Age at Realizing Asexuality

[square peg]

15-16. That was when I thought 'what I feel really isn't what other people feel when we talk about "crushes"'. I heard of the word after I decided it would be a good definition for me and googled it.

[appassionata]

The idea of sex never appealed to me but I was 19 when I heard of asexuality and identified with it.

[Peppermintdrop]

I read it in a textbook when I was 18, thought it might be me, and promptly rushed to the computer and looked it up. I knew that was me.

[Jordan]

Ever since the dawn of teenagedom for me, I've always told myself I'm not meant for the dating business.

[disgruntled_the_8th_dwarf]

Well, I certainly wouldn't have known what you were talking about if you had asked me if I was "asexual" if you had talked to me before puberty, but for as long as I've had sexual thoughts I've known that they were in relation to fetishes rather than to people. *shrugs* I've never been any different.

[Hayley]

I seem to have voted on this poll but not posted, which is the only way that I can keep track of my votes. Huh. Odd.

Well, anyway. It first occured to me that I didn't view sex in the same way as my peers when I was with my last boyfriend, I must've been 17 (I had already been sexually active for a few years by then and didn't bother to think much beyond that.) I just figured I was weird or that it was my depression. Then for some reason I decided to look into asexuality, found AVEN, and the rest is in my posting history. Now I'm 18 and 99.997% certain that I'm asexy to the core, so I'd say 17-18.

[La_Gioconda]

I'm not sure how I should answer this question. I noticed I'm not interested in the opposite sex when my friends started getting crushes and talk about boys all the time at the age of around 12. I thought that they were being stupid and shallow and that they are only pretending to be attracted to the opposite sex because they saw it in movies and wanted to mimic the actors (how naive I was!). I felt a bit superior that I wasn't interested in such petty things but I never gave it much thought. The thought that I might be a lesbian never crossed my mind (in the end I turned out to be straight anyway).

I first heard about asexuality two years ago, when I was 20 and that was the age at which I 'officially' changed my orientation. So I don't know whether I should vote 12 or 20.

[!]

I knew from a really young age i was different...but a friend told me the actual term for it when i was 15.

[Hpets]

Twenty, but only because I didn't know about asexuality until seven months ago.

[pinten]

I voted 21-26 because I finally found out asexuality existed when I was 22, but I knew I wouldn't "bloom" by the time I was fourteen.

[sparklypixie]

I'd had crushes but never been interested in sex since puberty hit. I didn't realize this lack of interest in sex was anything different until I was about 16, and labeled myself asexual. I always figured no one else my age *really* wanted to have sex, or at least girls didn't. Not incredibly logical, since I'd heard about those 12 year olds getting pregnant occasionally.

[ratatosk_lemur]

For me the issue was much more realizing that other people actually wanted to / did have sex than knowing that I didn't. I don't think I ever noticed any behavioral / interest changes in myself during puberty, and I didn't have enough friends to realize that they were acting differently, either. I always sort of assumed that it was something people did because they wanted to have kids or because of peer pressure, or something, but that no one could actually want to do something that gross for its own sake.

[AverageGuyOnTheStreet]

I know I've never been interested in any kind of sexual relationship, only close friendships, for as long as I can remember. But I guess I always thought it was something I would grow out of. I'm now 20 and haven't yet grown out of my asexuality but it doesn't bother me.

Though, to be honest, I have since heard it is a common symptom of an illness I've had for most of the last year.

I voted 19-21 as I am 20 but I guess I won't know for definite until I have been given the all clear by my shrink.

[cyan]

Voted 15-16 based on a diary entry I unearthed about a month back in which I pretty much gave the textbook definition of asexuality in terms of myself. :shock:

I was in fourth grade (9? 10?) when I started realizing that I wasn't getting crushes like practically everyone else in my grade ... but I'm not sure how to count that, since I did end up romantic.

Discovered AVEN at 19, and went through the usual "you mean there are other people who feel like this too? :shock: :D :D :D ". I suppose that's the first time I started using the label, as before that I had a description, but not a word for it.

