Confused about my sexuality

[nihilistshit]

Hi y'all! My name is Sofía. I'm a 21 year old biology student. My interests are : music (latin music, alternative rock, many kinds of music), tv shows, cinema, and of course, biology.

I'm writing because all of my life I've been confused.

When I was a kid and early teenager, I never had any interest in boys. I had some 'crushes' but it was more like poeple that I had interest in.

I've tried to m*sturbate but got bored soon, so I can say that I've never done it.

I had my first boyfriend at 16. I didn't like him a lot but since he showed a lot of interest in me and I was curious, we started dating. I had my first sexual experience with him, and I didn't hate it, but I didn't enjoyed it so much, so when he wanted to repeat I tried to avoid it many times.

Eventually I broke up with him because I didn't feel like I loved him.

I had more sexual encounters, some I liked more than others, but I never had an o*gasm. Currently I've been more than a year without sexual encounters and don't feel the need for one.

For a lot of time I thought I was a lesbian, but I think that's not it. I'm very confused because I don't feel 100% asexual but I feel like can being in the  spectre.

Does anybody have answers or had similar experiences?

Thanks if you took the time to read everything and I'm sorry if this topic doesn't belong here.

[Custard Cream]

Hello and welcome. It took me a long time to realise I was asexual and I thought I was bisexual until I figured it out.  Enjoy the forum and have a good explore - you certainly aren't alone.

 

Have some cake.

 

[Paula @ BH]

Dear N,

 

It's quite possible to have no percptible need for sexual release - for instance, you may simply have a very low level of physiological need as compared with the rest of the population, and that would mean no autoerotic satisfying was required either.  You might research on the internet for the results of the quite regular population surveys into sexual activity levels.  There's quite a wide range of sexual need.

 

I know also that severe childhood abuse (and not just sexual) can make it impossible to express whatever need there might be, or even to think about it, and maybe also very difficult to be naked with anyone and/or to be touched, even non-sexually  -  almost in the manner of 'phobia' and/or an inability to trust - and I know also that it doesn't 'need curing' if a person is comfortable with the result.

 

There is also a possibility - it doesn't seem to be the case with you - that the the emotion 'Disgust' runs at a relatively high level in a person, preventing that person from even wishing to engage in whatever activities are associated with it - and the effect of Disgust, and the related trait Self-disgust, on the expression of sexuality is well-documented (anyone interested  might search the internet for research papers).

 

If you look at Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs -

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

 

- you can see that each party to a relationship might be looking to satisfy a different mixture of needs, and with a different balance of requirements, in interacting with the other person.  If you don't have a physiological need for sexual gratiification, then that frees your attention for meeting needs higher up the scale.   Another person, if a person who is sexual - won't have that 'careless disregard', so negotiation there would need to be in a 1:1.  And first, that would mean them respecting your make-up, just as they'd think you should respct theirs.

 

Maslow realised eventaully (after everyone had seen and used and adopted and liked the original rainbow pyramid - too late to change it) that, to satisfy the topmost level, self-actualisation, you really needed to pursue the needs of an other or others or a cause which would benefit others - he called that 'self-transcendence': 

 

https://academic.udayton.edu/jackbauer/Readings 595/Koltko-Rivera 06 trans self-act copy.pdf

 

- and that opens up the possibility of doing things for someone out of love, even though you do not want those reciprocacted, and feeling the benefit from doing just that.  It's the payoff for altruitic behaviour, and it's wired-in with social species like ours, and maybe at most 20% of the population like to turn their high level of empathy into expressions (practical and emotional) of sympathy to non-kin others when they have resource to spare.  Well, in a deeply-loving 1:1, you may each find yourself puitting that other person first wih all the reources you have to spare.  It's rare, but it can happen.

 

I have lived without having any sexual interest, and without sexual responsiveness of any sort, and that has been done in 1:1 relationsips with 'persons sexual' - see my full AVEN profile - and I have in effect negotiated how what started as the development of friendship might lead to non-sexual intimacy, and, in fact, to anything one of us did for or with the other. 

 

Re-framed cognitively within the context of true friendship, and acting to satisfy needs at the higher levels in the pyramid and through self-transcendence, a thing can have a very different meaning to what it might commonly have, when it might instead be interpreted as a means of satisfying a lower-level need.  

 

A lot of what might be given freely and with care and tenderly, can be bought - just think of washing a partner's hair - but not so that yours will be clean afterwards.  She might have gone instead to the hairdresser, but far more than the physiological need on one side for clean hair, and the need on the other to have money to satisfy physiological and safety needs, have been served in the first instance.

 

Disaggregating sexual need from sexual drive, from sexual triggers, from sexual orientation, from romantic orientation, from aesthetic appreciation, will allow you to see that people may differ in each, and yet they are all natural occurences, just some clusters are far more commonly-found than others. 

 

Being from one of the less-frequent clusters is isolating, but I hope that this input will help you to feel more confident that you are quite OK to be yourself.

 

Finally, another AVEN member, posting in a different thread, made the point recently that, for whatver reason it might be, if you know you don't want to do something, then just don't do it.   'Doing what the Lemmings do' isn't turned into a good idea because of conformity 🙂 .

 

With best wishes,

 

 

Paula

 

[Tasha the demi squirrel]

Hi welcome to Aven 🍰

 

From what you said about enjoying the experience more some of the time than others it sounds like you could posdibly be somewhere on the Graysexual side of the spectrum but only you can say how you define yourself 

[NickyTannock]

Welcome to AVEN!

 

Asexuality is a lack of Sexual Attraction, which we define as leading to the desire to have sex with someone.
But there are other types of attraction besides Sexual Attraction.
There's Romantic Attraction, which we define as leading to the desire to have a romantic relationship with someone.
There's Sensual Attraction, which we define as leading to the desire to have intimate non-sexual physical contact with someone, like kissing or cuddling.
There's Aesthetic Attraction, which we define as leading to the desire to appreciate someone's aesthetic beauty.
There's Platonic Attraction, which we define as leading to the desire to have a deep friendship with someone.
And more.

 

In my case, I realised that I'm Asexual in my early teens, around 14 when I started hearing sexual comments from my peers and in media and found that they bewildered me. I'm now 33, and I've never had or desired either sex or a relationship.

 

Incidentally, it is a tradition here to welcome new members by offering cake, and here's a Biology Cell Cake,

[Lichley]

Welcome! Oh you like biology? I prefer chemistry,  but I appreciate the overlaps. What do you like the most in biology?