How have you found it growing up as asexual?

[SummerPetal]

How has it been for you as an asexual when growing up? 

I am a millenial. (Y gen). What gen are you? 

 

I recently researched asexual history and there are records according to online search engines from the 1860's of asexuality. There are even some animals that can be asexual too. It's not just us humans. 

 

However for millenials and likely the generations before millenials, when growing up asexuals was never known or spoken about. Unsure about gen z.

I knew I was different from primary school from maybe year 5, when people would say they love a person such as someone from the backstreet boys. I never understood this. I was thinking how can someone say they love someone they never met before, someone they don't actually know personally. 

 

Then in year 7 (1st year of high school) I realised it was lust. (Physical attraction). I knew then that I was different then from others in my school. I had no attraction to any gender.

 

However I feel that society for years have tried to make us asexuals (well for me, unsure about others) feel like we are not normal. That there is something wrong with you if there is no sexual attraction or desire. But there have been asexuals for many years. Why have they hidden it? 

It then made me hide it, pretend I got attraction when I never did. Knew never wanted sex with no interest in kissing, but pretended I did. 

I went to uni in 2004. I said to someone for the first time who I thought was a friend (but really wasn't) how I didn't want sex, that I had no interest in it and had never been attracted to anyone before. 

Their response? How do you know you don't like it. You've never done it before. I was like I just know. Then they were like are you sure you've never been attracted to anyone? Not even the same gender. I was like no, I've never been attracted to any gender. I am sure. I know.

They acted like I was lying and like there was something wrong with me. They then seemed to be funny towards me. No one understood that I had no sexual desire or attraction. I didn't understand it myself at the time either.  They made me feel like I was the only person like it.

Since that day, I've told noone else that I have no attraction or sexual desire.  Not even a family member. Due to the negative experiences I received. 

 

Only thing is, I just realised now that being hidden or hiding asexuality from others in a way helps to keep it hidden and perhaps doing what society wants. Keeping asexual invisible. 😱 

 

When I dated a guy not long ago, I said I prefer a companion style relationship, one without the sexual and romance stuff. Then he is like that the romance/sexual stuff is how a relationship works though.  He said what is the difference between a companionship and being a friend? I didn't know what to say. He said that is fine, he can be a friend but nothing more. I didn't want to see him again after that, as it seemed awkward.

I knew I wasn't weird before & when I found this forum. 

It's deffo everyone else 😂 

 

How have you felt when growing up when you realised you were not experiencing sexual attraction or sexual desire? How have others been towards you? (Only share what you are comfortable with. If not comfortable, don't need to share).

How do you feel about it now you are older? Or feel about yourself? 

[blunose2772]

millennial here. I didn't know about the Ace community growing up I just know I had no desire to get in a romantic relationship. I grew up in a VERY homophobic area and since I never had a girlfriend I was always made fun of because it was assumed in I never had a girlfriend it was because I was gay. Someone not wanting a relationship at all apparently wasn't an option. So things weren't great. I guess I could have forced myself into a relationship to look "normal" but I couldn't do it. 

[10 Lubak]

Hey, gen Z here. Before the age of thirteen, all I could really gather was that my sexuality wasn't 'normal' and thought that I must be gay. Once I learned what asexuality/being aro was and actually considered it in regards to myself, it made a lot of sense. I dunno if you're familiar with the term 'comphet'? I did something like that- I picked out people and decided to have a crush on them because that was how people did things. I thought that's legitimately what others did to- like all sexual or romantic attraction was a conscious choice and then behavior change based on that choice.

 

As an older teen now, I'm very confident in my identity, but even queer people don't always 'believe' me. Friends parents will think I have a crush on their kid, which is really awkward. My friend will like explain to them over and over and somehow they just don't get it. Lots of people in public assume me and my friends are a couple, and I can't get them to understand otherwise. If I say that I'm not interested in dating or sex or whatever, people either think I'm immature, lying, gay and don't know it, choosing to be celibate for religious or moral reasons, or have something wrong with me. 

