r/OffMyChest Asexuality Edition

Transcript Transcribed by Hannah E.

Courtney: Hello, everyone, and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here, as always, with my spouse, Royce. And together, we are The Ace Couple. And so many of you lovely listeners absolutely love it when we pick a subreddit and share some Ace-related stories. Some of the most consistent ones we’ve done have been r/AmITheAsshole? We’ve delved into a few other ones. I know our r/DeadBedrooms episodes have been pretty divisive. [laughing] We’ve only done a couple of them, and some Aces in our audience really love when we do that one, and some allos in our audience really have words for us when we do those ones. So, I don’t know. Maybe if I’m feeling saucy, we’ll dive into that one again.

Courtney: But I thought this would be a really good opportunity to dive into a brand new one, and this is r/OffMyChest. This subreddit bills itself as “a mutually supportive community where deeply emotional things you can’t tell people you know can be told. Whether it’s longstanding baggage, happy thoughts, or recent trauma, posting it here may provide some relief. We’ll listen, and if you want, we’ll talk. We aim to keep this a safe space.” So, we’re just going to start reading a few and see how many we get through. I saved so many of these that are talking about something pertaining to Asexuality. Sometimes it’s Ace people confessing their own thoughts, or people who have an Ace loved one in their life who are confessing their thoughts. So we have a pretty wide range of situations we can read and comment on.

Courtney: This first one, I imagine, is gonna be a doozy, because the title is, “My spouse came out to me as Asexual a few months ago. Tomorrow, I am handing them divorce papers. They are going to be devastated.” Oof!

Courtney: “Basically, the title. My spouse and I have been together for eight years. Our sex life has had lots of ups and downs. Sometimes it felt like it was fire and was really good, but there were long stretches where I felt like I was starving. While they never denied me when I initiated, lack of initiation on their part has destroyed my self-esteem and has left me so incredibly unfulfilled. I have so missed the feelings of being desired and having my partner seduce me.

Courtney: “It was really hard for my spouse to come out. They were so nervous and scared. I fucking hugged them and thanked them for telling me. I fucked up and told them everything will be all right. But it won’t be. I can’t go the rest of my life with a partner who isn’t sexually attracted to me, so I spoke with a lawyer. I’m so worried about my spouse. They are really dependent on me socially, emotionally and financially. And I know that they love me. They love me more than anyone has in my entire life. I wish love could be enough for me to be happy in a relationship. Tomorrow is really going to suck.”

Courtney: So, this one’s just kind of hard to read, because I can imagine that this was the biggest fear of the Asexual spouse in coming out.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: And it’s fascinating to me that… One of the things that has gotten us in trouble with some of our allosexual listeners when talking about dead bedrooms or adjacent topics is that I have said repeatedly, from experience and observation and other people I know in my life: sometimes allosexual people think they just want more sex, or they want sex, period, with their partner. But then if a partner in their life does make some concessions or some compromises to have more sex to try to bridge the gap in whatever you want to call it — libido, sex drive, inherent desire — sometimes, that still is not enough, and that can be very hard on both spouses and/or partners in general; you don’t have to be married to have this issue necessarily.

Courtney: But I’ve said time and time again that sometimes people want to feel desired. And if this is an insecurity they have, if this is a hang-up that they have — whether or not they understand that that is really at the heart of what they want and it’s not just literally the sex, it can certainly leave Ace people feeling like, “Well, there’s just absolutely nothing I can do about that. This is how I am. This is how I operate. It’s not going to change.” But that note that I’ve mentioned is something that really, really irritates some people. Every time we say it, I think we’ve gotten some kind of comment or email or some sort of reprimand from an allo who’s like, “Actually, you just fundamentally don’t understand how important sex is to us allosexual people. You don’t have empathy for our experience.”

Courtney: So it’s kind of fascinating to now have an OffMyChest where basically, that is the confession. OP is self-aware that that is what they want and need and desire. They have said that by not having a partner who wants to initiate and pursue and feel sexually attracted to them, their self-esteem is shattered. Which is very hard, because we know that mixed-orientation relationships can work, and they have worked.

Courtney: And in situations like this, looking for that external validation, I do wonder how many relationships could at least attempt to be salvaged if the partner who is feeling this insecurity did the introspection first necessary to know that that’s what they wanted, and then to do the work on themselves to not need external validation from another person, if that makes sense. Which… it may not always work, and I understand that.

Courtney: But what does it kind of say about us and our society that we expect our partners — if we’re someone who is monogamously selecting a single life partner, how often, in other areas that aren’t sex-related, do we hear people say, like, “Your partner cannot be your everything. You cannot rely on your partner for every single aspect of your happiness and to fill every need that you need.” And even in cases of monogamy, people will say, like, “This is why you do need friends. You need friends who are going to be able to fill this role in your life.” Or I know plenty of polyamorous people who will say, “I have multiple partners who all fill different needs in my life.”

Courtney: And it’s just interesting to me that more often than not, if there’s ever a deal-breaker where people are not even going to entertain, “No, this is something my spouse must do and must do for me and must fulfill in my life,” it is very often sex-related.

