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The Success Stories Thread


The Great WTF

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Wow, reading something like this really gives me hope!

Thank goodness for these stories.

Me and my "sexual" boyfriend have been together for a year and 8 months, we tried sex within the first year and it never really seemed to work for us, we hadn't had sex for about half a year recently and I began to wonder if something was wrong with me, that I had no desire for sex, but I found AVEN and realised that I am grey asexual. I told him and he was completely fine with it. :) We both found some middle ground with things like cuddling, occasional kissing, and other equally physically intimate things, just not sex. We are both just as happy as ever. I love him. *Soulmate* ^_^ :wub:


That sounds absolutely wonderful!

Congratulations to you both!

I am in a successful primary friendship! We've been friends only since August and agreed at the beginning of last November to be "primaries," as in the most important person in each others' lives with a dedication to always grow and foster that friendship. We've also agreed that neither of us will seek out a romantic partner.

It's really an amazing story. I started working my new job, and she is my colleague. We began carpooling and just chatting. I came out as asexual; she told me she was a straight sexual. But then, she took a super active interest in all things asexual, and it turns out that she truly fits the definition (although will not subscribe to the label) and is predominately attracted to building spiritual friendships with women. She has no interest in marriage, and virtually no interest in men. It took a couple months for her to confess all that to me, all the while she and I had been building an emotionally-connected friendship. Then, when everything came into line, we decided to be primaries. It's wonderful to be in an organic, asexual, sensual, and mutual passionate friendship!


This too, gives me hope TwT

I told my boyfriend on our first date that I was ace. We had a heart-to-heart about it and he suggested a poly/open relationship arrangement, where we're allowed to seek additional partners as long as we're honest with each other about it. I hadn't really considered polyamory as an option before; I'd just assumed my choices came down to staying single or finding an asexual partner. But I realized that the thought of him having sex with someone else didn't make me jealous, so I agreed to try it.

We've been dating for over a year now, and he's gotten me to try a lot of new things while still being very respectful of my boundaries and never pushing if I'm not comfortable with something. Now and then he asks other women on dates, and I know he's having regular sex with another partner, but I'm totally cool with that, especially since his sexual partner is someone that I feel like I could be friends with.

We get along very well, but I don't think I'm in love, really. I don't expect to marry him or make any other kind of lifetime commitment. But our relationship has already given me some invaluable gifts. It's shown me that I can have a successful long-term relationship even if my partner isn't asexual. It's made me more comfortable with my body and confident about what kinds of physical intimacy I want and don't want. It's taught me how freeing it can be to have someone I can be totally honest with--not just not lying, but being able to say anything and not be judged for it. (No conversation we'll ever have is going to be more awkward than the one we started with, after all.) Whatever happens next, even if I broke up with him tomorrow, I get to keep that self-knowledge for life. While I'm thrilled for all the people in this thread who have found a life partner, those of us who haven't gotten there yet can have success stories, too.

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Hope I can have a success story here in about 1 year :) Would have really liked that ^_^

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HilariousUsername

I'm currently seeing a girl I met through one of those Ace dating sites. We've spent the last couple of weekends together and I'm going to her this weekend. Crazy thing is she's the first person I've ever contacted online on the first dating site I've ever used yet we have loads in common, like many of the same things, have the same sense of humour and she virtually lives in the next city. I have no idea how astronomical the odds are of this working out so well, the cynical git in me thinks "What's the catch?" ^_^ As UltimateGinge said, it is indeed possible.

