#ada-refractor

Not to start drama or anything, but … sun bears

This is more about how I figured out that I was not in fact straight and learned to embrace my aroace-ness.

Of course looking back, every thing makes sense, I never had schoolyard crushes, and I never understood the appeal of talking about boys and who we had crushes on, I was mostly preoccupied by the fact that I wasn’t allowed to join the Boy Scouts. I digress.

I think breaking up with my last boyfriend was the catalyst I needed to realise that romantic/sexual relationships just weren’t for me. After we broke up I just didn’t understand why everyone was asking me if I was okay, how I was coping, and if I was upset. By response was usually, ‘I’m great… should I not be?’ For the most part I was relieved that I no longer had to hold hands and make out, have anyone touch me, and most importantly no sexy times. While I wasn’t upset by these things, I didn’t like them, I would much rather sit on opposite ends of a couch and watch The Avengers for the 40th time.

Anyway, after we broke up and I wasn’t sad even though I was apparently supposed to devastated, I started to think maybe I was never attracted to him, so I quietly embraced the Gray-Ace label but I was DEFINITELY romantic (Nope.) it wasn’t until a few months later that I started to realise that I just didn’t feel sexual attraction nor did I feel romantic attraction. I seemed to think that just because I had been in relationships I HAD to feel at least some attraction, and I totally did, I just now realise that I was conflating romantic/sexual attraction and platonic attraction.

As many people will tell you that moment of: “yeah, I’m ____, this is who I am!” Feels amazing, finally everything made sense! So I told some of my close friends and everyone was super supportive. I even got “well obviously, I’ve known since like 7th grade.” (I was like: dude! Why didn’t you tell me?). I was finally myself and it felt great. However, I still hadn’t told my mum, who I adore.

So I followed some Facebook pages and joined a meetup group, and started getting pretty active in the community, but then a comment I made got quite a bit of attention, it ended up being one of those comments that all your friends can see. Well, my aunt saw it and replied and it was great, she and my uncle are super open minded and fantastic people, so I wasn’t worried. I didn’t realise that my mum also saw it until she super awkwardly asked me about it on the phone. (Just a side note, after I said ‘so do you understand what that means?’ My mum said ‘yes… so do you like girls?’ Clearly a bit of a misunderstanding)

So to sum everything up: I’m an aromantic asexual (and aromatic too as my phone seems to think) also Facebook outed me before I was ready so I’m still salty about that. But I’m so much happier now!