[nickolekuebler]

I tried very hard to fit in when I grew up. I knew that I was different but knew nothing about asexuality. my family has always been more on the side of hypersexual, so I would try to fit in with them saying that I liked people and trying to date people. I was not in love with anyone back then and I would define the people that I like as being more of a squish. I still feel this way, I do like the idea of a relationship but I know what I want out of a relationship and I know that there are things that I wont compromise on which has made it very hard for me to find a partner. I also grew up trying very hard to hide who I was from my family as I never heard of trans people before either even though I was one. I was far to afraid to tell my family cause I know they would not have understood back then. my mom tells me all the time now that I could have come out to her back then and she would have been ok with it, but I told her that I was bi back then and her answer was "no your not allowed to be". 

[Philip027]

Honestly, pretty uneventful.  I never made any great effort to seek out relationships (I'm more of a "let them come to me, if they want to" kind of person).  Asexuality was more or less just one more way/reason for me to feel different from other people, which is something I was already quite used to as an (at the time undiagnosed) autistic.

 

When I was in school, my energy was focused on surviving school.  When high school went to shit for me and I went through my whole drop-out-and-get-GED ordeal, I went through several more years of trying to pick up the pieces from that emotional fallout.  My a/sexuality was just never at the forefront of my concerns at any point in my life.

 

I wouldn't say any of the major difficulties in my life have been rooted in the fact I was asexual.  Both of my notable relationships, past and current, were even with sexual people, and my asexuality is not the reason the first one didn't last, nor is it something that has proved to be any real obstacle with my current one.  My spouse has exposure to asexuality and once thought they might be asexual too (it's why they were here, and how we met), and because of that they have a good inkling of the way I am that I think most sexual people would lack or possibly find difficult to understand.

 

I don't really know/understand all the gen XYZ/millenial/etc terminology.  I was born in 1986, if that means anything.

[Hurta]

Gen Z here. I’ve questioned my sexuality since I was like 11, because the way I felt about boys was so similar to how I felt about girls, I had to be bi, right? I was weirded out by my friends’ suggestive comments and stuff, but I wanted a romantic relationship too, so I assumed that was just how you spoke about a partner you loved.

ding dong, i was wrong about both —when I was like 15 someone I knew talked about being asexual (she was mostly joking, definitely not her identity) and I started researching from there; finally came to terms with it at 16, almost 17.

[everywhere and nowhere]

43 years old, I'm never sure about the generations (and I still find it a bit of an artificial division - anyone may be an untypical representative of "their generation" on many levels). I would say that it was probably easier for me than for most people, but that's because I never enjoyed socialising. In high school I spent most breaks alone, often in the library - to an extent, in fact, hiding in the library from the noise and unwanted interaction... (Example: our high school library was closed on Wednesdays, but the librarian was still there - and I had a deal with her, she would let me in through the back door so that I could read books and newspapers in peace, and sometimes even help her with some typical pre-digital-age library work, such as putting book cards back into returned books...)

[daveb]

I grew up in the 1960s-70s, and didn't know about asexuality as a thing. In fact, I didn't know about it until I was around 50 years old. I am shy, awkward, introverted, nerd, and never had many prospects for romance or dating, much less for sex. I did have crushes on girls in school and on women as an adult after high school, but rarely tried to act on the crushes or attractions, and always got no for an answer when I did work up the nerve to say something. I always thought I was just bad at that stuff. But I didn't mind it all that much, other than feeling like I was missing something that other people were into.

 

I don't know what anyone thought of my lack of dating in my younger years. Maybe they wondered, or maybe they just thought no one would be interested in me, or maybe they didn't think about me much at all.

[OverThePathlessLand]

Gen X here. I dated a lot of guys in my late teens and into my 20s and have been married now for 21 years. I never understood what asexuality was until last month thanks to a comment from my therapist followed by lots of internet research. I had only heard the word in recent years due to the LGBTQIA+ acronym but didn't know what it meant. I just thought I was shut down, inhibited, and somehow messed up. I was trying to figure out how to get over that with "Come As You Are" and only feeling more messed up when the therapist's comment that I might be ace came to the rescue.

[Picklethewickle]

I didn't know people were different from me. I guess you have to talk to people to figure that stuff out.

[Autumn ace]

Whenever my friends would tell me they thought someone was hot, I never understood it. I always just nodded along and said they were cute. 
There were random interactions like that, but I didn’t know the feelings other people had so I didn’t think about them a lot. 

[Sally]

All I know when I was growing up was that I didn't know what my peers were talking about, and I didn't know why I wasn't interested in what they seemed to be talking about.  However, I now know that I was a romantic, so it was even more confusing when I got crushes on boys but didn't extend that to want anything physical.  I think if I hadn't been a romantic, it would have been easier -- I then would have thought I just didn't want "relationships" period.  