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  • 3 weeks later...
ranting ferret

i never dated until college and never had anyone who'd taken any sort of "dating-type" interest in me until then anyway. it never bothered me, never even really occurred to me that i could be bothered by going through unnoticed. i would even joke about being non-sexual or undate-able. and the brunt of "never date" jokes of my friends (which bugged far less than when they'd talk about setting me up with someone). i was well aware i was not looking at things from the same lens as my friends.

fast forward to a couple years into college. met a boy. we became pretty good friends. one night, after about a year or so of a good and increasingly close friendship, said, "what would you do if i asked you on a date?" to which i freaked out and instead of answering shoveled almost half a pint into my mouth at once (brain freeze from hell). a couple days later after pitching a hissy fit to another friend about how awful it was for a boy to no understand he shouldn't be asking me out, in my hissy fit agreed to say yes if he asked about a date again. he did.

i survived the date. and the next and the next. we dated for almost 4 years and became extremely close on a lot of levels. a lot was due to certain struggles i was working through. certain issues that were triggered during that time and our individual struggles with episodes of depression. when two people are still together after all that, they become fiercely close.

any physical expressions came very slowly, even holding hands. he let me have charge of all final decisions on physical closeness/intimacy.

we ended up getting married. before marrying, there had been some held back versions of fooling around, but no sex. none of this bothered me. i thought the whole idea was stupid. during our dating years, i was gone for all 3 months of summer. rough conversations ensued about whether or not i missed being physical with him. i honestly said no, but felt awful because it seemed like he was hurt by that. but there was nothing else i had to say. it kinda tore me up. after getting married, some sexual intimacy did come into being part of the relationship. i'm still in control of how and when and what. i get pleasure from it, but doesn't matter to me.

but i knew i felt no attraction to my husband. never had. nor had i to anyone else. i didn't (don't) understand it, and would bawl, weep bitterly and become unbearably angry about the whole situation. i couldn't fix it, couldn't understand it and was knocking myself out trying to research my way to an answer to get attraction to my husband (as i thought one was supposed to) and wondering if it bothered him anymore.

a friend with a degree in sexology suggested asexuality and i sent a novel of questions to her. she linked me to aven and as i read through and did further research everything fit into place and made sense. i could breathe. i could understand. and finding out all this didn't change any of the aspects of my relationship with my husband. just made me feel more comfortable having a name to put to what's been going on.
he's accepting and supportive of this. of my learning. of me. he's fully satisfied and happy to be with me and i with him. we're heading into our first year married, 5th year together. everything is working!

the end...sorta...

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  • 1 month later...
ItAllMakesSense

I miss my ex but have come to terms with being happy while I'm single. It's better off this way for now anyways as I'm travelling a lot for work. I know this isn't a typical match-making post but it's the best I've got at this moment.

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I miss my ex but have come to terms with being happy while I'm single. It's better off this way for now anyways as I'm travelling a lot for work. I know this isn't a typical match-making post but it's the best I've got at this moment.

I still think it qualifies as a success story. :)

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ItAllMakesSense

I miss my ex but have come to terms with being happy while I'm single. It's better off this way for now anyways as I'm travelling a lot for work. I know this isn't a typical match-making post but it's the best I've got at this moment.

I still think it qualifies as a success story. :)

Thanks, Philiarock!

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I've pretty much already posted my success story in a different thread, so I'm just gonna quote it here:

I always knew I was little different from others when it came to sexuality. My best friend would say things about somebody's butt, or whatever, and I was always kind of just like, "eh" towards it all. Then I started college, and I met this guy on my floor. We started talking, and just immediately hit it off, which was a really weird experience for me. The first few days after meeting him, I was finally forced to think about my sexuality, and when I came to the conclusioon that I was asexual, it was like everything just fell into place. It made me happy, but at the same time I was nervous, because I wasn't sure how he would react. I'm not very good at verbally expressing myself, so I wrote a note to him and gave it to him, explaining what I'd come to realize and saying that if that would be an issue in the future, to let me know now, so we could just be friends rather than go through a messy breakup later.Once he got out of class that afternoon, the first thing he did was come over and hug me and tell me 'it's okay'. We then proceeded to sit down and talk things through, and he said at first that he thought my asexuality would be an issue for him in the future, and to just be friends. I had half expected that, but it was still rather upsetting. Part of me wished I could be different, even though I knew trying would just hurt me. And it wasn't as if my feelings had been rejected - we both really liked each other, and I knew it was going to be hard to move on from that. But, it turns out I didn't have to. Not even two days after our initial talk, he talked to me again and was basically just like, "screw it. i really really like you, and you're more important to me than sex is." So now we're together, and he's been super accepting and considerate and always asks what I want, if something's okay, and I'm so incredibly happy that I figured out my asexuality and was able to find someone like him, because I would've just continued to be incredibly confused and upset by my lack of actual sexual attraction towards anyone otherwise.

