On relationships and sexuality.
I've been thinking a lot about this over the last couple of weeks, but started kind of thinking about it around December.
I might be gray-asexual. I'm not sure, and I'm still thinking about this and figuring it out. Luckily, I'm not in a sexual relationship with anyone at the moment, so it's likely that I'll have plenty of time to keep thinking about it. Now, first we should establish what asexuality is, to the best of my own understanding. Asexuality is when someone does not feel any sexual attraction to anyone. There is kind of a sliding scale to this, between asexuals and sexuals. There is also demi-sexual, where someone has to have an emotionally-invested relationship before feeling sexual attraction. People who fall somewhere between asexual and sexual are called gray-ace.
I only have two sexual experiences to draw example from, so on the one hand, I want to see how I feel about sex with a different partner. Not that the sex I did have was bad or anything, but I was never able to really be satisfied. Maybe I was too nervous to enjoy myself, maybe I was too dysphoric about my body, I don't know. What I do know is that when I think about actually having sex with another person, I kind of don't want to. I can still be turned on, I still think of some things as sexy, I can make sexual jokes (albeit not very well, but that's probably just me), and I do enjoy reading fictional sex (either in written word or comics/pictures). This tells me that my libido is fine and healthy.
The distinction here is that libido and the act of sex don't always go hand-in-hand. From the small amount of research I've done, this seems to be a common thing for Aces. They can be turned on and do masturbate, but don't want to actually have sex with anyone.
This is pretty approximate to the way I feel about sex at the moment. If I were in a strongly romantic relationship, and my partner wanted to have sex with me, I would be okay with it happening, but it would never be at the forefront of my mind when hanging out with them. What would be on my mind is simply being in their presence, with a desire to be cuddling/kissing/making out with them, but not more than that. Not so much the getting naked and having sex.
Which brings me to another thought. Could I have relationships that are very romantic, but not at all sexual, and have other relationships that are romantic and semi-sexual? This plays in to how I am very honestly panromantic and polyamorous. It also hinges on romantic orientations and sexual orientations being separate. When I say I am panromantic, it means I see in myself the ability to fall in love with anyone, regardless of their sex, gender, or gender expression. With, of course, respect to way they see themselves. For me, it's not being blind to gender, it's seeing the person as a person first, a boy/girl/etc. second. Polyamory, then, is the ability to fall in love with more than one person at a time. Ideally, I would like to have a three-or-more relationship where we are all dating each other. To me, it sounds just plain awesome.
The idea then, is that I could have a partner that is not necessarily attracted to me in a sexual manner, but still loves me on a romantic level.
I don't know, maybe I'm just desperate to have someone I can hug and cling to and love with all my might.