How old were you when you realized your'e an asexual individual? What brought upon the realization?

[ForceGhost]

For me, it was in my late teens and early 20's after I had endured a few personal experiences with an ex of mine. 

[letusdeleteouraccounts]

2 years ago at 15 years old when someone joked about me being asexual and I looked it up. My experiences started making sense as I thought of myself as the weird straight guy who didn’t want sex (even though I’m still not straight, I’m aro). 6th grade is when I would say I was self aware of it all as I thought to myself to avoid relationships because I didn’t have sexual desires like the other middle schoolers did

[ForceGhost]

58 minutes ago, Star Lion said:

2 years ago at 15 years old when someone joked about me being asexual and I looked it up. My experiences started making sense as I thought of myself as the weird straight guy who didn’t want sex (even though I’m still not straight, I’m aro). 6th grade is when I would say I was self aware of it all as I thought to myself to avoid relationships because I didn’t have sexual desires like the other middle schoolers did

Aw, I'm sorry to hear that someone made a joke out of it, I've been there. Not wanting sex is something we can all relate to here. I think we all thought we were that weird straight person until we found our true orientations.

[SithLord]

Found out when I was 18. Was trying to describe someone and called her "attractive" (or hot, I forget which) and my friend laughed and asked if I was bi. I freaked out for a while, thought about how I felt towards other people, went to Google and found AVEN and a couple other sites teaching me about asexuality. 

[blunose2772]

Around 25  when my at the time girlfriend was putting on pressure for sex and I'd freak and try what I could to kill the mood.

[Guest]

I was 20 years old. Basically, my two favourite YouTubers came out as queer/gay and I was curious, so I looked up different sexual orientations. And once I looked up asexuality, I looked back on my relationships and noticed it fit perfectly! I turned out to be aromantic as well and it explained so much. Naturally, it was quite shocking to realise that.

[NickyTannock]

I've told this story before, but 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.

[AwesomePerson]

I started questioning when a friend came out to me as lesbian. We talked about how the other girls in my class were attracted to all those ,,Hot attractive bois" and how it didn't make sense to her, and then I realized: I don't understand it either. I did have one kinda crush I never actually talked to, besides some fictional ones. But I never thought about having Sex with any of them. It was more like ,,Aw man it would be great to go out with this person to watch a movie or get Ice cream". So yeah, I looked it up and immediately connected with Asexuality. I was 15 at the time

[NickyTannock]

@AwesomePerson Welcome to AVEN!

 

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

[A Cool Fool]

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[Galactic Turtle]

I was 22 years old when I stumbled upon the term. Before that I was just "sensible." The catalyst that brought about me stumbling on the term was me getting intimately violated at a college party during my last semester.

[reliace810]

Me last year, I registered very recently on this site. I had vaguely heard of asexuality, and because I realized that I never felt sexually or romantically attracted to people, I decided to look for more information about asexuality. Then I found out that I am asexual and aromantic.

[Wikkit]

25! Up until then I was just 'uptight' or 'prudish'. I found an article on the BBC about a couple who didn't have sex and I (slightly jealously) clicked on it and realised there was a lot I could relate to. This site was mentioned there but it took me a good few weeks to pluck up the courage to come here...

 

I'd heard about asexuality before but misunderstood it completely - I gather that's not unusual! And I wish I'd known sooner. Maybe not early/mid teens kind of sooner, because I might have fixated on 'this is who I am' when I was actually just maturing at a different rate, but knowing by my early twenties would have been nice. Could have saved myself a lot of trouble that way XD

[bookwormgirl]

I was 23. I'd known for years that heterosexual didn't feel quite....right.. but I knew I wasn't gay so I must be straight, and was too afraid to pursue the matter further for a very long time. 

 

Years of observation of the behavoirs of other people gradually convinced me that other women, in fact, DO usually want to have sex. And then one day, I decided to be brave and type "asexual" into Google, which came up with this site, and I had my worldview upended upon finding myself reading a description of me for the first time in my life.

[Light02]

I started identifying as asexual when I was 16. Before that I just knew I didn't want to have sex since I was around 12 years old. I would cry because I thought that some day I needed to have children but I didn't want to have sex in order to do that. When I was 6 I'd heard the word "asexual" from a sitcom, asked my mom what it meant and she said it's "someone who doesn't like men or women", so basically she gave me the definition of aromantic. When I discovered AVEN at 16 years of age I read through the FAQ and the difference between romantic and sexual orientation was explained to me. I immediately recognized I was asexual.