It's only even been a week so far, but I really think things are going to work out. I'm just so happy I found him.

Good luck!!!

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I miss my ex but have come to terms with being happy while I'm single. It's better off this way for now anyways as I'm travelling a lot for work. I know this isn't a typical match-making post but it's the best I've got at this moment.

I still think it qualifies as a success story. :)

Me, too!

I think it's best to be happy before entering into a romantic relationship because, otherwise, one might have the tendency to depend on the other person for their happiness (not very healthy or practical) vs. an appreciation for how the other person may add to their current happiness.

It's potentially a difference between want vs. need and I'd prefer to healthily want vs. desperately need someone in my life. In the former situation, I'm better able to say "no" and "let go" when a relationship doesn't meet my needs.

Check out this article:

http://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/be-a-happy-single/

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I've been dating my girlfriend for 5 years, my asexuality is not a problem at all. We've been celibate for about half a year now (which isn't a permanent thing), with no repercussions. We plan on moving in together sometime within the next year - it would have been sooner, but we've both been in college. Which is a success in it's own, I suppose - staying together despite living in separate states for some of the year. ^_^

I still love her as much as I did year one. We talk about our future as if it's a definite: children, marriage, life goals. I'm pretty hopeful that it is.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have been with my sexual partner for five years and we have been married for two this December. We have a 3 and a half year old daughter (our only due to fertility issues). I am very happy in my relationship and he is incredibly accepting of me.

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I have a lovely boyfriend that I met randomly - we work near each other, and started hanging out due to mutual friends. Eventually we started dating, and we've been living together over a year. It's a kind of tricky situation because we haven't really even talked about sex - he says he's shy, and doesn't really want to talk about it, so I'm not sure if he's asexual or what, but at the moment this arrangement we have works.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I am an asexual married to a borderline nympho sexual. :/ It isn't always easy but we are coming up on our 1 year anniversary! It isn't always about sex. It is about love. There are so many more ways to tell and show someone you love them other than sex. And I am so glad I found this website.

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I discovered Aven two years ago thanks to an article in the Metro (http://metro.co.uk/2012/07/05/asexual-network-aven-gives-voice-to-those-who-dont-feel-sexual-attraction-492903/), which certainly was a hallelujah moment - up until that point I thought there was something wrong with me. Being a social kind of guy, I started going along to the regular Scottish Aven meets, and soon made some good friends.

The venue for the Scottish meet in April 2013 was Stirling, which I had to pull out of due to illness. My mates phoned me to let me know that someone had gone along because she had wanted to meet me. Blimey, I thought, and let my mates give her my number (I've called her my stalker ever since because of this). And so we conversed online and over the phone, eventually meeting up at the next meet in Glasgow. We started dating, and became an item soon after (we've been engaged since August last year, when I took her to see my homeland down south and we both got quite drunk one night).

Unfortunately my Mum passed away during the day of Guy Fawkes last year, which hit me hard. But I'll be forever indebted to my partner, because she somehow managed to keep me on the rails - if I had been single I simply wouldn't have coped and probably ended up a complete wreck.

I'm now in the process of selling the family home (I'm an only child, and my father ran away with another woman 10 years ago so there's no ties to hold me back), and buying a place for us to build a family together up here in Scotland.

So thank you Aven, it's quite possible you saved my life :D

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When my companion in life and me met we were still in our late teens. It was only a few weeks after my (elective) mastectomy and she had just suffered an accident that gave her an additional handicap to the one she already had. We have cared for one another for more than a quarter of a century now, and we are still deeply in love. She knew from the beginning that I totally abhor sexuality. I knew from the beginning that she does not.

We regard our relationship to be fully equivalent to a heterosexual marriage, and as christians we take marriage vows very serious.

