r/OffMyChest Asexuality Edition #2
Back by popular demand!
- I married my same-gender best friend even though we're both straight
- You're not "ace," you're normal
- Today I came out as ace to my mom
- My boyfriend of 11 years, came out as Asexual
- My friend told me she’s never had sex, she’s been married 15 years
- I almost had s*x with somone to prove I was ace
- Actionable Ways to Support the Palestinians of Gaza
Featured MarketplACE vendor of the week
Xikeb. Shop, TikTok, Toyhouse, Bluesky.
Transcript Transcribed by Hannah E.
Courtney: Hello, everyone, and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here with my spouse, Royce. And together, we are The Ace Couple. And we are back for another round of r/OffMyChest. This was a new subreddit we dove into not too long ago, and we got lots and lots of requests to do it again. And I think the first one was pretty successful. We got some confessions from a variety of viewpoints. I think it sparked some good conversations. And no one told us that we hit the boundary for being the biggest piece of shit possible without committing literal genocide, which is a thing people told us from our Dead Bedrooms episodes. Those get really spicy really fast. [laughs]
Royce: Oh, yeah. We get a few odd comments on those every now and then.
Courtney: People really get in a twist about them. So let’s keep things, I guess, a little kinder, because times are hard. [laughs] Not that all of these are going to be positive. Some of these confessions are a little bit of a bummer, but we’re going to read several and talk them out.
Courtney: So, the first one is actually not specifically about Asexuality or Aromanticism, but it is very much in line with themes and topics that we are very passionate about and have talked about at length, and sort of proves that the sort of Aspec ideologies that we speak of can actually benefit a much wider variety of people. This is not solely for the benefit of Aces and Aros, even though, when it comes to societal pressures and discriminations, we are often the ones most likely to be negatively impacted by these societal norms. But I just like this one because it’s called, “I married my same-gender best friend, even though we’re both straight.”
Courtney: “My wife / best friend, Annie, is self-employed, works freelance, and, as a result, has struggled getting steady health insurance in the past. Four years ago, she had a health scare, and because I had somewhat decent insurance through my job, we said, ‘Fuck it,’ and got married. Thankfully, the health scare was just a scare and we’re both healthy. Three years ago we said, ‘Fuck it’ again and decided to buy an apartment together. It’s small and shitty, but there’s no way we could afford anything on our own, so it’s nothing to really complain about. We have separate rooms and we still sort of casually date, but we talked it over and decided to commit to being married. We love each other, we live together, and we’re happy, so does it really matter that we’re not gay? We haven’t decided if we’re having children yet, but we have decided that if we are, we’re going to have them together, not with a man. Everyone in our life is really confused about our marriage, and I guess to some extent, so are we. [laughs] But this seems like a ‘Don’t fix what ain’t broke’ situation. I don’t know what it means to be platonically — question mark? — married. I know we’re not gay, but we’re also more than friends. I’ve honestly never been this happy in my entire life. And the love I have for this woman pales in comparison to the ways I felt about boyfriends in the past. And before the ‘best pal’ jokes start pouring in, I’ve never in my life been sexually aroused by a woman, and I very much find men hot. Guess this is just my PSA to all of you that you can live life however you want, and there’s no universal formula for a good life.”
Royce: So OP discovered a QPR and has not found the word for that yet, or the phrase.
Courtney: Yes. And they can be beautiful, glorious things, and you do not have to be an actual Ace and/or Aro person to find one. And, as I so often do, sometimes you just stumble into them, which is very fascinating. Because, like, I figure when people try to, like, date romantically or they try to date for the explicit purpose of finding marriage, people go in, like, knowing, “I want to find a person who’s going to be this person,” and it’s a coordinated effort. But sometimes your life partner — soulmate, if you want to call them — can just show up completely unexpectedly and not be in the form you would have thought for yourself. And I think that’s beautiful.
Courtney: But also, it makes me very sad that I’m pretty sure they are probably American, given the health insurance of it all — being heavily tied to employment and/or marriage. Because that should not be that way. People should not have to get married in order to have financial freedom or access healthcare. And that’s just the problem in our political system, the problem in our marriage structures. We’ve talked about the issue with marriage. There are well over 1000 benefits that you get in this country by entering into a marriage.
Courtney: But it sounds like these two have a massive silver lining, because the way it’s written really has me wondering, like, if it were not for the health scare and if it were not for the really messed up medical system that we have and the insurance system we have in this country, would they have ever gotten to this point of having this arrangement and being happy with this life?
Royce: Yeah. Without the pressure of the social system around them, would there have been any reason for them to get married?
