How did you come across the term 'asexuality'?

[Naylien]

A friend told me.

He told me that he thought someone was asexual. I didn't know humans COULD be asexual so I looked it up, and they can! I didn't look into it much more until my boyfriend and I were "trying to get intimate" and I didn't want to (and even after over 2 years, I still didn't want to) so I looked up asexuality again. Turns out I have all of the traits, and it all kinda clicked. My history and now confirmed it. I feel much better about myself now, but I'm nervous to tell my boyfriend! I don't think it'll end good, but I guess that's okay...

[Kelsea]

I made up the term 'asexual' to try to explain to a friend how I felt... Only to learn that it was an actual thing?! They directed me to AVEN, where I was able to learn all about it! :)

[FoxKat]

Honestly, I didn't really "find out" about it... I just gave myself that term a while ago because it made sense. I've never met anyone else in real life like me, so I just forgot about it for a while.

[JGR]

The first time I heard the word "asexual" was in a seminar I took my first year of college. It was an art history class. Someone suggested that Michelangelo was gay, and the professor counter-suggested that Michelangelo may have been asexual.

I looked it up afterward and thought "oh, maybe that's me," but I didn't really give it much thought until last year, when it was Coming Out Week and for some reason I felt very left out. By that point I had decided I was queer in some way, but I wasn't sure how. So I looked up asexuality again and looked at AVEN forums. Then I decided I must be ace.

It wasn't until this year though that I decided to become a member. Why didn't I do this sooner?!

[Hatzi]

:lol: about a year & a half ago:

Sherlock BBC slash fanfiction -_- --> flame war in the comments :evil: --> AVEN --> [me, running away in panic :redface: ] --> thinking about it a bit --> [me, coming back to the community 8) ]

:lol: true story.

[Suistar]

Someone I only vaguely know on Facebook posted a link to their tumblr, which contained a link to another person's tumblr, which was about asexuality. I started reading there and gradually I realised it fit me pretty well too.

So definitely a discovery by chance.

[I am a rock]

I was dating a girl I met on OKCupid. We got along well but before too long she started pulling away. I suspected it was because I hadn't made any sexual advances. I did some googling and found a topic on the eHarmony advice forums about a woman who was dating a man who was just like me. Someone suggested he might be asexual. Yadda yadda yadda, here I am.

[Mr_Charles]

I discovered the Wikipedia page on asexuality as I randomly clicked around the sexuality portal aged about 14. It stayed in the back of my mind from then on and I ended up following the links to AVEN aged 16 or so as I slowly began to realise that it applied to me.

[belovedless]

A beloved college friend informed me. Then, I proceeded to grill her about her identity with avid curiosity. When I came out to her eventually (months later), she seemed a little surprised. Needless to say, I'm a good actress.

[PoeFreak]

I found out on Facebook, a picture of all the orientations' flags and a small drawings of what each orientations was. I saw asexuality's flag I thought "ohh, pretty!" and the drawing was of a person just chilling by his/her self and I thought hey that could be me.

[imemyself]

Google > Wikipedia > You Tube > AVEN

Since I discover the term asexuality it took me a while to join AVEN, but here I am. :)

[Jami93]

Tumblr

I think someone asked someone i was following about it. i thought it sounded similar to me, looked at the asexual tag and slowly joined the community there. :)

[JAKQ7111]

I first came across "asexuality" as a legitimate orientation when I was about sixteen. I was (still am) a big Emilie Autumn fan, and I read an interview where she mentioned her own asexuality, and experiences with it.

[ordinaryyak]

I decided to describe myself as asexual based on biology. A few years later, I Google d the term and found aven. :)

[HappySpirit]

About a month ago, my happily married asexual girl friend and I were sitting in the airplane on our way back home from our vacation. We were discussing my struggle in finding a satisfying relationship and how to go about finding a partner who was interested in a hetero-asexual committed relationship.

For my dating site profile we brainstormed headline ideas that would attract compatible individuals and came up with the title “Long-term Platonic Monogamous Life-partner”. Once I was back home in Los Angeles, I updated my profile and although I received more replies in general I realized that my choices were still very limited at regular dating sites.

I was getting inquiries about clarification but almost all of them did just not understand. Many of them told me that I was too sexy looking for any straight man not to be sexually attracted to me.

At this time, both my girl friend and I did not know that there was an asexual community out there. I googled and researched to see if there were any sites for asexuals (although I did not know consciously anything about the true definition of asexuality) and came across some asexual and celibate dating sites along with AVEN where I discovered the difference between asexuality and celibacy.

[evigmidnatt]

i've had it said more times as a insult than anything else.

then recently one of my close friends announced she was coming out an Astar and suggested I do more research, we've been looking into it together and though we end up and different ends of the scale.

makes me laugh, i just recalled a boy who thinks he's a "honest friend" which for the rest of us translates as a total B*tch was the last one to try and use it to hurt me, said he was "saying it so i'd stop pretending to be normal"

[skmetoff]

I have no idea. I think I just heard it around my LBGT community years before I ever connected it to my situation. I only know that by the time I started having sex and discovering something is not "quite right", the thought "maybe I'm asexual" crossed my mind every few months, but I didn't dive into it until this year.

[konrad22]

I think I heard the term first from tv on a show, but didn't think much of it at the time, but as I was wandering on wikipedia I came across the term and educated myself a bit on it.

[Star Burton]

I'm sure I encountered it online, what somebody listen themselves as. It made sense to me.