Now, at nearly 23, I feel like I'm finally beginning to not just identify as asexual, but understand myself better as an asexual being (and as a person in general ...). Heh, takes me a while, sometimes.

[mouri_shin]

i knew there was something different at about age 15. there wasn't a realization of what i thought until ~18-19 (so i voted at 19) and there wasn't a word for it until 21.

hasn't changed since so i'll say i was right in my assessment at 18 XD

[ghostgurl]

When I was in high school, but I'm not sure on the exact age. Probably around 15-17. I didn't know about the term asexual until I was 19 or 20 though.

[Pallad]

I'm with Dargon - I knew at quite an early age that I had no interests sexually or romantically in much of anything but I didn't have a proper word for it until two years ago, when I was fourteen.

[Enkai]

I grew up in a surrounding where I didn't really have much reason to question my sexuality, although I did wonder why the speakers in chapel made such a huge deal about fornication. I was dating a guy, and never had any urges of the sort. Talking about it never came up. I was subconsciously aware that maybe there was something different about me if I didn't see the reason why it was such a big deal, but I never thought about it.

I started thinking about it when everybody in college--including my Bible study group--was shocked when I told them I was with my high school boyfriend 2 1/2 years and we never kissed once. And moreso when I admitted that I never felt a real desire to do so. Then I dated a guy from the anime club and actually had my first kiss, and I wondered what the big deal was. And freaked out when I realized what I was thinking.

I didn't start to realize it until a few months ago when there was a special on my plane ride back from Hawaii to California. I didn't actually identify myself as asexual until a couple weeks ago.

So 21.

[Tool1989]

"I'm not asexual or haven't decided what my orientation is, but I enjoy voting in polls"

LOL nice choice.

[Endurance]

I could have said always, or 26+, so I picked 26+ because that's when I decided asexual was a hell of a lot more comfortable for me to live with then "so-damaged-from-sexual-abuse-that-I-have-no-sexual-feelings".

I don't actually know if I am this way naturally, because of environment, or a combination.

[Raisin]

Agh, I already voted, but reading through some of the responses I don't know if I should have thought a little harder before responding.

In the strictest sense, I "decided" I was asexual when I was 19, because that's when I learned the definition of the word and that's when I found AVEN.

However, that was just when I found a label for something I had been feeling for quite a long time before that.

I guess you could say I first started to realize I was "different" around age 11 or 12.

So, if I could vote twice, I would. But there's my answer. :)

[Dark]

As soon as I read the AVEN definition, within the past month, I knew that was me.

[oja]

I was quite young-- when girls started going gaga over the boys I couldn't understand it. I thought I might be a lesbian but I wasn't attracted to females either. I think I knew back then that I lacked this interest that everyone else seemed to have.

[aesthesia]

Like most people, I knew I was different a long time before I had heard of asexuality. I was 18 when I first heard about it and thought that that could fit me (so I voted 17-18), and I first used the term for myself around my 19th birthday.

[BleedingThrough]

I found out I was asexual when I was 19. I've felt this way since I was younger but I didn't know there was a word for it. I found out about asexuality earlier this way.

[Gloom.Cookie]

I didn't know about the term asexual until I was around sixteen or so, but I knew there was something different about my thoughts on it all before that.

When I was a kid, I remember all the other little girls were desperate to grow up, get boyfriends, eventually marry and have kids, but I thought the whole thing sounded silly. I used to get grown-ups telling me that I would "change my mind when I got older", but I really never did.

Around the age of 12, I got my first "crush"--but it was more a case of wanting to spend a lot of time with the boy (my best friend, at the time), and just generally do more stuff together than I did with anyone else. I wouldn't have minded holding hands with him, and maybe a hug or little innocent kiss (I've never been a touchy-feely person, but I feel that I could make little exceptions if I was in a relationship with someone); my attraction to him never made me want to go ANY further than that though.

As I got on a bit more, the boys started showing interest in me. Rather than feeling flattered though, I felt myself feeling somewhere between awkward and the point of repulsed, especially when they started to hint at more raunchy things around me.

