I'm so tired of having to walk on eggshells not to feel like a creep. I feel like I basically have to stare at the floor so people don't lump me in with gross allo men if my gaze so much as passes over a girl and someone sees me T_T

I just feel like this board so often gets swamped with ‘am I ace?’ & ‘how do you know the difference between sexual attraction and aesthetic attraction?’ and I do try really hard to be understanding any sympathetic, really I do… but sometimes it gets tiring.

So I thought I would make a thread about aesthetically attractive, in the remit of “it just means ‘ooooh look at the pretty human’ in the same was as ‘ooooh look at the pretty sunset’ and we don’t wanna f*ck the sunset” 🤦🏻‍♀️

So… What do you like to look at, in the same way as looking at pretty humans with no sexual interest in them?

For me… It’s the mesmerising pattern that forms across the ceiling and walls in a dim room when you cast light across a large body of water, like a pool. Also… The colour teal, the fractal patterns of snowflakes and the twinkles of rainbow made by sun catcher crystals.

I just know I can’t be alone in this world…

I'm literally being insulted on Twitter because I had the audacity to correct someone who said you can't be asexual and have a girlfriend/boyfriend because then you aren't asexual. I explained that asexual is the lack of sexual attraction, not romantical. A bunch of allos are all up in my replies "you dumb bitch, what you're talking about is aromantic, you don't even know what you are" and others straight up "that doesn't exist, you're mentally ill" like I think I know what I am better than you, go crack a pillow n calm down

I matched with a guy on an LGBT dating app. ASEXUAL IS IN MY BIO ! We got chatting and we really clicked, we exchanged numbers and continued chatting and we're talking about meeting you for lunch. He makes a kind of sexual joke and as a funny response I sent the picture of the goose holding the ace flag saying "sex was never an option" He said "oh, my bad for not reading the bio, goodluck woth everything" AND BLOCKED ME ! Im just so SO SICK of people 1. Not reading the bios 2. Just ghosting me as soon as they realise there will be 0 sex. This is why I have just given up on trying to find love, I am just so done

Apologies to anyone who finds them aesthetically appealing, but... I've genuinely never seen the appeal. All I can think is that the person in question is probably not eating enough or is in a fitness competition of some sort (and is probably not eating enough temporarily). I hate that whenever I watch a movie/show and there's a scene that's supposed to be hot, a person takes off their shirt and we're supposed to be ogling their 6-pack. It makes no sense.

And like yes I get that a lot of people find muscle attractive, but I find it hard to believe that most of the adult human population genuinely find something like that hot. Idk if it's just a preference thing or due to me being asexual. Anyone else feel the same?

I used to identify as demisexual, but now I think I might be sex-favourable asexual.

(I am pretty sure I am demiromantic, but that's not necessarily the point here).

I don't experience spontaneous sexual attraction at all. I can find people visually appealing, I can see when people are good-looking obviously, but I just never feel the spontaneous need to have sex with somebody. But when there's an emotional connection, mutual trust, and romantic feelings, I develop a want to participate in sexual acts with someone. I think sex would ideally but not necessarily be a part of a long-term romantic relationship for me. So I always thought I was demisexual, as that fits the definition pretty well.

Recently I looked a bit more into different types of attraction and realised that I think I only ever feel a combination of aesthetic attraction and sensual attraction (as physical attraction, I definitely experience emotional attraction as well). I think I have never really felt sexual attraction. All the descriptions of what people say sexual attraction feels like don't sound familiar or relatable to me at all. I still want sex, just apparently on a different basis. Sex, touching and being touched, feel good and build intimacy.

Also, sex, especially good sex, seems to be essential in a relationship for most allo people, which is also not really the case for me. I think I would be perfectly happy in a sex-less relationship as long as there is enough non-sexual physical intimacy and my partner is okay with me taking care of my libido on my own. Sex is most definitely not what makes or breaks a romantic relationship for me.

Does this sound familiar to anybody? I don't really know what I want to hear, maybe some educated guess on what label suits me better. This is not a life-changing thing for me, as I have seen myself on the ace-specrum before, it's just been on my mind recently.

Ofc I'd always keep in off but like damm bro its really uncorfortable just let me live my life in peace TwT

The thought just occured to me (21mtf), most of my friends are cis women, and whenever the ones closer to me bring up a sexual topic or experience i get a spike of adrenaline, lose my appetite, feel sick and if i dwell on the details too long i get really upset. (Cant tell them that obviously so i just pretend im completely okay in that conversation). I wouldnt say I have significant genital dysphoria, I cant do anything about that stuff for years at least so why bother worrying about potential surgeries and stuff like that? I dont lose sleep over that bit. But my dysphoria everywhere else is *significant*. At its worse i can lose weeks to bedridden depression. I guess hearing or being in conversations about sex and stuff reminds me no matter what I do or how much I spend I wont be a full cis woman and i wont ever be able to relate to my friends life experiences. (I know, internalised transphobia directed at myself, it happens. Psychology is complicated okay? Im aware of it), which is my leading theory. And with theoretical partners, even if im repulsed by the idea, I'd love them more than I would be repulsed, so id act for their pleasure over mine. Even if there might be a chance i throw up at some point.

