There is something I have started to come to terms with about myself. It is something I have been talking to my therapist about, and something I think I should write about here. There is a lot of confusion about sexuality from the cis world generated by us LGBTQ. We like to talk about a sexual spectrum, and a gender one for that matter. Many of us find it hard to define one simple place we fit in, be it homosexual or heterosexual or somewhere in between.
This realization of mine that I have recently had came from a simple question a co-worker asked me one day. He is one of the few that have been told about me because he is a manager, so I guess he has some questions and decided to ask this one rather randomly one day. He asked me if I was in to girls or guys. I told him I am Bi-sexual, which is the answer I have been giving everyone and what I have been telling myself. He even asked if I had a favorite that I like to be with, and I told him no, I like both. I am starting to see that this isn't true.
What I'm starting to see is I fall somewhere in the realm of 'asexual'. That is, I have no sexual attraction or desire to either sex or gender. It has been difficult for me to absorb. I always thought I was some sort of sexual, homo, hetero, bi, something. I still masturbate, though not very often. While I do I don't fantasize about being with anyone and in fact to do so turns me off. I can actually see now, looking back with these pair of eyes, how a fair bit of my actions and desires in the past have hinted toward this and being sexual as I was was just part of the masquerade.
There is a great deal of confusion involved because there are a great deal of things that seem to suggest otherwise, like my post about wanting to go on a date with a man. I am starting to see those things for what they are. I don't want the sexual part of being with a man, I want what a man represents, that I am a woman. I want to be made to feel like a woman like only (I guess in my mind) a man can. I also, obviously, see women as attractive but I'm starting to see that for the envy it is. I rarely look at a woman now and think "She is sexy, I would like to sleep with her." What I'm thinking is "She is sexy, I wish I looked like her."
This slow to start understanding that I am asexual or some form of it just as slowly started to make me see how much I have been doing for others. It also makes me feel even more separate from everyone else, but at the same time makes me feel the same sort of calm that all of the rest of the self-understanding has done. As I started to really feel this decision it started to let go some of the pressure I felt. I see this part of me, or at least what I want now in my life and it gives me more freedom in my new life. I don't need to choose who I want to have sex with. I don't need to decide who I am attracted to. I thought my inability to decide meant I was bi-sexual. Apparently it means the opposite. Deciding to 'choose' neither has been the only thing that makes sense, the only thing that alleviates stress, it makes it go away in fact. I just need to come to terms with feeling ok with being asexual.
I live in a world that the people you talk and interact with in certain ways means, to this world, that you want to be sexual with them. My personal world is one that these things are being friendly, or funny. I would rather not feel the pressure of being labelled as bi-sexual, or straight, or whichever. I would rather just be allowed to interact with people without them wondering if I'm trying to get in their pants or inviting them into mine. Maybe someday someone will be able to make me comfortable, or desired, or whatever enough for me to be sexual with them, but I have no desire to care about it. I have yet to see or speak with someone that gives me even the slightest inkling of that feeling now that I have started to be honest with my feelings.
As for how much I have been doing for others, it borders on anger what I have given away to people. I would cross that border with these realizations if it didn't also come with such calm. I have given my identity, my gender, even my sexuality away for other people just to make them happy or to fit some sort of stereotype I felt forced to be part of. I have seen the other two, the gender and identity, obviously my gender, and how I have given those away for a while now, many years in fact. This, however. This makes all of those things fall into place and makes me, as I said, close to furious about what I have done. How could I be so blind to myself, or willing to give myself away, that I didn't even realize that this is one of those answers that make sense? It makes sense now how every relationship has always slipped into having little or no sexual contact. How I have never been sexually active with someone outside of a relationship, or if it was someone outside of my relationship it was a result, with encouragement, of a relationship I was in at the time.
Who would have thought that defining my non-sexuality would give me so much peace? I have always felt like I was like no one else and it has depressed me. The irony now is I keep finding things about myself that are true to myself that separates me from the majority of the world but the truth of it brings happy tears to my eyes.
It does bring its amount of sadness though. For one, who really wants to be in a relationship with someone that isn't interested in having sex with them? Most of the relationships you hear that are like tend to be because of one partner or both being sexually hurt somehow in the past. Besides that, I don't know how to be in a relationship like that, or how to start one.
What does counter the sadness is being honest with myself, and therefore others around me, and that I don't want a relationship right now. I am too busy, too selfish, too caught up in learning who I am to get another person involved. I have been 'trying it out' so to speak the last week or so. I think nothing now about if I would be interested in having sex with someone, or if they are thinking the same thing. I flirt with both genders because I mean nothing by it, my flirtations just about always coming from a place of humor.
No offense to the rest of you out there, but sexual attraction and desire feels as primitive as it does primal to me. It was something that used to control my life, and I hated it, I really always did. I used to hate how much sex was on my mind before, and it was one of the things I would hope would go away if (at the time) I ever transitioned. Here I am transitioning and not only has the constant thoughts of sex gone away, I have come to realize I have no interest in it what-so-ever.
I still want to look attractive. I have no desire or plans to 'let myself go' because I'm off the list now, so to speak. I still wear make-up and intend to keep doing so. I still want to dress well, smell nice, have beautiful skin, all of these things. But none of them are done to lead to having sex with someone. They are done to express myself. This is how I want people to see me, as a woman.
So all of you people out there that are trying to find yourself and where your sexuality lands. You may be homosexual, you may be heterosexual, you may be bi-sexual. But don't feel the pressure to choose either of them, choose what feels right to your, what makes your world click. And if none of those choices makes you feel that way, then maybe your choice is none of the above.
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