Grey Asexuality: The Great Balancing Act
I wanted to make this post awhile ago.
One of the hardest parts about being grey-A is… the grey part.
When I say that, this means that for me I transiently inhabit both fully asexual and fully *sexual modes of being. It’s not as simple as merely floating along a hormonal cycle, points at which I have little sex drive and high at others.
This goes way beyond that. For me, hanging in the balance of grey asexuality is to be sure at one moment that I can be sexually attracted to another person, and the very next moment be incompatible with the idea of attraction. So many times in relationships I have beamed with confidence to say to my partner, “You turn me on! I am so attracted to you”—only to find the next day that all I can feel is that aesthetically they are lovely people.
Similarly I have had times where after a lot of deep thought, I realize I must be asexual. I cannot become sexually attracted to another person. I do not, for reasons of attraction, want to have sex with anyone. Only, of course, for that to dissolve completely when I realize I’m responding brilliantly to the visage of my partner.
I have looked for years to find a pattern. Maybe it was my hormonal cycle. Maybe it was my emotional connections to that person. Maybe it was stress.
There is no pattern.
My attraction flickers in and winks out. It does not follow a calendar. It does not appear when I get close to someone or disappear when I begin to talk to them less.
I propose a new way to think of my sexuality:
I am on a pendulum.
At all times I swing back and forth, swaying hard into the realm of sex at one turn, and veering hard into the realm of total, absolute asexuality the next.
I have spent too much time trying to think of myself as being one or the other, when in reality the answer I was always looking for but didn’t know existed was that I was both.
As does a physical pendulum, I spend most of my time in the middle—unsure of what I feel, occasionally aroused briefly or confused or repulsed utterly by sex. When prompted to describe my feelings of attraction, most of the time, I’m lost. I have to say, “I don’t know”. It is rare that my eyes can flash up and say “Yes!” or to completely say “No!”
I inhabit both at the same time. My answer is “Maybe so.”
(via magicwandsandpirateflags)
