am i ace or a late bloomer?

[mack931]

i've identified as ace since i was around 11 years old (im in the late teens/early 20's now). before highschool i never had any sexual attraction whatsoever. i had no interest in masturbation, porn, etc. so i was confident in my asexuality. as i grew, i developed some sexual urges but still lacked overall attraction. i considered this simply a part of teenage hormones and still never questioned my asexuality due to my lack of actual sexual attraction to others. now, im at a complete loss.

now that im a young adult i have continued to have sexual urges and possibly even developed sexual attraction to women (?) i think of womens bodies and get "turned on".

but, heres the rub: whenever i engage with the feeling (ie. masturbate) i am completely unsatisfied. i often get bored and never reach completion. i simply go until i run out of energy. there is nothing enjoyable about it besides the physical feeling, and even that is somewhat lacking. i have never reached the big O and i often feel tired/annoyed afterwards. 

i have yet to actually have sex due to personal insecurities, but the thought of having sex no longer bothers me in the way it used to. but, only if its sex in very specific scenarios. am i still asexual or just a late bloomer?

i wish i could just stop being "horny" and go back to feeling nothing/being confident in my asexuality. do any other asexuals feel this way/have a similar issue?

[Larre]

Considering the average age of first experiencing sexual attraction is 11, it makes sense you started to identity as ace at that age. 

 

Your experience of sex is non-normative in ways that you have in common with many in the ace community. I have seen a number of aces talk about this kind of thing. High libido can be a real pain in the neck when it doesn't point to anyone in particular.

 

You may be growing into gray asexuality or demisexuality, but it's probably better not get too caught up in labels for now.

 

It is a fairly common ace experience to think of bodies while masturbating. I think very common, actually.

 

 

[Frameshift07]

14 minutes ago, mack931 said:

now that im a young adult i have continued to have sexual urges and possibly even developed sexual attraction to women (?) i think of womens bodies and get "turned on".

When you think of women's bodies, is your arousal isolated or is it tied with an urge to have sex with them? If the latter, this would classify as sexual attraction. If it's the former, then it may just be a result of fluctuations in libido, which is a biological phenomenon and not a precise indicator of sexual orientation (or lack thereof).

 

Please also check this post out, it's extremely helpful describing what asexuality is and what it isn't, and also includes different accepted definitions of asexuality in case you find one hard to understand.

[Ceebs]

Honestly no one can tell you. Sometimes we have to learn just through waiting and seeing how we feel, where our experiences take us, etc. Never push yourself to do anything you don't want to do or that you don't feel ready to do; that can be extremely damaging.

 

I'm sexual, but it took me longer than the average person (from what I understand, anyway) to figure that out. I joined AVEN 20 years ago when I was 19 precisely because I didn't know what was going on with me. I'd had a handful of romantic crushes, I'd tried masturbating a few times in my mid-teens but felt pretty ashamed of it and grossed out by it, and I didn't have strong urges to do it anyway. It almost never really occurred to me and I just wasn't a 'horny' person. I also didn't fantasise about people sexually and nothing about their bodies turned me on. (I'm still not a particularly visual person when it comes to arousal.) I was a bit curious about sex in my mid-teens, it seemed sort of intriguing in an 'ooooh grownup stuff', detached sort of way, but I grew increasingly repulsed at the idea and I didn't really see myself as someone who would ever have sex. In retrospect I know that some portion of this was due to my very poor mental health and some physical issues at the time, and social struggles as well, but it was definitely more than that. I just wasn't comfortable with sexuality, wasn't comfortable with myself, etc. I was over 20 by the first time I had any sexual experiences, and although I figured I likely wasn't ace by that point and that something else must be going on, I was around 30 before I finally became comfortable with myself in that regard. Very few of the sexual experiences I had in my 20s felt good to me, emotionally.

 

People aren't all the same. Sexuality is diverse, not just in terms of orientation, but in how we experience our desires and how comfortable we are with them and what turns us on. For me to get to where I am today, it took better understanding myself and being in relationships with people who made me feel like sex was a good thing.

 

Of course, I'm definitely not saying you're not ace. You might be, you might not be. Plenty of aces feel horny and masturbate, and from what I've read from people on here, a lot of them have far more elaborate fantasies than I ever have and get turned on by bodies, some watch porn, etc. What makes them asexual is that they consistently have no inclination to have sexual experiences with other people and they have no other explanation for it besides being asexual (by which I mean some sexual people can experience a lack of interest due to things like physical or mental health issues, trauma, medication side effects, etc.). As I said at the beginning, maybe only time will tell. There's no rush to figure out what label fits you. Be curious about yourself, keep your mind open, but respect your own boundaries and needs. You never have to do anything you don't want to and someone who pressures you is someone who shouldn't be in your life. If it turns out that you never want to have sex that's ok. And if things change over time, that's ok too.

