My Asexual Joy Story
Finding out I am asexual has helped me come into my own
Originally published at Prism & Pen
Seeing as the Holiday Season is here, I thought I would post my Asexual Joy Story to my Substack and share how discovering being asexual has helped me find joy in my life.
I remember a day during my senior year when all my friends and classmates were talking about plans after high school. Eventually, the question got around to whether or not to have kids and get married. Everybody said they wanted marriage and kids. When the conversation got around to me, I remember the look of astonishment when I told them I never wanted to get married or have sex, and that I was looking to get a vasectomy because I didn’t want any kids.
My friends looked at me as if I had committed a major transgression.
During a free day in choir my senior year, my classmates spontaneously broke into a conversation about sex, with all my classmates talking about it like they were aficionados. They spoke of things I had no knowledge of, like different condom brands. As they rattled off all this sex stuff, I sat there feeling as out of place as a space alien.
It was at that point I began to realize that I was the peculiar one, that I was behind the curve.
My focus on my studies and my total lack of interest in dating and relationships made me the atypical teenager. Even my parents noticed.
When I told my parents I didn’t want to go to prom, they acted like I’d broken a law or committed a social taboo. When I told them I didn’t want to go because I didn’t want to date, they started questioning if I were secretly gay. They thought that being 17 and never dating had to mean I was in the closet. I wasn’t.
I knew I wasn’t gay. I also knew I wasn’t straight like all my friends were.
This led to me feeling out of place and out of step with society for the next decade.
In school, there was no discussion of asexuality in class.
My conservative, Bible Belt school school did not have sex-ed, because parents raised a fit over learning anything related to sex. My school had an entire separate school that acted as a means of shaming the teen moms who got pregnant. Because I didn’t get a comprehensive sex-education in school, I grew up as an isolated and confused loner and misfit, not knowing who I am.
As I went to college and people were really hooking up, the pressure to follow suit started driving me crazy. Even though I didn’t want to have sex myself, I felt as if I had no other option, because I didn’t want to be the weird one.
Whenever questions would turn around to whether or not I was hooking up with anyone, I would make up a lie, manufacturing crushes or saying I was waiting until marriage, even though I had no plans of getting married. Lying became an escape from social derision.
Dodging questions about my dating life became a habit.
Whenever peers or family asked me about dating, I would find ways to avoid the question, not answer the question, or switch the subject. I spent two years away from home and then had to transfer back due to student loans. My final two years at home made it easier to deal with all the sex talk, since I was focused on finishing my degree and getting into my career. I ended up staying a virgin through college and finished as summa cum laude. I felt great glee finishing college. However, the feeling of being an oddball stayed with me after college.
The pressure grew immense. Everyone already was either having kids or had kids. Everyone was already paired up or hooking up. I stuck out like the sore, single thumb.
I was still facing the same questions that people peppered me with during college, except now there was no escaping stigmatization. To try and dodge questions, I began to call myself celibate, so I could have an excuse. I even considered becoming a priest, not only because I thought it might be perfect for me since I didn’t want sex, but also so I could give a reason for why I didn’t wanting sex. I still didn’t know what my sexual orientation was, and celibate seemed perfect for me.
I ended up not going through with becoming a priest. With all the scandal surrounding the Catholic Church and the movie Spotlight highlighting the scandal, I discovered that celibacy was not what I was intrinsically. I didn’t feel any inclination towards sex; celibate people were just choosing to not act on theirs.
After figuring out I was not celibate, I was 25, stuck in a deeper state of confusion. The questions still kept flying at me.
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Do you have any kids?”
Now, I was expected to not only say yes to every question, but I was expected to have a plethora of trysts that I did not have and did not wish to have. Now, my virginity became a shameful secret, an albatross on my neck.
During my first year at a new job, I had to take mental health days because I couldn’t deal with the stigma of being the misfit. I was constantly watching over my shoulder, guarding my secret of being a virgin. I was so scared of people finding out I had never been on a date and never had sex, and being embarrassed and mocked for it. I was feeling shame and insecurity. No one could help me figure out who I truly am and it was hard for me to even articulate my persona.
I was dying inside and out, with no support system around me.
I quit church, because church essentially became a “marriage retreat” focused on couples and children. My last church marginalized singles as outsiders , and when we didn’t want to do “courtship,” we were kicked out and ostracized.
Leaving my faith community was not an easy decision. I became estranged from my family because they felt I betrayed my upbringing. Losing my faith community also meant losing friends and gaining loneliness and isolation.
I was at my all-time low.
Sadness was no stranger to me; it was my best friend, weighing me down. Some days, I felt suicidal, with visions of driving off a cliff or free falling from a building.
I felt I had reached the bottom of my rope. It turned out I was on the climb out of the darkness.
One day, I went home and began to type into my computer. I found a post on an old website from when I was 19 in college. I described everything I wanted for my future. I scrolled down, and a comment struck me. Somebody said I was asexual.
Asexual.
Lo and behold, that comment was the beginning of discovering my truth. I did Google search on asexuality, and I came across an old Youtube video of a 20/20 episode about asexuality. As I watched the video and began hearing their experiences, everything started to fall into place. I navigated to AVEN (Asexual Visibility and Education Network) and what I found there helped me complete the puzzle. When I was 19 living in that college dorm, I had posted on AVEN that I wanted to be a virgin for life. That post stated exactly everything I was still feeling at 26.
I questioned if I was asexual at age 19, but family and friends were all saying that asexuality was for plants and that I couldn’t be asexual. Being insecure and unsure of myself, I just went along with what they said instead of accepting my asexual truth.
Coming back to that same post I wrote at 19 was the final piece in helping me see myself for who I really was all along. I knew then and there that I am asexual. I broke down and cried the day I discovered the truth—this time crying tears of joy. I cried an outpour of joy greater than any I had ever felt before.
Six years later, I have actually never been a more joyful person.
I grew up on Disney movies and children’s books telling me that the only way to be happy and complete as a guy was to find a princess, woo her, and marry her. Whether it was the prince kissing Briar Rose to awaken her from her slumber or Ivanhoe winning the hand of Lady Rowena, fairytales constantly inundated to me a message that being a man meant being a knight in shining armor, rescuing and wooing a mate.
Even though I didn’t have any interest in dating or being in relationships, society and culture kept whelming the concept of amatonormativity at me, stating that dating, sex, and romance are just things you are supposed to do to be normal. Society kept reinforcing the idea that dating and relationships are things everyone has to do in order to find the person who completes them.
It turned out I never needed “completing”; I was complete all along.
—Songbird 💜♠️🂡🏹
