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To come out to mum, or not...


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This will probably be a long one sorry haha

 

So I've only in the last year or so discovered the existence of asexuality/aromanticism, and how that correlates to me. I've always known I didn't feel the attractions everyone else around me had, but never had a name for it till now. So I've basically been defaulting to 'straight' whenever anyone asked me about my orientation for the last 8 or so years since it's 'mattered', but saying straight never felt right to me. I've always known I'm not attracted to anyone of any gender, romantically or sexually. 

 

Discovering the term asexuality has solidified that feeling, and knowing that it's not just me is huge too. 

 

Anyway, for the last few months, whenever any family member has mentioned "when you get a boyfriend/married,"  I've jokingly scoffed and said 'no thanks!' And received no questions or remarks about it

 

However with this, and my recent change in gender presentation with my hairstyle and clothing (is gender presentation the right term? Idk ...I identify as/feel female(cis), but just dress more masculine than feminine, almost androgynous), I think my mum might be beginning to think I'm either trans or lesbian. Idk for sure if she thinks that, but there's been a couple times where she's said "dinner's ready boys...oh, kids" referring to my brothers and I....and she seemed quietly keen to watch the Butterfly mini series that was on TV recently about a trans kid. 

 

So do you think now might be as good a time as any to come out as aroace to her? To sorta clarify things for her, so she's not wondering/falsely assuming things? 

I'm pretty sure she'll be ok with it, she might not entirely know what it is, but still.

She'll probably also wonder if I plan on having kids in the future...I do want kids, I just have no idea how she'd react to my plan of having kids by myself, through a sperm donor. So I don't know how that side of things might work out.

 

If anything the kids thing is probably the thing I'm more worried about telling her than actually coming out as aroace

 

 

I don't know. Thoughts? 

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46 minutes ago, Shace said:

So do you think now might be as good a time as any to come out as aroace to her? To sorta clarify things for her, so she's not wondering/falsely assuming things? 

I'd say yes, it is a good time. It'll make you feel better, I suppose.

Your mum might be worried about you. She'll be glad to know what's going on. Does she watch Shortland Street? If so, she might have heard of asexuality; there was an asexual storyline some years ago.

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When I came out to my mother she was shocked and could hardly believe it the first couple of minutes. Also she felt sad as she thought this would mean I'd be alone the rest of my life. Not having grandchildren didn't bother her as much when I told her I might adopt after finding the ideal partner. She always knew I didn't want to reproduce, so no real surprises there. By the way I have a brother, but my mother seems to think he won't have children either. Who knows. This is just my experience, but it probably won't hurt to just tell her. It will probably improve mutual understanding over time.

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everywhere and nowhere

I definitely think it's a good idea to come out. First: I generally support openness and visibility. Probably except if there are reasons to believe that it could have bad consequences... but even this should be considered while remembering that anti-asexual discrimination extremely rarely takes the violent form known from some examples of homophobia and transphobia; aces are much, much more likely to be disbelieved or mocked than to be physically attacked or thrown out of the house, as may be the case with gay or transgender people. Of course disbelief or mocking is not a good thing, they can "legitimately" lead to depression - but still people who exhibit this kind of behavior are likely to be much more responsive to just trying to talk to them than people who are violenty homophobic. This kind of reaction poses no immediate danger. Actually, I would even argue that some form of low-key coming out, without mentioning the term "asexuality", could be a good idea even in very conservative cultures which still practice some seriously bad stuff such as arranged marriages - by saying something like "I don't think that I could ever want to marry, I would much prefer to spend time with my family and friends and never have a husband or children", a sex-averse girl could do something to protect herself.

In your case it's easier because your mum already seems to wonder whether you could be trans, but doesn't show any signs of outright intolerance because of it. So first, you could, in a way, calm her - facing a child's gender transition is hard even for parents who are not transphobic in any way. And second, she doen't seem to be transphobic or homophobic, so she's more likely to also accept asexuality as something which obviously doesn't harm anybody.