Courtney: Right. Or even just, like, the next step. They were like, “Well, at first we said, ‘Fuck it, let’s get married for the insurance.’ And then we said ‘Fuck it’ again and bought an apartment together.” Like, it’s possible that they still would have decided to buy a place together. It’s possible they’d still be having the conversations about, “Do we want kids or not?” But would it have taken them longer if they didn’t have that immediate urgent health need? And…
Royce: I’m actually kind of surprised, with them being as close as they are, that they didn’t already live together.
Courtney: Yeah. I guess it doesn’t totally specify. The way it’s written kind of made it seem like that’s when they moved in together. But…
Royce: Well, this says that four years ago was the health scare. That’s when they got married. Then three years ago, they got the apartment.
Courtney: Mhm. They decided to buy one, though, so we don’t know if it’s, like, renting before then.
Royce: True. True, yeah.
Courtney: So, a little bit unspecified there. But it it is fascinating. Because this is what I think people really need to consider: whether or not you are married, whether or not you want to be married, wherever you are in your current stage of life, like, choose your family and commit to them in the way that makes sense to you. Because, you know, the marriage anecdote is “In sickness and in health,” and that’s something that you don’t have to be married to agree with each other. But we’ve talked about people who don’t get married, whether or not that’s their choice, who don’t have kids, whether or not that’s their choice — what does happen as they age, as they get sick? I am consistently worried for those folks. Because the way our systems are set up in this country is people try to make the nuclear family — a wife, husband, and kids — the sort of, like, well, these are micro welfare states. Like, the family is going to take care of each other. The parents take care of the kids, and then, when the parents are old, the kids take care of them, and that’s what the cycle is designed to be. So if you don’t create a family like that, it’s a lot harder to access things like insurance, end of life care. Who’s going to be your power of attorney if you can’t make your own, you know, medical, financial decisions at some point? So, these sort of things, whether or not marriage is part of your plan, are very important to consider. Like, who is the person you trust more than anyone in your life? I don’t know. I like it. I love it. I’m happy for them. More platonic marriages, please! If you want!
Royce: Yeah, more nuance in personal relationships in general is needed. But to back up a little bit, it’s funny how you were trying to pinpoint where in the world this was, just based off of the whole health care and marriage laws things — gives you a good idea. In skimming this, trying to figure out the timeline, it occurred to me that this also narrows down what area of the country, too, because deciding to buy an apartment is a completely foreign concept to me.
Courtney: Yeah, that is definitely more common in certain areas of the country. But I guess there are, like, condos you can buy in the city we’re by, but most people who have money for that are just going to get a house.
Royce: This next post is titled, “You’re not, quote, ‘Ace,’ you’re normal,” which is a great start.
Courtney: Oh boy.
Royce: “This weekend, I’m attending yet another wedding of a friend who made a big deal out of being, quote, ‘Ace’ till she found the one. When she met him, wow, it moved really fast. I’m happy for her. That’s not what this is about. It is about the pressure normal people feel to explain that they are not sexually active by claiming to be, quote, ‘Ace.’ No, people, we live in a hypersexualized time when sex and identity is one big muddled mess. It did not used to be normal to sleep around and build your entire worldview and social circle around what genital you are attracted to. This is ick and it is ew.”
[Courtney laughs]
Royce: “Aces and sapios are pretty much the way normal people were from the beginning of the human race. They didn’t call it anything special because it was understood sex was not the center of life. Stop putting so much freaking pressure on people to be sexual.” So —
Courtney: Wow, that’s a lot to unpack. [laughs]
Royce: The reason why I picked this one from our big folder of Ace things in the subreddit was because, well, one, I thought that it followed this last post of yours well, in that people are more complicated than we give them credit for, and we do need to be challenging the expectations of relationships, platonic or otherwise. There’s a lot of ignorance in this post.
Courtney: Yeah.
Royce: But, like, it is true that there is a lot of pressure to follow the path society has set for you, which is heteronormative and sexual in nature. There seems to be a pretty large misunderstanding of what Ace is. Like, the idea… There seems to be no knowledge of the separation of, you know, attractions — that someone who is Ace can be romantically attracted to someone. Anytime someone tries to jump into a very flattened version of history to prove their opinions right —
Courtney: Always going to be wrong.
Royce: It’s always a big red flag for me. Usually, one, their references of history are generally incorrect, and it tends to be, like, “Oh, you’re cherry-picking some idea of something to fulfill some preconceived bias of yours. Right.”
Courtney: And this is already so vague that there’s no way it was ever going to be accurate.
Royce: Yeah. Yeah. And there’s not a lot of discussion on this because it was kind of just a rant post. But one person did pop in and just say, “I’m not saying you’re entirely wrong here, but sex has been pretty important in ancient societies, actually.”
