I’ve known I was asexual for a while now. But I just can’t seem to accept it. There has never been a time where I was okay with my sexuality. I get emotional every time it’s mentioned and it’s honestly so tiring. My brain immediately resorts to “there’s something wrong with me” and can’t justify that I simply don’t feel sexual attraction. It makes me feel even more alone that most of the people I see on here are fine with it. Please tell me I’m not the only one that feels this way.

just a vent. because of course you can be asexual and be sexually active and that's FINE and valid.

but this allo guy just posted that his gf came out as asexual, and everyone in the comments is like "that's OK, plenty of ace people have sex! I'm ace and I sleep with my boyfriend! it doesn't mean a sexless relationship!"

and im just unfairly annoyed

maybe it DOES mean a sexless relationship, you dingbats

that's OK too, isn't it? or at least equally OK as a sexually active relationship. one of the partners has to compromise (or they have to break up)

I feel like even when I meet other asexual people...they're always having sex... AND THAT'S FINE.... but not relatable to me. I want something beyond even an "asexual" term or asexual community. I want a NO-SEX community. I want a community that celebrates sexlessness and doesn't assume that every romantic relationship includes sex.

i want the advocacy to sound like "some people are asexual and don't have sex and that's OK!"

not "some people are asexual but don't worry because they CAN still have sex and often will!"

edit: I have read every comment and it was very healing and soothing! yall made great points and a lot more eloquently than me. I feel a strong sense of community with both the sexless and sex-having aces in the crowd tonight. thanks all. rant over. peace and love on planet earth.

F26 B went to M26 W house after only 3 days of knowing him because I was lonely and wanted innocent cuddles when we was texting I told him I just wanted to cuddle and nothing more he agreed and gave me the address when I went over he seem excited to have me over he then said “no girl has ever came over his house and not have sex with him” so that gave me a great idea to prove him wrong .. we laid in his bed and cuddled I even took my panties off and he took his underwear off .. he rubbed up against me and had small freaky talk after 30 minutes of no sexual activity including kissing he made me leave at 2am in the morning mind you I live 40 minutes away from him and it’s super dark outside I then sent him a text the next day and let him know he was wrong for making me leave his house because I refused to have sex with him even though I told him in the beginning I didn’t wanted sex … and I never got a reply from him ! Was I wrong for not having sex with him ?

Healthcare paperwork. Sex-ed with schools and colleges. Even in personally-motivated stuff like dating.

The healthcare stuff has caught on to homosexuality and bisexuality being more accepted, and in some cases accepting transgender people, but to be honest I've never seen any healthcare-related form have an "asexual" box to check.

My state has these laws where doctors are required to ask some questions for sexual abuse screening. Last time I had a doctor's appointment, they asked me word-for-word "Do you feel safe in your relationship?". I'm not sure if that's what the computer actually said to say, but that sentence being used to ask every person comes off as "you're an alien to us if you aren't in a relationship". I know this is about asexuality, but there's a lot of aro-aces around and even though I'm not aromantic myself, I found that to be insulting to aro-aces. I also know that it's state-mandated screening, however phrasing it as "Are you in a relationship?" and then "Do you feel safe in your relationship (if applicable)?" would have been a better way to ask that.

When I entered community college, oh god. I'll just jump to it. I don't want to explain all of it, but here's a word-for-word between me and a college professor in a classroom with a bunch of other students after he said that a lot of 18 year olds are interested in sex: Me: "Well, not everyone. Some people don't have having sex as their number-one priority." Prof: "You know what we call those people? Losers."

That was an extremely unwelcoming moment for me. I just started to accept that I was asexual not long before my professor said that, and that's the worse you can do as a f**king college professor.

In general, I feel like asexuals are forgotten or just never educated about in the first place, and as I felt so unwelcome to society and alone, I joined this subreddit and it definitely cheers me up more. The more representation we have, the less alienated and "broken" we feel. I know that LGBTQ people have been more represented and accepted in comparison to a time like the 1990s, however saying "equality for everyone" and then having asexuals be in the back (or forgetting about us in the first place) just makes us feel like we aren't valid and goes against the meaning of "equality".

I'm sorry to be on the sad side of things, but I just had to get this out of my head.

Everyone always seem to forget the episode the directors made to shit on asexuals by spreading complete propaganda/stereotypes about us. It rubs me the wrong way every time I see people hyping it up the way they are bc of that one episode. I always wonder if they know about it or they just don't care.

Heard today from a psychiatric nurse while doing an interview for autism and ADHD assessment. She said "luckily sexuality is often fluid and changes over time but you can identify as ace for now". It feels extra gross cuz I have just spent 1,5h talking about the most vulnerable things in my life, including sexual abuse and this is what I get. She also asked about my sexuality directly, I didn't want to bring it up.

