Every teen has a villain in their story. Mine was a stereotypical footballer with a li’l chunk on him, enough to make him self-conscious. Most of his days were spent crushing kids’ souls. During my high school years in the late ’90s, he loved screaming at me about how much pussy he got—his words, not mine. But he wasn’t the only person who exaggerated their sexual conquests. Close friends quasi-made up stories about the women they’d bedded. Meanwhile, I had little sexual interest in the opposite sex, or the same sex, or anyone in my life.
During my junior year, my best friend pointed out to me that she and her female friends had branded me as asexual. I shrugged it off, somewhat honored that I transcended sex. For most of my life, my sex drive had made me feel both superior to other humans and like a freak. I shuddered when women made jokes about men being drooling doofuses who couldn’t keep their dick in their pants, yet I looked at other men as exactly that. Judaism, my religion, has a crap ton of rules (often for women) to help men restrain themselves, as if without the rules, the men would be humping everything. I asked myself, if I can control myself, why can’t men? But I never grasped that I wasn’t controlling anything.
In 2003, after breaking up with an ex that I truly loved romantically, I told myself I was supposed to be sexually exploring, hooking up with multiple partners like I saw in music videos and movies. I was in my early twenties, a period when most men’s sex drives peak. Instead, I spent years alone, not caring to kiss or touch anyone, scared of what I was. I forced myself out of the house and into bars, trying to have flings because that’s what “normal” people did. Numerous times, I was invited into women’s beds, knowing they wanted me to do something—that I was supposed to do something—but I couldn’t. I had no interest. I told myself I must be gay, but I didn’t care to hook up with men either.
Even though I had heard the term “asexual” before, it never seemed like an actual option for me. For years, I struggled. When I met my wife at 28, I was terrified of the prospect of sex, but I yearned to be close to her romantically. She was a stunning Nigerian/Jamaican, a Jew-by-choice, and rockin’ an afro poof, and she’d excelled through her bachelors and masters degrees in four-and-a-half years. We loved debating race and religion while listening to Maxwell and Amy Winehouse. I wanted to be the man she cuddled close to and shared her secrets with, the guy she depended on, but in my head, at times, I was petrified and alone, often shutting down when sex was in the air, because I didn’t know who I was.
What It Means to Be Under the Asexual Umbrella
Asexual people, also known as aces, do not feel sexual attraction the way others do. (“Allosexual” is the term for people who experience sexual attraction). “There’s a ridiculous amount of diversity in experience under the asexual umbrella,” says Cody Daigle-Orians, an asexual writer, educator, and advocate known for his popular Ace Dad Advice social media accounts, “but for all of us, it is an experience of having sexual attraction occupy a very different place in our personal experiences, one that is not primary, and sometimes, for a lot of us, it’s not there at all.”
There are aces who experience no sexual attraction. Aces who sometimes experience sexual attraction, often in slight amounts (graysexual). Aces who need a strong emotional bond with someone to experience a sexual attraction (demisexual). There are sex-repulsed aces, sex-indifferent aces, and sex-positive aces who may be open to different types of sex. Some aces seek romantic relationship; some don’t. Aces can have any sexual or romantic orientation.
Daigle-Orians prefers the term asexual “umbrella” over “spectrum” because it’s less binary: “Spectrum makes people think of something that’s very linear—that you’re in between poles—whereas I feel like a lot of people’s experience of asexuality is more amorphous.” He cautions aces not to feel boxed into terms. “As my experience changes, I can move from word to word because I’m defined by my experiences and not defined by the words,” he says. “I pick them up when I need to, let them go when I don’t.”
Although I am not grasping for terms, I feel like I’ve lived periods of my life as demisexual or graysexual. There have been brief blinks when sexual activities seemed attractive and interesting to me: a couple of months with my first girlfriend in my early twenties; three months with my second long-term girlfriend during my late twenties; and a few months with my wife when I was nearly 40. (I named three people, but I’ve only had actual sex with two people in my life.) Much of the appeal came from my amazement that I was achieving “normal,” but these periods were always fleeting. I usually feel straight-up asexual, fluctuating between sex-indifferent and sex-positive. I could happily live the rest of my life without sex.
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How Common Is Asexuality?
The most commonly cited statistic is that 1% of the population identifies as ace, but that figure comes from an old 1994 study from the U.K., so the number is debatable, especially because—nearly 30 years later—much of the population still doesn’t have the language to understand asexuality.
Another study, performed by UCLA’s Williams Institute and published in June 2019, found that 86% of self-identifying aces were assigned female at birth, while only 14% were assigned male—not because people assigned female at birth are more likely to be asexual, but because they are more likely to identify as such. “There’s something cultural that makes men not think about asexuality as an option for them,” Daigle-Orians says. He partly attributes it to the social pressure for men to be sexual aggressors. “If that’s all you encounter, you’re never gonna think about yourself as an ace person.”
And sexual norms vary across cultures, says Yasmin Benoit, a British model, asexual activist, and board member of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network. “The relevance of using that kind of label is very much dependent on the way your society perceives sexuality,” Benoit says. “If you live somewhere where they really didn’t ever talk about sexuality, and no one’s really meant to be expressing it, and they don’t really encourage people to feel sexual attraction very much, would you feel the need to use the label?”
What Are Some of the Signs You Might Be Asexual?