Also by the way: remember that you don't "owe" your parents grandchildren. There is no acceptable reason for having children other than genuinely wanting to. Parenthood is an extremely serious decision with lifelong consequences. In my case it's not really a problem - my mom explicitly knew that I don't want to have children and probably realised that I'm extremely tokophobic (terrified of pregnancy and childbirth) long before I even started thinking of myself as asexual, and since I have no siblings (plus I never changed my mind, have never had sex, and I'm already entering the age of probably reduced fertility, so time is definitely not on mom's side, should she actually desire to have grandchildren), she knows that she will never be a grandmother. Expect that your mother may ask you question such as this, but there is even no need to talk about it proactively when coming out as asexual.

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Dear Shace,

 

Hiding things 'erodes the soul' daily, and denies/disses the person whom you are every time you duck the issue, but there's also the power dynamics of being dependant on others - like one's parents - for food, shelter, and love.  Only you can gauge the risk.

 

This book might be useful, to give her immediately after 'coming out':

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Invisible-Orientation-Introduction-Asexuality-Generation/dp/1634502434/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

 

and I would recommend to her in particular pages 3-13 ‘The Basics’, and pages 17-33 - n.b. on page 32:  the need for human-to-human physical contact exists independently of the human desire for sexual interaction - and pages 41-45 - n.b. on pages 41-43, female-to-female relations readily allow one person to give while the other receives, so the table on page 43 needs a point 6, and ‘making love’, which the author does not mention, is not at all the same 'as having sex’.

 

Pages 63-66 give two lists of ways in which asexual people are discriminated against (a) specifically as asexuals, and (b) in the same ways as gay people;   on page 64, bullet point 5, the author means that some orientations are known to be possible, not that they are options (sexuality is not a choice).

Pages 76-78:  the high prevalence of asexual people reporting that they are not clearly of one main gender or the other is probably because gender, as it is expressed in our society, relates to sexuality in our society – no sexuality, so no need to adopt and display strongly one or other main gender.

Pages 81-82 & 104-107 discuss abuse in childhood as a possible cause of asexuality.  The conclusion is that childhood abuse is not a necessary cause of asexuality, any more than it is of being either homosexual or bisexual or straight or of having any degree of gender dysphoria.  There is good advice about how utterly tactless and inappropriate it is to push that ‘explanation’ at someone who is asexual and might also have been abused as a child.

Pages 110-111  Being asexual and having a ‘homoromantic’ orientation (which would mean being gay or lesbian if one were sexual) makes it far more difficult to find an 'exact-match' partner.

 

You might note that we are more disliked by (hetero)sexual people than are gay, lesbian and bisexual people:

 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/without-prejudice/201209/prejudice-against-group-x-asexuals

- which mught indicate that you might find it harder to be understood.

 

You can point out that almost every human characteristic is distributed acorss the population in a Gaussain or Normal distribution, a.k.a a Bell-curve -

https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/standard-normal-distribution.html

- and that yoour being, for sexual need (or sexual need of others), right at the very lower end (we're about 1%) of the distribution doesn't stop us from being naturally-occurring human beings and 'of a piece' with everyone else, just because there's less of us/ours is much lower than average.

You might suggest that two people can interact on many levels to satisfy many needs:

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

- so not wanting just one of the basic physiological needs to be satisfied by s/o else isn't the end-all of the chances of finding love and 1:1 partnerships - see my own full AVEN profile to witness that. 

There's a mistaken tendency also to assume that you'll end up 'lonely and unloved', just for that, and it simply isn't true. 

Nor is it true that living alone means being lonely - some people are just fine with it - see 'Party of One:  The Loner's Manifesto' by Anneli Rufus, for one instance (you might read it,to give you courage and ammunition, privately).

So, there's a risk of failure to understand, and even of rejection, but often a parent's love is less conditional than people fear. 

At least you can explain that you're quite natural, just less commonly-found, and that you can love just as much as anyone, and you can interact with others in so very many ways - and, actually, your mother's love for you, and yours for her, are very good examples of that, right under both your noses.

With my best wishes,

 

Paula

 

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To be honest, I think you can take your time if you don't feel a need for behaviors to change.

 

I'm all for visibility, but if you're young (which it sounds like, from what you wrote), I don't see a need to rush on it. The bad outcome would be that it might complicate your own journey of understanding yourself, if you declare a particular position right now and feel like you have to stick with it.

Grain of salt, I'm not ace. But I did come out to my parents regarding my gender a year ago -- I felt I had to, because gender is about how others treat me. (It didn't take. I don't care much. I'm nearly 40.)

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