Jump to content

At what age did you perceive your (A)sexual difference?


Recommended Posts

6MinutesFromSanity

I remember the first time I really realized I was very different. I was a freshman in high-school, and a junior wanted me to go to a dance. I was so uncomfortable with the thought of formally dating someone because the way the other kids explained it was pretty much a build up to eventual sex. I didn't realize anything was that 'odd' with me. I was highly intelligent and was more stuck up about it and just figured I was more mature than everyone else.

To this day I've never formally dated. I casually 'dated' two of my best friends, but it was more romantic friendship. One of which is now my wife of 11 years, so it worked out. Just figured out this week that asexual was a 'thing' and not just a scientific term for a type of reproduction. Go figure.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Thunderstorm

Seems like we mostly figured it out in teen years? Hard to say exactly when really, like others said...I never understood why friends are so excited about all the personal stuff, including dating, kissing, having sex. I didn`t pay much attention to that until I was 17 or so, I met a guy I really liked then, but I liked him because of personality and I never even thought about having any physical relationship with him. When everyone started dating I was like "ok I guess I should do that? why I cant be like them??" Well, nedless to say it did not went well. I first disocvered AVEN when I was 19 or so, and I was like "omg there are other people like me, yaay! I am not weird after all." I got my first kiss when I was 22, and I didn`t like it at all. Never really had a boyfriend so... Came back to AVEN and realised that grey-A is what describes me best.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I remember realising I was interested in women first at around the age of 12-14 and came out as a lesbian. I always knew I wasn't interested in sex and just thought it was a personal preference, it was only when I was 18 i found the term "asexual" and came to use it to describe me.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think I was 14 or 15 when my long-time crush asked me out, and I got a little frazzled when he started talking about kissing and intimacy and sex and all that great stuff - it was probably the first time I realised I didn't like that at all, though I'm still not sure if that was simply because he started seeming annoying to me and I didn't like him so much (the cause and effect get blurry around here). But it took another two, three years before I realised I could be asexual. It wasn't that I didn't know the term before that, it was just that I associated it with fandom and being forever alone so I thought it wasn't for me. Yay for inaccurate media portrayals!

Link to post
Share on other sites

There were small things that I didn't really pay attention to when I was younger. It wasn't until sometime last year that I began to take notice to them and fit the pieces together. I'm thankful that this site exists or else I might not have felt so confident

Link to post
Share on other sites

About a year and a half ago. It gradually sprung upon me during my previous (toxic, may I add) relationship. I slept with him less and less and it seemed like a chore, and sometimes he'd have to convince me just to lie there. Needless to say, since being with him I have become extremely genophobic and obviously that lead to me being known as asexual.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Barricadeofcostarica

Half a year ago at 16, I discovered the term asexual when I was looking for information on Enjolras, from Les Miserables, because I read somewhere he was asexual. I didn't know what the hell it was so I did my research and BOOM turns out I am too :)

Link to post
Share on other sites

I spent my teen years mostly thinking that I was a late bloomer, that people were right and I needed to give it time, 'find the right one'. Around 16 I started tentatively, privately thinking of myself as bi, because I realized I found people pretty or handsome regardless of gender... took me a few years to realize it was just aesthetic acknowledgement, not sexual attraction... now I'm 24 and it was maybe last year that I started giving in to the idea that I might really be asexual.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I heard about asexuality about two years ago but never really attributed it to me because I've had relationships and sex. I started thinking back into my relationships and kind of realized that maybe I was asexual. There had been things that kind of clicked together for me and that was my "ah ha" moment.

I always figured that some things that had happened when I was a kid had maybe led to me being closed off emotionally and being a "late bloomer" because in high school I was more interested in Harry Potter and movies than I was in dating. I didn't have my first relationship until I was 24 and I didn't have sex until I was 26 and I remember laying there wondering when it was going to be over because I wanted to go back to my book.

Link to post
Share on other sites
PurveyorOfBadPuns

At 18 I'm just putting a name to it, but it was pretty obvious since I was about 5, when all the girls were getting "crushes" and I just did not understand how you could find a boy (or girl) cute.

Link to post
Share on other sites

This is kinda difficult to answer

I knew since I was little that I didn't want to have sex. The first time I discovered what it was my reaction was "I will only do it once if I must to have a child" (grew up in a very Catholic family)

Then I didn't think much about it throughout my teenage years until...

I had my first boyfriend about a year ago when I was 18 and while I enjoyed kissing him an what not, it's when we started doing other stuff that I realized I wasn't into it at all and all I wanted was to go back to kissing and cuddling (he was really good about it all and didn't push me at all). Shortly after he dumped me, which was good for both of us.

So I knew I wasn't quite into that, but I thought that was because it was my first relationship and I would eventually learn to love it once I found the right person (Again, raised by a very Catholic family)

Then one day while tumbling down tumblr at the age of 19 I found a post of a tiny dinosaur explaining asexuality and I started to look into it
Once I discovered what asexuality was my first reaction was "I DON'T HAVE TO HAVE SEX TO BE IN A RELATIONSHIP?! *starts jumping up and down on the bed grinning like a Cheshire cat*

After reading up on tons of asexual blogs and forums I discovered that there was a thing called "sexual attraction" that I most definitely didn't experience.

So yeah, it was gradual

Link to post
Share on other sites

As a small child, I thought of sex as an unpleasant task that people performed just for the purpose of reproduction. But I grew up in the hypersexualised 1970s, so I quickly became aware that there was more to it than that.

