Yesterday marked 10 years since the official start of my asexual journey, as I joined my first asexual site on February 24th 2014, which was Asexualitic. Though that site is dead today pretty much, it lead me to the AVEN forum (the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network), and was the first step in probably one of the most important journey’s of my life.
After several failed relationships by that point, I had broken up with my long-term girlfriend at the end of 2012, and had a major breakdown. It took some time to recover, but by the end of 2013 I was trying to fathom why I was never interested in sex with any of my partners, having had boyfriends and girlfriends by that point. I was aesthetically attracted to them, but I never had any interest in engaging in sex, and even struggled with kissing them.
By early 2014 I began looking into why I may be like that, and that led me to Asexualitic, which I joined ten years ago. I made a couple of connections on there, but it was never overly active. That led me to Ace-book around three weeks later (on 14th March 2014), which was slightly more active. I had never really engaged much in online forums, so the whole online thing was pretty new to me, I was only on Facebook because my ex-girlfriend encouraged me to join.
Eventually, over a year later, I joined AVEN in June 2015, and though it took a few years for me to start really feeling comfortable with interacting on there, it has gone on to become one of the most important parts of my life, as I don’t have in-person friends and struggle with leaving my flat due to mental health and fear of people, and thus AVEN is 97% of my social life.
I have made some fantastic friends through the asexual community, through all three of the mentioned sites, as well as attended Pride in London with AVEN, and been to a fair few asexual meetups across the southern UK.
I have met some wonderful people on AVEN, and even spent a little over a year as a Moderator for the forums, which was a fantastic experience.
Finding out that asexuality was a thing completely changed the way I viewed the world, and also lead me to eventually realise I am not interested in any sort of romantic relationship, and that is okay. I find plenty of people (general males or male-oriented folks) attractive, but I have no interest in forming a romantic relationship. I got into relationships before because I thought it was what you were supposed to do, and all of them failed because I would feel overwhelmed and like I was trapped. I am much happier as a single person.
That is not to say all asexual people do not want a relationship. There are many asexual people who do want and/or have loving relationships, and asexual people are as capable of love as anyone, but there are also those that do not. Most likely fall on the aromantic spectrum, which I am fairly certain I fall under (though not fully).
I personally find “love” a difficult concept, not just romantic love, but love in general, but I will probably write a separate post about my feelings on that some time.
It has been quite a journey, but it has answered so many questions, and also allowed me to focus on who I really am without the expectations of others, and I am much more comfortable in who I am now.
A Voice in the Void 