[Royce and Courtney laugh]
Courtney: Actually.
Royce: But —
Courtney: There are so many, like, goddesses of fertility and… [laughs]
Royce: Yeah, yeah. But OP basically tried to justify this line of thinking by saying, like, “Oh, well, in polytheistic religions, there were gods for everything, and it wasn’t as focused on sex as it is today.” Which is a very… Like, it feels to me like the people who just yearn for the old times without having really experienced them.
Courtney: Mmm. Well, the thing that’s so fascinating to me about this one is that, like, your final thought that you ended on… If you were just like, “Stop putting so much freaking pressure on people to be sexual!” Like, yes, 1000%. We Aces are with you. In fact, we are [laughing] the front lines shouting this into the world. And yet, like… But you attacked Aces in the process. So this is almost as if you received the message, you agreed with the message, and you still shot the messenger.
Royce: I’m also really curious about something here. Because I — one, regardless of this person’s orientation or their friend group’s identities, we in the broader Aspec community have dug in deep and microlabeled everything —
Courtney: Yeah.
Royce: — and have tried to pick apart just how diverse this section of human orientation is. Straight and gay and bi people are also diverse. They just don’t talk about it as much, not to the same level of detail. And so there is a lot of nuance that is missing in those discussions.
Courtney: Mhm.
Royce: I’m sure there are plenty of straight people out there who are also like, “Yeah, way too many — sex is way too common of a topic. That experience is definitely there for me, but it’s not as big of a deal as other people make it out to be.” There’s going to be nuance there.
Courtney: Absolutely. Yeah. And even the frameworks that we tend to, like, subdivide by and discuss and rehash in the community — like the good old-fashioned Split Attraction Model, how romantic and sexual orientation aren’t always the same. Sure, they can be for some people; even within the Aspec community, they can be the same for some people. But we don’t hear those conversations happening in, like, bisexual communities, even though I absolutely know some bi people whose romantic and sexual orientations are not the same, and it’s very confusing for them. But I think I know why. [laughs] I think I know why it is confusing for you.
Royce: The other thing that I think is interesting here is that this person is at, quote, “Yet another wedding of a friend who made a big deal out of being Ace, according to them.” What bubble are you in?
Courtney: I don’t know.
Royce: The fact that they also said “Aces and sapios”? Like, that’s a very specific word that I don’t hear very often.
Courtney: Not anymore. And this was only posted a year ago, which is really interesting, because I feel like sapiosexual had its heyday, like, eight years ago.
Royce: Did I miss the resurgence?
Courtney: I don’t know. Lots of people find that to be the most problematic Ace microlabel —
Royce: Yeah.
Courtney: — because of the ableism of it all.
Royce: Yeah, that makes sense. But what I’m getting at: that line threw me a little bit, because it made me think of sometimes when people are like, “Huh, all of my friends have been diagnosed with ADHD. What a coincidence. I wonder what the statistics for that are.” And then a few years later they’re like, “Oh, this is why we’re friends.”
Courtney: I do hate to break it to OP… And I promise I do not enjoy being the kind of person who’s like, “But could you be… Are you… Are you maybe?” But —
Royce: That’s my point.
Courtney: There are some signs here. Is OP… [laughs]
Royce: Yeah. Like, is it possible that this is a small broadly Aspec friend group that came together, because that’s how queerness works, and sex is less important than average to everyone in this friend group? And the… It is really hard to figure out that other people experience life differently than you.
Courtney: Mhm.
Royce: That’s why I didn’t figure out any of my labels until I was into my 20s, if not 30s.
Courtney: Mhm. Which, the interesting thing is, too, because you’re coming to a confession subreddit to basically openly chastise other people. Like, this isn’t a confession on the part of OP. This is like, “You aren’t Ace! If you think you’re Ace, you’re just normal!” Like, I almost want to say, you’re coming to a confession forum, so this is like, every accusation is a confession. [laughs]
Courtney: No, well — and listen, listen, listen. Like, I would never be like, “OP, you are Asexual, just admit it.” I’m not going to be like, “You have internalized acephobia. You just have to accept yourself.” Because it sounds like, by all accounts, if OP wanted to identify as Ace, it sounds like a lot of people in their bubble probably would not be surprised or question it. But labels in general are just not for everyone. Some people are a lot more anti-label than others, and that is totally their prerogative. But if you’re the kind of person who gets, like, internally irked by other people labeling their identities, you’ve got to find a way to be okay with other people doing it for themselves. You do not need to adopt them on your own. If it doesn’t feel right, if that’s not comfy for you, that’s okay. But I do very often see people who are so anti-label even for themselves that they start to lash out at other people for labeling themselves in the way that feels right, and that’s when that becomes a problem.