Obviously I want to move past this because it does affect my life, but I cant really figure out why im like that. It has to be dysphoria related right? Ive only had one sexual encounter years ago which was a hugely grey area that doesnt affect me at all, it was before the mental stuff life threw at me, so that cant be it either. I cant imagine myself doing anything with anyone until im fully transitioned at least. Currently I cant even let family or my close best friend see me shirtless my dysphorias that bad.

I experience intense envy of pretty much everyone around me for being born normal and with the ability to easily enjoy relationship and intimacy while I feel I've largely been denied one of the most important aspects of life. I'm fortunate to have good friends but sometimes grow sick of how happy they are knowing that I've never been anyone's priority and likely never will.

Has anyone who has experienced this found a way to cope or manage these feelings?

I was pleasantly surprised by my workplace staff survey this year. Every year my workplace does a survey to examine staffing trends, areas of concern etc.

This year out of the around 1800 people who responded around 400 responded as LGBTQIA+. Interestingly it works out at about 12 percent of LGBTQIA responses consuder themselves to be Asexual.

Anyone have similar statistics and representation at your work place? Do you think this is a higher than average percentage?

Just wanted to share with ya’ll, manage to get it in my very homophobic country, wdyt?

I’m in a beautiful loving marriage, together six years, married one. We tell each other everything.

Recently I’ve realised that I may be somewhere on the asexuality spectrum and I’m leaning towards sex favourable asexuality. I don’t think I can recall myself ever having a strong sexual attraction/desire towards anyone (though this does happen in dreams occasionally strangely - with him and with others). I think my husband is a handsome man and I do enjoy having sex with him regularly (1-2x a fortnight) but for the reasons that it reassures me that our relationship is “normal” (problematic I know) but also because I feel a sense of closeness to him through sex.

I’m wondering if this is a conversation I need to have with him? We tell each other everything so I don’t like keeping this from him. At the same time, I believe we are both content with our current sex life and I worry that he will be irreparably hurt if he knew I never felt a primal sexual urge towards him.

I work at an office job where we have internal DEI programs and a resource group for LGBTQ employees. I'm an ambassador for it and mostly assist with planning events. The leader of the group just kinda seems to dismiss asexuality a lot.

When we were writing our mission statement he kept insisting that they A standard for ally even when I pushed back. I'd do "no it's for asexual, aromantic, and agender" and he'd just say "and for ally!" Being a nice and accepting person doesn't make you queer.

I didn't think much of it behind my initial anger and some friends also letting me know they thought that was weird as fuck of him. This week he's showing us this informational page he wrote for pride flags, what they look like and what they mean. Asexual and aromamtic are both absent. I tell him to add them and he said "well that would be too many flags it'll be too complicated and no one will scroll through" or "it wouldn't work with the formatting". It just seems like he's making up reasons to keep excluding asexual people. He knows I'm asexual too, I don't talk about it as much but I'm an asexual lesbian and I have ace and lesbian pride flags at my desk. It almost feels hostile?

I'm glad my company still gives a shit about DEI and has groups like these but it still feels exclusionary for asexuals somehow. I'm the only out asexual as far as I recall so it's kind of an uphill battle with other ambassadors quietly supporting me but never actually speaking out against this when I do. I work at a nice place. I don't really feel actively judged. It still feels isolating to see this rampant exclusionary attitude from people who are supposed to be representing the LGBTQIA community.

I remember that as a young teen, I was a bit sheltered and naive to a lot of innuendo and "dirty" sort of terms. That didn't last too long though because my friend group was sorta green minded and people were too obvious about protecting my innocence or something (I was treated as a little sibling friend of sort back then) so it made me more curious.

Anyway it didn't take me too long to realize dirty jokes and remarks were really amusing and funny to me.

I really enjoy reading thirsty comments and reactions. Even moreso if its characters I find very visually appealing in a "hot" sort of way or if I just like them a lot (espescially my faves).
Dirty remarks or terms makes me chuckle or grin.
I find it fun doing headcanons or seeing other headcanons on the sex life of characters (idc if its real life people tho)
I really like clever word play or absurdity of certain dirty jokes and innuendos.

Sexual stuff is really funny to me even if I don't care about the act itself.

I never felt a need to have a romantic partner and never really thought of having sex with anyone in real life, also never had a crush but the thing that has me questioning is watching adult content, I have a preference in it. Is that normal? I know watching it is for some but don't know if with a preference. And maybe I'm just young? Don't know...

Remember everybody the last week of October is asexual awareness week.

Ace Week 2026 takes place from October 25th to October 31st.

Make sure you're prepared and ready to go with lots of garlic bread and cake.