Ok, this is a true story.
My significant other and I have had a very tumultuous love life starting out. Which is OK, because finding a balance is hard for everyone, and there’s bound to be some rough patches. Especially when one partner is asexual.
I had been out about my asexuality for a long time before my SO and I ever met in person, and it was not something they were insensitive about. They loved and cared for me, and continue to do so to this day. Our relationship started out platonic but quickly got “intimate”, and before long it became sexual. I was scared at first, but comfortable enough with my SO to try; and I liked it a lot to be honest.
But there were several points in our relationship where I was repulsed by sex, where I did not want to be in a sexual relationship. Which is completely ok, but…
When I told my SO, they reacted in a very distraught way. Saying that sex was a way of showing they loved me, that it was emotional and important to them and to stop would take away a lot of intimacy from the relationship.
I cried, I shut down, and I swallowed my feelings—my discomfort. I was scared to be so heartless towards my SO, I didn’t want them to think I didn’t love them.
It was unhealthy, and I wish I had known the inner workings of this misunderstanding back when it could have saved us a lot of strife.
Every time I had heard asexuals talked about, there was always an asterisk, a little aside saying, “They can [sometimes] have sex to please their partner, if they love their partner, ect.”
And in hindsight, I see how the priority was placed on the sexual partner in adding that little aside. How the focal point had been skewed from asexuality being valued, to an asexual’s ability to comply sexually being valued.
"An asexual person can have sex to please their partner."
This sentence is not enough. If this is all you’re willing to say, then don’t say it at all. This sentence can be twisted and manipulated by so many means to say, “If you care about your partner, you will have sex with them.”
And that hurts.