Asexual Dating:

Last weekend I told my parents Peake and I were dating.
I have very liberal parents – who while not perfect always seemed like they would be accepting, so I brought it up like it wasn’t a huge deal.
My dad took it well, my mom did not.
In fact the day after I told her, several hours after we already had an extremely awkward and inappropriate conversation where she aggressively asked invasive questions about my sex life she called me back to explain what friendship was to me and tell me she thinks I am mistaking friendship for dating.

I get that I can be socially awkward and slow to pick up on social ques, particularly in new settings, and I did have a very hard time making friends for a lot of my childhood, but I have a solid friend group at my college, I had a solid friend group in high school, she knows that, she has met a decent number of my friends. So I assured her that after 21 years on this earth I do in fact know what friendship is. I also told her that I am figuring things out and that I get to decide what dating is to me.

We haven’t spoken about this since then (though she did half apologize and we have talked about trivial nonsense)

This is my second romantic relationship, both of which have occurred after I was already identifying as asexual, which I started to identify with freshman year of college. The first was with a girl, J, and I knew in the lead up to it that we were likely going to end up dating, we bonded over a class we had together and in our shared confusion and apathy towards dating.

As an aside a little bit of context worth mentioning, DevKitsune is genderless and uses them/they pronouns (but doesn’t really care that much) IRL I am a cis guy and use he/they pronouns (but also don’t care that much)

Anyways J and I did date, for a couple months. She asked me to just as fall was rolling in last year and when she asked I told her I was willing to try it but was probably ace, so she needed to be okay with that, and she told me she also identified as ace. The relationship was fine, fun at times but honestly the lead up to it was more fun then anything we did when we were actually dating, and by the time the semester ended I felt like she was actively trying to find excuses to avoid hanging out with me (and I suspect she felt the same about me) so over winter break we mutually broke it off over text.

We still sometimes make small talk, I don’t think we hold any ill will towards each other, I don’t think we can and frankly I don’t understand why so many couples do.

Part II: I wish society talked more about sex:

I know this a weird thing for an asexual person to say, and maybe it would be better phrased as “I wish society did a better job talking about sex” because so few serious people talk about it because it is considered taboo, and then the void is filled with the performative hyper-sexuality of teenage boys, and of men who have all the maturity of teenage boys. Frankly I find these people repulsive, I find them immature, and insecure, and deeply unhappy and I hate being around them and how it makes me feel. I was around far too many of these people in middle school, who bragged about the porn they watched in between their deeply bigoted jokes. I was around far too many of these people at the start of college, when my freshman roommate would hang out with a group of shallow boys who tried to prove they were men by talking about how hot different women were and how many they had slept with.
Even men who I think generally try to do a good job providing healthy male role models tend to talk about sex in ways I can’t relate to – I remember listening to LinusTechTips talk about how he used to sneak Playboy magazines and how Luke got in trouble for printing porn. Before finding fury I had never sought out porn, because the little snippets I randomly came across seemed both boring and unsubtle. I tend to hold it in a similar regard to the “try not to laugh” videos all the edgy gamer boys in middle school found funny but I was simply confused by. Even then the “NSFW” furry stuff I tend to like tends to be men in latex suits with there fur heads on, and I don’t find it “arousing” I just like how it looks. I tend to find actual furry porn to be way less interesting. If you do enjoy porn of any sort, then I am happy for you (and I apologize for comparing it to those videos. I truly am not trying to be smug about not enjoying it, I honestly kind of wish I understood attitudes around it more)

Part III: Am I Just Denying Myself?:

I had a therapist at the start of college who I stopped seeing rather quickly (and moved on to someone better) who told me that he thought I was just denying myself. I think he just couldn’t comprehend ace people and likely thought I was an incel or a closeted gay guy who had deeply diluted himself. That therapist didn’t hide his surprise when I told him that my friend group in high school had included girls, and basically told me that he thought I was just denying myself pleasure for some reason. I generally do not like this therapist (for several other reasons as well) but I can never quite get that thought out of my mind – am I, in some sort of smug attempt to show that I am different, just denying myself. And the answer to that is I think no, I did have a time in middle school when I actively disliked all mainstream pop music, but by late high school I got over that, and actually quite like a (small) subsection of pop music now and I have always felt way more comfortable discussing my appreciation of media that is mainstream, or at least popular within the community I am currently in knowing that I won’t be judged for going against the vain and liking something I am not supposed to like (I have also gotten better about this, but I do still have a strong instinct to avoid conflict and that means not making a big deal about being different while also trying not to compromise your values)

Part IV: Society (and fear of loss)

I like to pretend I am not influenced by society. I tend to try to avoid conflict with it, but I am also unwilling to fully deny myself to fit in, which is why I never pretended to like all the things the other nerdy middle school boys (at the start of gamergate) liked, like shooter games, or edgy humor, or sex, but is also why I tended to nod along, put up with their immaturity, and at least try to understand their perspective. Because of that conflict aversion I am influenced by society more then I would like to admit. The way I still take that backwards therapist’s comment seriously for instance. And my mom’s condescending comment about “mistaking friendship for dating” has stuck with me more then I like to admit. That combined with a fear that the thing that collapsed my last relationship was the weight of calling it dating has lead me to worry about my relationship with Peake. Yet I think we have a much stronger foundation then I did with J, we have spent a lot more time together, we have the shared interest in the fandom and all the bonding that comes with that, and ultimately if we decide not to call it dating at some point I think we could still be close friends. But it felt important to me that we call it dating, at least among ourselves, because it felt more like dating then anything I ever done, and because I do truly love him. And I thought my parents were cool enough that I could tell them without it being a big deal, I just wish that the confusion and hostility from my mom hadn’t dampened my excitement quite so much.