I was always years ahead of my classmates in school and therefore felt alienated and isolated. I had no friends in high school, so I was spared most of the talk about dating and sex. Although I was well aware that some young people were having sex (a number of girls became pregnant; one even gave birth at the schoolhouse), I thought—quite naïvely—that it was just a handful of people who were trying to act older than they were. Not until my early twenties did I find out just how much sex people were having. (It was a gay friend who corrected my impression that gay people were a good deal more promiscuous and sexually active than straight people.)

In any event, I was always put off by sex. I never felt anything sexually for anyone. People told me that I was a late bloomer and that in another year or so I'd begin to take an interest in women. Well, I'm almost 44, and I haven't yet taken a sexual interest in women, men, or anyone else.

From time to time, men (less often women) would make slutty comments to me, along the lines of "Check out the ass on that babe/hunk". I'd look—and usually would find a person who looked perfectly ordinary. I simply did not understand why that person had been singled out as particularly sexy.

Many sexual people, most of them women, have assured me that sex is about more than appearance, that it is a transcendent experience rooted in love. Yet sexuals almost invariably report feeling sexual attraction for a person at first sight. Obviously there's no love, at least no mutual love, between strangers; yet even most people who insist that sex for them is inextricable from love do claim to be sexually attracted by even a stranger's appearance. I never have felt anything of the kind. At most I may occasionally have decided to meet someone because of her or his appearance (typically dress or comportment, not physique). But I couldn't imagine feeling like doing anything with someone whom I did not even know.

Not long ago I discussed that with a friend in his mid-twenties who is not sexually active (although he does have sexual experience). He seemed a bit surprised that sexual attraction is foreign to me. For my part, I wonder how blind people experience sexual attraction: by the sound of a person's voice?

By and by I came to see that asexuality was as alien to most people as sexual attraction was to me. People who asked me whether I had a girlfriend seemed puzzled when I said that I wasn't interested. A few people asked me whether I was gay. My claim to experience no desire for sex with anyone was usually met with disbelief: people thought that I was shy, immature, or mentally ill, or that I had been sexually abused, or that was suffering from a hormonal or other organic defect requiring medical attention. One day in my early twenties I told someone that I was asexual. I had never seen the word used in that sense before; I even apologised for what seemed to be a questionable choice of term. Not long afterwards I did find that term used in print.

I've never been ashamed of asexuality or wanted to be sexual. For a long time, I told only a few close friends about my asexuality, simply because I felt that it wasn't other people's business and that divulging it would probably just invite trouble. Lately, however, I have become increasingly frank about it. I don't raise the subject for no reason, but I don't usually shrink from it either.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Red Sun Rises

Ehhh, I've known I was different for as long as I can remember, I just didn't have a name for it :)

Link to post
Share on other sites
marmalade-cats

I've always felt kinda different than other people growing up. From my early teens onwards, I've never really had crushes, never felt the need to obsess over having a boyfriend or talking about who is "hot", not even to mention any lack of interest in sex on my part. Several years back once I realize that people were actually being serious when they said they wanted to "do" or "bang" someone else that didn't help the confusion at all :P

I only started identifying as asexual here in the past couple of years, once I actually looked at the definition of asexual.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think I may have been born asexual (if that is possible) I have had clues about it my whole life even in childhood

Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't remember how and when I figured out I didn't want sex, but it was definitely way before I knew of the word "asexual" (in the sexuality context, that is). I think I just assumed nobody wanted sex, because sex is not something that comes up in conversation much, where I live. It was only when I was about fifteen that some time after attending a compulsory sex ed class, I overheard my classmates discuss how "hot" or "sexy" celebrities are, and I finally put two and two together. One of my ace friends recently mentioned that she remembers us discussing how weird it was that other people wanted sex, because we couldn't understand why! (But my memory is bad and I don't remember this conversation.)

Link to post
Share on other sites
PurveyorOfBadPuns

Age 4 in my preschool it was a thing to have "imaginary boyfriends" and I never could find an image of someone I liked, or even wasn't grossed out by the thought of holding hands with. Age 11 all of the other girls were getting butterflies for cute boys and girls and I felt nothing, and my mom kept asking about boys at school, so I pretended. Age 12 I came out as lesbian because I didn't like boys. Age 17 I came out as bisexual because I realized I had the same amount of attraction to boys and girls (i.e. none). Age 18 I heard the term "asexual" and was greatly relieved because it was a thing. :D

Link to post
Share on other sites
mischevious_koala

I would have to say around 14-15 when one of my friends told me about asexuality, although I must say that before that I always felt a little different to others, especially when others would start talking about "hot chicks" and I had no interest in that kind of stuff

Link to post
Share on other sites

When I was little, before I learned where babies come from, I knew I never wanted to have one and told my mom that and asked her if it was possible. Then, when we had sex ed. when I was in grade 6, I was completely uninterested but my best friend would not stop talking about it. At that point I wasn't sure if she was weird or if it was me. Finally, when I was in high school and all my friends started getting boyfriends/girlfriends, I knew. I became aware of just how much I didn't care about romance or sex, though I never learned the words for those things until last year.

Link to post
Share on other sites

When I was 17, some girls were sitting on the bench next to me in gym class. One of them was talking about the night before, when she had had sex with her boyfriend. Until that time, sex had always been an abstract concept. The thought that my classmates were engaging in that was baffling. I'd never made it past holding hands and kissing a bit yet. Oh well, at 17 I could still be a late bloomer (FYI, 17 is the average age for first-time sex in my part of the world). Then I discovered AVEN at 20 and that was it.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...