I Am Curious...are There Others?

[Riverspell]

I've been having a truly lovely (no sarcasm here) conversation with a fellow member. After a rather long reply I wrote, I got to thinking. Is there anyone else out there like me that does not and will not love nor seek it out or accept it? I don't try to fool myself into believing that I am alone in this. Frankly, if I am alone in this and how else I view emotion I may just get a bit worried.

Let me explain a bit and I beg forgiveness if this is too far worded.

It started because of a conversation with my middle sister that was rather upsetting and worrying in the way she regarded me, my status and the way I treat emotion and emotional matters.

Over the last few months I have begun to see myself as asexual, she even said she believed I was, as I have absolutely no interest in a relationship whether it be involved or casual nor the physical acts that seem to come with it and be required. There's nothing for me in it, it appears to me as something utterly boring and unimportant and most of all not needed. So why subject myself to it? Subject another to the experience of my utter disinterest and lack of love toward them?

She told me that she considers me abnormal. When I pointed out calling me abnormal for choosing to be asexual is like calling gay people (she avidly supports them, also note that I have no problem with anyone's sexuality. Whatever floats your boat, go with it.) abnormal she became offended and attempted to clarify in her utterly brutal and tactless way. I am abnormal to her because I do not and will not love. I do not seek it out nor appear to accept it. And apparently that is not normal. According to her, people are meant to love and be loved and that you can't really be human without that. It's not normal to not have relationships, true ones anyway.

While momentarily offended I realized that while I was offended over the fact that she believes that while we have a relationship of sorts I do in fact not love her when in fact I do. But not in the traditional sense. I don't know the feeling of love everyone talks about. I don't know what it is to feel love. To accept and share it with others. What I project and share as my form of love is merely action and reaction. I show my love through what I do and say and in no other sense. There's nothing that I feel associated with that. As I attempted to describe to our fellow member, while I am quite willing to wade through hell or kill myself for her or the rest of my family in my own act and form of love, there's really no emotion associated with it.

Is this wrong and abnormal of me?

To clarify all this I will attempt to explain a few things.

I am strongly empathic. People are to me a body of emotion, sensation and thought. While there is a pulsing heart there and blood and guts and such, it is merely a vessel for our minds. Without our bodies we could not explore the world or hope to understand it. A lack of a body would not allow us to interact with other humans. And in order to interact, we use and express emotions.

Being empathic means that I am able to read these emotions in another person. Whether or not they voice the emotion or signal it through body motions and voice inflection. My family will eagerly tell you that I am a very emotional and sensitive person. This is because of a variety of reasons. The biggest being that I suppressed my emotions so long that they up and rebelled and now I struggle to crush them down. My usual tactic now is to ignore and forget that I have emotions (It doesn't always work). They will plainly show in my body and voice whether I like it or not or even realize it. On top of that, I literally feel everyone elses emotions and reflect them back. Though I have learned to deal with it and in fact block most reception, I cannot always do this. Especially in large crowds or groups of people. Because of this, I have developed severe social anxiety (though my raising did in no way help this) and it is worsened because I lack proper social conventions.

I was not taught how to interact with people and it became imperative that I did not interact with people unless necessary in order to survive. To love someone, to trust them enough to love them and receive their love, is incredibly dangerous and leaves you open to dangerous situations and overwhelming pain. From a young age I learned that it is not safe to love, it is not safe to trust or depend on others. I learned how to survive and live without dependence on another human being, without the contact and emotion so many people seem to need and thrive on.

This leads to why I hate physical contact. Usually I tell people it is because of my past abuse, namely sexual, but that's only part of it. Physical contact acts as an amplifier to my empathy, it literally blows apart my shields and overwhelms my senses. The persons emotional range is vividly thrust on me (there's been rare occasions when an emotion has been so prevalent in them I can glimpse the past memory that triggered the overwhelming response, this of course happened once at a funeral and another time when a friend of mine lost her mother). It worsens the longer we are in contact and often strengthens my empathic tie with the individual resulting in me sensing them more readily for a period afterward. Usually my own emotions are so heightened at this point with theirs that I can't cope with it and struggle to maintain the connection.

