A pleasant coming-out experience

[Shadowscast]

So, I think I want to tell a long and rambling story.  The gist of it is: a few months ago, I came out as asexual in the company of some colleagues.  And then the next day, one of my colleagues told me that she was also asexual.  And then a while later, we had a nice chat about it.

 

But to tell the story properly, and fully express my complicated and happy feelings about this sequence of events, I think I need to start further back.  Like, when I was 17.  (And I'm 42 now, so like I said: long and rambling story!  You have been warned.)

 

When I was 17, I decided that I was bisexual.  This happened because I noticed that I had crushes on girls the same way I had crushes on boys.  If I had known at the time that "bi-romantic asexual" was a thing that I could be, maybe I would have realized right away that that was what I was -- but, well, this was 1995, and it would be a few years before I encountered the term "asexual."

 

I joined LGBT youth groups, I read lesbian magazines and comics, I participated in Pride marches.  I thought a lot about what it meant to be closeted, and what it meant to be out.  I had various coming-out experiences, some of them positive, some negative.

 

And then eventually (in my early 20s), I met and fell in love with a male human being, and decided to marry him.  And also, I figured out that I was asexual (thanks, AVEN!).  And then life happened -- I moved to a different city, I started a career, I had a kid.  And in the process, I found myself accidentally and thoroughly closeted at work.

 

It's not that I ever decided to be secretive about my sexuality at work.  It's just that it literally never came up.  I've been at the same workplace for 14 years, and my colleagues knew that I was in a heterosexual marriage and that I had (eventually) a kid.  So nobody ever asked if I was actually straight.  Why would they?  And although on some level I did want to come out -- from my queer youth group time I retained the sense that visibility is important -- I had no idea how to do it in a way that wouldn't be super awkward.  I mean, I don't really want to talk with my colleagues about my private sex life (or lack thereof).  But here I am, married.  So if I blurt out that I'm asexual, I feel like people might very naturally have some follow-up questions about how that works with my husband.

 

Anyway, late last year I finally did come out to some of my colleagues, and here's how it happened:

 

One of my colleagues runs a monthly book club.  Not everyone in the club is a coworker, but about half of us are.  Last November, we met at a cafe to discuss the novella All Systems Red by Martha Wells.  During the discussion, somebody (not me) brought up the main character's asexuality, and there was some talk about that.  Somebody suggested that asexual people might be offended because the main character's lack of sexual attraction could be seen as a marker of non-humanness.

 

I wanted to jump in and disagree -- I thought that the main character was quite wonderful, and I appreciated their asexuality because it seemed very natural to me -- but I realized that I couldn't really make my point without first outing myself, because otherwise I'd come across as really obnoxious ("Oh hey, let me tell you what I think asexual people would really think!").  And I remember having a moment of hesitation, counting how many of the people at the table were also my colleagues, and realizing that even though this was a non-work social function, I would be outing myself at work by saying it.  And then I went for it.  I identified myself as asexual, and then talked about the book.

 

And it was pretty much a non-event!  The book discussion just flowed on from there.

 

But then the next day at work, one of my colleagues who had been at the book club poked her head in my office door and said, "Me too."

Totally lacking context, I blinked in confusion and said "You too what?"

"What you said last night," she said. "Me too."

"Oh!" I said. "... Cool. Would you like to get together sometime and talk about it a bit?"

"Yes, I'd like that," she said.

In the end it took us a while to get together -- we had a very busy period, and then the COVID-19 lockdowns happened and we all ended up working from home.  But a couple of weeks ago, we finally got together for a Zoom chat.

 

And it was really nice!  It's funny, we've been working together for about five years and we know a lot of things about each other, but this was a totally new area of common experience.  And for her, I was the first person she'd ever met offline who also identified as asexual.  (I've met a few others, but only as fleeting acquaintances.)

 

Anyway, there it is -- my story of how I finally came out at work (sort of), and the unexpected and pleasant result of finding another ace right around the corner from me.
 

[frostboot]

Oh, this warms my heart!

Thank you for sharing, I'm glad you had such a good coming out experience!

[Guest]

What a beautiful experience! It's always such a pleasant thing to discover fellow aces out there in the world. So often they're already there in our circle and we didn't even know. I hope you guys continue to get to know each other and have even more great conversations!

[NickyTannock]

Thank you for sharing the coming out story!
I wonder how many aces are hiding in the world.

 

[SamiLynn]

So glad you had a good experience.

[death angel]

great story well done hope you continue to talk