had two "relationships" that were really just me trying really really hard and failing to experience sex and love the same way other people did. I forced myself to go on dates, and do sexual activities, and tried to convince myself I was enjoying them. In the end, I remember being called to come over to my then-boyfriend's apartment to "watch a movie", which I knew meant sex, and I just remember walking over to his place and being overwhelmed with this feeling in my gut that I didn't want to do it. I just really, really didn't. I ended up texting him I didn't feel good and turning back around and walking home, and the relief I felt told me that I had made the right choice. I ended things the next day. I tried another relationship out of fear and loneliness a little while later- and the guy was actually great. Attractive, funny, interesting, kind, smart, successful. I didn't want to have sex with him. Sometimes I wanted to hug and hold hands- but it was sporadic and he wanted more. It ended after about a month of constantly berating myself in my mind, trying to force myself to just be "normal" and have a relationship and sex like everyone else. 

 

I think trying to force myself to experience romantic relationships normally took more of a toll then trying to force myself to be sexual, but they were both damaging in their own ways. I realized I didn't like who I was while in a sexual/romantic relationship. I was always stressed and irritable, and trying to be "normal" consumed me. I would always find myself wishing we could just be friends, and that made me feel guilty. And I would always have some sort of moment where after trying and trying my mind would just shout that I couldn't take it anymore, I would dump the person, and then I'd feel awful about it. 

 

Now I only will be in relationships where people understand that my romantic attraction is sporadic and sometimes I just can't feel it, and that I'm just not interested in sex. I'm done completely with trying to change who I am. I don't particularly regret the point in my life that I did though, despite all the anxiety it caused. It helped me realize who I am, and that who I am is okay. 

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Fluffy Femme Guy
On 10/17/2018 at 5:38 PM, Philip027 said:

Nope.  I'm not compelled to behave like other people, especially when it's a behavior that I find repulsive, like smoking.

I don't feel an incredible need to 'fit in' either. I'd rather be accepted for who I am (as much as it's possible anyway) than force myself to be something I'm not.

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Sewing_shadows
On 9/29/2018 at 1:36 PM, scare-let lati-boo said:

Yeah like... the first 20 years of my life. :P But I didn't know ace was an option until recently so... 

So much this! I spent 11 years of my marriage trying to “fix” me and my sexuality. 

 

My husband always wanted to know why I wouldn’t initiate, why I was rarely interested. So, book after book and blog post after blog post was sent in my direction. Oh goody, another two bits of advice to “fix” me and make me a sex kitten ... or something like that. 

 

Sigh. I wish I had known that asexuality was a thing before now. After the initial shock of me coming out of the closet, my husband commented that my closet was certainly a plexiglass one. Finding a name that describes how I feel about sex was legitimitizing. Instead of trying to fix me, we’re finding ways to move forward and strengthen our relationship. It feels so good to be able to say and to know, “this is me.” I am not broken, I don’t need to be fixed, I don’t need to change who I am. 

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AmorphousBlob

For a while I would try and convince myself I liked this person or that person. It never worked but I didn't stop trying til recently.

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