Ace newbie

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  • #28291
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Hi everyone

    So I’ve just had my second long term relationship fail due to the fact that I am just not interested in sex. I love every other part of a relationship – kissing, cuddling, holding hands – but that’s as far as I’ll ever want it to go.

    I feel so lonely and lost at the moment – I miss my ex terribly but I understand that he has needs I just can’t fill.

    I was really just hoping for a bit of support and understanding from people who I’m guessing have gone through something similar? Really just feeling terrible and could do with some love!

    Thanks all
    Ruby

    #28392
    Laine
    Spectator

    Hi Ruby just to say I’m in a similar position to you, but my ex split with me two years ago and I feel like I can’t move forward and meet someone else as I think the not wanting sex thing is gonna get in the way. That’s why I joined this site, but nothing much seems to happen on it! Anyway sending hugs to you. Laine

    #28859
    Tiffany Grisham
    Spectator

    I hope there are still people here. I spent 11 years with my ex husband 6 before we were married and then 5 together as husband and wife. We didn’t get divorced until last year so we married a total of 16 years. I spent so much of my life feeling messed up. In my mind sex is only for procreation and if we weren’t trying to have kids then there was no point. Needless to say he wasn’t too thrilled with that and I can’t count the times I was told “if you loved me you’d want to have sex with me”. I can’t understand that. To me the fact that I chose to spend my life with him and to have children with him meant I loved him more than anyone else. Now I have finally found out that I wasn’t broken I am asexual. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to being alone forever but I hope through these forums I’ll at least find some friends who will understand and we can talk about and learn from each other.

    #29033
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I haven’t had many relationships and now I’ve been with my second boyfriend 4 years. He’s the only one that I’ve been sexual with. I thought I was just unaware about how great sex is supposed to be because I hadn’t tried it. Though I was never all that interested and people were telling me I was crazy not to at least try “it” out. Well now I know the reason is because I am ace. Before I was confused now I feel at peace. Needless to say my disinterest in sex and intimacy really bothers my boyfriend. I feel I will soon move on for my mentalities sake.

    #30537
    Caton
    Participant

    Like so many in this community, a word I used to describe myself to people, friends and potential partners was the feeling of being “broken”. This was well before discovering the asexual community and the apparent similarity I see across the board, that “broken” seems to resonate so clearly with the uniformed asexual. The healing alone that begins in the heart and soul on discovering this community and little known sexual minority is nothing short of a miracle.

    But just as much as it’s revelatory and healing for us, it’s also, in many ways, alienating. Because you finally have answer, you feel like you get this rush, you’re high on life, you’ve solved the mystery to your life, and realized you were never broken, you were just born different, but had a community now that understood you implicitly in a way you hadn’t even known yourself.

    And then…

    At some point along the way, the best realization hits you, how will I find a compatible partner. If you did your research you discovered that asexuals reportedly comprised approximately 1 to 2% of the population. Great! You’re unique! And apparently a little known almost secretive sexual minority nobody talks about. If you happen to be gay, and ace, your odds were even worse, because gays are reportedly only 1 to 2% of the worlds population, and therefore, only 1 to 2% of all gays were asexual as well.

    If that weren’t bad enough, it would be fair to say that there was a 50/50 chance that half of the worlds adult asexual population was married or taken, therefore not available. This invariably led you with a much smaller pool of potentials. Whereby, you could further comstrain your options by fairly saying that of the 50/50 left for you to chose from, perhaps 1/2 of those simply wouldn’t be your type, or wouldn’t be interested in you.

    Then, Those that were your physical type, it would be rather fair to say that the 50/50 chance applies again, in that there are so many different fla ors of asexuality out there, and any given number of them just aren’t compatible with your needs or aversions, or vice a versa. For instance, they are aromantic, but you desire cuddling. They don’t get it. You resent each other for having to give in or give up you particular “need”. It would work for a while perhaps, but in the end neither would particularly feel fulfilled in the ways they need. Why remain in a miserable situation if you both aren’t completely committed to it. So you go back to the drawing board. And you realize, even worse, that the majority of available asexuals in the world don’t realize they’re asexual yet, and so they don’t know you are looking for them to tell you they are available. So you’re stuck with one of the 2 or 3 “dating/friendship” sites available to us out there, hopeful that soon, one of those asexuals out there finds out about the community and finds you before you give up completely on the, rather inactive and introverted, asexual community and return to the miserable sexual dating world again.

