What made you start to question your sexuality & then what led to you discovering you were grey-ace or demi?

[Ellie6]

For me, it's realizing how rarely that I feel sexual attraction to anyone and that the more comfortable I feel emotionally with another person, the more attracted I am to them.

[lilylee]

I realized since primary school that I had never experienced romantic or sexual attraction, but at that time I didn't know how to describe it in terms, so I just thought I hadn't met the right person yet. Until I reached adulthood, eighteen years had passed but there was still no sign of it. I thought it couldn't be “I hadn't encountered the right person“, so I started searching for information and finally confirmed Aroaego. Then, I came to Aven😃

[Guest]

@Ellie6

 

I always felt my feelings for someone deepen as time goes on and I feel more relaxed in building a relationship in this way.  Friendship as the foundation then to see what happens.  I think dating is the wrong way round and to me it's pretty gross sharing your body with someone when you don't know them on some level. I've always known this but forced myself to be like other people and be sexual when I didn't want that.  I only ever wanted the romance of kissing and sensual touching without the "next step" so to speak.  I always felt sad that sex had to spoil the huge emotional buzz I get from kissing.  It confused me though because sex with one particular partner in my 20s felt relaxed and right.  I felt connected to them on a deeper level instantly without knowing them yet so there are exceptions to the rule in that sexuality really depends on many different things at various times in ones life.  AVEN has reassured me that my fluctuating feelings are felt by many others here so I'm not "othering" myself. 

[Emma49]

I didn't question anything or realize my identity until I was 50. I saw the word "demisexual" online and looked it up in the dictionary. I knew immediately that it described me but at the time, it seemed like just a word. I'm not sure why but I did not connect it to asexuality. I had a brief moment of realizing that "oh, not everyone is that way?" and also realizing "Oh, that explains some things."

 

A few months later I read a book with an asexual character and connected with the way she described certain things, and that finally caused me to read more about the spectrum and understand the different types of attraction, and figure out what might apply to me. Being able to separate types of attraction helped me a lot. My whole life, I'd wanted a romance so badly but been scared of it, and I had never realized that some of the fear was not feeling an interest in sex and not knowing how to set boundaries about it (so I just avoided relationships).

[martinicus]

I grew up in a small country during the post-USSR period. We had only recently gained independence from the USSR and sexual topics were a total taboo. Of course, in school boys were being boys and, when adults were not around, they talked about girls and penises and condoms. I always felt left out because for me all that stuff was meaningless.

I am an introverted person and boys often were too loud and competitive, so I often found myself discussing things with girls, especially those few who were into sci-fi, serious movies and books. I could also become somewhat romantic with a girl and I've had a few long-lasting friendships that turned into dating, but it ended up nowhere because I never desired to have any physical closeness with a girl. That made me quite depressed at that time. This girl is so nice and we have so much to share; I feel I could spend my entire life with her. So why does not my body work as it's supposed to? I want to want her!

I wondered if my body had delayed development (no wonder - I had a few other chronic health issues) and if the desire would come later. So I just ignored the situation.

But then around 17, I started having those weird dreams about older men. And then they turned into wet dreams and, of course, I thought that something was wrong with me. I did not have any knowledge about homosexuality at that time.

Later, when the information "seeped in" through gossip and the internet, I thought that I must be gay. However, that did not feel right either.

At first, it was always only about older men. If I tried to imagine how it would feel to touch or kiss a man of my age, I felt only repulsion, the same as for girls. So, if I'm gay, then it's only exclusively for older men. As I grow older, the attraction also ages - it's always with 10 - 20 years distance (depending on the person's appearance).

Second, I don't crave sex "as such" and don't care about naked bodies. It's like a very narrow fetishistic attraction to men who seem to exude wisdom, peace and authority. I might feel intimately stimulated when I'm close to such a person, but it's from imagining cuddling and romance without all that messy naked body stuff.

So, I can define myself as a homoromantic grey-sexual. However, I haven't even had a chance to test it out. Being an introverted and visually handicapped person, I have always lived in small towns where I already was often bullied because of my vision and it would be a catastrophe if someone discovered even more...