Royce: Well, the general acceptance of identity, or knowledge of, is something that I’m going to go on a little tangent here before we get back to the next post. But I’ve occasionally done some thinking just on Ace population statistics and awareness and demographics and things like that. Because, what is it, the old, old, like, college questionnaire statistic that gets passed around a lot is, like, 1%, right?
Courtney: 1%!
Royce: And I think a slightly larger, slightly newer one that’s still very small and flawed in its numbers was, like, 1.7. And this is with further studies saying that, like — and our experience reading various things online from people — showing that a lot of people don’t know what Asexuality is, they conflate it with celibacy, this and that and the other thing. And then there’s just the weird demographics, that there is a gender difference in people who identify themselves as somewhere on the broader, like, Ace spectrum. And I haven’t, like, sat down and tried to do any math. Because, like, gender bias in orientation makes no sense to me. I don’t see any reason why that would be a thing.
Courtney: Mmm.
Royce: Unless you’re talking about how hypersexualized masculinity is and how that could present a barrier to masculine identities accepting Ace identities. Because then you’re, like, not only trying to figure out your orientation, you’re also having to shake a lot of perceptions around your own gender identity and fulfilling that to the degree that you feel is appropriate. And that gets really messy really fast. But I’ve tried to think, like, realistically speaking, if the knowledge was out there and we didn’t have all of these societal pressures, how many Ace people are there really? You know, are we talking 2, 3, 4% higher, something like that? And I just find it interesting that random OP here, who has an issue — every time “Ace” is mentioned, it’s in quotes, in these couple of paragraphs —
Courtney: Mmm.
Royce: But they seem to have, like, an Ace friend group.
Courtney: Which is having me concerned. Like, you’re probably not [laughing] a very good friend to those people. But I also want to know how many Ace weddings you’ve been to. [laughs]
Royce: Yeah! Like, is this just such an issue for them that they’re at their second wedding and they’re frustrated, or are they, like, getting into the second hand counting fingers?
Courtney: Gosh, if we could all be so lucky. [laughs] But, yeah, since — I don’t want to get too far into it, but since “sapio” was mentioned, I don’t think we’ve ever specifically talked about sapiosexual as a microlabel on this podcast. So if any of you listeners are like, “What is that? I haven’t even heard that one” —
Royce: I think I first heard of it before I had really heard a big breakdown of Asexual identities, just as some one-off.
Courtney: Really.
Royce: Yeah. And then, after I learned more about Asexuality, I saw it being put in as a microlabel and thought, “Oh, I guess I can understand why, given past definitions, why people would remove it from, like, heterosexual or homosexual umbrellas.”
Courtney: Yeah. So sapiosexual… The way I have most commonly seen it defined is, like, you are attracted to highly intelligent people. And I think, as with all things, there is nuance here. I think intellectually is one way that people can connect with one another. So if you think about a broader scope of, like, Demisexuality as an umbrella term of a variety of ways that you only become sexually attracted to someone once you’ve developed a close bond, and how is it you develop those close bonds, so I’m not at all saying that people are wrong for forming connections on an intellectual level.
Courtney: But there absolutely was a point in time — and I want to say it was, like, eight years ago was the heyday, but this was not when the label was first used. I mean, I’ve seen it going well over a decade ago, so it had been around a while, but I feel like it slipped a little more into some more mainstream communities at a certain point. And I just, like, distinctly remember a period of time on Facebook where I saw sapiosexual, like, in real time, in my own bubbles, become popular and common to throw around. But I saw it, like, bounce around, Like, first it started in the goth bubbles that I had, and then I saw it floating around, like, the antiques and oddities bubble that I had, and then I saw it floating around… And so, I saw, in real time, it travel to these different things. And all of a sudden, I saw a ton of people being like, “Yeah, sapiosexual, that’s totally me.” But it was all done in this very social media aesthetic where there was, like, a piece of artwork that people would always repost with it of a very alt looking chick that was, like, literally licking a brain with a tongue that was a little too long and pointy. And people would have this very, like, glamorized, sexualized aesthetic.
