Hi it's me.
I have been a very open and staunch aro/ace person for a while now, but lately I've been kind of questioning how true that is. And I feel kind of guilty about that?
For some context, I went through a traumatic experience that left me very anxious and sort of grossed out by the idea of having any sort of intimate relationship with other people, romantically or sexually. The feeling persisted for a very long time and I eventually settled on it being aromanticism/asexuality, just falling into the box of not really being interested and not really wanting anything to do with that side of life.
But my mental health has been steadily improving and along with it, I find that I have a sort of budding desire for human connection and intimacy. They are weird feelings to unpack. I have a lot of anxiety around these things still, but more and more I find myself wanting to explore them, especially on the sexuality side of things. Romance is in a very strange place because I'm not super sure how to navigate the sort of feelings and gestures people tend to expect from romance because I've never been good at feelings in general - expressing things like "happy" and "sad" have always been difficult and so something like "romance" or "love" is very alien to me.
I guess where this all culminates for me is in a few places: I'm interested in trying things out, and that leaves me unsure of where I stand. I haven't tried to label anything beyond understanding the sorts of partners I'd be okay with, because I find this tangled mess of thoughts and feelings difficult to put a word to besides "curious." But the other side of that is I feel kind of bad for being in aro/ace spaces and claiming that label if it's not really the person I am, and I feel like I'm reinforcing negative stereotypes about aro/ace people by being like "well now that I'm not a depressed sack of potatoes anymore I want to try exploring my sexuality."
A bit of a ramble but I've been thinking about this for a few weeks and just sort of wanted to get it off my chest.
Hi. Hope you don't mind me responding.
I identified as ace for several years, staunchly, about as firmly and openly as possible. I was fully confident that was just who I was. Like you expressed, throughout that period, my mental health was Rocky At Best, and there was a very deep-seated and trauma-informed anxiety and insecurity around sexuality that was very difficult for me to address. I didn't want to, so I didn't, and I found comfort in that choice for a very long time. I never identified as aro for very long, though that likely came from having the same long-term partner before, during, and now after the period in which I identified as part of the aro/ace community.
Eventually, though, about a year and a half or so ago, I reached a point, I'm not even quite sure where or when, that it was obvious I wanted to at least try something more. I was curious. And my mental health was in a good enough place where I felt like I could safely and healthily navigate the anxieties I still felt with a partner and figure out what works for me and what doesn't. So I did. Turns out, I was "just" depressed and very traumatized, and I actually had a lovely little sexuality I was happy to explore. Good news! but also kind of a rough realization after years of thinking something about yourself that now feels untrue.
Made me feel more than slightly guilty for the years I spent saying otherwise. More than slightly guilty for changing my mind, so to speak, or like I had no place in the ace community in Any capacity. Spent a long time working through
that too, and I guess from mostly on the other side, my perspective is that it's good to just take things slow, explore what you want to, and with who you want to, and don't put the labeling cart before the feeling horse, so to speak. The ace community is so warmly welcoming of all forms of nuance, and although I see myself as fully separate now, I know there's plenty of room for people trying to reassess where they might stand. The words that have stuck with me are that it's only as deep as we want it to be.
As far as the reinforcing stereotypes part, I feel that hard. For me, now fully outside the community and as someone who identified with asexuality as a
teenager, this hits hard. I've come to think of it as a similar idea to, I think, detransitioning. I can see myself today as a non-asexual lesbian and still fight for the ace community, support ace voices, have a fondness for the safety and comfort the label of asexuality gave to me for years, and accept it's not me anymore. I can hold in my heart that it
was me for a long time and now it just doesn't work for the life I want to have. It's only reinforcing those negative vitriolic viewpoints if that's what we choose to do with it, and that's an easy thing to avoid. Plenty of people out there are ace and I support em all, even, maybe even especially, as I've found it's not for me.