[Sarah-Sylvia]

@mack931You get to explore and find what sexuality means to you over time. I didn't settle on being graysexual until my late twenties, and I think it's worth keeping open so that you can just be true to you. I also think that it's good to look at sex not just as something for horniness, but also what kind of intimacy someone ends up liking with someone they'd like have more intimacy with. Masturbating could feel unsatisfying for different reasons, like having low libido, or it could be because sexuality without a partner is unsatisfying, but either way it's ok however you are, and you don't need to fit one way or another, just be yourself :).
 

1 hour ago, Larre said:

Considering the average age of first experiencing sexual attraction is 11, it makes sense you started to identity as ace at that age. 

Some studies show also numbers like less than 25% have experienced it by 11, it could depend on region too, but I think in general it's good for teens to keep open, not that there's anything wrong with using a label, but it really is a time that things can change.

[everywhere and nowhere]

7 hours ago, Sarah-Sylvia said:

Some studies show also numbers like less than 25% have experienced it by 11, it could depend on region too, but I think in general it's good for teens to keep open, not that there's anything wrong with using a label, but it really is a time that things can change.

But the OP is no longer a teen. Yes, eleven years might be too early to say for sure that one is asexual, but around 20? At this point saying that someone is a "late bloomer" doesn't make much sense, especially if they are physically fully developed. (Sure, there is a lot of disparity between physical, emotional and social maturity, and I believe that people shouldn't have sex until they have achieved both emotional and social maturity and are able to recognise they consequences of sex - not just the risks, also its existential consequences. For example, I deeply feel that I simply don't want to be a person who has had sex, I value my non-conformism in face of sex normativity. I may not exactly be an "emotionally and socially mature person" - which is, obviously, another reason not to have sex - but I recognise that the consequences of sex go beyond health risks.) Particularly when someone has developed some sexual feelings in form of autoeroticism, but still no sexual desire towards others. In such circumstances it makes much more sense to say that they are likely to indeed be asexual.

8 hours ago, mack931 said:

i have yet to actually have sex due to personal insecurities, but the thought of having sex no longer bothers me in the way it used to.

Nevertheless, don't have sex just because it "doesn't bother you". There is only one good reason for having sex:

• knowing with full certainty, in an informed and uncoerced manner, that one wants sex to happen;
• and having a partner who feels likewise.

Unless these conditions are met, sex shouldn't happen. Sex is not a default activity. And every person who understands how destructive sex normativity is (not necessarily only us here, because a lot of allosexual people understand it just as good) should, at least, try to promote the view: that not wanting to have sex for any reason is always a "good enough reason" for having sex. That people should never have sex they don't want. To achieve this, sex should never be considered a default activity, to do just because there are no clear "against" factors. No, lack of a clear "I want to do it" is already an "against" factor!

[Sarah-Sylvia]

@everywhere and nowhereyeah it doesn't matter much anymore, I was just responding to what Larre said.

 

I agree though sex shouldn't feel like it's something someone has to do. That said as someone curious, it 'not bothering me' would be enough for me to try it. And personally I did need to try it to find out how I felt. But I also did have periods of sexual desire so in my case it wasn't just curiousity.

[Ceebs]

 

Yes, eleven years might be too early to say for sure that one is asexual, but around 20? At this point saying that someone is a "late bloomer" doesn't make much sense

It's probably rare, sure, and it's important to take that into consideration... but hey, hi, hello. I was 19 when I found this place and was beginning to question, and definitely well over 20 before I was certain I wasn't asexual.

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with someone identifying as asexual if it appears to fit with where they are at the time, with what they know of themselves, because it's probably more likely when you're in your 20s that things won't change than it is that they will, but it's definitely not impossible that someone can be that much of a 'late bloomer'. I'm sure as hell not that unique of a human being that there's no one else like me. I remember another (now gone) member who was in her 30s before she realised she wasn't asexual. There have been others, too -- in fact lots of 20-somethings who've discovered they're not ace. People are so vastly different in terms of life experiences and personality and psychology, and those things play a big role in our sexuality.

 

The main important thing is to not become locked into an identity so much that if you learn more things about yourself that point strongly to that not label fitting anymore, you engage in lots of mental gymnastics in order to convince yourself that you're something you're clearly not. But there's no harm in identifying with a label if you don't close your mind, because of course you may well be correct. I assumed by default that I was straight, thought I might be ace, then maybe bisexual, spent a few years thinking perhaps I was just a lesbian, before realising that I'd been correct about being bi. And I fought in my head about those changes in my self-knowledge sometimes, and it really wasn't healthy. I've seen other people on here do that too. I've come across people who didn't realise they were gay until they were in their 50s or something. So while I think it's entirely reasonable to tell someone that being a late bloomer in your late teens or early 20s doesn't align with how most people experience discovering their sexuality, I don't think it's a good idea to say it doesn't make sense at all or isn't possible when sometimes it absolutely does make sense and is possible for some people.