[kiaroskuro]

2 hours ago, bookwormgirl said:

I was 23.

Me too. Back then I came across a forum post (not on AVEN) where a bisensual asexual person described what they wanted from a partner. It was then that everything fell into place.

But this person didn't use a label for their orientation; and because I didn't bother to research into it any further, it took me a few more years to find a proper name for mine.

[firebird8]

When I was in my early 20s, I was very religious, and I had a very close friend, a closeted (sexual) gay minister. He was trying desperately to deny his sexuality and become straight, but obviously life doesn't work that way. (I am happy to report he is now happily married to the man of his dreams and practicing a friendlier spiritualism than what we belonged to then.) One day he was explaining, with no real need because I hadn't asked, but you know sexual people are, and he said this electrifying statement: "when I hit puberty I started having desires that felt as natural to me as yours probably do to you." That started it. I never had any desires of any kind, but I thought that was because I was good little virgin who hadn't done any bad sexual stuff outside of marriage. I spent years after that trying to figure what was wrong with me. I joined AVEN in 2007 when I was 26 and identified as biromantic asexual. I desperately wanted a romantic relationship because I was extremely depressed and I thought a man could fix me. Then I got into a romantic, sexual relationship, with someone who wasn't terrible but not especially kind either. I distinctly remember that I never thought he was very attractive, but he was interested in me when not very many people were so I went with it. Being in a relationship didn't fix depression and I felt emotionally needy all the time, like there was a hole inside me constantly. It was miserable. It was like being addicted to him, without even liking him all that much. He eventually broke up with me after a few years and I've moved on. A couple of my friends are demis, and recently I started thinking about AVEN again. I've been completely celibate for a couple of years and only ever had one long relationship. At first I came back and thought maybe I was grey or demi, but the more I think about it and read, the more a) I don't recall ever being attracted to anyone, even though I've had sex - I have wanted people to like me and hoped that feeling connected like people say will happen would help me emotionally but I just picked those who were willing is all. And b) I can't for the life of me figure out what romantic attraction is. I can't find any shred of feeling or desire to have a relationship with someone that is different in kind or character than a friendship. Now that I'm in an emotionally healthier place, I don't need to find that one person who is going to fix me, and that means I don't have to invite into my life whoever wants me for some reason. Instead I can have varying levels of friendship with people who enrich my life, and they are free to be in romantic relationships with others and have other friendships, etc. 

 

More importantly, I suddenly feel free. I feel like the last puzzle piece locked in place. I like my apartment and my job and my friends and my cats but I was still struggling with depression. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. In the last few weeks I've started to feel like this is my real life and maybe no one is going to make me get back in the rat race of having to have a relationship or do sex stuff or let people touch me when I don't want them to. And there's so many things that make sense, so many little things that are different about how I see the world that are ok if I'm ace, even more ok if I'm aroace, that are problems I'm probably supposed to fix otherwise, like feeling like sex is gross (I've done it, it wasn't that bad, but I still don't want to do it anymore) or never getting crushes on anyone...like ever. I find the word happy bouncing around in my brain. I've never used it. I've never been happy, not since my age was in single digits. I'm scared to even entertain the thought. But it keeps lurking in my brain. Maybe...Maybe this is happy.

[Comrade Kitty]

I was almost 13 and I realized that I started slowly backing away from the sexual conversations that my friends had (not because they were really inappropriate or anything, but because I thought it was disgusting). I was labeled "the straight" friend in my friend group, and I always thought that that was true. Then one of my friends goes up to me and is like:

Friend: Hey have you ever thought about not being the straight friend? 

Me: Well, i don't like girls so, I'm still the straight friend

Friend: But do you ever want to have sex?

Me: *walks away*

Then we just didn't talk about it for about a week then my friend came out as being demi-romantic. I didn't understand the difference. I asked. He explained. I was like "Ok cool" Then my friend made a lighthearted joke about being asexual. I didn't take offense, I just laughed it off till that night when I got home and researched for hours. Then I didn't really sleep that night questioning myself. This went on for a good 2 weeks. Then one day I was hanging with my friends and they said I was the straight friend. I quietly said, "Maybe I'm not the straight friend". They just glared at me, so I ran away. Then we discussed it later. I then became the ace friend. I like my new title.