Royce: Yeah. This was an interesting post to start with. I just started looking around and this is a large subreddit. There are over 3 million members. And there’s just a lot of activity on this post in particular — some of them having, like, over 3,000 interactions on, you know, a single comment. It’s interesting to see there are a variety of Aces chiming in saying, like, “Basically, this exact situation is my worst fear in relationships.” Like, those are words in the comments.

Courtney: Yes. It’s a very common Ace fear.

Royce: Yeah. Overwhelmingly, Ace or otherwise, the comments section is pretty overwhelmingly against OP here. They even responded to something and it got, like, 400 downvotes.

Courtney: Really! That’s interesting. Because another facet of this, aside from OP knowing and admitting that “I want to feel wanted, I am seeking validation from being pursued sexually,” the thing that I don’t understand and I will never understand is the way OP writes this, it sounds like the spouse has no idea these divorce papers are coming tomorrow, and I don’t think that’s acceptable for… most situations of divorce, I feel like?

Royce: That is why they’re getting shredded in the comments by Aces and allos alike.

Courtney: Good! Okay.

Royce: So, everyone’s all over the place. Well, overwhelmingly, it’s, “Yes, some people are going to be incompatible.” There are going to be — like, a relationship is… I don’t think “negotiation” is quite the right word, but it is something that you have to communicate on and…

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: …make space for your differences and things like that. OP seems to be fairly self-aware, at least, as you articulated, mentioning the underlying reasons that this whole scenario felt bad, and even admitting that comforting their partner in the moment — telling them that things are going to be okay — and then never revisiting that was a mistake.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: Because now, time has passed. But this comment of theirs says… This was in response to someone saying, “That whole situation seemed very callous. Why didn’t you communicate with them?” And the OP, the original poster, responds, saying, at the time, they thought it was going to be okay, and in the moment, they didn’t know what else to do. Then some time passed, they thought on it, they spoke with a therapist about it — not with their partner — and decided that they would never be happy in that relationship.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: So they kind of made the decision on their own, without communicating with their partner.

Courtney: And that’s a massive red flag, regardless of if sex or sexual orientation is the inciting incidence to go down that road.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Like, there are, I think, almost no situations that a spouse should be surprised by divorce papers.

Royce: Yeah. And I’m going to keep reading a little bit more, because this post that they responded to is one of the heavier comment threads. A lot of people chimed in here.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: But OP admits that the reason they are doing this this way is because they think if they tell their partner that they don’t think their relationship has a future, that their partner will put that burden on themselves to act out what they think their partner needs, that this person’s Ace spouse will force themselves to have sex to try to make their relationship work but it still won’t be quite right, and that they’ll just drag out the inevitable end of the relationship — as this person, you know, believes is going to happen.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: And they also say that they were afraid that they would fall for such a situation and the relationship would end up going on in a non-perfect state for too long. And overwhelmingly, the response to that is, “So you’re just trying to do the easiest thing for yourself.”

Courtney: Yeah. It’s selfish. It’s horribly selfish. And it is interesting because, like, unless there is genuinely a case of abuse or physical safety, a spouse should not be surprised by divorce papers, especially around something like this that was a large, difficult confession where they were told everything was going to be okay.

Courtney: And that, I guess, kind of goes back to the heart of what I was trying to get at but maybe didn’t articulate very well earlier with the, “Is there something you can work on internally where you won’t need that external validation as heavily or from this person?” Because if the concern from OP is, like, “Well, what if my spouse just tries to pretend or act or force themselves to initiate?” that might — depending on the Ace person — that might not be a burden. That might be a fair negotiation. That might be a thing this person is willing to do. I don’t know, because I don’t know this spouse, but that’s a conversation that can happen.

Courtney: And OP said, “There have been long stretches where I felt like I was starving, but sometimes our sex life was really fire and it was really good.” So if OP could communicate, “These are the things that make it really good. Do you think that this is something we can sustain a little better with some sort of mutual compromise?” And then also do the work in the relationship between the two of you to find a reasonable compromise, but also work on yourself and your own internal hangups…

Courtney: Because it just feels a little unhealthy to me to be like, “My self-esteem has to rely on someone being sexually attracted to me. If someone is not sexually attracted to me, I am just not going to have self-esteem,” and instead of trying to find internal self-esteem so that you can sustain that for yourself long-term, for your entire life, you’re just like, “No, I’m just gonna need to find someone who’s sexually attracted to me. That’s how I fix this problem” — which is kind of what they’re doing with the divorce papers. They’re just like, “Easiest, fastest thing that takes less work, less communication.” Yikes.

Royce: Yeah. And I do want to highlight something that you mentioned in there. There’s one point that I see issues arise in a lot of different relationships where a person — either from a point of, you know, internal projection or fear or just sometimes, if they’ve been in a long enough relationship, that they’ve gotten used to seeing a particular pattern or a particular reaction — will assume they know exactly how the other person is going to react, and so they cut off the reaction. And instead of, you know, asking a question and fielding the reaction, they just assume that they know the answer, and they act upon that answer without actually giving the other person the autonomy to make their own decisions.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And sometimes those fears or those internal biases are incorrect.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: And so I think it is unfair to say, without involving their partner, that there is no answer here, that it couldn’t be worked out. One of the top comments was recommending, like, “Even if it doesn’t work out long-term, if you sat down together in some sort of mediated area, like with a couples therapist or something, you could hash everything out, and maybe they would come to the same conclusion that you came to — that this actually wasn’t viable — and you could, you know, split on amicable terms.”