Courtney: And it did at times rub me the wrong way. Because even before I started really considering the implications of the ableism and elitism that might have been there — because I’d only seen a few people prior to that sort of explosion very earnestly identify as sapiosexual within Asexual communities, so it didn’t register to me as something that could have anything problematic attached to it until I saw this explosion, and then I did absolutely see the kind of people who glamorized a very specific type of intelligence above all else. And it was a very elitist… I don’t even want to say academic. It was a very pseudo-academic kind of way. It’s the kind of…
Courtney: And as someone who spent a lot of time in, like, oddities communities — this is the one I’m going to pick on here for a second. Because there are some folks in that community who I love to death, who have been very, very good friends of mine and still are to this day. But there’s also been a large pocket of people that just like the collecting and the items on this pseudo-academic level, to the point where they also ignore any actual, like, human harm or social injustice. The kind of people who are like, “Yeah, I will keep an entire human skeleton in my house. And it is okay, it is ethical, because it was a teaching skeleton. This was in a doctor’s lab. This was in a hospital,” or “This was used to teach doctors in the Victorian era. Therefore, it is ethical to have these human remains.” And they don’t take that extra step to be like, “You know, some doctors actually just saved the body parts of poor patients, women who were patients of theirs, people of color. Some were just outright grave-robbed.” But they’ll use that sort of academic nature as a justification for such things.
Royce: Even though Victorian-era England isn’t particularly well-known for its ethics.
Courtney: No! Absolutely not. That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m saying. Like, people will consider it ethical if there’s an academic authority at one point. So when that group of people started sharing around the artwork of an alt chick licking a brain and being like, “This is totally me. This has always been me. I am only attracted to people who are very intelligent,” then I started — I did! — I looked at it and I was like, I feel bad, because I know this as a minority sexual orientation, but something about this whole everything feels wrong. But then, you know, most of those people never began to earnestly identify with it. Most of those folks only shared that one picture that one time, and made a big post and got lots of likes on it, and then went back to not actually identifying as a queer person.
Courtney: And so, yeah, there absolutely have been people who [laughing] will use this label in a suspicious way. And I do, in general, think the worship of intelligence and IQ and, specifically, a very specific type of intelligence — a very Western, Eurocentric type of intelligence — is something that we should all be questioning as just another societal norm. Why is this a thing that we value so much more heavily than other characteristics? So, I guess that’s as far into my sapio spiel as I want to go right now, so let’s find the next one.
Courtney: “Today I came out as Ace to my mom. Today I was in the car with my mom and I brought up an artist who is LGBTQ. Yesterday, I was talking about LGBTQ stuff too, so my mom jokingly said, ‘Are you giving me a sign here?’ And I responded with, ‘Maybe.’ My family is pretty okay with me, this kind of stuff, and my mom has made sure that I know that she will love me no matter what, so I knew that she wouldn’t be angry or anything. And she asked if I was interested in girls. I responded with something along the lines of, ‘Nope, definitely not.’ She then asked, ‘So you’re interested in both?’ I was kind of scared at first, but I blurted out, ‘I think I’m Ace.’ My mom was super nice about it and asked me a few questions about what being Asexual meant, but toward the end she said something along the lines of, ‘Just know that you shouldn’t be afraid to tell me if you like anyone.’ That end part kind of scared me, but I’m glad that I told her.”
Courtney: That one’s interesting because, yeah, the “Don’t be afraid to tell me if you like anyone” is maybe not the best response to that, but it’s certainly not the worst one. And there is actually a pretty strong precedence of parents who are not homophobic and would still be loving and accepting of their kid if they were gay, who are just completely unaware and uneducated about Asexuality or other lesser-discussed identities. And there is a learning curve. There really is. I know more than one Ace person who has come out to their otherwise queer-affirming parents only to get some very, you know, acephobic comments in response. And it’s not uncommon that I hear my Ace friends say, like, “Yeah, my parents would have understood better if I just told them I was gay. That, at least, they would have known what that meant.”
Royce: Yeah. I think I’ve tried to contextualize what I’ve noticed about sort of just the broad pattern or nature of bigotry before as: it’s kind of contingent on what a person’s view of humanity is. Like, a person has an idea of this is how people are, and some people have a much more narrow view of that than others, and really anything outside of that viewpoint is where they start having bigoted opinions. So, like, if you take your stereotypical religious conservative person who has a whole host of bigoted opinions, a lot of people would say, “Well, that person hates gay people.” It’s probably more accurate to say that that person hates people who aren’t straight.
Courtney: Yes.
Royce: Which includes a wide variety of people. And so, if a person is accepting and is aware of homosexuality and bisexuality and has come to, you know, accept those as what they would see as a normal part of the human experience, then they’re probably not going to have too many bad takes on that. But if they have never had Asexuality explained to them, then it’s going to be in that area outside of their purview, and there’s a higher likelihood that they’re going to have some bigoted opinions towards it.
Courtney: Oh, yeah. And that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be, like, so harmful that if your parent has never heard of Asexuality, that, like… There can be a safety issue. I know Aces who have been kicked out of their house. I know Aces who have been subject to violence from acephobic parents. So I don’t want to diminish that at all. But there are some parents who do genuinely just need a little time and education and will come around.