[fuzzipueo]

19 hours ago, Philip027 said:

I don't really know/understand all the gen XYZ/millenial/etc terminology.  I was born in 1986, if that means anything.

RE: Generational tags - Greatest/WWII, Silent/Post War, Boombers I, Boombers II/Gen Jones, GenX, GenY/Millennials, GenZ, Gen Alpha, Gen Beta are all tags mostly created by marketing research firms as an easy way to follow trends and market specific products to those various generations*. (see: https://www.beresfordresearch.com/age-range-by-generation/ ). For the most part, they all fall within a 20 year range of births, with the Greatest Generation (the men and women who fought and worked through WWII) being born between 1922-1927 and so on.

 

Since those cohorts tend to have similar experiences growing up, they tend to clump together, though there is a lot of overlap between the beginning and end of each generation, ie Xennials tend to fall between GenX and the earliest Millennials and have similar experiences with both cohorts, since they remember playing with analogue toys, but also were there when the first real gaming systems became available.

 

-----

*If you're hearing 80s pop rock in commercials, you're hearing a commercial aimed at people my age - between their mid 40s and mid 50s ... Right now it's financial planning and drugs I wouldn't touch with a 20 meter pole.

[Philip027]

Yeah, I'm an introvert that found it extremely difficult to relate to most of my peers growing up, so it checks out that I remained largely ignorant of this sort of terminology and which ones apply to me.

 

The only reason I may have been "clumping" with my peers is because they kinda make you go to school, and at school you kinda fucking have to, to at least some degree.

[fuzzipueo]

On 1/20/2025 at 2:46 PM, SummerPetal said:

How have you felt when growing up when you realised you were not experiencing sexual attraction or sexual desire? How have others been towards you?

I was 13 and sitting in what our school laughingly called "sex ed" during the teacher's Q&A session and someone asked about getting pregnant on their menses*. My brain shut down and I just wanted the floor under my chair open up and swallow me whole. 🤢 The idea was gross and I knew I'd never have sex.

*

Spoiler

The myth being you cannot get pregnant. Myth busted: you can

 

When I was 15 I was getting up from the desk after class and a girl who was friends with a guy I thought was just a friend came up to me and asked if I knew he had a crush on me. I didn't believe her and told her we were just friends. "Does he know that?" I thought he did. Fast forward to post Winter Break and he comes out of the blue to ask me my plans after high school. "I want to go to college," I told him. "What do you want to do?" "Get married. I'll wait," he says. Eh, what? Married? What 15 year old boy is thinking about marriage? I puzzled over that for years until I finally realized there were a number of factors involved in that response.

 

After that I just sorta avoided guys in general so I wouldn't have to deal with that again, at least in high school. For the most part though, I just didn't really pay attention to the sexual/romantic culture going on around me. I was a big time loner in high school, a mix of extremely shy and an introvert, and really did not care what others thought about my lack of dating or whatever. That's been my mode pretty much ever since. It's only in the past several years that I have really given the whole thing any real thought. No one ever bothered me about getting married or having kids, and honestly? It's no one else's business either.

[Gen of the Trees]

On 1/20/2025 at 9:35 PM, OverThePathlessLand said:

Gen X here. I dated a lot of guys in my late teens and into my 20s and have been married now for 21 years. I never understood what asexuality was until last month thanks to a comment from my therapist followed by lots of internet research. I had only heard the word in recent years due to the LGBTQIA+ acronym but didn't know what it meant. I just thought I was shut down, inhibited, and somehow messed up. I was trying to figure out how to get over that with "Come As You Are" and only feeling more messed up when the therapist's comment that I might be ace came to the rescue.

Come as You Are is the last book in a loooong line of books I read to "fix" whatever the hell was wrong with me.  I found it so unhelpful that instead of trading it in at the half price book store like I do with most books, I straight up threw it in the trash.  It seems to have helped a lot of people, but I personally found it made me feel worse, or like I just had another list of "chores" to do to improve my sexuality and sex life.  I'm so incredibly thankful I found this website 5 years ago.

