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What’s love got to do with it?
Sexual orientation and romantic orientations are different things. For many people, their sexual and romantic orientations coincide, and can even reinforce each other. But they can be different. Some people experience romantic attraction, but don’t experience sexual attraction, or vice versa. (And falling in love doesn’t even necessarily require romantic attraction, just like having sex doesn’t require sexual attraction.)
Did your love come with an accompanying aspect of sexual attraction or desire? Something more, something different than “They want it, so I’ll go along” or “I kinda like how it feels, so sure” or “As long as I can keep reading my book, you can do whatever”? If it did, was it there to begin with, or did it come later, and have you ever felt similar toward anyone else?
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If so, you might be “demi”-sexual, which is under the ace umbrella.
“And falling in love doesn’t even necessarily require romantic attraction, just like having sex doesn’t require sexual attraction.” I’m somewhat convinced that yeah I don’t experience romantic attraction in any meaningfully different way than a squish so it probably is all squishes, platonic oo-friend-potential excitement instead of anything different, but that yeah I’ve been in love with a close friend who doesn’t know that’s how I’ve felt (still maybe feel?), and with my former queerplatonic partner, that at a certain point I realized I couldn’t really deny that was a part of what I was feeling.
I also have had zero sexual attraction despite falling in love. So yeah. This shouldn’t rule out people feeling like they can claim an asexual identity.
For a while I had the opposite doubt, the “Maybe I’m Not Really Asexual because I’ve never been in love (yet)”, a version of your “haven’t met the right person” doubt elsewhere in this series, or even the “haven’t tried…” dating, being in love, all of “it” yet…
I’ve never fallen in romantic love. I actually love my job. I love my family & friends. I love my fur babies. I’ve also never felt romantic heartbreak. But I have been heartbroken in other ways. Over losing a family or friend. Over losing a fire baby. Over losing a job I loved.