#internalised acephobia

since i was very little i knew romantic relationships weren't for me. i always forced myself to like someone to fit in. i remember when i was in middle school and all my friends were talking about boys and i didnt like anyone so i lied to them and picked a random boy in my class and confessed to them that i liked him. i didnt like him in the slightest. this happened in high school too, my friends at the time were talking about boys and, i was questioning if i liked girls or boys or both, so i picked a girl and said i liked her. i didnt like her. growing up i always had to lie to myself and pick someone to pretend to like, forcing myself into feeling something for them and i always failed. at some point i thought there was something wrong with me, that i was broken. at the same time, i wasnt interested in sex either. i was ashamed of being a virgin when i was 18 and all my friends talked about their sexual life. i thought "not only i cant love someone but i cant have sex either, im broken. there's something wrong with me". and to add to all this, i started questioning my gender too. in high school i asked my friend to use they/them with me, point is, im italian and there's no neutral pronouns in the language so the only people who addressed me with neutral pronouns were my online non italian friends. at some point i was tired of this, so i decided to only use she/her on myself and move on. growing up this didnt sit right with me, i knew something was not right but i kept thinking "i dont need to add more problems, i refuse to have sex and i cant love a person, now this too? i should fix myself". point is, it was difficult for me accepting myself but when it came to accept other people i was their biggest ally, but me? no, something must be broken. now im 25 and, after a long and difficult journey, ive come to accept myself. i dont feel romantic feelings for people, but i can still love. i love my friends to death, i love my grandparents, i love my cats, i love my dog. i am capable of loving because love is not only romantic. im full of love, i can love with my whole heart. maybe i will never love someone romantically, but my love is still valid and im still capable of love and, especially, being loved. im 25 and a virgin and i plan to stay like this because who cares? virginity is a social construct anyway, im not less valid than people who have sex regularly or just like to have sex. some people like sex, some people tolerate sex and some people dont like sex at all and it's okay. im valid even tho i dont like sex. and for my gender identity, im only 25 !!!!!! i have all the time in the world to experiment with pronouns and discover what feels right for me and what doesn't feel right. and also, i dont have to label myself if i dont want to. i have time to explore my gender identity and if someday i feel like i should label myself as non binary then so be it. right now im comfortable with just being addressed with she/they. my journey was long and difficult and just recently i started to accept who i am but i realise that i still have time to figure things out and most importantly, i realised that im not broken or in need to be fixed, never was. there's nothing wrong with me and i accept myself for who i am.

The gag is I was always expecting some type of acephobia on here to happen at some point. This place is the OG ace exclusionist site after all. But I never expected it (and maybe I should've have done) to come from predominantly the asexual community. I've experienced it from a non-asexual queer person like once. I've experience it from non-aspec cishet people plenty of times (but it's hard to measure sometimes cus I didn't ID as ace when the moments happened and it wasn't based on that reason but if I wasn't ace it prolly wouldn't have happened so at the bare minimum it was some type of compulsory sexuality). But being told specifically that asexual people need to go to therapy to unpack sex repulsion, aversion and indifference, that ace people are puritans or more puritan than other identities, that I'm a puritan (because puritans love Black dykes don't they lmaoooo), that sexless ace people are stereotypes that inherently harm aces that have sex and experience sexual attraction and shouldn't be represented or centered in asexual activism, that asexuality doesn't need representation or pride, that people don't need to come out as ace because sexuality should be private didn't come from the kinky horny allo queers™, it didn't come from the cishets™, it *all* came from ace people. On here.

deep down i know I'm not actually aromantic, but i choose to identify with it bc i'm just THAT bad at handling being asexual

ive decided that the way to beat internalised acephobia is to eat a massive amount of garlic bread

I feel so bad sometimes for not wanting to take part in sexual situations. I'm perfectly fine with not wanting sex, but when there's sexual jokes in the group and they want me to participate and I can't bring myself to, that's when I feel guilty.