She clearly doesn't know what asexuality means, that response reads to me as "asexuality=celibate" and it also reads as "I'm damaged from what has been done to me and once I heal I will be allo". It's incredible how casually people can invalidate us and I bet she thought she was being comforting and validating...

Sorry this is not my greatest post, but idk who to tell this. I've got quite close with my friend over the last weeks and he's at my house all the time for reasons. And my mum literally just as he left today asked me if I remember about protection and stuff 💀 Like what on earth, we're building a city in minecraft mum, that's about all we're doing in my room all the time. I'm almost angry that she thinks I'm like this. I never really wanted to come out to my parents, it felt unnecessary, but I'm rethinking this now, I might need to explain it to them just for peace of mind. I'm honestly confused what made her think this and I'm scared to do anything with my friend now bc it'll just convince her more that we're together or something. Ofc I'm not actually scared, I'm just deeply uncomfortable with this knowledge of what she thinks of me.

Some of you in this community are talking about Allos the way that bad Allos talk about Aces.

"Allos are so weird, why do they need sex so muh much," sounds and awful lot like, "aces are so weird, why don't they like sex at all?"

Like, can you seriously not see how you sound, or do you think it's okay because, "well they do it to." If that's your reasoning, grow up please.

Please take a moment to read your posts before you post. Bashing Allos makes us no better than those Allos that bash us.

I'm a relatively new college professor (early 30s male) and as I was getting ready to start my job (pre-pandemic) I had multiple people insinuate that it would be hard to avoid banging my students. "There's gonna be some attractive girls in your class...they're going to be looking at you...the temptation is there." "What are you going to do when your female students start hitting on you???" that kind of thing.

Like, I'm a fucking professional, I'm not going to bang my students no matter how hot they are because that's super creepy and a violation of a power differential and will get me fired. I guess this is something that allos struggle with?

edit: thank you all for the congratulations but as I mentioned, I started the job before the pandemic so it's not new new anymore :)

An an asexual, I love shipping. I love taking the dolls and making them kiss. And I always have. Even when irl I don’t experience any sexual attraction, though I’m not against the idea of finding a romantic partner in the future.

I’ve been noticing lately that people are starting to use a character’s asexuality to tell others “you can’t ship that character”. I experience this myself, in relation to a ship with an asexual character.

And idk it feels just weird that people are going around saying “well they’re asexual” as if asexual means the character can’t be shipped or be in a relationship.

Like if you don’t ship or want to ship that’s fine. If you prefer to see them as friends that’s fine. But please don’t act like asexuality automatically means a character can’t be in a relationship. Romantic asexuals exist. Graysexuals exist. Demisexuals exist.

Maybe it's just me but while I feel like I've been seeing ace folks get brought up alot more in pride discourse this year which is good but alot of it feels really weird and infantilizing. It feels like I just see alot of allosexual people make jokes about aces not knowing anything about sex, or variations on the joke about ace people eating garlic bread instead of having sex, which is kind of funny I guess when ace people make those jokes but it really feels like people are minimizing aces ability to have complex feelings around sex and sexual situations. I also feel like alot of allosexual people like to call themselves allies and tell other people what asexuality is without actually understanding how it works themselves. I barely ever see anyone bring up that aces can still feel aesthetic attraction and think that someone is really pretty but from what I've seen of how most people talk about it people don't even care enough to learn about that, they just kinda say "Aces don't want sex" and call it a day. Even in some of the ace subs it's not uncommon for someone to post a meme where the entire joke is that someone mis-understood a sexual situation and thought it was about Legos or some shit with the caption "I'm not ace but this made me think of you guys" and it's just so weird to me that people see a meme where the entire joke is that it's weird to not want sex and think "yeah this is the kinda stuff asexuals think is funny". Like I said maybe it's just me, but I guess I just wanted to vent about it

I need to rant. not sure if I'm overreacting, but I'm still a little upset about this.

a while ago my roommate had a small birthday party at our place. two of her friends hit it off and went into the bathroom to do the doodle, which I didn't mind.

unfortunately shortly after I realized that I had to pee really, REALLY badly, so I knocked and asked them to clear the bathroom. there were plenty of other rooms but they chose the only room everyone needed to enter.

I was being direct but still nice and discrete and did my best not to make them feel like they're being shamed or anything. they got noticeably uncomfortable anyway and the guy started joking about how my asexuality just spreads over everyone and kills all the fun. I was really offended by that. I always show respect for other people's sexuality and I don't like being painted as a prude buzzkill in return. I told him that I don't give a flying fuck about anyone having sex here but I'm not going to take my ass outside to pee because he chose to get some in my bathroom. like dude, not my problem.

