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Sexual fluidity


Zebrafinch

Has your sexual orientation changed over time?  

113 members have voted

  1. 1. Has your sexual orientation changed over time?

    • Yes, from asexual to sexual
      2
    • Yes, from sexual to asexual
      3
    • It hasn't changed, but I understand myself a lot better now
      68
    • No, never
      22
    • It's complicated. Really complicated.
      18

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I've been wondering how common sexual fluidity actually is. I see people say "well sexuality is fluid" quite often in response to people asking "am I asexual?"

This is about your actual orientation, not labels. So if you used to think you were straight, bi, gay, but not very interested, but now realise you were ace all along for example, pick no.

 

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Most people seem to stay with the same orientation. But it definitely can be fluid in some cases. In cases like mine it's been fluid at least over long periods of time. :D
I've been asexual, sexual, and now demi-sexual. I was 'straight' (though actually gay if going by my gender) but then became bi-sexual as I accepted my gender identity more.

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Mackenzie Holiday

I may be a bit of an edge case here, but my sexuality changed pretty drastically after hormone replacement therapy. I'm not sure if my orientation changed much since my sexuality had a fair number of ace qualities to it beforehand, but looking at my sexuality before, during, and after that whole process, I've had a lot of complicated sexual feelings. Things I was curious about, things I found arousing, things I desired at some point only to stop desiring them altogether as time went on, even before HRT. Figuring out how to categorize these things is tricky, and determining which of these things are actually relevant to how I conceptualize my sexuality as it is right now is a different kind of tricky. There are things I've felt in the past that would influence how I think of my orientation if they had been more continuous experiences, but I've decided to let the past be the past and only concern myself with how my sexuality is at this stage of my life.

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Fluidity? It is definitely complicated.

I believe that a lot has evolved because of understanding myself better (for the romantic part) but for the sexual part it may also have evolved because I allowed myself to be more open.

I have always been interested in people rather than boys/girls. The sexual attaction bit happened once in a blue moon so difficult to understand where it was going. I am mainly graysexual but had a few years when I was fully ace. After my first interest I was convinced that I was heterosexual. Then 2 years later a woman had me really puzzled: was I a lesbian? At that point I accepted that I was probably a bit LGBT. I openned up and understood later that gender was not in the picture after meeting other people. The bi/pan part is quite new and took some extra effort to accept. Honnestly the positive information and LGBTQIA+ visibility helped me consider it as a label. I would have denied it 15 years ago: bisexual people were pictured as libertine/polyamorous and seen as cheaters/mistresses in movies ... I hate cheating.

For romanticism it is a question of understanding. I have (very rarely) been looking at others with interest but never wanted any romantic relationship. Now I get it. Before I still hoped that what I felt was like everybody else.

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I don’t know if it’s fluidity or just having been incorrect in my assumption. I like to see it as a journey. I used to think of myself as asexual but now identify as sexual.

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I find that greysexual would be a good label for the fluidity between "sexual" and "asexual". Like people who've experienced it in the past and no longer. 

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I think I was asexual to begin with and only figured it out when I was 16.

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Basically what @CBC said. I used to identify as asexual, and then I experienced sexual attraction for the first time, and I knew that I wasn't. I think part of it is just understanding yourself better, why you feel the way you feel towards certain things and individuals and why you don't with others. Whether that means realizing, after years of being sexually active, that you aren't actually sexually attracted to anybody, or whether you identify as asexual and then meet someone you respond to in that way, like I did.

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WanderingKate

I tend to think that sexuality can be fluid, however most people I know haven't really changed their sexual preferences throughout their lifetime. It is hard to say, however- there are probably a lot of cases of people discovering attraction to the same sex or discovering possible asexuality later in life and just keeping quiet about it because it's easier that way. A lot of us on this site are young... I imagine its a lot harder to come to terms with changing sexual preferences the older you are and the longer you've identified as this one thing...for a lot of people, their sexuality is a large part of their identity. 

As for myself, I've always been asexual...never experienced sexual attraction that I'm aware of, it's confusing of course. But I don't subscribe to the belief that I'll necessarily be asexual forever- right now, I've never experienced sexual attraction and I'm very comfortable with this being my orientation for life if that's who I am. But I also do believe that sexuality can be fluid and change over time, so we shall see what the future holds. 

 

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Janus the Fox

No different but understanding with words to its longest time.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/15/2019 at 7:02 PM, SithGrinch said:

I find that greysexual would be a good label for the fluidity between "sexual" and "asexual". Like people who've experienced it in the past and no longer. 

I feel like greysexual would be a lie because it assumes a possibility of want of sex when that's never the case for me after the shift.

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  • 4 months later...

Complicated. VERY complicated.

I was first hearing about Asexuality in my military service (19 y.o.; I’m Israeli, so that’s default), but I was also not sure about if I was attracted to more than just boys romantically. In the beginning I was defining myself as completely Asexual and Panromantic, because gender wasn’t an issue for me, but then there were like 3 years (to the age of 22, until a few months ago) that my self-definition was jumping between Graysexual to to Demisexual to just Straight, and then to Asexual/Graysexual Panromantic again, and then to Graysexual heteroromantic, and so forth and so forth.

A bit before the Covid-19 pandemic (just to give it a time stamp for you, it doesn’t have to do with Coronavirus 😆) I was finally fixating myself on the definition I’m now holding: Graysexual Heteroromantic. And that’s it. Until it changes again. Hope not.

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Mine hasn't really changed, only my understanding. I started of thinking I was straight, maybe bi, then asexual and somewhere between ace and allo until settling on demi after some more research. My problem was amplified by the lack of intimate relationships and experience.

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GingerRose

Bisexual to pansexual to "am I asexual"? But I've never been sexual so I wouldn't say that it was from sexual to asexual...

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Skycaptain

From "having never heard of asexuality, but wasn't interested in sex"  to "know I'm asexual and happy with that" 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Does anyone else have this thing like sexual fluidity but it changes to what u subconsciously feel like would make the most sense? Like, u find out that things u do are like stereotypically “gay” and then all of a sudden you are undeniably sure that u are gay, not faking or convincing yourself but genuinely feeling like you are attracted to girls and not boys. Like no question about it. But then the cycle starts again and you feel just as sure. And u know. But then it happens again and you don’t know what to believe. But if u don’t find something, it doesn’t change. It’s like it’s dependent on that facto. And Ik some of u are probably going to say that I’m just convincing myself of things or that it’s just the normal fluidity, but it feels different, and impossible to explain. I can’t change it to what I want but more like to what it lines up with the most.

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  • 4 weeks later...

i think i've always felt i was asexual (even in the start of high school when i didn't know asexuality existed), but it changed this year from not having a libido to having a libido. i've questioned being demisexual/graysexual before and am still confused about whether i am or not.

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  • 2 weeks later...

"It hasn't changed, but I understand myself better"

Technically speaking, it has probably changed slightly, but not radically, just slight fluctuations. Always been ace. But now that I understand myself better, I also understand others better, and I'm able to empathise with others to the point of feeling a little bit of what it must be like not to be ace.

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  • 5 months later...

@Zebrafinch

 

This poll is being locked and moved to the read only Census archive for it's respective year. As part of ongoing Census organisation, and in an attempt to keep the demographics of the polls current with the active user base at the time, the polls will last for one year from now on. However, members are allowed and even encouraged to restart new polls similar to the archived ones if they like them.

  

iff, Census Forum Moderator

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