[Car_Dood_314]

Millennial here, I definitely found it to be confusing and frustrating. A lot of me wishes that I was a traditional straight male but what can I do? 🤷🏽‍♂️ I still find it frustrating but it’s a lot easier because I don’t get that type of attention anyway. 🤣 It balances out

[Gen of the Trees]

On 1/21/2025 at 12:41 AM, Sally said:

All I know when I was growing up was that I didn't know what my peers were talking about, and I didn't know why I wasn't interested in what they seemed to be talking about.  However, I now know that I was a romantic, so it was even more confusing when I got crushes on boys but didn't extend that to want anything physical.  I think if I hadn't been a romantic, it would have been easier -- I then would have thought I just didn't want "relationships" period.  

This is what caused my confusion for 35 years    I could not for the life of me figure out why people were obsessed with sex.  It just seemed so bizarre to me.

 

The way I explain my particular flavor of asexuality to people is "You know how when you're a kid and you develop a crush on someone you imagine holding hands, or maybe a little kiss on the lips, and maybe getting married?  And then at some point around puberty those feelings morphed into doing all those things PLUS a bunch of extra stuff involving boobs and genitals?  Yeah, I never progressed past that first stage..."

[Lilihierax]

I'm an elder of Gen Z (born 1997).  I was always somewhat queer, from being a tomboy as a young kid to believing I was bisexual (mistook aesthetic attraction for sexual attraction) throughout my teenage years and early adulthood, so I never really fit in anyway. That didn't mean I had no friends or was ostracized, I was just a bit different. Plus being super introverted so I never went to parties and fraternized, never had a relationship or any dates, never expressed attraction to anyone at school. My friends noticed this and a couple of them correctly assumed I simply wasn't interested in that stuff, while others teased me by calling me a lesbian or "hermaphrodite" (that was the word they used).

Growing up asexual and aromantic made life quite uneventful, which is not a bad thing at all! It means I was spared the mess and drama of teenage relationships and dating, and awkward or scary sexual experiences. I just kept to myself and lived my own life. I'm really glad I did!

[RekrabMot]

1967.  I avoided this issue by not growing up.

[danisp]

On 1/20/2025 at 9:46 PM, SummerPetal said:

I feel that society for years have tried to make us asexuals (well for me, unsure about others) feel like we are not normal.

I'm a millennial. This is the same for me. I feel society dictates you have to conform in a certain way. Anything else is wrong or not normal. I felt like I was broken for a long time. I remember when I first told my sister (I hadn't found AVEN at that point) she said it wasn't possible. It was a comment born of ignorance. How could she understand when at the time I didn't. I shared an ace video on FB a few years later and she asked me about it. It's accepted, no further questions needed. 🙃

 

Now most everyone who knows me knows I'm ace. I had one person (an aunt who I happened to work with) who I trusted and who I told first, and again it was accepted. She declared 10+ years later, after a massive family argument that's way too complicated, that I didn't know what I was. Too say I was angry was a mild understatement. I vented on FB (most of my people on there are mostly family and co-workers) and told them all. It was epic. And I got a lot of support. Another aunt was proud, but said it was a shame I had to explain myself because someone was giving me shit.

 

In the early days, when I told my parents, my mum didn't know what to say. She would clam up. Embarrassed to be talking about emotional stuff. As a family we internalise a lot of feelings. I can talk about my sexuality openly and honestly with her now, especially after the big blow up. With my dad, when I returned from a meet-up, with a bunch of strangers no less, asked what was going on. When I told him, I got a shrug and a "well there had to be name for it". 😂

[heutgel8]

I had the funny experience in my family of not being able to talk about sexuality because it was such a conservative atmosphere that you could not even mention sex.

My mother was an average heterosexual cis woman, but my grandfather was a very conservative patriarch who would even cut out nude photos in the newspaper before others could read them. I only had classmates and friends in the middle of puberty to find my way into that topic. All this happened in the seventies, when my country was still in the process of liberation from conservative and religious influences. That is how I grew up thinking, that I was like everybody else. Sex was something interesting but  more theoretically. The prospects of practicing it were less attractive after my first french kiss.😜

I felt like an explorer. Sometimes I had to ask for a try, like the first kiss, which turned out to be the opposite of a pleasure. I got no clue out of the experiences other had in my age. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to be 'normal'. I thought that with my lack of 'motivation' my sexuality was just a variation within the range of normality. Last year, after many happy years without sexual relationships, I found out about my grey sexual orientation. I am fine with it.  That is what counts. Thanks to AVEN by the way.😄