Courtney: Yeah. Because another piece of this that is very concerning to me is OP does still care about this person. It’s not as if all love is lost. They don’t seem to feel like they’ve been horribly betrayed. They’re saying, “I am worried about my spouse. I feel bad. Tomorrow is going to be tough.” They do say that their spouse is dependent on them — “financially, emotionally, and socially,” they say. I don’t know how socially and emotionally — what that means, how that manifests in their life, but financially, if your spouse is financially dependent on you and you’re just going to serve them divorce papers out of the blue, that’s also kind of disrespectful. You could maybe give them a heads up, like, “Hey, this isn’t really going to work. We need to figure something else out for you.”

Courtney: Because if this spouse is now going to be left completely high and dry… I don’t know if this is a situation of a spouse being unemployed. I don’t know if this is a situation of a spouse being disabled. Maybe it’s just what they decided, is that one spouse is a stay-at-home spouse, and that’s fine too. But whatever the situation is, like, if this person now becomes homeless, if this person now must live in poverty after losing their spouse, all as a result of coming out as queer? This is devastating. So… Man, so, so much love to that person. I really hope they’re doing okay. This was posted nine months ago, and, as far as I can tell, there wasn’t an update post. So, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: Yikes.

Royce: There is one thing that I think is interesting about this post that has nothing to do with all the content that we just talked about. But OP wrote the original post in completely gender-neutral terms —

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: — and in an edit, clarified something, but then also said, “For those of you who have assumed the gender of myself and my spouse, the majority of you are wrong. Watch your assumptions.”

Courtney: Sure. I had no gendered assumptions going into this, because it doesn’t matter either way. This person is being shitty to their spouse, regardless.

Royce: Just an interesting aspect of anonymous posting on the internet, and most of the commenters not upholding the gender-neutral language that the original poster was using.

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: So, yeah, that was an interesting start. I wasn’t sure how to wrap up that post and move on to the next one, because that seemed like one that could have been on AmITheAsshole? But I think OP understands to some degree that at least some of that was wrong in the first place in the way that it was written.

Courtney: Yeah, OP was like, “If I ask if I’m the asshole, I’m absolutely going to be the asshole. I will get shredded. I know this. So instead I’m going to go to the OffMyChest safe space [laughs] to make this confession about how I’m an asshole.”

Royce: Well, this one’s a little bit lighter. This post is, “Thought I was bi/gay for the longest time.”

Courtney: I know where this is going already. Sounds very… familiar.

Royce: “So, after years of being ultra open about everything and eventually thinking to myself, ‘Gender doesn’t matter,’ I had an opportunity to test my words. To preface, I thought I was bi, then gay, because I didn’t have too much interest in women, but I had some. Downloaded Grindr. Did the usual dating stuff. Met up for a date, which went really well. The guy was objectively really handsome and cute. We talked and chatted, was happy and thought I was into it. Fast forward: he was getting handsy, so I thought, ‘Well, let’s get on with it.’ Went back to his place. Got a bit nervous but tried to keep open to the situation. I initially left but decided to come back. because I’m a man of my word and I’ll stick to that. I thought, ‘I’ll at least try it.’ He started getting into it and did things to get me in the mood/comfy, and I wasn’t getting into it no matter what he did. So I apologized. He was super understanding and an all-around great guy — like, truly a gentleman about everything. Hope he finds someone nice.

Royce: “So I went home, took a shower, contemplated what just took place. Turns out I’m not bi and I’m not into guys, just a feminine dude who likes to dress up and do his makeup. I’m happy I at least tried to explore and be open about myself, rather than sit and wonder for, like, 20 years and keep thinking about what-ifs. TLDR: thought I was bi/gay because I’m ultra open, and the way I am led me to that conclusion. Turns out I’m straight/Ace and found that out midway through getting my ass eaten by a true gentleman.”

[Courtney laughs]

Royce: “Sorry to you and hope you find someone who deserves you.”

Courtney: [laughs] Oh, beautiful!

Royce: So, there are some interesting things just in the casual wording of that post. The “some interest in women, but not much.” The “objectively really handsome.”

Courtney: I love the visual I was given of this guy out on a date, being like, “Yeah, let’s go to your house and mess around.” Get there and then be like, [sucks teeth] “Actually, I think I’m into this.” Then, having left his place, walking a few steps out the door, going, “Wait a minute, I’m a man of my word, and I said I would, so fuck it, let’s go back!” [laughs] And then showing up knocking and being like, “Sir, I said we are going to do this, and we are going to do this.” Hilarious.

Royce: Scrolling down through some comments, I did see one that just said, “Username checks out.” And I had to scroll back up. This was posted by StraightUpNotGay.

Courtney: Amazing.