So is it really such a good idea to engage in the physical contact so necessary for any strong or romantic relationship? I have no want, no need for that contact and in fact loathe it. To this my family really cannot understand because when I am under severe duress, when I am upset and overly emotional or depressed, I seek out contact like a starving man. However this contact is rarely looked for outside my parents and occasionally my fathers parents. There is a reason for that need and who I seek out. I seek this contact at those times because I can no longer process or cope with my own emotional range and the physical pressure and touch allows me to reach out and ground myself in those few trusted individuals own emotions. Because I am upset, they react in an automatic parental instinct that projects emotions that read as nothing more than safety to my overwhelmed mind and in that I can find brief security in their touch.

No one can understand the stiffness in my body and the sense of revulsion when they attempt contact. When they try to hug me, to hold my hand, maybe a chaste kiss on the forehead or cheek. They can't and won't understand that it causes me physical and emotional pain and turmoil. I hate expressing emotion, I always have. However I can't not feel. No matter how I attempt to suppress and forget that I have emotions. Because it gives those around you a profound advantage against you. In the last few years I have been slowly lowering my shields and allowing others to grow closer to me. This went against my own rigid structures and beliefs on the matter and was only done for those around me. To contain and no longer perpetuate the pain I cause because of those beliefs. But with my fathers backward slide and the recent turmoil in my family I have begun to regress. To slip back into my original mold and shield to once again protect myself.

So no, I do not love people and I do not trust them. At least not in the sense that everyone else does and expects. My love is shown through my actions and reactions. I may not feel whatever the emotion of love is, but I will show you my form of love and attachment through what I do for you. I will do anything for most of my family, wade through hell itself for my baby sister or jump a cliff if it meant saving my middle sister maybe even kill myself for all my family combined, but no I will never truly feel love for them. However I do tell them that I love them, even if it is hard to form the words because I know they cannot understand my actions are the only way I can express love. And no, it doesn't pain or trouble me to admit this. It just is.

I have decided that I am most likely asexual. There is no interest in me for a relationship, no interest in procreating or having to deal with a child. What child would want a mother that cannot and will not love? What husband would want that either? This is not a mere dismissal, there has been a few attempts out of the pressure of social and family conventions to engage in a relationship. It never worked out. I could not feel the same thing the other person did. In fact, I only felt revulsion and distaste and fear. There was never any pain or sympathy in me when I cut those relationships off. Of course there was minor sorrow for the others brief moment of pain, perhaps even born because I felt that pain, but nothing more. They would move on, I knew they would, so I did not bother with concern.

My life is fine as it is. There is no longing or a feeling of incompleteness, no urge to seek out a would be mate. Though in most things I am not, I am content in this. I am the way I am and though it may bother me that my family cannot understand this, I know there is no real point in worrying over it. They probably will never understand it and so I must move on. Life, as ever, is ever moving and I will not stop over this point to mull it over any longer.

Instead, I will continue working on my social anxiety and dislike. Continue in my attempts to learn how to interact safely when it is necessary to interact and outside of that rejoice in my isolation. As I said in the beginning, people are fake. They smile through their teeth at you and rarely mean what they say. When you are in tune with their emotions and body signals you don't need to speak with them to know how there day was or how they are or even what is going on with their lives. You can see it. So there's no point extending the hand of interaction only to have them drop hints and lie to you. Your conclusions may not always be right, but they will rarely be drawn far from the mark. So why concern yourself with stupidity?

Now, none of you get offended. Most but not all people fill this mold. I in fact quite like those of you I've met. Perhaps it is because we are in a way kindred spirits. Either way, those I've met I enjoy talking to. It is easier to converse online, where I am not subjected to others emotions beyond those gleaned in words and do not have to worry about physical injury.

Are any of the rest of you like this? Do you reject emotion and relationships for the sake of safety and sanity? Are there other reasons perhaps?