Royce: Yeah. It depends entirely on how willing they are to listen to and accept new information and change their worldview. And that’s not something you can always predict very well.
Courtney: Mhm. Yeah. Absolutely. And, I mean, I’ve shared this story in the past so I won’t rehash it too heavily, but, like, my family was very small. It was mostly my mom and my grandma growing up, and it was a queer-friendly family. Like, my grandmother, at one point — I don’t know if she meant this as a joke or if she thought it was real — but she was like, “Oh, yeah, I was friends with the first lesbian in South Dakota.” [laughs] Because she had a friend who was gay back long before it was normal to come out or know a gay person, and so, like, she had that lesson early on in life. And my mom had a gay roommate she lived with before she met my dad, called him her gay husband. So, like, I knew — as a kid, from a young age — that even though lots of society, like, lots of people are very homophobic — I was aware, I saw that, I heard the slurs, I knew that that was around, but it was just never a reality in my own family.
Courtney: That did not mean that it was super easy to come out as Asexual to them. Because that felt like and truly was an entirely different ballgame. And that’s why I was like, if I’m going to break this to my grandma, like, I am taking her out to margaritas, we’re going to get her tipsy first to explain this. [laughs] And I got the sense that if I was like, “Grandma, I’m gay,” she would have been like, “Awesome. Do you have a girlfriend? Let me meet her.” Like, I’m confident that’s what it would have been. And she basically all but told me that, too, because she was like, “Well, I at least understand if you’re gay, because then you’re still attracted to someone.” [laughs] And so like, yeah, it does take time, but she, she came around, and then she loved it, and then she told everyone, and then she decided that that was the key to [laughs] why our marriage was so good. Love her to death. Just because someone doesn’t get it at first doesn’t mean they won’t get there. So, a lesson in patience to us all.
Royce: Okay. This next post is titled, “My boyfriend of 11 years came out as Asexual, and I’m honestly so proud of him.”
Courtney: Aww!
Royce: “He, a 31-year-old man, and I, a 27-year-old woman, always had problems when it came to the sexual part of our relationship. We would fight or have talks constantly trying to figure out what was, quote, ‘wrong with him.’ It messed with my self-esteem for a really long time. Even family and friends told me to just leave because I would be miserable in the long run. But I stayed because, despite my high sex drive, I really love him, and he’s a great partner and provider, so walking away because of that just wasn’t something I wanted to do. So tonight, after doing some research, him and I sat down for a bit to talk. I suggested he might be Ace. He wasn’t so sure, since to him, it meant he wasn’t normal or something was wrong with him and I wouldn’t love him if he accepted he was Ace.” Which, I didn’t pick this one on purpose, but that goes back to my comment on how, statistically, for example, there are a lot more people who identify as women who listen to our podcast.
Courtney: Mhm.
Royce: Masculinity is kind of a problem right now.
Courtney: Well, masculinity isn’t a problem, but the patriarchy that tends to control it is the problem.
Royce: If you were to condense all the thing that compose the concept of masculinity in our society at this point in time —
Courtney: Yeah. [laughing]
Royce: There are some issues in it.
Courtney: Yeah. [laughing]
Royce: “But after I reassured him that I’d stay no matter what sexuality he was, he felt more comfortable with the idea and told me that he accepts that he’s Ace. Even now, I’m beaming with pride and joy for him, because we finally get to properly work together on strengthening our relationship and make sure both of us are comfortable in it. 11 years of not understanding, and now we have clarity. It’s amazing.”
Courtney: I love this. We don’t always see such supportive allo partners as this, and it’s a breath of fresh air every time we do.
Royce: Some of this read like some of the Dead Bedrooms or Am I The Asshole posts. Like, an alternate version of this post where they didn’t actually sit down and do the research and have the conversation could have ended up over there. Because they said they had a lot of arguing and fights for a long time. But they actually took the steps that we normally mention — of communicating and trying to work things out — on those other posts and came to a good conclusion.
Courtney: Yeah. It’s also so interesting, too, that OP here said that his response — the reason why he wasn’t so sure was because it meant he wasn’t normal. I personally don’t relate to that because I have, frankly, always been profoundly odd. [laughs] So I openly embraced “weirdo” as a young child. Before any of the labels or diagnoses or any words were put to the peculiarity, I have openly embraced being weird. But I am also fully aware that there are different types of people out there who fear not being normal.
Courtney: And so this is kind of interesting because we just read one that’s like, “You’re not Ace, you’re normal,” and this one’s like, “But if I’m Ace, I’m not normal!” And it’s like, you can be Ace and normal, and you can be Ace and absurdly weird! You can be Ace and not normal. But yeah, also very happy for them. Good for them.