Royce: There are a variety of other people here just talking about various aspects of gender fluidity. Some Ace people as well. One person said that they were confused on whether they were straight, gay, or bi, and it was actually when they watched BoJack Horseman where they got the verbiage they needed.

Courtney: Mmm. Interesting. It’s kind of refreshing to have a story — like, a realization and understanding yourself, coming to Asexuality story — that is kind of just nice and wholesome. Like, this isn’t riddled with regret. This isn’t a situation where, you know, their sexual partner ended up being very deeply uncool about the situation. It’s not traumatic. It was just like, “You know what? I tried this thing. It wasn’t for me. But hey, I learned something. Now I know more about myself. And he was great too. Nice guy. Parted amicably. Kind of cool.” We don’t get a lot of stories of realizing you’re Ace in such an easy, nonchalant way, you know?

Royce: Yeah, this is a very particular slice of the Ace experience. Because I’m just thinking back to, like, Edward Gorey being like, “I was in a relationship once, and it was traumatic.”

Courtney: [laughing] “It was traumatic.” Well, and everyone being hell-bent on deciding that Edward Gorey is gay because of, quote, “The way he is” — you know, dressed a little flamboyantly, had some feminine mannerisms, which a lot of people could also justifiably read as neurodivergent. [laughs]

Courtney: But yeah, this is not the only time I have known of an Ace person who thought they were either bi or gay before coming to Asexual. And of course, there are a lot of people who are genuinely gay and Ace. But I do think there are Ace people — be they AroAce, be they heteroromantic Ace — that are gender nonconforming in some way. And unfortunately, a lot of those people — whether it’s some sort of gender fluidity, whether it’s agender, or if it’s really just, “I am cisgender but I do like to cross-dress,” that’s also a very valid identity and way of being — society has kind of told us that this means gay. So when you kind of realize, “Well, I’m not really straight, but I fit a lot of the stereotypical checkboxes for gay, so I guess…”

Royce: And part of that is just society, or at least the society that many of us knew when we grew up, was so behind on gender and sexual orientation identities that “not straight” meant gay, and there just wasn’t the knowledge or the verbiage for anything other than that. So, a lot of things that don’t really have anything to do with gay culture have gotten lumped into the perception of homosexuality.

Courtney: Yeah. I also think that’s very true.

Royce: I mean, I still… This isn’t with gay people specifically, but I occasionally still hear the “bisexual people can’t sit in chairs properly” thing.

[Courtney laughs]

Royce: And it’s like, that is a neurodivergent trait.

[Courtney laughs]

Royce: Let’s get it right.

Courtney: Hey, it can be both! Actually, now I am very curious, because I don’t know if I still know any bisexual people who are not some form of neurodivergent. So, please, if any listeners out there are definitely neurotypical — like, you have never once suspected that you just were never diagnosed with something; you’re like, “No, I’m very neurotypical, actually” — and you’re bisexual, please tell us how you sit in chairs. This is for science. [laughs]

Courtney: No, that is interesting because by some combination of my neurodivergences and also my connective tissue disorders, I also do not sit in chairs right, and I have at times been mistaken for bisexual because of it. But I’ve also said repeatedly that I was technically bullied for being gay in, like, middle school. Even though I was not gay, I didn’t think I was projecting gay, but someone very much saw “not straight” in me. And I know a lot of other Aces who are not gay Aces who have also been mistaken for being gay before or bi.

Courtney: You know, speaking of the neurodivergent things, too, since I also mentioned Edward Gorey, I mean… We’ll talk about him more at length soon, I promise. I have so much to talk about Edward Gorey. But when you, when you see any interviews of him, any video interviews, he’s very fidgety. He’s very often just, like, fidgeting with his rings or playing with his fingertips. And he’ll make these, like, flamboyant gestures that people are like, “Very clearly gay gestures,” but then I also know a lot of Autistic people that are like, “No, he’s just stimming.” [laughs]

Courtney: But also, Royce, I don’t think you’ve ever been knowingly mistaken for being gay or bi, have you?

Royce: No, and I was just thinking about that. Like, the vast majority of times that I’ve been around people where I would have the opportunity to sit weirdly in a chair, I’ve had shoes on.

Courtney: [laughs] And that changes everything!

Royce: Yeah, it does!

[Courtney laughs]

Royce: Shoes go on the floor.

[Courtney laughs]

Royce: You tend to wear very low-profile shoes that can slip on and off very easily. But if I’m in an office space, it doesn’t make sense to sit cross-legged in a chair, or something like that.

Courtney: Well, you also walk differently when you’re wearing shoes.

Royce: That’s true.

Courtney: When you’re not wearing shoes, you often walk on your toes, and so other people aren’t going to see you walk on your toes the way I do around the house. But sometimes I will — if you’re just casually standing around somewhere, I will see you stand in a posture with the T-Rex hands, [laughs] which I know is an Autistic trait, but it’s also a gay stereotype.

Royce: Mhm.

Courtney: I don’t think it’s necessarily as common now as it used to be. But, like, do you remember the time when, if you were trying to ask if someone was gay, but do it in, like, a discreet way, you’d be like, “Are they… you know?” and then you do, like, the little —

Royce: Oh, like, limp hand thing? Yeah.

