This question is mostly for people who have had serious heterosexual relationships before coming to terms with themselves in a different identity. Did you fall in love with an opposite-sex partner? Did you enjoy having sex with them? Does having a past with opposite-sex partners affect the way you think about your sexuality now? I'm curious because this is something I'm thinking through now. So I'll tell this long thing about my experiences, but I really want to hear some second opinions and how others approach these kinds of questions. I've had two boyfriends in my life. The first is easier to understand, I was starting college, had literally never dated anyone before, so we got together, I wasn't attracted to him at all, and it would have been better if we could have only been friends. But I had no experience dating, so I can't hold it against myself for letting it happen and see where it goes. But the second, I am having more difficulty coming to terms with. I almost married him, and every time I remember that I am endlessly grateful that I didn't. I was really crushing on him when he made his move. I never had any sexual fantasies or feelings towards him until he brought it up, but I would keep looking forward to the weekends when our group of friends would watch movies together, for the chance to be close to him. I agreed to have sex with him, knowing that that could be all he wanted and then he'd leave or something, but it would be alright because I could be close to him. If I look back there are all kinds of warning signs that I overlooked because I was so infatuated by his presence and his personality. That I didn't have any fantasies until he suggested it, that I found him a lot less attractive with his clothes off, all these things that I could just put out of my mind. But at the end of the day, for about a year and a half out of the three I was with him, I was pretty happy, and in love, and really, really surprised by it. It's one thing for me to think of the physical side of things—at the time, it felt like a time of sexual discovery, but I can look back and see what happened on that end as "just" physical stimulation. But why was I that infatuated to begin with? Why was I that ready to jump in and stay with him for three years? I know there were other, practical factors to it, but it's not all. And I know that socialization shapes the way we approach our relationships, especially when we're young and don't even think of all the options there are to explore. All through high school I wondered if I might be asexual, but I also knew I was afraid and repressed, and it was easy to figure that there was just no one in particular for me in my small town school. As a woman it's easy to overlook some of those clues. There's this pervasive attitude that women are less sexual than men. Women have emotional needs and men have sexual needs, and on the flip side, women don't have sexual needs and men don't have emotional needs. It's as though women are demisexual by default. So if I don't crush on anybody at all through high school, I don't see it as a problem, because I didn't have this pressure to think that sex was something I should desire. This is a big tangled mess of questions. About a year ago, when I first thought I might want to be with a woman, I negotiated this by saying I was probably bisexual, since I am attracted to women but previously enjoyed having sex with men. But now, it's different. If I say how I feel right now, I waver between usually asexual and occasionally sexually interested in women. I had a one-night stand with a woman almost a year ago, and it was fantastic, but since then I have not had any relationships, dated or seen anyone. Partly that's because of a lack of opportunity. But I find it difficult to settle and identify myself, I can't find resolution. So how do you come to understand your identity knowing that you'll never earn your gold star status?
I think in the end it is really hard to understand. Sometimes you have to just accept that you won't completely understand it and move on. It's cliche but the past is the past. The asexual part you are dealing with I have no experience with and don't feel I am wise enough to answer but regardless you should just look at your past relationships as part of who you are, you needed to find yourself and dating the guys helped you do that. It also sounds like you are struggling with a label a little bit? As many would say on here, don't worry about labels Let me know if you would like to talk more
I write about it, I actually just wrote a song that talks about having to convince myself to like people in the past which is what I did. I would think Abbott girls and think, huh, she might be a good girlfriend, and she is pretty, I guess I could try to date her, even though the spark isn't really there, over and over again, time after time.
I'm definitely having some labeling anxiety. I wonder how I can tell my friends and people I work with if I can't even figure out a label, and know I'm being honest with myself? I also know that I have a problem acknowledging my own feelings, especially about situations that make me unhappy or uncomfortable. I'll tell myself it could be worse, and put up with it until the situation goes away. So I tend not to see things that should be obvious to me until months or years later. I worry that if I label myself one way, and that is contradicted by what people know about my past relationships, they're going to question me on it, and I wonder how I can be sure that I know what I want when I've been on such a dry spell for so long.
