The words you didn't have yet

I only realised last year that I was aromantic, and it’s only recently that I’ve started letting some of my friends know that I am asexual, though I’d suspected that for a few years now.

I was brought up with quite traditional gender roles, and in a very allo-cis-heteronormative environment. The goal of a relationship with someone is to get married, settle down, and have kids. Before I realised there were other options, I could only view dating through this lens.

My epiphany came when I was dating someone who was polyamourous and knew I was asexual. We’d been kind of dating for a few months, and I was really confused as to when I’d start to feel romantic feelings. Then I realized; I wasn’t going to. I never had.

In previous relationship I didn’t know I was ace, or aro, and it brought me so much anguish and confusion and distress.

Having these words, this identity, it finally frees me from the expectations and allows me to feel like I’m not broken. And I wish someone had been able to tell me that years ago.

***

19 years old
28 April 2013
Why is something trivial like flirting so important to Tom? Why do I always have to try to be something I’m not? I don’t want to say things I don’t mean, so I just say nothing.
And why do we have to go a little bit further with things every time. Maybe I’d like to keep my shirt on. Is that really such a problem? This relationship is about more than physicality. I thought that we had an intellectual and emotional relationship as well.
And on that, why, if he’s not pressuring me, is he so keen to always be alone together. I don’t want to spend all our time making out and stuff, I feel like I’m losing the friend I had to someone I don’t know.
I don’t want to think about what he wants all the time; I’m my own person. Everyone always encourages you not to be pushed into things, but once you’re in a relationship, it’s completely different.
I feel like everyone around me and the people I trust and talk to are trying to force me to do things I don’t want to do.

Maybe my problem with flirting is that I'm not ready for the connotations. My brain just shuts down. I don't want to lie. I thought relationships were about honesty.
And he says I'm the most precious thing in his life. What does that mean?! What am I supposed to do with that?! This is not what I signed up for! 

Apparently some people find flirting fun; just not you or I. Although I’ve been told that I probably accidentally flirt with people, because I’m chatty and laugh a lot, but it’s not on purpose. And trust me, we still struggle with reading subtle flirting if it is directed at us. 

Tom’s flirting was fairly direct, with direct connotations, and you’re right, you weren’t ready for those connotations. And I’m starting to think we never will be, but I’m also starting to realise that that’s okay.

29 April 2013
There seems to be a social construct whereby once you are in a relationship that person must do everything with you.
First, for dinner with the girls Amanda asked why Tom would not be in attendance.
Well, uh, because I see him every weekend and see my friends never! I just want a chance to catch up with MY friends, without the social pressure of being boyfriend and girlfriend. Is that too much to ask? Obviously it is!
And then Mum, trying to make me bring him to the family dinner. I don't particularly want him to meet all my family and have to answer all their nosy questions whenever I see them from then on.
Is nothing mine? Can I not do things at my own pace?

I don't want him to sleep over after we go see the musical on my birthday, but how do I tell him that? Should I just let him stay? Why am I so apprehensive? What should I do?

The pressure you feel from your friends and family to present your relationship in a certain way; to be happy with your partner, to want to bring them everywhere and show them off, to want to spend every possible moment with them. That’s what you’ve been taught love is like. Tom was one of your closest friends; you spoke to him nearly every day for 5 years before you started dating. People were always saying that you were already almost dating, but you didn’t have that interest in him. Even when he asked you out, you said “yes” because of what other people told you about your feelings. The friends who said you must like him. You dated him based on what people told you to feel. Hoping you would eventually feel it. But you didn’t.

You’re apprehensive about him staying over because this is something you don’t yet have the language for. Something that had never been presented as an option for you. 

There’s a word for this, there are other people like you. You just don’t hear the word for another 2 years, when a friend is talking about coming out to her mum as asexual with another friend, and you overhear. They give you a quick aside on people that don’t really feel sexual attraction. You’ll go home from that party, and you’ll give it a google. You’ll find that it suits you. You’ll put this information in a box, you won’t come back to it for another 2 years, when you’ll start thinking about it again.

