Who I am
I am 35 years old and single. I have had 2 boyfriends, both in the last 5 years and neither a fun experience. It wasn’t a bad experience, they were good guys and they were good to me, the experience of “dating” was just very uncomfortable for me. I was simply not interested in boyfriends and making myself pretty to impress and trying to “make it happen”. The whole thing baffled me. For most of my adult life I have wondered what’s wrong with me, why does my turn never come? Was it because I’m too fat? Too ugly? Not “likeable” enough? I wondered if I was a lesbian, I’m pretty sure I’m not. I wondered if I was one of those people who were born both male and female parts and my parents decided to raise me as a girl and never told me.
In the last year I have really come to embrace and enjoy being single & child-free. There’s so much I can do and enjoy as a single gal! I’d pretty much decided that I didn’t want a guy and that was fine. Then last fall, through a good friend on his path of discovery, I discovered a website that entirely changed the way I thought of myself.
AVEN - Asexual Visibility & Education Network
I read their definition of asexuality:
An asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. Unlike celibacy, which people choose, asexuality is an intrinsic part of who we are. Asexuality does not make our lives any worse or any better, we just face a different set of challenges than most sexual people. There is considerable diversity among the asexual community; each asexual person experiences things like relationships, attraction, and arousal somewhat differently. Asexuality is just beginning to be the subject of scientific research.
WOW. That was me. And what I quoted here is just the 1st paragraph, it goes on and as I read I saw more and more of myself. WOW. There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m just wired differently. And, it’s OK! :-)
Labeling myself as asexual has freed me from feeling bad about myself. It has helped me enjoy the relationships I have and not feel like I should have something different. It has made me happier than I ever imagined I could be. Not happy in a jumping for joy sense, but content deep inside myself.
This is something I have kept pretty much to myself, I don’t really feel like it’s something that the people around me need to know or will understand. Tonight I “came out” as much as I probably ever will by openly joining AVEN’s Facebook page - not sure if any of my friends will click on the link to see what it is or put 2 and 2 together, but I feel like I have put it out there. I almost didn’t join, out of fear for what some of my FB friends might think, but finally decided that this is who I am and I’d like to continue to explore what it means to be asexual and if there are people on my FB list that think less of my because of that then they aren’t my friends to begin with.
While, it’s not something I’m ready to be totally public with (and may never be), I would LOVE to have a good way to explain my feelings to my well meaning friends who ask “are you seeing someone” or “have you met a nice young man yet?” and then give me the pity eyes when I say “no”.