Courtney: — the limp hand thing? [laughs] Like, that was just known as, like, “This is a gay gesture. Only gay men do this — or, I guess, very straight women.” But now we know: T-Rex hands are very often an Autistic stance. And sometimes I’ll just see you standing like that, and I’m like, “How has nobody, like, assumed you are gay throughout the years?” And maybe someone has, and it just hasn’t been a discussion, but…

Royce: There’s probably some amount of just body awareness in public as well.

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: Or, again, I’m thinking more around the office, and a lot of times I’m just not standing in one place like I am around the house, like, trying to decide what to do. I’m moving from place to place, often with things in my hand or hands in pockets, just as a general rule, so I’m not as fidgety, or something like that.

Courtney: In other words, anxiety and masking?

Royce: Yeah, probably.

Courtney: So I guess we’re trending in a very specific direction here, because this next post — it is about Ace, it is about gay, it is about a lovely-sounding mixed-orientation relationship. So the title is, “I am a gay man, and I am in love with my wife.”

Courtney: “I met my wife when we were both in high school. We grew up in the South, so me being gay wasn’t exactly an option at the time. We started dating because it was a good cover for me and she had a thing for me. I’ve never had much of a sex drive. I used to assume it was the pent-up gay. [laughs] But knowing the terms now, I’m probably on the Ace spectrum. I definitely like men, but even with the hottest guys, I only ever wanted it once or twice a month. I came out about 15 years ago, just to her. She was heartbroken but very accepting. She asked me to still, quote, ‘date’ her until I found a boyfriend, and I agreed, because I did really value her as a close friend. We both agreed we would keep living together, go out together with friends, the usual, but obviously, would start actively seeing other people. I met a few guys, but none that I really wanted to hold down and she was happy enough coming home to me after whatever escapade she got up to.

Courtney: “Then she got pregnant. Everyone assumed I was the father, and all I’ve ever wanted was to be a stay-at-home dad. I sat her down and told her that if she wanted, I’d marry her, if she was the breadwinner. I’d take care of the baby, the house, all that stuff, if she supported us. I explained that I would want the same arrangement we had now, but that this way, she could count on having childcare, and I would have the life I’ve always wanted. She agreed, and we got married in August 2011. Quote, ‘our’ daughter was born January of 2012. Life was exactly what I wanted and expected. We didn’t have tons of money, but we got by fine.

Courtney: “About five years ago, we got drunk and slept together. For the first time in our relationship, we were actually physical. I woke up the next morning and was shocked at how much I didn’t regret it. It was definitely not something I would have done sober, but it made her so happy, it just made me happy. It was… fine. Ultimately, it wasn’t some horrid, gross thing. I wasn’t into it, but it really made her happy, and that made me happy. She asked me about it, and I told her the truth: I am gay, I am not attracted to her, but I do love her. If a physical relationship would make her that happy, I could do that. After all, how many women are with men they aren’t attracted to?

Courtney: “When the pandemic hit, we had another talk. We discussed that seeing other partners wasn’t safe, and for the time being and the safety of our daughter, we should stop doing so. Our second daughter was born three days ago. There were some complications, and I realized I didn’t just love my wife, I was in love with her. I have a perfect wife, a perfect little white picket fence life, and two beautiful daughters. I am a gay man and I am in love with my wife.” And OP does reiterate again in the comments, “I still would call myself gay, but somewhere on the Ace spectrum.”

Courtney: And this is honestly so cool and wholesome. And the thing is, like, I just know there are people out there that would hear this story and be like, “You are a self-hating gay man! You are repressing yourself. You are repressing your own sexuality,” or “How could you do this to your wife?” Like, there are people who would hear stories like this and inherently think there is some sort of profound deception. We see this kind of reaction all the time in mixed-orientation relationships.

Courtney: But for as prevalent as the discussion of mixed-orientation relationships is within Ace and Aro communities, just because there are so comparatively few of us who are out and meeting each other… And, I mean, we are certainly far from the only Ace couple in the world, but I know we have so many listeners who have said, “You are the first Asexual married couple Ace-Ace relationship that I have ever been exposed to, personally,” and I know we have a lot of listeners like that. And so many people make it out to be such a horrible thing if an Ace or someone of any sexual orientation tries to actually establish a lifelong relationship with someone who isn’t of the same orientation. Heck, even to a certain extent, bi people. I know a lot of bisexual people who have dated people who are either straight or gay who have had some sort of just hatred or suspicion towards their bi partner that they wouldn’t have if it wasn’t a mixed-orientation relationship, and that’s where a lot of biphobia comes from.

Courtney: But there are absolutely instances of very deeply happy and meaningful mixed-orientation relationships. And I like seeing those stories. And some of them are gay men who aren’t even on the Ace spectrum, and I have seen how viscerally angry people get upset when they hear stories about this. But I’ve seen stories of gay men be like, “No, I am gay, I am homosexual, I am homoromantic, I am gay through-and-through. But I am married to a straight woman. We have a great life. I do love her. I don’t love her in the way a heterosexual, heteroromantic man would, but I do love her. And we have a great life, and I have no interest in leaving her. And whatever our arrangement is, it’s working for us.” There are just so many people that are just like, “Nope, bullshit. Not real. Can’t be true. Couldn’t be me. You’re lying and probably a bad person.” [laughs] Like, that’s what we get. But I just want more stories like this out here in the world.

