Asexuality, Acceptance...loneliness?
A few months into being 'out' some thoughts on the good, the bad and the isolating of being Ace in an Allo world.
I set up this blog to reflect on my relationship to queerness as much as to comment on queer culture. So this is one of those blogs.
Given it’s been just over half a year since I was ‘out’ as Ace, and I think about a year, give or take, since I first started thinking, ‘huh that might be me,’ it seems fitting to reflect on my relationship with Aceness.
This happened partly because I was watching Ace Dad Advice (who was also intrinsic in my own coming out/understanding of my Asexuality). In this video, Cody answers the question essentially, ‘do you wish you weren't Ace’ and they answer ‘no’. Cody talks about how their Aceness makes them who they are, and I agree. I’ve never truly wished I wasn’t queer, so why should my Aceness also be something I don’t want? It's part of me; it makes me me.
Short answer, no, I don’t wish I wasn’t Ace.
Long answer; does being Ace make my life more difficult? Also yes.
In all honesty, I’ve been wondering lately how much both my loneliness and my terrible mental health are related to my Asexuality. And the answer is, of course, it’s complicated.
In really practical terms, the fact that I’m going through a period of loneliness and poor mental health is an offshoot of everything we all still live through. We’ve been through two years of ‘unprecedented times’ (and we could all go for some precedented times about now, am I right?). We’re in a weird space where everything has shifted, yet the world likes to pretend it's back to normal. On a practical, personal level, everything from jobs to the hobbies and social life I had pre-pandemic has shifted and not settled back into place. In short, the world is still on fire, and in practical, personal terms, none of us should pretend it isn’t impacting us still.
On a more personal level, we have all the above. We have that I’ve gone through a terrible couple of years job-wise. That my relationship with everything I thought I worked for crumbled. I also took on too much work to compensate for that (and, ya know, pay the bills), and I’m exhausted and burned out. I also haven’t had time to rebuild a post-pandemic life because I feel like I’m endlessly drowning in life.
I say that not everything comes back to queerness; there are other factors at play in why frankly, in the last few months, I’ve struggled a lot. But also, we shouldn’t discount queerness and its impact on us as humans.
Firstly, I came out again. That’s huge. It felt like a bigger coming out than the first time. The first time sorta felt like coming out by osmosis. I never had a YA Novel style coming out moment, as many of us don’t. When we’re doing it as teenagers, it's incremental, piece by piece, person by person. Coming out as an ‘adult’ means bursting out of the closest and often re-writing what everyone thinks of you all over again. All while wrestling and recalibrating what you think of yourself. For me, on a personal level, it’s been incredibly freeing, incredibly joyous. But that doesn’t mean there also haven’t been struggles. Times I’ve wondered, ‘am Ace enough or ‘am I just broken’ (answer yes, no). Or I let the wider Acephobia or ‘why do you need to label it’ or the worst ‘that’s just everybody though’ seep in. Spoiler: I wouldn’t have spent my life to this point feeling broken if it was everyone. Or even with the knowledge now of being wired the way I am, the exhaustion of living in an Allosexual world is sometimes just too much. Everything is structured around being allosexual and nothing around being Ace. It’s a forever swimming upstream and feeling out of step with the world around you. With an identity that isn’t as ‘easy’ as gay or straight, with an easily erased identity, it’s been hard work, and I think it's okay to acknowledge the strain on your mental health too.
My Asexuality, too, means I’m ‘out of step’ with what is ‘normal’ because even for queer people, it’s now ‘normal’ to be coupled up and settled down in your 30s. And if you haven’t, make it a priority. Now don’t get me started on the heteronormative nonsense of all that. But also, it's more complicated wrestling my Ace identity into that. It feels like I finally have a reason for feeling so isolated and out of step with other people, but not a solution.
And it’s lonely. In a world designed for couples in heteronormaitve relationships, it’s lonely. Especially when ‘friends’ acquaintances, and the world like to remind you of that.
I’ve been friend-dumped many times when someone gets into a relationship. As an adult, it’s less obvious than the friend just leaving you for their boyfriend/girlfriend. As an adult, it’s an insidious “we”: “We have plans than” “we are going to x,” and for some reason, we can never become an “I” to spend time with a friend or the “we” suddenly cannot accommodate another “I” for a glass of wine or a coffee. Until one day they’re just no longer in your life (or in the case of one lass I was Bridesmaid for they announce ‘yea we just can’t really talk to non-married people’ true story, totally bitch).
Of course, this doesn’t apply to many people. One might argue couples with healthy relationships manage by some miracle to maintain healthy independent friendships, too (shocker, I know), but I’m also shocked at the number of single friends who have said, “well, you can’t expect them to still spend time with you they’re in a relationship.” This gets worse when you’re asexual and do not behave as people think you should. Only now can I understand that firstly, I spent so long not understanding why people didn’t understand me. Ace people talk a lot about all the conversations we’ve nodded along with pretending we understand all the talk about pursuing sexytimes or needing a relationship, which isolates us. In part in a way that can’t be helped- we just won’t ‘get’ that- but also in ways that are part of the insidious structures and ways of thinking that just don’t help anyone. In short, I know friends have friend-dumped me for not being ‘normal’ and not wanting/being in relationships…but also, if as a human that’s all you have to talk about…isn’t that more…your issue? Is your life so narrow your relationships only define it?
