“…I’d made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I’d spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn’t matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit. And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It’s full of treasures and strangeness and mysteries and joy.” ― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
Navigating the area of sexuality as a teenager with a traumatic history is anything but easy. It tends to leave you in a strange phase of feeling both younger and older than your peers (sometimes in the same moment). Perhaps that’s why asexuality was a concept that took me so long to find and own. It was a relief to find it: an orientation that finally described me. Lots of variables. That was okay. I had time to figure it out. Except for the question that refused to go away.
Is it appropriate to talk about sexual orientation as a mental health issue?
No. Of course not. But this question falls into both camps. No one can help me with it yet I can’t tackle it alone. For me, I’m not sure, is asexuality something I was born with or a reaction to trauma I experienced?
This is a very difficult article to write mostly because I never ever envisaged being able to think it through rationally never mind write about it. Thinking about it has been excruciating at times. Excruciating, fascinating, painful, sometimes amusing and naturally, quite embarrassing. Is it actually possible to reach ones’ thirties (I’m now 37) without any idea of what sexual orientation you are or what you actually want out of life, relationships wise? For me, it is.
There was a gap of years in my twenties when I didn’t dwell on this issue at all. If it popped into my head I could casually shrug it off. Yet I still knew something was different. I tried out orientations like new outfits. All were interesting but nothing fitted. I could find someone attractive or admire them for some aspect of their character but that was as far as it went. Something was missing and it was so obvious that I couldn’t name it or ask other people about it.
Much worse than trying to understand an invisible concept is trying to understand a negative. How can I explain what my experience is like against what I “should” be feeling? For me, sexual attraction is a colour I have never seen. No one can truly describe it to me. They can tell me what it’s like for them, how they see it, what shades of it appeals to them. The reality of the colour is all around me and the fact that people see and enjoy it. But I never have and never will be able to see it.
In my teenage years I would “fancy” someone but that fancying was always to do with the quality of my friendship with them or a longing for comfort or solidarity. The physical element just didn’t come into it. My quest to figure out that side of things put me in some pretty unpleasant and dangerous situations and in the end I abandoned the project altogether. Romance was something that didn’t interest me and I decided that whatever was “broken” in me was better not thought about.
Added to this is my diagnosis of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) a symptom of which is difficulty with sense of identity. So you can see the confusion comes from a lot of different places.
When I first tentatively discussed the subject with my therapist she asked me if I felt I was missing out on something. Did I see it as a problem?
My honest answer was and is “no”. It is another thing that sets me apart and can feel like a secret the whole world knows except me. But I also can’t miss something I’ve never had.
Ironically it took being in a relationship to examine my reasons for not wanting one. For me, they had come to represent having to concede control over my life, having to make room for another person and disturb a precious solitary life. I never took into account that I might meet someone who would make these concessions worthwhile, someone willing to meet me halfway and who, when I dared mention the word ‘asexual’, listened, read about it, made me realise that love and companionship are not out of the equation for me and helped me to see that the reality of who I am is more important than the reasons why.
So… is it appropriate to talk about sexual orientation as a mental health issue? No. Of course not. Apart from where the two things collide and colour each other. No one can answer the question for me and BPD gives me very black and while thinking.
In the spirit of radical acceptance I may need to just sit with my question and its possible answers. So here’s my conclusion. For now, I need to accept the grey (pardon the pun) in all its shades. Sometimes that’s okay. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it hurts. Other times it throws up unexpected surprises in the shape of all I had forgotten to wish for. But there is hope that gradually it could start to become who I am rather than everything I am not.
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