Courtney: And honestly — and maybe I need to watch the whole show [laughs] before I can comment on this, but we recently started watching Grace and Frankie. And Episode 1 and the entire premise is basically, two couples, husband and wife, of multiple decades end up getting a divorce because the husbands are actually gay and have been having an affair for 20 years, so they leave their wives to be with each other. And I’m waiting for one of these guys to become more redeemable, and maybe he does, [laughs] but he’s kind of just an asshole. [laughs]

Royce: We’re in, what, middle of Season 2 out of, I don’t know, four or five? Oh, it’s seven seasons, actually. We have a ways to go.

Courtney: But one one of these men definitely has outwardly a lot more guilt and empathy for his wife whom he is leaving, and also just seems to have a lot more genuine care and love for his ex-wife, and the other just doesn’t. And I’m sure, since there are so many seasons, I’m sure they are going to redeem him, and he’s going to have some kind of character arc [laughs]. But at least throughout the first season, we were seeing almost nothing but negative instances of this newly out gay couple, where they are fighting all the time: they are getting into new fights, they are dredging up old fights, they are inviting friends to dinner and then having petty arguments in front of them. And they just don’t seem to be having a good time at all! And now, all four of these people have had their lives completely upended and changed. And I wanted to be happy for the gay couple, but so far, I’m like, “Your relationship seems miserable! You both seem miserable.”

Courtney: And at least one of the two men very much did seem to like and enjoy his life with his wife, at least to a certain extent, and was kind of going through a process of, like, mourning his old life, even. There were instances where he would say something, or you’d see him interact with his ex-wife and his children where you could see some sort of grieving for that life that was gone. And there was maybe a moment or two where I was like, “Well, it’s not great that you’ve been having an affair for 20 years.” Like, that is a deal breaker for sure. But I definitely kind of saw a man like him — a situation like his, where had there been open communication, had there been a situation of being able to have some sort of open relationship — like, he reminded me of some of the gay men that I do actually know who have had a mixed-orientation marriage and kept it and stayed married.

Courtney: And there are even some therapists that specialize in mixed-orientation relationships. There aren’t a lot of them. But in a situation where one spouse is queer or does come out or identify themselves as queer, there are therapists who can help you decide, like, “Is this a relationship you want to salvage? Should it be salvaged? Can it be salvaged, or is it done?”

Courtney: And going back to that first horrible post, maybe that’s what they needed, was a therapist who specialized in mixed-orientation relationships to help them decide what is the best course of action. I don’t know, maybe the Grace and Frankie thing will be totally irrelevant and I’ll be very on board with their relationship the further we get into things, but… [laughs]

Royce: Well, I found one that seems to just be a venting post, which is part of what this subreddit is for, but it has basically no activity on it. The title is just, “I’m just exhausted with Ace discourse.”

Courtney: Oh, that’s kind of a mood.

Royce: “I’m Asexual. It’s not the most important identity I hold, nor is it something for which I actively seek community. I also support LGBTQ+ people, and I don’t want to hear your thoughts about whether that acronym includes an A, but I’m becoming less engaged with the community as a whole. The internet can’t seem to go five minutes without some forum devolving into exclusionist versus inclusionist infighting, and I’m just sick of it. It’s like this weird purity test for them, except half of them don’t know what Asexuality is and a quarter just seem mad that we exist. And if I had wanted to be a pawn in someone else’s war, it would have been easier to just join the army. Hell, my fraternity had the decency to debate new members in private. TLDR: I’m sick of getting dragged into LGBTQ+ infighting. Call me when you get your shit together.”

Courtney: I mean, this is so vague that I don’t know definitively where OP sits in the inclusionist versus exclusionist infighting or somewhere in the middle. I don’t know what they’re implying with, “Half of them don’t know what Asexuality is.” Because, yes, I’ve seen plenty of discourse where people genuinely do not know what Asexuality is. But when you pull in the inclusionist versus exclusionist, both of them will say that about each other. [laughs] Both of them will say that. Because if you say, like, “Oh, well, some Ace people do like sex and some Ace people have lots of sex,” then the exclusionists are going to be like, “That’s not Asexual. You don’t know what Asexuality is.” Whereas an exclusionist will say exactly the opposite — like, “If you’re having sex, you’re not Ace” — and an inclusionist will be like, “But actually, Ace people can have sex!” [laughs] And that’s only one example. That’s one of the most common recent examples of Ace infighting.

Courtney: But we’ve kind of talked before about how the community over the years has gone through different moods. And sometimes it’s about Asexuality and disability. Sometimes it’s about sex-favorable versus sex-repulsed Aces. But there is always, like, butting heads and there is always infighting and there is always discourse that is so exhausting. So even not knowing where OP stands or whether or not I agree with them, I do understand this [laughs] fatigue around that and a desire to not necessarily engage with it. It is such a fringe gripe to be on such a broad-strokes forum like this, I think, though. [laughs] And that’s probably why there isn’t any comments or other engaging with it.