[Bloc]

About two years ago. After realizing that I am bi. I attended a workshop on asexuality hosted by the local LGBT+ center which reached something deep and pushed away in me. Since then I am also regularly at their a*spec meetups.

[Iam9man]

Thought I might be ace when I first heard the term at 18. Decided on balance I probably wasn’t. Then stumbled across AVEN in my early 30s and it just clicked! Finally my “heterosexual but not quite” experiences made sense.

[NickyTannock]

@ar-ace00 A very belated welcome to AVEN!

 

I think I forgot to welcome you when I moved your thread, sorry.

 

Incidentally, it is a tradition here to welcome new members by offering cake, and here's a Puppy Pug Aviator Cake,

[Fighting_For_Us]

I was 17, I think? And I first had the realization when my parkour coach (now best friend) shared various ace posts on Facebook. This led to me asking her many questions, and her and I eventually getting to have a lengthy conversation at Noodles & Company. It was the firs time either of us had ever talked about ace stuff with someone in person before.

[levelskid]

I was 22. Four years ago. I found out when I was studying asexuality, and seeing a counselor at college after an anxiety attack after, trigger warning, "relieving some tension" in the bathroom. He asked how I was taking my discovery after talking about what I was researching, and it just clicked. I thought I was doing it just because I was at a part of my novel where my characters were being helped dealing with it with their respective parents, but it made me think if I had ever experience feelings of sex towards others myself. It was vague at first because arousal and the desire the hold and be held were confusing me, but I understood that I did not. Not in that way.

[Hylethilei]

I was 21 years old and was dating for about 2 years and consider marrying this person one day but at the same time, I noticed from the beginning that when we tried having sex I was very very hesitant to lose my virginity to this person. When we finally did have sex I really had no enjoyment of it at all, not just the first time but like every single time, we had sex. All I really actually wanted from the person I was with was to talk with them about my life and how we can make each other better people and just plain have a heart-felt conversation with about our passion for each other. Like sex is fucking pointless in my mind... I found out and realized one day we have never really actually had a single conversation where we talk about feelings at all. She would hardly talk to me, and then have sex and then just go do her own thing. After dealing with that for just under two years it came to an end because they were cheating on me the entire time and using me for a place to live. After that happened I realized "Hey, I just don't give a shit about sex and I just need to find someone who likes me for me and does not want sex and can respect that." Fast Forward to 2019 and I now found out what asexuality means, I was relieved to find AVEN and it was a feeling that was overwhelmingly positive. Still have not found a partner that understand or respect me but hey, within time and good faith I can't see why not!

[Iamace]

16, a couple months ago actually.  Basically since like 12 people would make sexual reference and I didn’t understand why they would refer to them. I actually found the term reading a fan-fiction and I thought I kind of related to it so I researched about the term. 

[DuranDuranfan]

I first heard about it sometime in the early 2000s. But what confused me was the fact that if I was asexual, why would I have moments when I was sexually attracted to someone? Then just this past June, after keeping it in the back of my mind for many years, I took a few quizzes, and out of most of the results I got Grey-A, so I came here. Turns out there are others who’ve had similar life experiences and in going over my own past memories, they echo most of mine. So, that’s why I believe I’m also Grey-A.

[Chris Zulas]

im uber weird bc i always knew, as early as elementary school. idk how many kids think theyll never outgrow it, but i did, and i was right, and im 21 with a porn folder a few gigs big and potential interest in romance and im STILL asexual. only thing that tripped me up was having a crush/squish on a really nice girl in middle school. well that and watching illicit materials. then i learned it was not contrary to acehood. think i learned the term asexual in this context in like 6th grade, some time in early middle school

[Disneyblueberry]

I was 30. I still am 30. It’s been a recent discovery! 

 

I was was bothered by being so unsure and started searching for answers. I found this website and all is clear now! 

[eorion]

14 years old, i saw a tumblr post that listed a lot of common experiences for aces and I related to a huge amount of it.

[ForceGhost]

I found my asexuality because I was sexually assaulted by an ex of mine...that’s not something I normally share with anyone but I feel like we’re all a family here and she can’t see this. I still consider myself a virgin because of it actually.