My ace journey
Recently, I was hesitant to speak about my sexuality in a Twitter Spaces. So, I thought of writing my gay'n'ace experience here. Firstly, about my sexual/romantic orientation: I am romantically attracted towards people of my gender (homoromantic). In terms of sexuality, though I have sexual drive and attraction, I never wanted to act on my sexual drive. However, I openly identified myself as a part of ace-spectrum only recently. I’ve never had sex and never willingly or unwillingly exchanged a kiss with anyone so far.
I’ve had no relationships but I had an open but unrequited love for my ex-/best friend (a cis-gendered heterosexual) for 15+ years. Open, in the sense, I was open about my love for him always. My love blinded his homophobia and his mean ways of converting me into a straight person which included: forcing me to visit a conversion therapist and verbally abusing me to get married to a woman. I saw those things as love for me.
When I was in love, I used to think that I lacked interest in having sex with other people because I loved my lover so madly. It was a long-distance “relationship” too. Only when I finally decided to move on and stopped talking to him (after his wedding), I “found” that I had no interest in penetrative sex at all. I will never be interested. However, I imagine the warmth of being with someone and holding their hands and I used to like to be in a relationship but I now I am really confused about relationships.
I started using dating apps only when I turned 33 (2018) after my separation from my best friend. That is when I faced allonormative harassment. Initially, a person blamed me for “wasting” their time since I talked about my sexual interests “only after a couple of days”. This happened despite my mention of “No” in anal sex. Later, I wrote in detail in my profile info that I was not interested in penetrative sexual acts. Then, people continued to ping me and tell me it is the wrong place to look exclusively for friends and relationships. Some people made fun of my “virginity”. Some would ask me why I was here if I did not want any penetrative sex. Some would declare that I am not gay since I am not interested in any penetrative sex. A friend asked me if my asexuality could be because of the sexual assault I had faced or because if I think sex is unclean. I explained how these are not the reasons. Amidst all these, I found a couple of friendships but they didn’t grow as relationships due to various reasons.
It was only after the 2020 lockdown, I doubted if I will even be okay with sensual acts with my partner. I still am not sure because I am confused if I tend to think so because I really lack any experience. Such thoughts sometimes question my asexual identity as well. My tryst at relationships also has now hit an all-time low because of irrational loads of anxiety that I faced when I met a person. I was comfortable when I spoke over the phone but I almost got a panic attack when I met him. This is despite the fact that we enjoyed a great deal of friendship when we spoke on phone. I cried for days thinking of the meet and never met him again. This anxiety attack has created a doubt in me if could ever share a relationship with a person. But I wanted a relationship too. Dilemma continues…