Slowly, over about a year, you’ll start to come to terms with being asexual. By the time you’re 25 and have been single for 5 years, you’ll be mostly okay with it. Not enough to tell other people, but enough to know it would be an important consideration if you ever start dating again.

 26 May 2013
His disappointed tone on my birthday about how my dog was barking and interrupted us. She is more important, but that's not the point. I didn't want to do whatever it was he had planned, so I'm glad. I didn’t even want him to come in when we got home.
Anyway, wanting to show me how 'special' I am, I'm kind of glad we were interrupted. I'm still not ready for that kind of stuff, the “sex and things”. First it's yucky and I just don't like the thought. Second, I know I don't love him, I know I don't want to spend the rest of my life with him, heck I don't even know if I lust him?
I know it's good to do that sort of thing, maybe not sex, but the 'other stuff' with someone you like and trust, but I still don't know.
And who can I talk to, Mum is so encouraging and supportive of if I want to, I'm not sure I can tell her I don't. I would like to talk to my friends, but I never see them. It makes it hard!
Also, I know it's not love, because there are little mannerisms that annoy me, And when he looks into my eyes, I don't know, with love, tenderness, affection, lust? I can't return it.

This is similar to what we felt when we were 17 with our ‘boyfriend’ Mitch. There was a social expectation, what a high school romance should look like, should feel like. But it didn’t. Remember when we didn’t want to receive flowers on Valentine’s Day from him. I know we love the concept of romance and love and all that jazz, but it CANNOT be directed at us. No way, never. And when we received those flowers and Mum made sure to tell us to thank him ‘properly’. We heard the insinuation, ‘you should at least kiss him’, but didn’t want to, it made us feel uncomfortable.

And the way you feel about sex? I don’t think that’s going to change, because 6 years down the track it hasn’t. We’re sex-repulsed, and that’s okay, we don’t have to fit ourselves into what society says we want.

30 May 2013
Tom asked if I had time to catch up this weekend, and to be honest, I don’t want to. I know I have to see him though, because that's what people do. I'm not looking forward to seeing him; I'd rather just not.
I keep thinking that I'm sick of this so-called relationship, but it hasn't really even started.

It’s odd that we consider our relationship with Tom to have barely started when we’d been dating him for a couple of months. We have this picture in our heads of what a relationship should look like, what we should be doing and how we should be feeling about each other.

And what you had with Tom didn’t fit that pattern. You weren’t smitten and wanting to spend every possible moment with him. You weren’t craving his touch; his affection; his attention. What you were feeling didn’t look like what your books and movies had taught you it would.

12 June 2013
This morning on my walk I was pondering the relationship. I don’t understand the point of having a boyfriend.

• Someone to take places - I’d have more fun with my friends, plus he doesn’t like current music and wouldn’t dance with me unless intoxicated, therefore friends are more fun

• Someone to talk to - if I’m not talking to anyone else about it, then I don’t want to talk about it at all. And it’s not like I can talk to him about this.

• Fulfilling lust - I don’t want to have sex, I don’t want to do the other stuff’ yet, so what’s the point. Kissing can be fun, but I don’t require it.

He is a great friend but is that love? If I'm already thinking that I know he's not the kind of guy I want to marry, then should I bother? Am I just using him to pass the time?
If I know I don’t love him, then what’s the point? He should be with someone who does.

Same here. I also do not understand the point of a boyfriend. I’m not sure we’ll figure that one out. I honestly think we prefer having close friendships. And eventually we’ll start to realise that that’s okay.

24 June 2013
So on Saturday night, I saw some of my other friends. I had more fun in my 15 minutes with them than with Tom the whole night.
When I was dropping Tom off, he was really disappointed that I wasn’t up for a make out sesh (due to the tonsillitis). So he asked to just sit with me for a bit. I just wanted to leave.
Anyway, he said, “I’m really happy we’re going out. You?”, so I said an unconvincing “Yeeaah”, then again “yes.” 
I lied.
I don’t want this. I think I’ll have to end it.