And now when I'm older (45), I'm the only person who can take care of my sick elderly parents, so I cannot leave them even for a few days. There seems to be no chance of finding a 60-ish-old gay who would be OK with just being romantic and playing father-son roleplays, because gay-ish people at that age, being "USSR products", are still very much hiding in their closets. So yeah, no adventures for me, and I almost don't hope anymore.  The only thing I can do is to be active on the internet, also on our local LGBT website (which is a quite limited platform) with the hope that the right person would read my profile there. But 15 years have passed and not a single message from anyone matching, although a few friendly messages from different other people. Sigh. Relationships can be so complicated.

[KBear_]

For me there were a few signs, but I never realized they were "signs" because I thought that's how everyone was. When in middle/high school I felt pushed to find a label because everyone around me was. They had cues and evidence (sexual attraction) that generally let them know who they were attracted to. With the asexual spectrum, it's the lack of evidence, or sexual attraction towards others, that defines it. That made it hard for me to find a label, because I was always looking for evidence that wasn't there, and when it was, it was few and far between. I was trying to understand a feeling I wasn't feeling. I feel like I could have worded that better, but I hope it makes sense at least.

Some signs for me:

One moment I remember is sitting in my room and thinking, "I don't really need sex, I think I could just be happy in my room jacking off for the rest of my life." This was at a point where I thought people on the ace spectrum didn't masturbate, so I brushed it off. 

Another is people's bodies. I used to do a lot of figure art, drawing naked people and the human body. People would tease me about it but I didn't know why. They're just bodies, there's nothing sexual about them? I guess not everyone thinks that?

Not really being able to define "sexy".

Last, just listening to allo's conversation and getting the feeling that everyone has some sixth sense that I don't have. This led me to considering there might be something more going on. 

[Boophone]

I was always aware that my life experience, which involved no romantic or sexual relationships, was very different from most people. I could never really account for it adequately though. I did have crushes and I wondered why there had been so little reciprocal interest from men (I'm a straight woman) and I wondered for a long time whether I was an especially unattractive girl/woman. But that didn't seem right because while I may be no supermodel, neither are most people, and that doesn't stop them finding partners and having relationships. Then I wondered whether my orientation to relationships was a product of how I was raised in church and Christian circles. Maybe I had deeply internalised a negative attitude to sex from there. But even long after I stopped being active in church, nothing changed in my orientation to sex or my relationship status. I was always mildly embarrassed about my lack of a sex life, but luckily no one has ever given me grief about it (and I never bring it up). 

One day about 10 years ago I literally stumbled upon the Aven website while accidentally pressing some random keys on my laptop keyboard. I typed in "as" and the rest of the url came up "asexuality.org". I had never heard of asexuality before that. I was intrigued and started to read more. It took two steps of reading about asexuality, about ten years apart, to finally click that I am on the asexual spectrum and probably demi something. The second and most recent step just happened this week. It has felt life-changing in a really good way. I realise now that probably the lack of interest from men could very well actually be a lack of ability on my part to read signs of interest from men; also, that I don't experience a sense of urgently wanting to have sex with specific people, which turns out to be different from how other people experience sexuality and explains a lot about why I have never had sex. Very liberating and enlightening to find this framework for thinking about different ways of experiencing sexuality and the fact that they aren't the same for everyone!

 

[Chiater]

My friend told me she was watching Heartstopper and how sweet it was. I was traveling and needed something to watch in the airport and on the plane so I started watching. It made such an impact on me. The slow pace of the intimacy of the relationship and the general sweetness.. so much less of a focus on sex and more on relationship and closeness. I realized I had never really seen a romantic relationship like this (to this degree at least) on tv or film before and everything else always seemed so disengenuous or just so far from how attraction works for me.

At first what came of watching the show was just this overwhelming feeling of joy and thinking man... I want to feel joy like that... So how do I make that happen in my own life. And then when a character came out as ace, I remembered watching some YouTube video once where an ace person said she had a partner she had sex with and at the time was surprised but didn't think too much of it... But now thought of it again and looked up some definitions of ace and different types and started to realize a lot of the gray stuff made a whole wack of sense to me.

So thanks Heartstopper! Even if this journey leads me to determining I'm not ace, it made me reflect a lot on my life, what I want from intimacy but also what I want in general to be more happy 

[LonesomeCrow]

It took me until my 20s to realize I was ace. I actually didn't know much about asexuality in general, until I became friends with someone who was ace. It didn't strike me right away that it could apply to me, but over time I realized that while I have had crushes before, I never experienced actual sexual attraction to anyone, and I feel pretty indifferent to peoples' appearances. I thought this was the normal for people. But I ended up coming here while I was researching asexuality more.

