Dear Prudence,
I am in a long-term romantic and sexual relationship, which I find delightful. Before that I had a number of other relationships, some casual and some serious, where sex was a significant motivator for me. I recently read a story by an asexual author with an asexual main character that felt so profoundly resonant to me that it hasn’t left my mind since. I don’t think I’m asexual, but I’m starting to think that I may not be allosexual either. As a teenager, I was utterly baffled by my friends having “celebrity crushes” because I could not muster up any desire for any famous person of any gender. I veered between feeling deeply embarrassed at what I assumed was me being dysfunctional in some way and just assuming that everyone else had to be lying—that no one actually really had crushes on celebrities, that they were just pretending in order to seem cool or something. It also made my coming to terms with my queer identity more complicated. I now realize I have never experienced sexual desire for someone I haven’t interacted with in person.
I’ve talked about this a little to my partner, and a close friend, which felt good and important, but I don’t know what to do next. It doesn’t feel like I need a label or access to a new community, exactly—the actual course of my relationships would be unchanged if I was more typically allosexual, so perhaps it doesn’t matter? I certainly don’t want to pretend to have a set of struggles that I don’t. And yet, there was a moment in which a bewildered, incredulous part of me felt recognized like never before, and I don’t want to ignore how deeply moving that felt. I would really appreciate any advice or words of wisdom you have.
—Hardly Worth Mentioning