That was the breaking point. You saw how happy it was making him, and couldn’t continue with the façade, the lie, any longer. It was only going to hurt him more the longer you left it.

1 July 2013
I did it today.
It was difficult to say it to his face, especially when he said ‘I thought maybe I might have loved you’, but that’s the reason that it had to be done.
I feel so relieved. 

I know that you cried while you broke up with Tom, not because you were sad about ending the relationship, but because it hurt him, and you didn’t want to. You’ll shake and cry as you hit send on the message that will end your next relationship too. 

* * *

You’ll meet Dave at a party. He’s friendly and chatty and listens enthusiastically while you talk about your work. You play a game of pool, and he touches your hand nearly every time he passes you the cue. You think he might be flirting with you.

Dave adds you on Facebook; he sends a wave. “Wow, he must have enjoyed chatting to me as much as I enjoyed chatting to him!” You tell him you enjoyed chatting, you chat with him over the weekend, and you ask him out for coffee the next weekend.

You’ll be nervous, this isn’t the kind of thing you usually do, and you’ve made that clear to him. He’s kind, he can tell you’re inexperienced with dating, and you’re not really sure how it works. He tells you that everyone is like that. He tells you he’s polyamorous. You both agree to try dating, but at a slow pace. He wants to give you a pleasant dating experience.

You’re still awkward when you hang out, especially when you kiss, but he is great, he is kind and gentle, and really, really, good about enthusiastic consent. An “um” or an “I’m not sure” is taken as a “no”. Only a strong “yes” is taken as a “yes”. You thank him profusely for being so kind and understanding and so good about your reluctance. He tells you “this is the bare minimum of what you should expect from someone, they shouldn’t make you feel guilty and they should treat you with respect”. 

This makes a huge difference in how you feel about your relationship with Dave compared to how you felt with Tom. You’re comfortable enough with Dave to tell him about how previously you’ve felt shame and regret and disgust after making out with someone. That your brain would virtually slut-shame you, even though you thought you were okay with it at the time. You don’t feel that way with Dave.

You tell Dave you think you might be asexual. This solidifies in your mind as your relationship progresses, but he is still careful not to do anything you aren’t okay with.

You’ve been kind of dating for a couple of months. He’s told you that he’s not really your boyfriend, more of an experiment. This confuses you, and you ask if there can be more emotional connection. But to him, because your relationship is much less physical than his other ones, he considers this relationship to be mostly emotional. He asks what more emotional connection would look like for you, but you don’t have an answer.

In your reading about asexuality, you’ll find some language around romantic attraction and how that can vary, you’ll start to wonder about your romantic attraction. 

You start to think about this, your vague interest in him romantically has waned since that initial spark (if that’s what it was), and if you hadn’t started chatting to him the day after you met him, it would have been gone in 3 days.

What you see in him is a friend, potentially “with benefits” but you’re not really interested in those benefits, in fact some of them are things you’ve never been interested in and probably never will be. You realise that you are aromantic as well. As soon as you realise this it puts all your previous relationships into a different light. You understand your reluctance for Mitch to give you flowers. You understand your fear and angst when Tom gave you a look you couldn’t return.

You break up with Dave. He understands; you still chat sometimes.

You tell some of your close friends what you’ve realised. That you are an aromantic asexual. They are happy for you. Some even share that they are aspec too and suggest some good resources.

You read some pieces. You learn new words and labels that you relate to. You find that other people think the way you do. You realise that there are more kinds of love out there than romantic love, other relationships that you can value and cherish. Friends that you love to pieces, and would do anything for; and to us, that’s better than a romantic relationship any day.

It’s a journey, but in the next six years, you’ll do a lot of self discovery (and there’s probably more to go, but we’ve had enough self realisation for one year) and you’ll find the right words and the right people to support you.