And now, in my 30s, I realized that the proper term for me is demisexual. Long story but I made a friend and developed a crush which led to more serious feelings....and then, sexual attraction. It's also my first time being interested in someone of the same gender, so I learned something else new about myself 

[Purple_Haze]

I never really questioned my sexuality at first -- from middle school to high school, that age where most people are starting to date and have sexual experiences for the first time, I was part of a friend group that was all very dedicated to their studies and weren't experienced themselves, so I believed that my lack of romantic or sexual experiences was because no one met my standards and I had no time. Then I moved for my last 2 years of high school, and suddenly so many more people around me, my friends, are telling me about their sexual experiences, and I honestly just felt very confused. How could these people hook up so casually? And so frequently, with people they didn't interact much with, if at all, just because they're feeling horny? 

I thought maybe I was just uncomfortable in myself, or maybe subconciously being a prude since I had moved from a conservative country, but it didn't really make sense. I still have a high libido, and I've never had any issue talking and discussing sex. 

 

However, I was always certain I never wanted to hook up, because I wanted to enjoy my first time with someone I felt 'comfortable' with. A lot of times when discussing sex, I would say something off hand like "I think I would only do that with someone I really like, like I would probably only like it if it's someone that I feel comfortable with," -- so honestly I was labelling myself as a demisexual quite clearly without knowing it was a thing. After one of these time where I said a comment like this, a friend asked me if I knew what demisexuality was. i didn't, so the friend encouraged me to do some research, and when I started reading about it, it was like a fog had been lifted. Despite me being so confident in my beliefs and my boundaries, I still had a deeper insecurity about my lack of sexual experience or attraction towards other people. But this, it has really helped me move away from that and reassure myself that what I was feeling was normal.

Thinking back, I have felt sexual attraction before, which is why I wouldn't say I'm asexual; in 6th grade, I had what I believe was my first and only real crush so far in my life. I liked this boy so much, and we were really good friends, and for a while I always had this urge to kiss him. Since then, I have never felt the same urge again, but then I've also never liked anyone to the same extent, so it makes sense.

[Black Sun]

I didn't realize that "asexual" meant "lack of sexual attraction", I thought it meant "complete lack of libido". I do get horny from time to time but it's directionless, I've never met anyone I felt attracted to.

When I somehow stumbled across the right definition I instantly knew it applied to me.

[Milly-Ann]

I never really questioned my sexuality when I was younger, and I would have definitely never defined myself as an asexual. But for me back then, asexuality simply meant not having any need for sex at all. I didn't realise that it was a spectrum. To be honest, I never really realised that I didn't really feel a sexual attraction to anyone. I didn't know any different, so I didn´t really think about it. I thought some of the boys in schoool were good-looking and equated that with "wow he's so hot", which is what the others said. I didn´t really get it when the others were hooking up with guys they hardly knew, just because they were horny. I was horny from time to time too, but I did't act on those feelings. I thought, maybe I'm just a bit late, it'll all come in time.

I´ve been in two relationships and I was friends with both partners at first. But I only felt sexual attraction to the second one, which I guess explains why I never slept with the first one.
That was almost 10 years ago and I haven't been in a relationship or slept with anyone since then. It´s not that I don´t want to - but with whom? I've told myself, I just haven't met ‘the right one’ yet. I kept thinking back and forth about whether I should sign up to Tinder or something, but just the thought of having sex with a stranger was so unimaginable that I never did. I thought that I was extremely picky and prudish. I subconsciously knew that I had to be friends with the person first in order to be able to even think about going further. I didn't know the term "demi-sexuality" back then, but I sensed that it just didn't work for me the way it did for others. However, I put it down to my insecurities.
It wasn't until a few weeks ago that I came across the term "demi-sexuality" by chance and immediately thought: Oh my goodness, that's me! It was a fantastic feeling, I was so excited because I had finally found an explanation for my feelings and I realised that I'm not the only one. I started to reflect on my “love life” from before and I have so many “ah, that explains a lot” moments. I'm still in that process of understanding myself better.