Am I alone in this after all?

[Threemoons]

Hello River. I've read all your post and I can't find anything wrong with you, in fact your reactions are very logical from what you have experienced in life. So no, you're not abnormal. It's what happened to you that is abnormal.

I'm an asexual too. I didn't choose it, it just is. Doesn't mean we can't love though, only that our means to show this emotion are particular. We can love. It's not the love as you'd find it in couples of lovers but it's not to be disminished either. Our concept of love may be different but we are full of it. While suppressing the sexual part of love, we can love a much larger amount of people and I see this as the gift of asexuality. A purer love to be offered to a lot of people.

I'm also very sensitive to the others' emotions. I have a shell to protect me too. But be aware that this sort of shell can become a prison if we don't care about it. In order to stay human, we have to accept to leave our shell on some chosen occasion. By doing so we take the risk to be hurt but it's the price of our humanity.

[Riverspell]

Wise words Threemoons. =)

I was thinking harder about this last night while I was attempting to sleep.

You're right about the fact that we can in fact love. That was something that weighed heavy on me. Like I tried to explain, I don't feel love and instead show love through actions. There's no feeling associated with it. But when I thought about it, how do I know there is no emotion of love behind it? If I can't recognize feelings of love how do I know they aren't there when I do those things? Y'know?

Over the last couple years I have tried to creep out of my shell. More often than not I discover I was very right to hide behind it. So it is harder and harder for me each time to crawl out again. I suppose you can say that I'm afraid, probably terrified. I've only know my attempts to love or relate to be thrown back into my face. A good portion of my family thinks expressing emotion is disgusting. The rest of them believe you have to express them to live. Trying to account for and behave right for each group is rather taxing. So I would just rather not bother and inevitably only end up pleasing one group and pissing off the other.

I just, well, I just don't like emotions. I don't like feeling them or expressing them. It's always dangerous. When I started harming myself a good portion of my disgust and self loathing and anger was because I was allowing emotion to control and dictate my actions. And that was wrong. At least to me it was.

Sometimes I wonder if I even want to be human. And those thoughts usually lead me to the conclusion and belief that I can't not be human and from there it can turn to an impulse and craving for self harm and when at my darkest, even suicide. I honestly do at times hate being human and have often considered vanishing to some place in the middle of nowhere and never having to deal with people again. A good portion of me believes that I would have no problem with that degree of isolation as I rejoice in it on a daily basis, but there's a small part of me that is very afraid that I would lose myself in my self exile. So would it even be worth it?

[morethanme]

Sex and love are 2 diff things so of course you can love..

[Lily-Bee]

I think you do love and you do have emotions associated with your actions and love for others but like you say you block them as you consider them dangerous.

I think you are in fact highly sensitive, highly emotional therefor too and you struggle with that as that's really hard. Your way of dealing is to ignore, block out whatever you want to call it your feelings and emotions.

Are you truly asexual as in you do not desire romantic relationships etc or is it you fear them and so therefor don't want them, those two are two different things.

It sounds like you have been in survival mode(cutting off all feelings) for so long you now believe partly that you really don't have them.

[Threemoons]

Are you truly asexual as in you do not desire romantic relationships etc or is it you fear them and so therefor don't want them, those two are two different things.

In fact, asexual people can desire romantic relationships. It's just the sexual part we don't want cause we don't feel the need. But your question is interesting as I fear sex and don't feel the need all together.

[Lily-Bee]

I do know the definition or much else either about asexuality and I hope its clear I have no judgement about it.

I just wonder in this instance whats what? If its fear is it then really asexuality as I thought asexuality was not a choice just like homosexuality?

[Threemoons]

Yes, asexuality is no more a choice than homosexuality. But your question is very valid, sometimes I wonder myself. Thank you for sharing your interrogations, it's appreciated.

