I think I’m Ace! …Now What?

The asexual pride flag. Stripes descending horizontally in black, gray, white, and purple. Text is centered and reads “I think I’m Ace!…Now What?”

“Asexual.”

It used to seem like a strange, foreign word — but then you saw a chart online that talked about what makes someone asexual. You did some googling and found some blog posts and videos where people talk about their experiences. You’ve dissected your life, you’ve googled, you’ve talked to close friends and asked them some questions that you worried were maybe too personal but you just had to know if this thing — this word — was what made you feel so different in so many spaces all your life. Maybe you’ve never had sex and never been interested and it piqued your curiousity and so you did some reading. Or maybe you’ve had sex and even liked it, but never really wanted it again. This word — this word seems to fit.

And it dawns on you. “Wait. Am I asexual?”

Or, maybe you’ve also learned about the asexuality spectrum. You’ve seen a word for someone who has rare sexual attraction, or who has it under a specific circumstance — or maybe even someone who has it and then it goes away. And maybe you thought “Wait, am I demisexual, fraysexual or graysexual?”

If you’re wondering this, especially right after reading information during this Ace Awareness Week, I hope this piece can help.

These are some concerns that I often see among aces who have just discovered their sexuality, and some advice that I hope helps.

First of all I’d like to reassure you that there’s nothing wrong with being asexual.

You do not need to be cured or fixed. If the possibility of being asexual — or on the asexuality spectrum, referred to sometimes as ace or acespec — feels daunting, you’re not alone. We live in a world that expects everyone to have and to want sex, even if they only want it for procreation and not for pleasure. It’s expected that we all understand what it means to have sexual attraction automatically — that it isn’t something that needs to be explained. When we live an experience that doesn’t fit into what we’re taught, we can start to feel like the odd one out. Everyone wants to fit in, after all, and when you know you don’t, that can be pretty scary.

It isn’t uncommon for people lie about who they are and how they feel for years because they are…