Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2020-09-20 03:43 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2020-09-20 03:43 pm
[ SECRET POST #5007 ]
⌈ Secret Post #5007 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 52 secrets from Secret Submission Post #717.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: Mixed feelings
(Anonymous) 2020-09-20 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)Ignore this if it's unhelpful or makes you feel worse, but just wanted to share my own experience.
For me, accepting that I was asexual wasn't all that hard. "There are other asexual people out there, I can find one to be in a relationship with and still be (relatively) 'normal'", but I knew it would be hard to find one since there are so few of us, and I would feel (what I thought was) jealousy whenever I saw couples because I wanted to be normal like them.
Realizing I was actually aromantic and accepting it was waaaaaaay harder than accepting I was asexual, because in doing so, I gave up all pretense of being normal. It happened when I started paying attention to how I actually felt when I had negative feelings towards couples. Why couldn't I be normal? was always the thought, never "why can't I have an SO?", and it seems obvious in retrospect, but the reason was that I didn't want one. I didn't want to have to give up my free time or independence or have to consider someone else when making plans, I just wanted to not be seen as abnormal by society.
It took a long time to actually get past it, and I think a lot of it was just time/age/maturity, but now...I realize I'm not normal and I never will be, and that's okay. I'm assuming there are the same number of couples around me as there always have been, but I honestly don't notice them anymore because I don't care and am not bothered by them. If they're happy being in relationships, that's great for them, but I don't want to be, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise just because I'm "abnormal".
Anyway, again, feel free to disregard this if it doesn't apply to you at all, but I just wanted to put it out there because it took way too long for me to realize and wanted to give you something to think about if there was a chance you were in the same boat I was.
Re: Mixed feelings
(Anonymous) 2020-09-20 11:39 pm (UTC)(link)But I would like more friends and a romantic partner. I just let my brain get in my way a lot. I don't want sex, though. The paranoia about friendships and romantic relationships I can link pretty directly to past traumatic shit.
The "no sex for me, thanks," thing isn't tied to any really bad memories or experiences, it's more like... I like reading and watching adventure movies and reading books about epic quests but have no desire to experience the real deal. I enjoy reading smut fic, but have no desire to experience the real thing. I probably wouldn't run screaming from an allosexual partner, but having sex would be an act of service and not something I couldn't wait to try.
Most of the people I consider friends I've known for decades, but as they move and marry and have kids and I don't, we have less in common and talk less frequently, and never hang out because they live hundreds of miles away.
I'm sad that my last close friend from childhood may end up doing the same, but I'm still happy for her that she's not as messed up as I am.
Re: Mixed feelings
(Anonymous) 2020-09-21 12:13 am (UTC)(link)I'm sorry you went through whatever trauma you had to deal with.
As far as sex itself, I'm pretty much the same way. I never had any bad memories or experiences to make me not want it, I just never did. Even before my first relationship*, I knew I didn't want sex (although I didn't know the word asexual or that it was a thing then) but I knew that I would be expected to do it because it was a requirement to be in a relationship and you HAD to whether you wanted to or not (obviously not true, but that's what I thought back then). With that relationship, I'd just started college, and felt like I needed to get a boyfriend because I'd never had one and was kind of curious what the whole thing was all about, and he seemed interested in me, so I agreed to go out with him.
Anyway, we only had sex handful of times before he broke up with me for not converting to his religion (even though I'd told him from day one that that wasn't going to happen, but that's a whole different subject!) and it was...meh. Not really traumatizing, and I certainly didn't feel that way at the time (I'm more upset about it in retrospect because I'm mad at myself for just going along with it even though I didn't want to). I wouldn't say I'm sex-repulsed necessarily, but I did not like it at all, and it just felt wrong to me. Not in any sort of religious/guilty "sex is bad" sort of way, but like in the way that I imagine a gay person would feel having sex with someone of the opposite sex, like "this isn't who I am, this isn't for me".
The next relationship, we never had sex (I'd figured out by then that asexuality was a thing and it's what I was, and told him about it, and he said he was fine with not having sex, and we never did). It was a thing where we were really good friends and he confessed he had feelings for me and I was like "well, I like him well enough, I guess I might as well go out with him" but was never particularly enthusiastic about it. (Both relationships were because the guy was interested in me and I was like "well, I guess I'll go out with you"...I should've realized I was aromantic waaay earlier lol).
I'm in the same situation as far as friendships, I literally have no friends right now. I've always been somewhat of a loner and never had a ton anyway, though, so I'm not really too bothered by it, but the ones I did have have gotten married and had kids (and moved to other states in some cases) and I've completely lost touch with them.
Anyway, yeah, I don't know what my point is, I'm just rambling now.
*realizing now that it might've sounded from my other comment that I never had been in one, but the worst of the 'feeling bad about seeing couples/being abnormal' thing was when it had been several years since I'd last been in a relationship