Courtney: And honestly, I think a lot of that infighting does come from even Ace-specific places still being just so open and broad and available to so many different kinds of people with different experiences and different frame of references that there is just no way that it is going to accommodate everyone. Because some Ace people are just like, “I want to exist somewhere where sex isn’t important. I want to exist in a place where we don’t talk about sex. We don’t talk about it like it’s this most important thing in the world.” So if an Ace person who’s like, “I love sex. I have sex all the time. I want to talk about all the sex I have as an Ace person,” that’s not going to be received very well in a community where some people are trying to get away from that. But they also deserve a community!

Courtney: So the problem is with very open forums — things like Reddit, things like AVEN, things like a lot of the big Ace Discord servers — is, what actually is the goal of the community? And I think a lot of them aren’t well-defined enough and don’t necessarily even know themselves what the goal of the community is. Even large Facebook groups — like, large Ace Facebook groups I’ve seen — were probably some of the first really big instances of mass infighting that I started seeing was over there years ago. So I understand the frustration.

Courtney: And to people who are frustrated with this — not necessarily this person, because this is someone saying, “I’m not actively seeking this community,” so that’s fine, you don’t have to. But people who are seeking community, I always encourage you to find your own. It is okay to keep it small, but Asexuality — or any orientation, for that matter — is just way too broad and diverse for everyone to always get along and get the same thing they’re looking for out of these big groups. I mean, God, you see infighting in all areas of the LGBTQ+ community. It’s not just Aces. I think we just hope that will be better because we’re aware of how much smaller and less visible we are, so we’re always like, “But why can’t we all just get together! We need each other!” So, I get it.

Courtney: And I do someday want to talk about, at more length, the sex-favorable versus sex-repulsed discourse, because there’s been such bad behavior on both sides of that discourse. There really has. But now is not the time for that.

Courtney: Oh, this one might be kind of a bummer one to end on, but I think it’s very relatable to a lot of folks in our community. It’s entitled, “I Wish I Wasn’t Ace.”

Courtney: “I’m genuinely so tired of trying to find someone to date, but I still want to. Yet it seems impossible because of how I am. Anytime I try to go after someone, I say I’m Ace and they’ll be put off. Or other times, they’ll say, ‘It’s fine,’ but don’t actually take it seriously. They think they can either fix me or I’m the good kind of Asexual that still has sex for my partner’s pleasure. Just recently, I had feelings for a girl, and she said she shared them. However, I came to realize that she didn’t take into consideration my Asexuality, despite how much I told her about it. I hate it so much. It feels so isolating. All my friends are happily dating, and I’m being stopped by this roadblock. I wish I could be fixed, but I know I can’t. I wish it was a phase, but I’ve been this way for years. I want to scream and cry in hope that I can just find someone, anyone, who can actually see that I’m Asexual and still love me. I just wish I was like the rest of the population, because I’m tired of missing out on so much and having this hole in my heart that grows bigger with each romantic interest. Are there even happy Asexual couples?”

Courtney: Um, yes! We are a happy Asexual couple. We have been married over 10 years.I know Ace couples who do consider their relationship to be romantic. I know AroAce couples who are in queerplatonic partnerships that are long-term and quite happy. It does happen, and I want people to know that.

Courtney: But gosh, I know so many Ace people who do want long-term partnership like this who have gone through this stage. I know some that are still in this stage. But I know a lot of people — whether or not they found someone — who went through this phase of, “Being Ace is going to make me unhappy, because it’s going to prevent me from getting this thing that I do want out of my life.”

Courtney: But yeah, I can also really, really relate to the “think they can fix me.” That’s a thing a lot of Aces get. A lot of people hear, “Oh, my partner is Ace,” and they think, “Challenge accepted,” which is very uncool. But also, the, “I’m the good kind of Asexual that still has sex for my partner’s pleasure.” That’s another really unfortunate thing that has leached into some areas of the public consciousness and is also one of the anxieties that really come out to haunt the entire community when we have the sex-repulsed versus sex-favorable discourse. Because there are a lot of Aces who are like, “I don’t want the default assumption to be that I can and will have sex or that I enjoy sex despite being Ace. I don’t want that to become the default assumption.”

Courtney: And the point is that there should be no default assumptions for any orientation, for any person, obviously. But we have such a deep-seated fear of being such a small, underrepresented community in media and in popular discourse that we’re always concerned, like, whatever conversation we have or whatever talking point we throw out is going to be someone’s very first introduction to Asexuality. And I think we’re a little hyper-vigilant of, “What could this mean? If a lot of people see this and this is their first introduction, then what sort of misunderstandings are they going to get?” And it’s not a healthy way to do life or to do discourse. It’s really not. It’s one of the more negative aspects of the internet as a whole.

Courtney: But as discourse like that has grown and become more accessible on more public platforms to a wider variety of people, I have seen some Aces say that, “Yeah, in my personal life, in trying to date allosexual people, in trying to establish mixed-orientation relationships, I have encountered people who do have this expectation of me that I will have sex.”