Because in reality, in those situations, my ‘weirdness’ (Aceness) has been an excuse, really. Because real friends, sensible, well-rounded people, won’t dump a friend because one thing doesn’t fit their worldview. Real friendships are founded on shared interests, which hopefully extend beyond who you’d like to bone.
Because being Ace makes relationships more difficult, many of us still feel out of step with society, where we ‘should’ be, and left behind by friends. And I think that’s important to acknowledge. My relationship path is more complicated because I’m Ace, and I’m okay with that personally. But society hasn’t quite caught up with 30-somethings who haven’t ticked off the relationship box yet.
Ace Dad is being asked if they’d like to not be ace, and I agree I wouldn’t want to not be. It’s who I am, and now I understand it about myself. I understand it makes me who I am, and why would I want to change myself?
I’m also incredibly happy with the Ace parts of myself (again, now that I understand that’s what they are). I’m happy not needing or wanting relationships in the same way. I’m happy now I understand how I do want a relationship.
But the reality for Asexual people is we’re trying to exist in a world designed against everything we feel and are. The world is designed to be sexualized. It’s also designed for a romantic two-by-two couple set-up.
Don’t get me wrong; this is the by-product of heterosexual nonsense that troubles queer people. As much as the world might wave rainbow flags in June, any sniff of queerness that doesn’t mimic straight life isn’t REALLY acceptable. From the annual arguments about Kink at Pride to sniffy comments queer people get about not getting married and not having kids. The bigger conversation is we shouldn’t have to emulate straight society to be accepted.
Don't get me wrong, too; I love the idea of a rom-com and a ‘real’ version of that. I re-read ‘The Charm Offensive’ last week, and I love it for two reasons. Firstly it’s a delightful rom-com for grown-ups with queer characters. End of sentence, more of that, please. But also because Charlie is the most ‘me’ person I’ve seen in fiction. Both his way of talking about his sexuality and his neurodiversity/mental health struggles. As cliche as it sounds, I’ve never felt more ‘seen’
This exchange in particular;
“No queer is fin. It’s just - you wouldn’t care if I didn't have it all figured out?’
To which Dev replies, ‘Why would I care?’ and Charlie asks, ‘I’m twenty-eight. SHouldn’t I already know?’
There's much pressure to have it all figured out with more representation and thankfully, permissiveness in society. And in this conversation, even with Dev accepting, Charlie has to ask if he would care about that if they were together. Dev says know, but it accurately demonstrates the fear of as an Ace person wondering if anyone can ever really be okay with it. Charlie also later confides he never thought he’d have feelings for anyone…trying to explain this to ‘normal’ people feels like trying to explain physics to a fish sometimes, but with the fear too of being thrown back into an ocean alone (I appreciate that’s a mixed metaphor). That book articulates so many of my fears, of all the messy puzzle pieces that don’t quite align and just wanting sometimes someone to help you figure them out(that analogy makes sense if you know the book)
As well as that, as cliche as it sounds, Charlie makes me feel like someone like me can be loved. Not only that, he manages in the book to find friends who accept him for who he is. Charlie gets to be loved for who he is. That book was an important reminder that it’s okay to want that, even if you’re asexual and a bit different in other ways. Maybe a reminder that it is possible.
That’s why stories matter; that book is more than just another gay rom-com to me, too; it’s only the third time I’ve read a book where canonically a character is Asexual. Who has the emotion and the language for what I feel and experience daily? Who also (spoiler) gets a happy ending. That matters; feeling seen matters. We’re only a few years off getting some kind of okay-ish gay and lesbain recognition; surely we as a queer community understand we need to better represent the other ‘labels’ too. But that’s a rant for another day. That book reminded me, though, that it’s possible to dream about being not just romantically loved (if that’s what you want) but accepted and to have a community of friends, even if you aren’t quite like everybody else in more ways than one.
In The Charm Offensive, Charlie isn’t solely defined by his Asexuality or his mental illnesses. But they’re part of him and makeup who he is. They have also been why he’s felt lonely, isolated, and unloveable. Both things are true. That’s how I’m currently sitting with it too.
My Asexuality isn’t something I’d get rid of, even given a choice. But that doesn’t mean it doesn't make life more complicated. We feel pressure as queer people to say “it’s all fine” and “it gets better”, but the reality is, as a queer adult, sometimes it’s really hard.
It has got better; it is better now I know who I am. Knowing about and taking ownership of my Asexuality and understanding who I am is so freeing and joyous. And I promise a future blog on how joyous it is and how it has recalibrated my understanding of relationships, sexuality, and myself. How it’s made the way, I see the world make sense.
But the flip side also accepts that the world doesn’t quite accept people like me. The world is geared towards a strange two-by-two existence by arbitrary milestones relating to other humans that don’t quite make sense. So there is still a feeling of being out of step and alone. I’m not alone, there are good people in my life, and the more I understand myself, the more I can surround myself with people who are good for me and who accept the whole me.
But just like coming out is a process, so is figuring out where you and your true self fit in.
Oh, and in the absence of other stories, also write your own. I spent the last year or so working on a novel that is the gap I don’t have in stories. My characters are ‘Ace-y’ to quote a friend who read it. I wrote the story and the characters I was missing. Maybe one day someone will read mine and find something they were missing.