Ever since realizing I am, and subsequently coming out as, asexual my world has been flipped upside down. In the past months, I have been doing a ton of thinking, self reflection, and finding my feet again in a world that is so profoundly sexual in so many aspects of it. What is my place in this? How do I interact with sexual people without giving up my own identity nor looking like a bitch turning them all down? How to communicate my sexuality, or rather: the lack of it, to those not understanding my not jumping to the occasion when flirted with? How to explain my wearing flimsy bikini's, minidresses and my love for taking risky, although always tasteful, nude pictures? If not for sex, why am I enjoying that? So many questions.
Let's start with "why the sexy clothing/photo's if sex is not the goal". Well.. I happen to see a human body as something very beautiful. In SecondLife, I enjoy creating a beautiful avatar. Aesthetically pleasing, nice to look at.. however you want to word it. That includes dressing nice and, I suppose, sexy although I don't see it that way. In RL, I enjoy nude beaches and I have zero issues with being naked. Maybe exactly because.. I don't see the human body as something sexual. I wonder how that is for anyone who is not asexual. When you look at the Venus of Milo or Michelangelo's David.. is that a sexual thing? Or just an amazing piece of art? To me, it's always just an amazing piece of art, even if it's not a sculpture but an actual living human body.
At the same time, it does make me very uncomfortable if people do sexualize my body. It saddens me, if what I think is a beautiful (from an aesthetic viewpoint) body makes people go; "oooh, I would love to fuck THAT". Honestly, the need to rub genitals is alien to me. I do understand this need does exist in most of humanity. It does make me feel like a total outsider. An alien from a planet where sex is not a thing who somehow ended up here.
Which brings me to: what is my place in this, and how to interact with people. For many decades, I have tried to fit the norm of being a sexual being. Sex seems to be the glue that keeps most relationships alive. But it did mean that time and time again I allowed sex to happen. In my previous post I called it a bonding experience. I did it because they enjoyed it so much, and I derived joy from pleasing them.
But was that the whole truth? Looking deep down into those dark, scary corners of my mind.. I found that no, it's not the whole truth. I found that, at the root of it all, was a huge, and probably irrational fear of ending up all alone. Not wanted, not loved, because without sex, what's the point of staying friends with me. My analytical mind dated this tendency back to my early childhood where I had to somehow survive an abusive stepmother who didn't want a child in her life. And I managed to do so by becoming mostly invisible, making sure she found nothing in my behavior that would set off her rage. Standing up for myself was counterproductive, and I learned at a very young age not to do that. Instead, I became a people pleaser.
Later on in life I found a new term for it: submissive. Suddenly, it was no longer a coping mechanism from my early childhood. It was something kinky and a "mental wiring" of sorts that many people shared and enjoyed. I'll readily admit that I enjoyed the attention, the feeling of coming home in a community that seemed to completely understand my people pleasing nature. Where it wasn't a damaged spot in my psyche but a feature that was embraced. And I learned to embrace it, myself.
Once I got out of the, ultimately very physically but even moreso: emotionally abusive relationship with a dominant man that almost literally killed me, I suffered from PTSS and had to rebuild myself up from scratch. I had no self confidence, no clue who I was or what I wanted from life.. it was a journey, and I'm still far from finished with all the unraveling and replacing learned behavior with my authentic self. I have come a long way, though.
Far enough to know that it's not true that I am submissive. I can be, when interacting with a dominant person, because I enjoy the energy exchange. But I can just as easily be the dominant person in the exchange, all depending on the other person's energy and how we interact. And neither of the two extremes defines me. Also: neither of the two is sexual in nature. That energy flow those interactions generate is something I enjoy, but I'm just as happy having deep talks with an intelligent person, laughing until it hurts with someone extremely funny, or being in awe because of someone's creativity, to name just a few different flavors of energy that I enjoy equally.
Recently I had another one of my, very infrequent, sexual encounters online with someone I don't share a deep friendship with. For lack of a better word, they are a fuck buddy. Someone who probably would no longer be interested in me if sex was taken off the table. This person had been asking to "see" me for months on end, and I suspected they wanted sex, and I finally gave in. Again: to please them. Personally, I did my best to create a nice experience for them, and I ended up covered in pixel cum and them waxing lyrical about how they really wanted to see me more often. They had multiple orgasms in real life and asked me about mine. I had to confess that i did not have any, but "saved that for later". Too scared I guess to admit that "later" actually meant "not at all". The feeling was one of total emptiness. WHY was I even still doing this if I got nothing out of it. Yes, I enjoy writing and roleplay but.. is that enough to roleplay something that I personally just.. don't enjoy, at all? Is that fear of ending up without friends still running the show? Isn't it time to get past that, see who still wants to be around me, and fill my life with that type of people?
The thought of it fills me with fear. At the same time, I have had the Bene Gesserit "Litany against fear" from the Dune series pinned on my wall here for many years now, for a reason.
It is an inevitable step on my path towards finding myself. Becoming my authentic self. And being either loved or hated for it. But I would rather be hated for who I truly am, than loved for who I am not.
