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I need help!


ElliotHMM

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Hello, 

I’m Elliot and about 2 years ago I came out as asexual. I’ve recently made some ace friends, and I’ve joined the ace club on my college campus. I’ve never felt happy or more comfortable with my sexuality and identity. 

Until yesterday. Yesterday, I was watching a YouTube video where one of the people was wearing a tan top, and he had nice arms and... I felt sexually attracted to him. I realized that though it doesn’t happen that often, there are definitely times that I do experience sexual attraction. So, I was thinking “no big deal, I guess I’m just more grey than I thought” but then I realized, that even with those people that I find sexually attractive, I still wouldn’t want to have sex, or even be in a relationship with them. The idea of sex and myself in the same context makes me want to claw my skin off. 

Is there a term for this? Does anyone else feel this way? I’m very anxious and confused right now, and I’m looking for some answers. 

Thank you for your time 

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Hello and welcome to the AVEN forums, @ElliotHMM! Have some cake... :cake::cake::cake::D

 

Are you sure it was sexual attraction you experienced, and not aesthetic or sensual attraction?

http://wiki.asexuality.org/Attraction

https://www.deviantart.com/secondlina/art/Sketchcomic-types-of-Attraction-298804729

 

 

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wonderflonium

Hey Elliot,

What you're experiencing is the reason it took me forever to put together that I'm asexual. I experience aesthetic attraction and occasionally sensual attraction. I've experienced sexual attraction perhaps once and it wasn't until then that I noticed the difference and started to question it.
 

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There's a world of difference between having occasional hints of sexual desire and what most allosexuals experience.  In any case, most people's orientations aren't as clear-cut as you might think.

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everywhere and nowhere

I do feel something similar. I'm able to feel more-than-esthetically atracted to someone and yet I never want to have sex.

On 1/3/2019 at 9:25 AM, ElliotHMM said:

The idea of sex and myself in the same context makes me want to claw my skin off. 

That's it, I'm so sex-averse that the idea of ever having sex with anyone feels intensely distressing, frightening... it's just something I don't ever want to happen.

So what could these feelings be?

Theory 1: This is not sexual attraction, it's rather a form of esthetic attraction.

Theory 2: There are different feelings which could be relevantly described as sexual attraction. ( @Ficto. ) However, the kind which matters most when talking about sexual orientation is attraction as a feeling which makes a person desire sex with the person they are attracted to. If we understand asexuality as first of all a social category, it makes sense: it has no influence on your lifestyle choices whether you feel aroused when looking at this or that person, but whether you want to have sex and with whom absolutely does have that kind of influence.

At the same time I feel that "asexuality as a social category" only goes so far. It is useful in context of asexual visibility, of making nonsexual lifestyles more acceptable, but the vast and often conflicted world of internal experience should be acknowledged as well.

Theory 3: This is the result of a clash between sexual attraction and sex aversion if the former is unable to overcome the latter. So this feeling is what remains of sexual attraction after it hits the wall of sex aversion: an arousal without desire.

To be honest, I tend to prefer the third theory, at least in my case, even if it would question my asexuality (but still... I may not be asexual, but I am sex-averse). I like even its esthetics: it's temptingly vivid, graphic. It feels very pertinent to my feelings precisely because I'm sex-averse and I probably wouldn't feel effectively asexual if I wasn't sex-averse. And I feel that it just goes further into details of experience. Some asexuality discourse is too mechanic: "If it doesn't make you desire sex, it's not sexual attraction!", "If you ever experience sexual attraction, you can only be celibate, not asexual!". And I feel that these shades of experience deserve being noticed. After all, "asexuality" is only a label. It can be useful and important, but it doesn't mean that the experience of any person who finds that label useful will ever be identical to the experience of any other such person. On the contrary: there are no identical experiences in any area. There are as many experiences of asexuality as there are asexual people. I don't reject labels, but I realise that we also need to look past them and to sometimes stop generalising, to notice and record the whole phenomenology of experience instead of neat categories.

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dragongirl7879
On 1/3/2019 at 4:25 PM, ElliotHMM said:

I realized that though it doesn’t happen that often, there are definitely times that I do experience sexual attraction.

Yeah, I'm demisexual so it's a little different, but it has very occasionally happened (like maybe three times?) that I looked at someone and was attracted to them, though only very fleetingly. I'm still not really sure it was a sexual reaction, though, since I didn't actually get turned on... it was more like a fascination. The idea of having sex with them would freak me out. So I still identify as demisexual, because anyone I've been attracted to to the point of actually thinking I might like to do something physical with them, I've had an emotional bond with first. Not sure if this helps at all....

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