[I_Love_Cheeses]

Riverspell, I totally relate to what you described, and to your experience. I wish this message box were big enough to say all that went through my heart and mind when I read your post, and even the edited version won't really say what I mean. However, I've spent all my life this way, like you - the only difference is that because of convention I did have relationships, and TRIED to make them work. I'm not asexual (and probably neither are you) but the bonding, intimacy, fear, vulnerability, memories and everything associated with that activity is just too much even to begin to open that door, so you decided to shut it.

And you're right to say - you DO want and experience love! Everyone does, but in some of us that need and longing as a baby and child is not properly responded to (or conditions are attached to that feeling - like keeping quiet, being "good", not being naughty, fitting in with what that rest of the family expect, doing chores, earning respect - whatever). As you are a sensitive, emotive and empathic person that makes it doubly difficult, because in many families that is a threat (parents don't want THEIR inner weaknesses and needs found out by their children) so driving all that underground is the ONLY choice!

And the substitute becomes (grudgingly) doing "what is expected" of you to gain at least a little approval, or to avoid the deep pain of rejection and humiliation and shame of "being who I am". Only you can translate that into what happened in YOUR childhood, but I know it happened in mine.

I ended up what they label "schozoid" from the earliest years of my life, unwilling to relate to people, afraid of the world and people, agoraphobic and "a loner". I wasn't offered unconditional love, and the physicality was mostly abusive, so at some point I concluded that I was "weird" and "unloveable" and "sod them all". I wasn't prepared to CONFORM and lose my sense of self in the process - that price was too high to pay - so my only recourse was to shut out the possibility of the love I desperately needed and survive by myself, unaided.

BUT ( and here is the biggest but in the Universe) that longing and need didn't go away! Yes, it was successfully hidden in a secret inner compartment, but my sanity depended on that compartment being watertight, and it wasn't. At times "something" would trigger the intense (I really mean INTENSE) need, so scary, so unnatural.... it took me so many years to find out what triggered it: the same scenario as I encountered at home as a baby, toddler and youngster!!

In other words, I was indifferent to most "normal" (whatever that is) people and shunned most reciprocal relationships and contacts, but whenever somebody was unavailable, elusive, tantalising, and at the same time vulnerable or needy I suddenly felt the intensity of trying to FIX them and myself along with them. I could TRAIN then to love me, and thereby achieve the unachievable. I could finally be loved for mySELF and not for what I could say, do or become!

So the paradox becomes... genuine love and sex is dull, boring, doesn't do anything for me, "take it or leave it" I don't care BUT "abusive", unavailable, dangerous, love and sex feels "like the real thing" and triggers the response that I call LOVE.

Unfortunately, the second kind of love just reproduces the rejection I felt as a child, so it's an unsolveable problem!!! (Thus, it's much better just to switch off the electricity that drives the trigger and the memories and the need, and settle for boring).

I don't know if anything of this rings a bell. I'm not offering an answer, just suggesting that underneath your lack of feeling is too much feeling, in reality.

[moonbeam beth]

Hello Riverspell,

between the Name conversation that you started having, and reading this post today...

I have quite fallen in love with you, and I am asexual at this time of life...so please don't get creeped out by my expression!

Your post, others responding, has given me, an odd, sense of hope, that I did not have this morning...

If others are in this experience, then maybe, just maybe, it is possible, to develop an intimacy, that has nothing to do with, all of the conventions and pressures, that 'mainstream' society place on me...

I swirl around, with all the thoughts and feelings expressed by you, and those replying to you...

I have come a very long journey, with these themes and experiences...

Whilst I realise that not all people process, more than one person inside themselves, and I am not, err, so common, in this way, knowing that you and others, can, really, feel, and know, what I go through..like I said, today, an odd sort of hope is born...

I do not seek out, will not accept in, romantic or intimate, relationships...since beth, left her partner, years back...I have no feeling for him, no desire for him, I am only upset, that he is upset, and wanted his Beth to return to him, I am not Beth...

He loved Beth (moon and Charlie), very much, but, me, writing to you now, feel, as you have described,

all my world put me under considerable pressure, to 'stay with' him..."how will you ever find a man that accepts your multiples!"...

