Asexuality and Aromanticism

How Did I find Out I Was Aeroace

So, as a child I didn't really know much about sex, like most kids. Although, I also was never curious about where I came from or how my baby brother ended up in my mother's stomach, I just accepted that he was there. So when a friend of mine told me about sex when I was 9 I was a little shocked that anyone would ever want to do that.

When I was 13 or 14 I became a little more curios, my mom had already said that she would not teach me about sex until I had my first crush, which I never had. So I decided to teach myself. I found a channel on YouTube (Hannah Witton) and binge watched her videos, I'm actually fascinated with the science behind sex.

After that I realized that all of my friends had crushes I felt weird about it, so I started faking having a crush on the YouTuber Markiplier. I couldn't exactly fake crushing on a celebrity because I didn't follow any popular ones that I thought were good looking.

By this time I was already thinking I was either gay or bisexual I knew I wasn't straight, I've never really though that most men were attractive, only a select few. But being gay or bi just didn't feel right so I went back and forth between the two for a long time.

I started reading fanfiction when I was about 16 and I usually avoided or skipped over the smut because I thought it was sooooooooo boring. I did read through it a few times when I first started reading fanfics, but I just got tired of it.

I came across the term asexuality when I realized that there are more sexuality's other then gay straight and bi and was curious what the others were, but I kinda ignored it at the time, thinking that my mom was right, I was just "a late bloomer".

Then one day I was scrolling through YouTube, my feed full of different things to do with the LGBT+ community and there was a video titled "5 Asexuals Explain What "Asexual" Means To Them" I was curious, so I clicked on it and I related to some of these people so much that right then and there I decided I was asexual.

Now, figuring out I was aromantic is a little bit of a different story...

I've always loved romance, I never would admit it to myself until I discovered what shipping was and that I love fanfics shipping characters together and I still won't admit it to most people irl. That was what stopped me from realizing I was part of the aromantic spectrum for a long time.

I came across aromanticism before I even came across asexuality, but I didn't think I could possibly be a part of that. Then I had my first boyfriend when I was 17. At least if you count a guy a little younger then me that lives half way across the country that I met on Reddit that I kept a secret from my parents a boyfriend, which I did at the time. Anyway, by the time I met him I already knew I was asexual, but I was just confused about my romantic orientation.

You see, there are different romantic orientations:

Hetromantic: Romantic attractions to your opposite gender.

Homoromantic: Romantic attraction to your same gender.

Biromantic: Romantic attraction to both men and women

Panromantic: Romantic attraction to all genders

Polyromantic: Romantic attraction to more then one gender but not all genders.

Aromantic: I've already explained this one.

Now back to the story.

So, a few months after we started talking he said he had a crush on me and I was so flustered that I said I liked him back and honestly I'm still a little confused because I think I might have actually been in love with him for that first few weeks, even if I'd literally never felt anything to him before that. I started doing research on aromanticism after that because I realized that I'd never felt anything before he admitted to liking me and that's when I came across Recipromantic. Someone that is recipromantic doesn't experience romantic attraction unless someone else expresses it to them.

I thought that might be me, but after we'd been in this relationship for a while I started to not really feel anything towards him anymore and realized that I felt trapped, but I didn't want to tell him this because he had a history of being suicidal and I didn't want to cause him any pain at all and end up pushing him over the edge. Then one day he told me that he wasn't in a good mental place for a relationship and I felt immediate relief and I told him that that was fine and that I wasn't in a good place for a relationship either, but we remained friends and still talk to each other sometimes even to this day.

After that I started reading more into aromanticim and came across Aegoromantic. Someone that is aegoromantic may still enjoy romance in movies, tv show and books, they may still enjoy shipping characters together and may even have romantic fantasies but only be a "disembodied spectator" but they do not experience romantic attraction and have no desire to be in a romantic relationship. And all of that fit me perfectly. And I felt amazing after that.