We both regard ourselves as very lucky.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was hoping to find a thread like this :) I haven't been on in a while and thought it was a good idea to write my story. for years I told myself I would have to get used to being single. I would never find someone who would love me and except my asexuality. I had been in relationships before and they made me feel broken, wrong, an sometimes even dirty.

I was on aven for a while and it made me feel less freakish and broken. I took the jump to find some chat buddies in my area, because I really wanted platonic friends without the fear of someone trying to get in my pants. I met someone who I really connected with and I wanted to be honest from the start. It scared me to death. I wanted to cry. I didn't want to lose someone I was starting to like and who was so sweet to me. I told him and he was so fine with it I couldn't believe it. He is sexual. I have sat down with him many times to explain how I feel. He may not understand 100% but he understands that doing sexual anything is hard for me. I am usually quite indifferent, but there are times I struggle and feel weird. We have our own way of doing things. I mean if I told sexual people what our sex was they would be like, and" your both hAppy with that"? My friends even ask me, so did you let the poor man go all the why? It took a while for him to understand, yeah I don't need that orgasim thing. If you just touch me, weather it's rubbing my back, or kissing my head, I feel loved. That's all I want. He still asks me, even after 8 months. Why are you with me? I'm old and unattractive. I keep telling him. It has nothing to do with how you look. It means nothing to me. I want someone who loves me and treats me like gold.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I fell in love with my best friend when I was about 14. Together we made stories, characters, worlds and eventually a small business, but never really thought of sex. Over 20 years later we are still together.

I was so tired of trying to explain that we're not lesbians, and also no I don't want to be with anyone but her, and that I want to be with her forever. Learning about Asexuality was a comforting revelation. I had an asexual success story all this time, not a confusing mess or an overlong phase or any of the things other people thought they saw. I am the luckiest ace in the universe, probably. I accidentally fell in love with someone who was my other half and as Ace as I was before we ever knew what that was. I missed out on all the confused fumbling about my sexuality, because all I could think of on all my awkward early failed dates with boys was how I wanted to go tell my best friend about a plot idea I'd just had.And how annoying it was that they wanted to hold hands.

Some day my best friend and I would like to get married. We pretty much already are, honestly. We've shared a house and a bed for more than 15 years, and have adopted a daughter/little sister together. She does the taxes, I do the dishes. She writes research papers and does class prep, I take the business booth to conventions. I am so happy and so fortunate and so glad I can now tell people honestly in terms I can explain who and what we are and that it's normal and good, and in fact a really happily ever after that gets better by the year. So just as soon as it's both legal to get married and she won't be fired from her job for marrying me, . . . Huge Ace wedding. We're thinking a LoTR theme. Lots of Aces in Tolkien. XD

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My boyfriend and I are together for almost 4 years now. He is my best friend and I can't imagine life without him :D

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  • 2 weeks later...

My husband and I have been together for 7 years and married for 4. We are both happily hetero-asexual and virgins, and plan to keep it that way. I discovered AVEN and asexuality around the time that I met him, so it was just a really happy coincidence that he is also asexual. We're also both childfree, so we don't need to worry about how to go about having super-awkward sex. We are both autosexual, though, and each have our "alone" time. We're not vocal about our asexuality, so I'm sure that people assume we have sex since we're married. (I had a horrible experience coming out to my mother, so I'm afraid to come out to anyone else other than the select few who already know. She's a horrible person who I no longer have contact with, which is a totally different story altogether. She assumes that ALL men are sex fiends and that if they're not getting sex from their SO, that they're getting it somewhere else. She also assumes that men who don't want sex have something wrong with them. Isn't she a gem?) We didn't meet until I was 31, and up to that point I had assumed that I'd probably end up alone since my relationship experience was very few, very far between, and very brief. Thankfully I was wrong about that! :)

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Until I was 14 I thought that there was something wrong with me. Society and certainly my friends were all so obsessed with sex and I just was not interested. Not only that but I never fit in with the other girls, I knew I was different and at 5 years old I told my father that I felt like I had a hole inside of myself that I couldn't fill - which was, as most other things said by me to my parents, ignored.