 

 

[Maybe Mae]

For me it was mostly one specific long conversation with my old friend group about sex and relationships when we were teenagers. It was kind of the first time it clicked for me that other people cared about both a lot more and pretty differently than I did. Like a lot of other aces I'd assumed people were exaggerating. When asked why I wasn't contributing much I tried to explain that I wasn't super interested in either right now and wasn't sure if I ever would be and I got reactions ranging from dismissing me as immature,  laughing it off as me being weird to just genuine disbelief.

Went to the bathroom to cry about how I was broken and my brain was fucked up.

Randomly found the word demisexual on the internet a few months later and though it wasn't really my label something about it did click for me. After a year I accepted that I was probably somewhere on the asexual spectrum and started identifying as greysexual though I didn't use the word for a while yet. A year after that I started inching my way towards accepting I'm on the arospec. That bit was a lot harder because of all the stuff you internalize growing up. I found the words aroflux and aceflux the same year and that helped put things into perspective.

I started going to aspec meetups after that and only then after talking to others did it really fully click.

[purple_rain]

I think I had suspected for a long time that my 'asexuality' could be in some way or another related to my lifelong depression. It turned out - and this came as a surprise to me - that underlying the depression was early trauma. And my suspicions were confirmed. 

I'm still hesitant to use the labels grey- or demisexual though, partly because I'm still figuring things out, partly because I think that human sexuality is too nuanced and too individual to fit neatly into a box. 

[Dawai]

So the simple answer for me is a couple years ago.  I actually wonder if it's when I started watching Bojack Horseman, and Todd's character piqued my interest. I can't say for sure, but funny enough, it was around when I started watching that show.

 

And, just for context to my comments, I'm a guy in my mid-40s.

 

The more complicated answer is a much gradual process. I've never fantasized about sex or fucking. Even on some of my most romantic crushes, it just didn't pop in my head. I might imagine holding hands, cuddling, kissing, etc. That's what I craved back then. And I always just assumed the sex would be part of that. But I was never directed at that itself. And even when I watched porn, I never liked any actual intercourse in it. To me, that's just kind of a turn off. Same if it's in movies, tv, whatever. It's just something that I'm happy not to see.

 

I should note that I was always a so-called late bloomer. I never went on a date or kissed anyone until my mid-20s, Of course, back then, I always thought I was sort of broken because of it. But, in retrospect, I now realize how much of my internal turmoil was due to societal expectations--with my friends, with my family, with general society.  And it's amazing how much of that impacts one's own behaviour, like what you say, what you comment on, how you react to a date, etc. So I'm enjoying just holding hands or being physically close to someone, which is what I craved, and all of a sudden they get horny and want to fuck. And I'm not wanting that, but I try to do it because that's just what's expected. And you copy that sexual passion and what you think they want, but deep down it's really not something you want. So you feel this pressure, but can't let them see that, right. It's like mirroring allosexual behaviour, without really feeling it deep down. Which is a bit of a mind fuck, when you think about it.

 

I think I always knew I felt a bit different from the norm. I was always a bit tantalized about the idea of asexuality, but also a bit scared to really ever delve into it. But I also thought it just wouldn't fit. It's not like I didn't check out a good looking girl. And I'd call them hot, like all my other friends. But they always wanted to sleep with them. And I never felt a real urge to chat them up to do the same. Of course, when someone had that craving for me--something that happened rarely, but it did a couple times--I generally didn't show any interest, and tried to explain it away. And the couple of times when I did reciprocate, I ultimately regretted, though at least I learned that sex didn't do it for me. But then I learned that asexuality wasn't just the complete absence of sexual arousal or anything, that it's a spectrum, and you can experience romantic attraction rather than sexual attraction, that you can be a graysexual that is more in the middle of the spectrum.

 

And that's when I realized that I might be a gray-ace who can feel romantic attraction (though I feel less of it now than I did when I was young) and is sex-indifferent (and maybe a little repulsed). I'm still feeling out if this is me, but it feels right.

 

Sorry if I'm rambling a bit. I find writing stuff down like this helps me process things myself. Hope it might be useful to you as much as it's to me writing it 🙂

 

 

[Ophecliff]

When shipping fictional characters, I found people always build a strong connection between romantic relationship and sex, and the importance they put into THAT connection confused me. Then I looked back upon my life and realized that romance and sex had rarely been coordinated for me. Instead they were like oil and water. And while I had no trouble understanding romantic attraction, libido and sexual drive, I felt uncertain about what was called 'sexual attraction'. It took some time to figure out if my confusion was caused by sex repression, and now I think it was not.