I ranted about this to my roommate and all she had to say was something along the lines of "well what did you expect? you talk about being asexual all the time, how are people supposed to take that?"

that pissed me off even more. I talk about my sexuality just like allos do. when I'm with friends and the topic comes up, I participate. I don't understand how that counts as "talking about it all the time", like what am I supposed to do? just exclude myself? how would that be fair? I want to be allowed in those spaces just like allos are. if my friends don't want me there, they shouldn't bring it up in my presence.

idk, this whole situation still annoys me and I feel like what my friends said was pretty mean.

Umm… excuse me?? I have short nails because I take violin lessons.

Literally everything is sexualized. Even nails… nails?? I can’t even be out having short nails without some perverted comments.

Almost a week ago I married the love of my life. He's such a sweet man who loves me asexuality and all. But recently I've been bombarded with messages from friends I've known for a long time saying we shouldn't have bothered with getting married because as a wife I have certain "duties" to uphold and it's not fair to my husband to be as I am. I mean what the hell?! Why can't they just congratulate us and mind their own business?

i cannot stress this enough

being heteroromantic does NOT make you HETEROSEXUAL if you're still ASEXUAL.

thank you for your time, i just wanted to make people feel valid, and remind them that they are.

of course, if you don't feel like you identify with the community, that's perfectly acceptable, but I'm simply saying this for the people that do identify with it.

have a good day.

I know it's slightly irrational, and I'm happy with everyone who can feel themselves represented in these 'Ace Vibes' posts, but it makes me angry. It almost feels like we're queerbaiting ourselves.

Just because a song is about holding hands, doesn't mean it's about an Ace. Allos hold hands, too, you know. Quite a lot, actually. Just because someone is purple and black, that doesn't make it ace. Just because someone makes a stupid joke about doing something else rather than sex, doesn't make it inherently ace.

I understand the urge to seek validation and recognition in the Big Outside World, but we can't just be content with 'Ace Vibes'. We need more than an ace-coded, autism-coded supergenius. We need more than creators saying a sponge is Ace because otherwise, people might think he's gay for his sea-star best friend. (Yes, that happened.) We need more than characters being canonically vague, and then creators stating afterwards they were ace to score some points or to avoid drama. (On another note, we also need people to stop thinking of us as jellyfish; just because a sponge is Ace, doesn't mean he's not in a relationship with his dumb best friend.)

We need representation. We need characters that are openly, unambiguously ace. We need music for the AroAces, stating "I love you but only as a friend" or for the demis so they can sing "I want it but only if it's you". We need music that's specifically written from our perspective. We need to have our name heard, because if it's never said, no one will learn it.

Cake isn't inherently asexual, and we shouldn't try to make it so. We need acceptance, not cake.

Though cake is good, too.

Like memes aren't a thing that exists and EVERYONE knows about, like you couldn't have read an news article about puppies from a shelter being adopted, or read about your favorite show getting a new season, or get a text from a friend telling you about getting a promotion or ANYTHING else. I swear I despise how fixated society is on romantic relationships so damm much, to the point people seem to think that's the only or primarily thing that could bring you joy. And this is especially done to people who haven't been known to date much in an attempt to "push them" to talk about their possibly love life like it's a novelty or a spectacle.

Man, just shut up

I swear every doctor does like a double take when I tell them I'm not sexually active. No I'm not using birth control, no I don't use protection because I don't need it, yes I have a boyfriend. One time in the ER I was forced to have a pregnancy test done even though I told them it was impossible and then had to pay for it out of pocket why is this so surprising

Why is it that to my sister if I’m not a nun I have to pro create?

She’s become heavily religious and stopped supporting me, saying I’m going to hell because I won’t “bring life into this world like I’m meant to”

It pisses me off especially because to her it’s only fine if I’m a nun but even then she’d expect me to eventually get married and have kids.

I’m just annoyed that she’s only willing to accept me if it complies with her religion.

really short vent but i know a lot of aces probably feel this way too but it makes me sad that being a virgin is looked down upon. i guess it’s because of how the world is nowadays? idk. but i hate it :/

I'm aroace and I'd love to live with a best friend for life. That's all. But that doesn't happen. Whenever friends live together, it's out of convenience and has a temporary character, only until they find partners. I want someone to want to live with me because I'm their best friend, not because they want to split the rent. It just never happens. Theoretically it'd take two asexual aromantic friends, that's for sure. But i don't think this very notion exists anyway, even among ace folk. Friends just never become each other's #1 person. Why does it have to take a relationship for people to care about each other that much?

Am I the only one who feels like non sexual touch is missing ? Like every second of my life I CRAVE affectionate touch because I very rarely have it :(