Courtney: Okay, this one is entitled, “My friend told me she’s never had sex. She’s been married 15 years.” And there are a lot of edits, so we’re gonna see how this goes. “My friend, Billie, 35, female, mentioned to me the other day that she can’t have kids. I had sort of wondered if there were fertility issues, because they both love kids, but I know not to ask people without kids these questions because they are so invasive. I told her that I had issues with fertility before I had my kids, and if she wanted to talk I was there, but I understand if not. She said I wouldn’t understand, so I took that as she didn’t want to talk, and I started asking about her most recent rescue pup. A few minutes later, she abruptly said, ‘I haven’t told anyone other than my mom and sister, but husband and I can’t have sex. I’ve actually never had sex.’ I was shocked but tried to be supportive. I have heard of vaginismus. I couldn’t recall the word, but was familiar with the condition where women have tightness or contractions in their vagina, making penetration impossible. She explained to me that due to this, she’s never been able to use a tampon, and obviously intercourse is out of the question. She said her doctor suggested dilators and pelvic floor therapy, all of which she has no interest in trying. She further confided in me that she doesn’t participate in any sexual activities, such as digital or oral sex. She is completely content living her life without sex. I feel good for her that she is happy with this, and I truly hope her husband is too. I understand that just because sex is important to me, it’s not to everyone, but this rings of trauma and fear, less intentional abstinence.” So that’s before the edits. That’s another one where it’s like, that last line… [laughs]
Royce: Yeah —
Courtney: That last line…
Royce: Everything seemed fine up until that point. But we’ve seen that before: where people are just not accepting of the information they’re given, so they have to keep pushing or prying until they get an answer that makes sense to them.
Courtney: And the edits are just kind of like, “Oh, I didn’t actually share personal information,” or “I didn’t betray my friend’s trust,” “I changed names,” et cetera, et cetera, and said, “A lot of people are seeing judgment in my post when that was not my intention.” It’s that last sentence: “This rings of trauma and fear, less intentional abstinence.”
Royce: I did see… This is not in the main post but there is what looks to be a first-level comment — like, a comment reply to their own post that OP made, not a response to another person, where OP just says, “They could also just both be on the Asexual spectrum and this is a perfect situation for both of them. It’s just hard for me to grasp because sex is huge to me.” I wonder if that comment was made after they started getting a lot of feedback from people.
Courtney: Yeah. Well, because then in the comments, people start going into, like, “Oh, yeah, SSRIs kill your libido, and that’s a problem.” And I really… That discourse gets really, really muddy very fast. Because there are absolutely people out here that are trying to ban antidepressants because they think it causes Asexuality, and that’s a problem, because we need more babies and everyone needs to procreate. And that’s a thing we’ve been seeing for years already. I can only imagine it’s going to get worse and worse.
Courtney: But my thing is: you can say this isn’t judgmental, you can throw out the caveat, like, “No, maybe they are Ace, or maybe one or both of them is Ace, and maybe this is fine,” but, like, “Sex is so important to me…” Because it feels like you don’t fully trust that this is a totally happy situation, and you’re trying to get to the bottom of whether or not it is because you think there might be something to be fixed in there. Like, that’s what this reeks of, right? It’s like, “Well, maybe it’s just trauma. Maybe you should work on the trauma. Like, maybe you should work on the trauma. Maybe you should take your doctor’s advice and try these dilators and pelvic floor therapy. And, like, what if your husband isn’t happy with it?” Because that line of, like, “I truly hope her husband’s okay with this” was kind of like, “Well, what about him, though?”
Courtney: And then, to go into the comments and be talking about, like, “Oh, yeah, SSRIs are a problem, and different medications can affect your libido, and…” I don’t think it’s full, open, loving acceptance if you have tried to cure everything first, and your last possible line of defense is, like, “Well, we tried to cure it in every way possible and it didn’t. So I guess now I’ll just be okay with this state of affairs.”
Courtney: Some of the comments are really off-base. Because a lot of people are saying, like, “She seems fine. She seems happy. She seems content. You’re the one who seems to have a problem here.” So, like, those comments are fine. But there are some that’s like, “Either the husband is Asexual or is miserable.” That’s not a binary. That’s not a binary.
Courtney: And, like, the thing here, too… We have no actual indication that OP’s friend identifies as Asexual. We have no knowledge that she would identify as Asexual if she knew what that meant, or she would resonate with it. We don’t know. And I don’t think it matters. But this is kind of where the knee-jerk bigoted reaction to Asexuality often overlaps with ableism, right? So, vaginismus being a very real condition that can cause extreme pain, can, you know, be quite a disruptive illness… Because there are implications related to sex, there’s almost, like, an extra level of pity to it that people will have. Like, just because someone has vaginismus does not mean Like. Just because someone has vaginismus does not mean, “Oh, you poor, poor thing. You can’t have sex. However do you live?” Like, disabled people don’t want abled folks looking at them and being like, “I could never live if I was in your shoes.” Like, “I wouldn’t be happy if I couldn’t have sex.”