I am offended, what if I want a woman, what if I want, no-one, what if I want to marry a parrot!!

I just do not need, the man for the sake of him, the relationship, for the fear of being alone, I do not care that I am alone, do not feel that I must pair-bond for my legitimacy, as woman of worth, in the world!

I honestly explore inside...my lack of desire to procreate, and whether or not, the sex, is just the drive, that pushes, us forward to touch sexually...

I explore, the extreme abuse, and whether or not, I have been trumatised to being this way, or whether people like myself, have no sexual desire, because we do not want procreation...

I, not beth, have never been in a relationship, I am told this is, 'a shame', result of trauma, and that as I progress, this will change...did not have positive responses to these views until, well, today!

The person writing to you now, is only sure of one thing...the confusion!

Well wishes, as always, moonbeambethxxx

[SusieQ]

Riverspell, I understand, at least in part. I am not asexual (my sexuality is very changeable), but I also do not feel love. I actually believe that love is nothing more than a strong feeling toward another person and is not very important in life. I think, like me, you have put a lot of thought into this, and come to the conclusion that love don't mean a thing. Most people are not as deep as you and use the 'L' word quite liberally.

When my boyfriend says he loves me, it is just an expression of his heightened sexual desire. I don't really feel better when he says it, in fact I don't like him saying it because it implies that we have something special and important, which is just not true. I am completely indifferent to my sexual relationship at the moment. I really don't get the whole deal with the 'L' word. I don't know if these are 'issues' or if I'm just different to most people.

[Riverspell]

Hey guys, just read through all your replies again and though the topic is like aged cheese, I'm working on a reply. So sorry for my horrible lack of reply!

[Riverspell]

So first of all I would like to apologize for my lack of replies despite the fact that I really did want input and thank you all for your time. Life just made an abrupt corkscrew and I kinda dropped off radar. Still not exactly here but felt I needed to reply to some things.

I've tried to answer everyone's questions here, even if I didn't pick or point out exact names. So reading through you should find any answer you wanted.

The biggest thing I'm seeing here is people asking me if I'm choosing to be asexual, which is not really a choice in most opinions (similar to homosexuality). Next in connection is if I was making the choice because of past trauma. And honestly, after thinking about it, I believe I am asexual and it's not my confused and scared attempts to place a warning label. Allow me to explain.

Yes, I will admit that there is fear derived from past experience. I've always been mistrustful of men, more so than my distrust for people in general. And it was worsened after several encounters of a sexual nature. Specifically the abuse I went through at 11 years old. It has always lingered and I suspect it always will. However I am not nearly as prone to panicking or reacting in a poor way to men or their touch in general as I used to be. Should I feel that their intentions are less than honorable then yes, I become very fearful and often very hostile.

However, I have never felt the need or want to seek out a relationship. Not even those brief crushes children and teens are so prone to. My mother can even recount my seemingly natural aversion to such things and how, though I wore dresses and such as a young child because it was what adults choose, when I could choose my own clothes they were often conservative and fully covering. I still dress this way and my family would like to forget that this has always been true and blame it on fear. This is not exactly evidence but I thought I would mention it.

Though I'm sure my raising influenced any feelings or abilities to develop relationships, I am simply not interested or desiring in any intimate relations. No matter the sex and completely dismissing past experience. I do truly believe that I am asexual. This has been a steady realization since I entered middleschool at 11 years and I suspect it always would have been even lacking the sexual abuse. At 16, when I felt that my family might accept such things, I announced that I was not interested in dating, marriage or children. This of course was not met well and though I've never wavered from it, they would like to believe it is a phase.

My mother is supportive in her own way, though she advised me to go with tube tying if anything instead of a full removal. Yes, I want to be...we'll go with sterelised. There is no need for me to keep bits that aren't going to be used and only ever cause me very real pain. My cycles are agony and because of this I may already be infertile. This was decided at 15 years, before even the announcement to my family. Of course my father forbade it the one time I tried discussing it with him and my step mom thought me crazy.