Royce: Yeah. There is part of the sort of introductory, “I just came out”/“Ace 101” period where an intentionally well-meaning partner might go and try to do their own research and then find, like, “Oh hey, why can’t you just do this?”

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And that’s also how a lot of comments on things like these very quickly go into, “Well, why don’t you just have an open relationship as well?”

Courtney: Yeah. Yeah. I have expressed my concerns about how people seeking advice often get advice that is probably not helpful. And that’s the problem with overly broad forums. You’re talking to people who do not know you. You’re talking to people who do not know your partner. We may be falling into that trap by reading some of these on these big, broad forums. So anytime we’re doing an AmITheAsshole? I’m always aware — in the back of my head, I’m like, “We don’t have all the details, and we only have one person’s side of things.” But the way I’m trying to see it to push past that is, like, “This is what was presented to us. I more or less have to assume this is fact, unless someone directly contradicts themselves that I can see. And, based on what I am told and what has been in front of me, this is my knee-jerk reaction to that.”

Royce: I also noticed, just going through this bookmarked folder of posts on the subreddit, because these were found just by keyword searching and flagging them, we are occasionally necroing some really old posts [laughing] that have been left aside for a long time.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: The Ace discourse one was five years old.

Courtney: Ooh, what was the popular discourse five years ago?

Royce: I didn’t realize that until after I was finished reading it.

Courtney: Five years ago, it was very “Let’s dogpile disabled Ace people, because they’re making Ace people look bad — because we’re not disabled, we’re not broken, there’s nothing wrong with us. You’re bad. You as a living, breathing human being, are bad Ace rep because you exist and are disabled and Asexual. Maybe just don’t talk, don’t be seen, stay holed up in your house forever and don’t ever say you’re Asexual again.” That was at least the really big one that I was dealing with at the time.

Royce: Well, I looked back at that post and it was made in May of 2020, so “holed up in your house forever” is applicable.

Courtney: Ouch. [laughs] And then we pretty much did. I think that also might have been around the same period of time that AVEN was making an announcement that they were changing their internal definition of Asexual to include “Someone who experiences little to no sexual attraction.” If that was shortly off the heels of that, and I think maybe it was, there was also a lot of nasty discourse about that. Some people were really upset about that. And obviously, the people who felt very represented from it — either the Gray Aces, the Demi Aces, anyone who’s like, “Yeah, I experience conditional attraction,” “I’m on the Ace spectrum” — like, some people felt really good and represented by that, and other people were like, “No, terrible. We shouldn’t be changing this definition.” So, talking exclusionist versus inclusionist, that might be what that post was talking about if it was five years ago. [laughs]

Courtney: Okay, since that one was a little bit short and also kind of a bummer to end on, I want to end on a very short, happy, joyful one. So here we have: title: “Autistic, gay, and Ace. I don’t mind at all. It’s amazingly liberating. I have never felt this fucking way before. Like, oh, my fucking God.”

Courtney: “Wow, I don’t know how to explain this. But holy hell, wow. Wow. Oh my God, I’m fucking gay and I’m Asexual, and I don’t give a flying fuck what other people think about me! Hell, I could even be Autistic, and it’s the most liberating realization in my entire life. Oh my fucking God, this is fucking great! I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not because I finally know who my other half would be and I’m more confident about the people I can attract in my life.” Amazing. Beautiful. No notes. Love to all the Autistic gay Aces out there. I wish everyone coming to learn themselves more had this reaction of just relief and joy. I know it doesn’t always happen, but I’m very happy when I do see it.

Courtney: And that is going to do it for our inaugural episode of r/OffMyChest: Asexuality edition. So that is going to bring us to our featured MarketplACE vendor of the week, Sierra Bravo Art Shop, where you can find art, zines, pins, and comics by an Ace cartoonist. And there are some very good things here. I’ve purchased a couple things from this shop. I think the one, Royce, that you’ve remarked on more, because sometimes it’s just been sitting out, is a little zine entitled Fuck!

Royce: Oh, yeah, the bold lettering in that. I just catch it out of the corner of my eye every now and then, and it’s just a bird just squawking the word “Fuck.”

Courtney: That is exactly what it is, yes. And the back cover says, “This is a feeling zine. The feeling is AAAAAAH,” and there’s a screaming possum. And every page is just a new animal saying “Fuck!” And if that isn’t a mood and a half, I don’t know what is. But there are a lot of other great things, other little zines, little comics, or just pieces of art. There are little clay ghosts, if you like three-dimensional artwork. If you like two-dimensional artwork, there is a plethora of mushroom-based art and prints. And for the graphic novel lovers amongst us, she has even published a graphic novel entitled Hans Vogel is Dead. All kinds of things to check out.

Courtney: As always, links to find this artist and her shop are going to be in our show notes, which you can find on our website along with a full transcript. Or, if you’re tuning in on YouTube, you can find it in the YouTube description. And if you’re listening to us on YouTube, go ahead and drop us a comment and let us know if you do want to hear more from r/OffMyChest, because we didn’t even make a dent in all of these that I bookmarked. There are a lot of Ace-related confessions here.

Courtney: But that is all for today, so we will see you all next week. Bye bye.