Courtney: And it’s kind of that, like, unsolicited advice, too, right? Like, don’t give a disabled person unsolicited advice, which — it sounds like you’re taking the first step to when you’re like, “I don’t know, this sounds like unresolved trauma.” It sounds like you’re trying to recommend some kind of therapy or something to fix that. That is bad whether or not we’re talking about someone with a disability or an illness or someone of a minority orientation. None of those things should be given unsolicited advice.
Courtney: And maybe I don’t fully understand how people use this forum, too, because this sounds like two different things where someone came to make a confession that is not actually their own. Like, what is your confession, OP? Your confession is, “My friend has been married for 15 years and has never had sex”? That is a choice.
Royce: I assume it’s the kind of thing where they kind of hit a boundary where they can’t discuss this in the way that they want to with their actual friends, so they need someone else to discuss it with, and the only way for them to do that is anonymously online.
Courtney: Is it because they know it would be very poor taste to say the things they’re thinking about?
Royce: Yeah.
Courtney: Is that why people do this? [laughs]
Royce: I’m almost positive, yeah.
Courtney: Is that the same reason other person was like, “You’re not Ace, you’re normal!” It’s because they know damn well they cannot say that to their friend’s face, but they just gotta let it out — which honestly sounds more like an Am I The Asshole than [laughing] an Off My Chest.
Royce: Well, I think we said during our last episode there was one post where there’s no way they would have posted it on Am I the Asshole? because they knew that they were the asshole during the post. Like, I think they even said it, so. Was that the sudden divorce papers one? That might have been it.
Courtney: Ohhh, yeah. That one was pretty bad. But people in the comments laid into OP, if I recall.
Royce: Okay, one last short one here before we end for today. “I almost had sex with someone to prove I was Ace. People kept saying that I wasn’t really Ace because I haven’t tried it out, or that I was just saying I was Ace because no one would want me. And then my friend started making jokes when they were dropping me home, and I almost did it with him. He said it was inevitable that we would. I feel so gross. I feel so broken. I almost did it. If I hadn’t gotten that message as an excuse to leave, I would have done it. I would have. Sorry, I just needed to get this off my chest.”
Courtney: Uh, dump that friend. That sounds like an unsafe person to have in your life. But I don’t know what age OP is here. But these are acephobic comments that people get, where they’re like, “Oh, how do you know your Ace if you haven’t tried it?” Or even, like, “Well, you haven’t tried it with me.” Like, that is a thing people say, and it is abusive. It can be coercive. I’m very, very happy that you did not do it, because that’s not the reason to have sex with someone. That’s a bad reason to have sex with someone. That sounds less than enthusiastically consensual.
Courtney: So, that is going to bring us to our featured MarketplACE vendor of the week. Today we are giving a big shout out to Xikeb, X-I-K-E-B, where you can find crochet goods and patterns designed and made by an AroAce fiber artist.
Courtney: And true fact, I have been learning how to crochet over the last, like, I don’t know, year and a half or so. I learned how to do some basic crochet stitches when I was a kid — like, young kid. My mom taught me some stitches, but I never learned how to actually make anything with it. So I could just, like, make my chains and then undo it and redo it. So, little under a couple years ago, I was like, “Hey, I should actually put those stitches I still remember to use and figure out how to do something with them.” And I started buying these little, like, beginner crochet kits that have the pattern and the yarn and the crochet hook.
Courtney: And so it was very fun, after I got the gist of making a variety of little amigurumi things, that I found this shop in the MarketplACE, because this was actually my very first pattern that I purchased to make all on my own. So this was my first crochet pattern, and then going to the craft store to pick up the yarn for it, and then seeing if I could do it all on my own, and I did. It was great. It was a biblically accurate angel. [laughs] So, you can also get this pattern if you would like to join me in having a biblically accurate crocheted angel. The pattern for such a thing is technically free, but it would be wonderful to throw in a tip to the artist. There are a variety of other things. You can either outright buy some finished crochet products or patterns, and there are even some wearables. There’s, like, a trans flag cardigan. There’s some really fun hats — a jester hat, a goat hat. Very fun. I love this shop. I had fun making my little angel.
Courtney: So, links, as always, are going to be in the show notes, on our website, and in the description on YouTube. That is all we have for today, and we will talk to you all next time.