I do not have an issue with my identity. I'm female and have always believed this and known this. However I do not wish to develop an intimate and sexual relationship nor do I desire to reproduce. In an effort to placate my family I informed them that if I did marry (and it'd have to be forced) my tubes would be tied and the man would have to deal with it.

Asexuality was never the label in my head, I've only just discovered this term in the last year and a half and began researching it. I believe it fits my feelings and the way I simply am. Like some asexuals I do occasionally have desires, I suppose in a crude way people call this being horny. It is very very rare and I am fine solving it myself. Why do I need to subject myself to another's company when it only makes me feel shamed and sick? Yes, being in any situation like that makes me feel shamed and sick. And again, it is not solely because of past trauma.

Would it make sense to any of you that I would like a person to look at me and see a person? See me as female but not female?

No, I suppose not as it is hard for me to even explain.

You are all right in that I do in fact feel and that I have feelings. But that past experience and trauma has taught me to repress them. And now when I look back at this I can see that my sense of being asexual is completely different from my emotions. Does that make sense?

In the last couple of months I have seen a growth in me. I am learning to accept and return others feelings. As in the sense of sharing laughter or happiness and on occasions love as much as I can share in their pain and sadness. Living with my mom is allowing me to open up and explore things I was only ever terrified of. I am not constantly waiting to be berated or yelled at. If something is said or done wrong we discuss it here. We do not scream and shout and swear. And this is allowing me to grow and learn what it is to feel.

This is in some ways a bad thing as I am easily overwhelmed. Like I stated before, my empathy is an amplifier to everything I feel. While in the past I often sought out contact, for that projection of safety while I was upset, I have been seeking solitude instead. This new openess to emotions leaves me no safe harbor and I fight back that urge to begin repressing everything over again. Because I fear now I wouldn't be able to turn back from that ever again.

Yet in all of this those feelings, or more precisely lack of them, I still do not desire relationships outside of what a family member or friend is. It is shameful for me to even consider it and the idea of becoming intimate in every way with another human being is sickening. My family however seems incapable of accepting that I believe myself asexual, as does nearly every friend I have. Even all of you believed that I might be making this a choice when it really isn't. Sometimes I swear I opened my mouth and confirmed everyone's suspicions that I'm a lesbian such is there reaction to me. As my family is very Christian, they do not accept homosexuality or alternate lifestyles in general and there has been a space between me and several of them because they believe me to be lesbian. Due to my seemingly impossible aversion to men. Apparently they don't notice that it extends to females as well, I've had some come on to me before and outright rejected them.

Even my nervousness and naturaly reclusive nature fall to the way side should someone attempt to flirt with me or anything similar. It all drops and I am very forceful, firm and often harsh in my dismissal.

Can it really be a choice on my part when I feel this so strongly that it is honestly a very real part of my being? Is it a choice when I cry and hurt inside every time someone says that I am not and am merely looking for a label or reason to avoid such things?

I believe myself to be asexual.

In fact I'd say that I know I am asexual but that seems to be something not very many people actually want to understand or accept. Think of something you know in your heart, in the very fiber of your being, and think about how you would feel if someone told you that you might be confused or your making a choice out of something that isn't a choice. How would you feel?

I'm not angry or hurt with any of you, I am so grateful for every reply and the way it made me think, I just want you to understand how I feel.

You are right, those of you who pointed out it really isn't a choice, and it honestly wasn't on my part. It was a slowly dawning realization. That all those promised feelings and desires I was told about weren't happening. This fear that I was abnormal and crazier than ever. Then that realization and niggling feeling and finally an acceptance of something your body and mind has been saying for longer than you want to admit to.

I am what I am. And I suppose that I must learn to fully accept and embrace who I am before I can expect anyone else to.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply to me and if there was something I didn't address feel free to slap me with a stick. And, I hope I didn't offend anyone and sincerely apologize if I did so. I just needed to try and explain this, to try and get you to understand.