    Not to be depressing, but there actually is a flip side to all of this, as hard as it may seem to conceive of one after all of that. But I’m forever the realistic optimist. I’m neither, the glass is half empty or held full. I’m the, “there’s water in the glass, and I’m happy about that” kind of guy.

    It is what it is.

    But the choice is still yours. You can continue pursuing a relationship within the sexually driven world out there, and continue to feel like you’re missing the point, that you’re constantly the one sacrificing, that your needs to be true to yourself and completely happy in a relationship, have to come second to your partners constant drive for sexual contact. And you may tell yourself that you can live with it, but if you’re honest, they’re is likely a huge part of who you feel that you are, that you wish you didn’t have to give up or turn off just to have companionship in your life.

    In all sexual relationships, there is always a high-sex drive person and a low-sex drive person. And very often times, the guilt of not getting enough sex is placed on the low sex drive person. Even when it’s not expressed, it seems obviously implied that the problems in the relationship could have melted away if the low sex drive person had just been more sexual in the relationship, then the high sex drive person would have felt more fulfilled, desired, validated, and loved. And with the low sex drive persons compounding guilt over the matter, the relationship fails. But then the low sex drive person gets into a new relationship, and discover that this time around, because their new partner has an even lower sex drive than they did, that the low sex drive person from the old relationship has now become the high sex drive person. Suddenly things have rebalanced, and the previously low sex drive person no longer feels inadequate. They can finally walk around with their heads held high again. But that’s the terrible cycle of sexual world dating.

    But for the asexual, no matter where you go within the sexual world, even with the most low-sex drive person out there, you will always have to live with the fact that in such a sexually focused relationship, even the lowest sex driven person will always be the high sex drive person in the relationship. And the scenario I described above will always p,ace the asexual into the implied, and often expressed, position of carrying the blame for a failed or failing relationship. Asexuals are all to familiar that sex isn’t everything, far from it, but in a sexual relationship sex more than certainly serves as the glue that bonds. And when the glue isn’t slathered on as liberally or as often as maintenance requires, things fall apart.

    And such is the rollercoaster of sexual world dating.

    Flip that around and look at asexual dating. It isn’t perfect, it you both have so much more of a common ground to work with. You both get each other, and understand each other’s limitations. You agree that there are certain things you might each have to live without, but all is practically acceptable so long as cuddling is frequent and sought after by both parties (unless we’re talking about aromantic pairings of course, then all bets are off the table). But at least the difficult dialogue is simplified and you can cut right to the chase of getting to know each other without the fear that one day you’ll just get fed up with their sexual proclivities all the time, because it will be a non-issue. And the positive flip side to being so rare in this world, and having only 2 or 3 established dating/social sites is this….consider that in the straight world, there are likely millions of dating websites frequented by billions of people everyday. And your soulmate or perfect match, Mr./Mrs. right could be a world away. How would you know which dating website to go on? Often times, we don’t have access to dating apps available in other countries because they don’t publish those to our App Store regions. This severely limits us in an already terribly diluted dating atmosphere. You’d be lucky to find you perfect match.
    And then consider that, all of the asexuals in the entire world which range in just a few million, when they start searching for asexuality, and discover that there’s a community out there for them, the vastly limited options for asexuals, namely the 3 primary websites of AVEN, Ace-boo,, and Asexualitic, will drive them to these communities. Being a minority actually makes it much more likely that asexuals halfway across the world will end up right here for you to meet. That makes finding your perfect match within the asexual community that much easier, and you have litterally billions less people to sift through to find that partner. That’s not a luxury the sexual world has to their advantage.

    Yes, there are fewer of us, and yes, we need all asexuals out there to have an existential wakening to who they really, but when they finally do, you can bet they’ll be coming right here to see what we’re all about.

    Life is what m
    We make it, and all to often, we forget to latch o to the positives in life. I too had a failed marriage due to being asexual, though at the time, I hadn’t known it. I divorced in 2017 and 1 month later I discovered I was asexual. It discovered it because I went in search of answers about why I was broken, why I couldn’t keep relationships down, and to the point, why I never wanted/desired or pursued sexual contact. It was a painful loss, and an ugly divorce, instigated by them, and it made me miserable. But had it not been for the divorce, I would never have gone in search of answers….answers that healed me, changed me, gave me renewed hope and a sense of belonging, a community to call my own, and it made sense of every single thing that had eluded my understanding my entire life, I suddenly made sense, I made sense. And that was a gift that a continued marriage would have kept from me. I needed that clean break to go on living my life the way I truly needed to, and I had been liberated to do so, despite how painful it was. It was my blessing I disguise.

