1. I am a 27 year old cisgender female. I’m a virgin.

2. I have fallen in love a few times, but the moment I try to imagine anyone in a sexual way, my brain shuts off and with it goes my attraction.

3. Over the past year I’ve realized that I am asexual, and I only feel comfortable with that label because I know that I’m not straight or gay.

4. Everyone thinks I’m a lesbian, especially my lesbian friends. A few have hinted that they’re waiting for me to come out. When I told one of them that I was asexual, hoping for solidarity, she paused and said, “Just stick with ‘queer.’”

5. I don’t feel that anything is missing from my life because I don’t have sex. I don’t feel like a social outcast, though other people seem to think I must be.

6. I’ve kissed/slightly made out with three men, all technically boyfriends. All three tried to take things further, and thankfully, all three stopped when I told them I wasn’t comfortable. I liked kissing, and them, very much but did not feel the need to move beyond that. As a result, I think I was thought of as a tease. I wish I could have explained to them what I know now. I haven’t been kissed in six years. Strangely, two of those three men went on to experiment with their gender and their sexual orientation and told me that it was my encouragement of their feminine sides that helped them to do so.

7. I fell in love with a married man. He doesn’t know that I’m asexual. When I told him that I thought my feelings for him were inappropriate, he told me that he is in an open marriage. We live in different countries but met in person, corresponding regularly in between the times we saw each other in person. He told me about his open marriage via anonymous email, which made me doubt the truthfulness of it. It was a year ago and I was so stunned that I never wrote back. We never talk about ourselves now, because I don't like knowing that he's "allowed" to have feelings for me. I worry about what would happen if I saw him again.

8. Four different married men, not including the one from #7, have told me that if they weren’t married they would want to be in a relationship with me. All of them were friends, and I felt very embarrassed by their admissions. I don’t know why I attract married men.

9. I’m physically disabled. I feel that this has no bearing whatsoever on my sexuality, but I know that most people wouldn’t agree. When I told my mother that I was asexual, she said, “That makes sense to me. I think it’s because of your intelligence.” I don’t think there’s a correlation, but her reaction made me happy. I haven’t told anyone else in my family, nor do I see a reason to.

10. When I find myself attracted to someone in a physical way, it’s always in an aesthetically evaluative way and is usually limited to their face and the overall balance of their bodies. Beautiful people to me are like works of art – I’d never want to have sex with a sculpture.

11. I literally have no concept of what it means for someone to have a “nice ass” or “nice tits”. Whenever my friends start talking about those things I just laugh. I’ve never checked out anyone’s ass before, and boobs are boobs to me.

12. I masturbate, but the need to do so feels entirely biological, there’s not really anything that triggers it. I don’t really think of anything, just go until I orgasm. I love the feeling, but it’s not anything that leaves me wishing for a partner. It just is.

13. I have nothing against dating, but I think there is an inherent sexual expectation built into it, so I avoid it. I wouldn’t be opposed to dating a woman, but women who don’t have an interest in sex are just as hard to find as men who don’t have an interest in sex. One of my friends has repeatedly asked me out, and I have repeatedly turned him down. I’m afraid that if I tell him, “I don’t have sexual feelings for people” he would think I was bullshitting him. Instead, I just tell him that I don’t date anyone, which isn’t a lie.

14. I fall in love regularly with people I will never meet, either because they are famous or because they’re dead and famous. I learn all that I can about them but would probably never say a word to them if I saw them in person.

15. Most of my family assumes that no one is interested in me sexually, and not that it's the other way around.

16. My female friends all come to me for sexual and relationship advice. None of them know that I’ve never had sex, but they still love my advice. Surprisingly, many of them tell me that they wish they could be as “strong” as I am, and not have to be in a relationship.

17. Contrary to what people might think, it doesn’t gross me out that other people have sex. People can have sex all day long, it’s just not something I want or need in my own life.

18. I get hit on quite often by women, but I never know how to respond. My biggest worry when it comes to dodging flirtations is inadvertently leading someone on.

19. Four years before one of my friends discovered that she was bisexual, I remembered lying on the floor with her with the distinct feeling that she wanted to make a move. When she told me recently that she was attracted to women, I told her that I had always known, but didn’t tell her why.

20. I’ve come out to very few friends, but one of them was a lesbian. I was staying with her overnight and her bed was big enough that I felt we could share it and stay out of each other’s way. I didn’t think that just because she was gay that it would mean she’d want to try something with me, any more than I would suspect it of any of my other friends. An hour later, I came back into her room after going to the bathroom and found her lying in bed in her underwear. She asked me if I was bothered by it and I wasn’t. When we woke up the next morning she told me I was the only person she had ever shared a bed with who didn’t annoy her.

21. I know that there are other asexual people in the world, but I don’t feel like I need to actively look for them. I feel, for some reason, that if I met anyone else who was, I’d suspect them of lying. I don’t know what makes me feel so suspicious because that’s not my nature at all, but I hate it.

22. In spite of being both disabled and asexual, I don’t hate my body or find myself unattractive. For some reason, this too surprises people.

23. I have watched porn before, because I wanted to see what the big deal was. It all seems so fake to me that I can’t possibly imagine how people feel anything at all from it. That said, I feel very uncomfortable watching movies with sex scenes in them if there are other people in the room.

24. I am not embarrassed by/of being naked in front of other people, nor does other people's nudity embarrass me. I feel that sexual perception varies for each person, and that there is nothing inherently sexual written into the naked form.

25. In spite of my own asexuality, I am frustrated by everyone's need to find the place where they belong, sexually. I wish that everyone could just accept their feelings for what they are, and join up with others who share the same feelings. I wish we had a world without labels, but maybe that's just because I feel alienated from all sexual communities. I read through many posts here before deciding to submit my own, and I just hope that everyone learns to love themselves.