When I got to around age fifteen, I decided I wasn't going to get involved in a relationship at all. I made a new best friend around that time, and his feelings were entirely mutual, so I was happy to have someone else who didn't think that dating was the most important thing in life, since I felt like I was practically the only one before that. After another year or so though, I decided that a relationship wouldn't be too bad--not that I've ever gotten involved in one since, but I sort of like the idea, somewhere deep down. It's just the fact of finding someone who's willing to put up with me and my standards. :lol: No sex whatsoever, and not a lot of physical touch. Hard to find people like that, in our apparently sex-driven society. Even more so around my area, although I have nothing against online relationships, with someone I trust.

*looks over post*... I've seriously digressed though, so basically, I'll just vote for discovering I was "asexual" at 16, but I've felt this way for as long as I can remember.

[Jin Kisaragi]

19-21, has only been 3-4 months since I decided I was. And I'm currently 20.

[Okapi]

After having erased my long, heartfelt post by accident, I think that the best idea would be to make this one quick and to-the-point. I discovered that sexual attraction existed at all when I was sixteen, and from there the road to identifying myself as an asexual was short and secure. As a little kid I saw judging people by the way they look as immoral, wrong and an overall Bad Thing To Do, and the habit has settled in so well that it has taken over two years of photography and art-loving to even raise the possibility of the aesthetic appreciation of people being okay, and not a shallow, objectifying act of ethical bankruptcy. I judged myself quite harshly for the best part of my life- I practically served at my own Thought Police, monitoring my feelings and perceptions constantly and throwing the majority of all input back at myself in contempt. But I digress... back to the point, upon realizing yet again during my mid-sixteens that something about me wasn't normal, I found out about Asexuality while reading about the LGBT community on Wikipedia, found AVEN's FAQ, and happily classified myself as an aromantic asexual. Since then I've gone to the Tel Aviv Pride Parade of 2011 with a really good friend, met a few other Aces, and have come out to quite a few of my friends (most of which seemed a tad puzzled yet okay with it, some of which have basically patted me on the back and offered consolation such as "Don't worry if you're a late bloomer, you'll grow up eventually and find a guy and get married and everything will be fine! 8D", which usually gains a shrug and a "Meh, maybe. It just doesn't seem very likely, but who knows?", though I find the lack of acceptance towards the acceptability of my current self a little disappointing). My parents are convinced that I'll grow up to be a perfectly normal double-hetero girl- which isn't at all inconceivable, yet grows less likely with every passing day- and upon seeing semi-naked swimsuit models of either gender, my first thoughts will probably dwell on looking for photoshop and special effects, perhaps wondering what the studio looked like when getting ready for the shot, and by then my ADD usually sweeps my short attention span away with anything between deep philosophical musings and "Ooh, look, a cat!"

To me, the confusing part wasn't discovering my Aceness as much as finding out how sexual everyone else probably was. I never saw kissing as anything more than the awkward, unhygienic Disney shorthand for 'Love! <3', and occasionally still wonder why people want to do it. By now I have learned what bits each hetero side supposedly finds attractive, and have read enough Darwin and Yanay to be able to guess why (thinking of it as an evolutionary trait triggered by genetic predisposition mixed with cultural norms makes it much easier for me). I haven't understood at what age people start developing sexual feelings yet, so for mow my standard explanation is varies between "Like you probably were when you were in preschool", "Like the foil of a Bisexual (if Hetero are VX, gays are XV and Bi are VV, then I'd be XX, for both romantic and sexual purposes)", and "I'm like an eunuch panda! ^^"

[SquirrelCat]

I have always known and felt it in a way, but I didn't know it had a name until I was 15, so I voted 0-11

[Ashkaa]

I said 16 because that was when I realized I did not want a sexual relationship but I didn't know what it was called. I'm 21 now, a few weeks ago I read about asexuality and found a word for how I felt. I might be able to say I realized, in some way, that I was asexual when I was a child. When family members or teachers would ask me about what I wanted to do when I grew up I would tell them pretty much the normal things little kids say (get a job, get married, have a pet dog, etc.) except that I wanted to adopt children instead of having my own. :lol: