What is asexuality?

Happy Asexual awareness week my people! 

This week has brought a lot of things up from the pas for me. You see, since I’ve been experiencing my first squish, especially one that has been going on for about three months now, I’ve been trying to be sure that my identity is still intact. For this, I go back to the bare bones definition of asexuality.

Asexual: (adjective) 1.) Without sexual feelings or associations. 2.) (noun) A person without sexual feelings or desires.

Going by this definition in its purest form, I remain confident in my identity as an asexual human being.

I’ve ever told one person out loud that I was asexual. This person was a really good friend, an allo, to use a popular term in the asexual community. But more specifically this person was an extremely sexual being. A lot less about romance than they were about sex. So telling them that I was asexual was mind-blowing for them. Life without sex was something tortuous for them. To them, the fact that not only did i not have sex, but didn’t feel the need to at all made me an oddity. If you have ever heard this experience, go ahead and give an eye-roll. Literally, the next thing that they said was that I just needed a good screwing to show me what I was missing. Like, no thanks. Needless to say, we aren't friends anymore.

Clearly, as I am a part of the same over-seualized society as everyone else, I’m not ignorant. From a purely logical standpoint I understand it. But that’s really as far as it goes.

I figure it this way, when it comes to sex, no one’s really happy. Either you have too much sex and are a slut or man-whore, or you don’t and are a prude. 

To me, asexual people really aren’t that different from the rest of the general population. It isn’t like when I’m walking down the street a person could tell that I’m asexual. You can’t tell if a person walking down the street is gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, etc. so why should it be any different for my 1% of the population? It shouldn’t.

But asexuality in and of itself tends to describe a number of people. It’s used as an umbrella term for some people. For me, even though I identify as a sexual, I also identify as aromantic. So how is that defined?

Aromantic: An aromantic is a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others. Where romantic people have an emotional need to be with another person in a romantic relationship, aromantics are often satisfied with friendships and other non-romantic relationships.

By this definition, I am aromantic. Even though I can experience squishes, and even in that cases they tend to be very rare, I don’t feel the need to have a romantic relationship with anybody. Do I like this girl? Extremely. It’s something that I would categorize as a very strong platonic attraction. 

Whether you’re deimisexual, asexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian; the main point of being alive is to feel, to have joy. As long as you don’t have a problem with your identity, you don’t need to worry. Be happy.

#aromanticism #relationships #asexuality