After some time I started to have romantic feelings towards my best friend. I had no idea what she would think, or if she had feelings for me. We were both girls, and from what I could tell she was only interested in boys. I crushed on her for 4 years and worked my way into her heart, and when I was 18 we finally started dating. It was the hardest thing I have ever done and I would do it all over again.

At 20 years old I came to the realization that I was transgender.

I said to her, "So I learned about what 'transgender' means today, and that really seems to fit." Her response was "I've always seen you more as a guy anyway." It was the most perfect response I could have ever asked for.

Over the last 4 years we have grown so much together, and things have gotten nothing but better. This January I will finally be getting Top Surgery and chest reconstruction and I could not be happier. Just recently did I realize that I am demisexual and everything made so much more sense. I seem to really be coming into myself and it is so great to have a community where I am not just tolerated, but understood. I'm so happy to be here and I cannot wait to make more friends as time goes on here.

So thank you, AVEN worker bees - for creating a place where we can hang out and chat and learn and love.

I am sooooo open to making friends so anyone please feel free to message me to chat! xD

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My husband of 8 years and I have 2 kids. I just discovered the asexual title this year and it fits me so perfectly. I have never been attracted to men, found women beautiful, though sometimes had deep intimate relationships with men (that always ended tragically because I "wouldn't given them a chance". I've often described my husband as a unicorn- while I dont have a sexual attraction to him, there is something so magical and amazing being with him that feels like the sun shining only on you when its an overcast day. He feels like a perfect balance between masculine and feminine. I love him. He loves me. He was upset about the asexual title (earlier this year), but we worked through that insecurity and are making it work. Things are clicking into place for him too and he has committed to loving me- the human being, not the vagina. And vice versa.

Long term relationships are always an art form, and I feel like we've weaved an intricate and beautiful tapestry together. I am looking forward to growing old with him, and our kids are wonderfully happy as well! I feel really blessed to have my family :]

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  • 1 month later...

Short version. asexual married to a sexual for 30+ yrs. Were friends first (as always was the way for all my relatnshps, yes, i had MANY boyfriends, and yes, marriage proposals - husb was #7). I said no to the first 6 proposals cuz i just didnt think i could DO it, confidence in who, what i was, etc allowed me to say yes. I am NOT out to my husb, and wont (as he would assume i was faking it - sex, that our sex life is/was a farce, etc). Yes, i do have sex (not repulsed, could go w/o sex easily).

We dated each other, cuz neither of us wanted to get married (he had just divorced his 1st wife and NEVER wanted to get married again), but we also wanted someone to do things with (had similar interests).

Sex was one of our biggest probs during the 1st 5 yrs appx, but HE was/had the problem - which was 'fixed" (he seemed to have an addiction to sex - wanted it 24/7). SO, even complete opposites can succeed.

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I met an Asexual girl on Acebook that was living in my city, we met a few times then I asked her out and we dated for 4 months, and it was great. I would recomend Acebook to anyone who is looking to find or date other Ace people if it worked for me it can work for you too. There is definitely hope for everyone. Just keep searching be confident and don't be shy to ask someone out if the opertunity comes.

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Came out as Ace to my partner a couple days ago. I told him we can still have sex if he wants to, but I just don't care. I think he was hurt at first 'cause he didn't understand, but he accepted it pretty easily because I think he knew it all along. Anyway, he wanted to have sex. I said if you want, I don't care. And he kept asking if I was okay. I thought it was sweet. (: Been together four years this month, here's to four more. (:

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I don't have a success story yet, but I'm holding out hope. For now, I'm very grateful with finally knowing the answer to why I feel (or don't feel) the way I do. I still want a life-partner, and I still want that fairy tale wedding. And I want to thank you all for sharing your success stories! It makes me feel more optimistic

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These stories are GREAT! I feel hopeful now. I just told my bf am asexual so he's still trying to understand the whole thing. After reading these stories I feel some relief knowing there are asexual and sexual couples that have made it work 😆

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