People discover their asexuality a number of ways, says Katherine Traxler, an LGBTQ+ affirmative marriage and family therapist who identifies as demisexual and panromantic (meaning a person who can be romantically attracted to someone of any gender identity). Maybe when your friends talk about someone being hot, you think to yourself, “Yeah, they’re attractive, but that’s all it is.” Maybe you don’t get what all the sex hoopla is about. Maybe sex feels like a chore. And, maybe, Traxler says, you’d rather just go get something to eat instead.
It’s a common belief that sex is one of the four primal drives: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and fucking, says ace writer Angela Chen in an essay for Catapult. In a culture based around that, it’s easy for aces to feel alien and broken.
“There are many other things you can experience in life that would really be problems—not experiencing sexual attraction is not a big deal,” Benoit says. “How long does sex last? Twenty minutes, an hour tops. It’s a very small component [of your life]… Is there any other thing that you would place that much emphasis on as being a crucial component of how human you are, of how valuable you are as a person, of how desirable you are as a person?”
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Common Misconceptions About Asexuality
Aces are often diagnosed as having hypoactive sexual desire disorder or female sexual interest/arousal disorder: diagnoses from the DSM-5 that mean essentially the same thing as being asexual, except they’re viewed as illnesses. Some aces are sent to gynecologists who treat asexuality as a physical issue. Others are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, which, while it can be true in some cases, “doesn’t change your identity,” Traxler says. “It doesn’t change the way that you feel attraction.”
Many ace advocates have battled to change the diagnoses in the DSM-5 and they’ve seen some progress. In old versions of the DSM, both diagnoses fit into “Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder,” which was defined by “low sexual desire accompanied by marked distress or interpersonal difficulties.” The fifth edition split the diagnosis and added, “If a lifelong lack of sexual desire is better explained by one’s self-identification as ‘asexual,’ then a diagnosis of [FSAID or MHSDD] would not be made.” The problem is this depends on the individual and therapist both recognizing asexuality. Plus, the diagnosis still views low sexual desire as a problem, a disease.
Two months ago, I disclosed to my therapist that I identified as asexual. He asked, “Have you ever thought about going on testosterone?” That was the last thing I needed.
Hormone therapy makes “no difference at all,” Benoit says. Aces can have high libidos and still not be sexually attracted to anyone. Many aces ingest porn; many masturbate. Medication, Benoit says, is “not gonna change which way your sexuality is directed.”
How Can I Find Resources on Asexuality?
While a misinformed therapist will further alienate aces, there are good therapists out there. Traxler recommends seeking out LGBTQ+ affirming therapists, and there are sites with recommendations for ace-friendly therapists (like the one where I found Traxler). Before committing to a therapist, schedule an introductory consultation and explain that you are asexual and expect not to be treated as broken.
The ace community has always thrived online, so many of the best resources are on TikTok, Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram. Daigle-Orians recommends asexuality.org, the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network, as well as the books Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen, who I quoted above, and The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality by Julie Sondra Decker.
There aren’t many in person LGBTQ+ spaces where aces can interact with other asexuals, Traxler says. While many LGBTQ+ groups welcome aces, others don’t consider aces part of the community—something ace activists are constantly pushing against. “Do your research before you go because you don’t wanna end up in a place where it’s not safe for you.”
To be an ally to an ace friend or family member, consider how you can make them feel more accepted. If your friend or family member is “sex-repulsed, talking about sex might make them uncomfortable,” Traxler says. “Be open to listening and being understanding because being asexual can be alienating when the whole world seems to revolve around sex.”
If you’re asexual, you can help make society more welcoming for everyone—no matter their desire or lack thereof—by having an “unapologetic approach” to living life. “It encourages other people that feel the same way to not place so much weight on it,” Benoit says. “And then in turn, it shows the people who aren’t asexual and don’t really know anything about it that this isn’t some kind of affliction. You don’t need to feel sorry for me or anyone else for being asexual.”
Though I struggled most of my life to understand my identity, three months ago, I was forced to accept it. My wife and I were cuddling on our living room couch, watching a movie while our two kids were snoozing upstairs. It had been a while since we’d had sex, and I told myself our relationship depended on me making a move. We started touching, and the clothes came off, but then I froze, spiraling directly into fight-or-flight mode. My entire body screamed in panic that I couldn’t do this, making it so there was no chance I could perform. I was forcing myself to do something I didn’t want to do at that moment. It wasn’t that I would never be interested in sex with her—my wife’s bad AF and I’m very aesthetically attracted to her—but, often, I pressure myself into it.
As the panic wore down, my wife and I started talking, and in the months that followed, we’ve had many more difficult conversations. We both dove into books about asexuality, me into books by the non-fiction authors mentioned above, and she into fictional stories. Her favorite was Once More with Chutzpah by Haley Neil, a novel about a Jewish demisexual teenager named Tally who struggles with anxiety. My wife said reading Tally’s thoughts felt like being trapped in my head. “I can’t empathize with it,” she told me after finishing the book, “but I can understand more.”
During our long discussions, we snuggled together on the couch, my arms wrapped around her waist as she hugged close to me. We took turns sharing and listening to each other’s sexual histories and our current needs, emotionally and sexually. Those moments of connection are what I truly yearn for…and she sometimes yearns for sex. In truth, I’m so happy that I’m the man who gets to share in her joy, emotionally and sexually. She knows sex can be a struggle for me, especially when my emotions overwhelm me, tapping me out. We discussed frequency and how sex should be initiated as well as what to do if someone doesn’t feel comfortable.
Our conversations brought us closer, made us both feel supported and understood. Nothing was news to her. She laughed that I had just accepted that I was asexual. She knew who she married—who she loved—long before I attached a term to it.
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