the invisible orientation an introduction to asexuality

I know from experience, but I was used to defining and defending my feelings and choices through a privileged lens of high self-esteem. Nothing changed for me, and I made my peace with that…It’s isolating and lonely to be the only person around who lacks sexual attraction or interest in sex. At eighteen, I fully expected to develop a “normal” sexual appetite when I got older. If this “sexual attraction” thing ever happened to me, I’d go with it, and if not, I had no reason to force it. I broke up with the boy because he considered sex an essential element in a relationship, and I vowed to trust myself from then on as the authority on what I was feeling and what experiences I wanted. Never enjoyable, never exciting, never intriguing enough to make me want more. And all my experiences were exactly what I’d expected: at best tolerable, at worst uncomfortable. My boyfriend dubbed me “Miss Non-Hormone.” I called myself “nonsexual.” I was reasonably sure that I would recognize sexual attraction if I felt it, but the mantra of “you can’t know until you try it” did inspire me to experiment a bit. Not my boyfriend, not the hottest people in school, not the heartthrob movie stars. I’d just never been sexually attracted to another person. My disinterest in having sex with him wasn’t rooted in the usual reasons-that “a lady” was expected to save herself, that I was afraid of sex, that I didn’t want to get diseases or get pregnant-I simply had a complete lack of interest in sex and anything related. I liked him as a person, but I wasn’t interested in him the way he wanted me to be: definitely not sexually, and not even romantically. At age sixteen, I left my second boyfriend perplexed and frustrated.

The invisible orientation an introduction to asexuality