taetae Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 Hello friends! I am 23 and I called myself asexual and aromantic officialy for the first time on the first ever International Asexuality Day. Cool, huh? Sooo I always knew how I felt about sex and romantic relationships. I was honestly shocked every time a boy or a girl wanted to kiss me or touch me or date me, like, why do we have to go through some stages, why the hands holding. I was so so so confused. But then I grew up a little bit and I understood that I'm the wierd one. So I tried to do sexual things and guess what. Now I am basically sex-averse (the circumstances play a big role in that). Because even though I knew how I felt about sex I didn't know it's ok too. So I was trying to fix myself which lead me to mental breakdowns, depression, self harm, panic attacks, psychosis and finally to mental hospitals. Yes, all of that because I couldn't accept my orientation. And yes, I realised it 2 days ago. So you can imagine how light and free I feel today. I am curious if anyone else also tried to fix themselves and what was the outcome? Link to post Share on other sites
Faleeria Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 Welcome to AVEN! I'm glad you feel better about your identity now. You're definitely not broken or anything. Your feelings are 100% valid and nothing that has to be changed. We welcome new members of this community with cake so here is some for you: https://www.delicious.com.au/recipes/date-chestnut-cake-pomegranate-butterscotch/q1shv4n3 Link to post Share on other sites
MCTlibrarian Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 Hi taetae, I'm very sorry this happened to you. That sounds like an extremely hard time to live through and you should be so proud to have survived this! I can't say that I've ever experienced anything this drastic, but I did try to condition myself to be attracted to a specific person once. Needless to say, it didn't work. I really hope you can heal from what you went through and I'm very happy for you that identifying as aro-ace has been liberating! Link to post Share on other sites
everywhere and nowhere Posted April 8, 2021 Share Posted April 8, 2021 I fortunately never tried. I always wanted to be a non-conformist anyway, so my asexuality hardly ever bothered me. But testimonies such as yours are important. They show that even if asexuality is, technically, defined in a negative way (through what we don't desire), it can't be reduced to "and I don't like broccoli, but I don't go out of my way to tout it". That it really is an important aspect of a person's identity and trying to deny it can be very detrimental to their wellbeing. And also - while your attempts to "fix" what was never broken were done by yourself, driven by internalised asexophobia - I also keep reminding that this is a thing which also happens "formally". It is never called conversion "therapy", but that's what it actually is. And as the momentum is building to ban conversion "therapy", shouldn't asexual activists jump on the bandwagon and lobby for an inclusion of asexuality? Yes, it requires a slightly different approach, because it's done by different people who don't usually use the same terminology as homophobic "therapists". But a ban on ace-to-allo conversion "therapy" could speed up the recognition of asexuality as a distinct sexual orientation. Anyway, I'd like to get to know you because we live in the same city. Since it is our tradition to serve virtual cake, I wanted to find some nice Polish cake, such as the karpatka. But I found something funny: "green tart with a blackberry mousse from blackberries" ("zielona tarta z musem jeżynowym z jeżyn"). Oh no, I would never have guessed it! I thought blackberry mousse was made of peaches! And let it remain a symbol of how asexuality is misunderstood. Link to post Share on other sites
Lichley Posted April 9, 2021 Share Posted April 9, 2021 Welcome! There are a few who have tried over the years, it usually ends pretty badly for the people involved, I’ve heard of a fair few incidents occurring as a result of people being manipulated into abusive relationships via the pressure to conforms. It’s not pretty. On a lighter note, the community has been working hard to try to increase visibility and there’s plenty of ways to get involved in the community and get to know all the people from around the world Link to post Share on other sites
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