    I’ll say in closing, please understand, I mean no disrespect, as I completely understand the pain, the loss of identity, the loss of a way of life, of friends, a sense of purpose, of family…all gone…it takes a lot out of you. But ive experienced so much pain in my life, so much more than I ever deserved, and it was killing me piece by little piece. I felt empty, meaningless, invalid. And one day I decided that, though I had the right to grieve, I had the right to continue processing my pain, and I had the right to remain angry at the perpetrators and predators in my life that stripped everything away from me that made me, “me”, I was never going to get anywhere like that. I decided to start living a motto I’d heard once in my youth, to look for the good in every bad. It was hard at first, but I got better at it, and as I did, my heart began to mend. But not only that, I discovered that by constantly looking for the good in every bad situation, that I was able to make sense of the situation, to see how it was making me stronger, better, and often served as an example of how NOT to be to others, and by doing that, I was able to start feeling thankful for those beautiful moments. Because let’s be honest, bad things happen, they always will. Despite our best intentions or desires.

    But if they have to happen, let something good come from it.

    Like the mother who loses her child to a little known cancer because they caught it too late. A cancer that, had more been known about it, had they known to screen for it, had hospitals made it part of their default cancer screening panels, their beautiful and happy little 5 year old son who wanted to be a veteranarian when he grew up, would actually still be alive to make his dreams come true. But he’s gone. So his mother advocates for children with this unknown cancer, she lobbies to congressman, pushes for research funding, and her example educates the hospital boards and the masses alike when her platforms make breaking news in the medical world. And then a mother out there starts reading about the progress, and reads in this article, the tradegy that that led her down this path to start with, and the terrified mother begins to feel a kindred spirit. Her daughter seems to be going through something similar, so she reaches out to the woman she just read about, they live within a few hours of each other and they meet up. The terrified mother walks away armed with more knowledge than she could have ever bargained for, and she begins the long and arduous process of saving her daughters life by convincing the doctors to look for something very specific, and they catch it in time to save the girls life. She’ll now be free to grow up and be the princess she always wanted to be.

    And the mom who lost her son is smiling, because though her work a
    Has just begun, the loss she had to go through helped another family, and a little girl who will never have to know the pain she went through. She feels validated finally. She needs no thanks, praise. The helping to save the little girl’s life was all she ever wanted. And for the first time she begins to truly heal herself, and to work on finding closure for the IRS time since she lost her son. She cries, but strangely, they’re tears of joy.

    Ugly things happen all the time, but when you actively look for the good that can come from even the most tragic of situations, it actually does more than help you smile for another day. It helps you make sense of a situation, as much sense as can be had. It helps to bring healing, knowing that it wasn’t all bad outcomes, and once you find that good thing, that helps to make the experience worthwhile, not tremendously, but even just a little, it helps to bring the closure you’ve been desperately looking for.

    I worked in the mental health career field for 15 years while I served in the Air Force. I can tell you, learning this approach wasn’t easy. I had to go through some major trials and loss, pain, and more, to come to this conclusion, but once I did, I screamed this approach from the rooftops for my patient’s, and the ones who were ready to give the,selves over to this method, saw lasting results that not only helped ease depression and pain, but healed their hearts and helped them see that, despite the pains they had to go through, the positives gained from their trials weren’t something they ever wanted to give up, and to wish the bad experiences away, would have meant never having gained the tremendous positives they gained as a result.

    Many never needed to come back after that.

    I know this is long, but when I see pain,and suffering in others my INFJ persona comes out in full force, and I can’t help but give my who I e and devotion to the matter, because you deserve it, and you deserve happiness, and it just sounds like it’s eluded you for so long. I’m hopeful this can help you to begin towards achieving closure and a happy heart.

    Thanks for taking the time to read this

    -Caton

    #30556
    Jordan
    Spectator

    That was well-said Caton and something I needed to read. I’ve only recently started to think that I may be “different” from other people and I’m still not entirely comfortable with it and still haven’t accepted it. In fact, sometimes I hate myself for it and wish I experienced the kinds of feelings others do. It’ll be a long process but I guess we need to start somewhere.

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