Demisexuality and Mental Health, accepting (a)sexuality.

Are there any common assumptions made about a particular mental health issue that do not apply to you because of asexuality? Or have extra complications when you add in asexuality?

Let’s see where this list takes us…

• Teenage lust was a non-issue. I didn’t feel any.
• Promiscuity and STDs and condoms were only theoretical things.
• Presence or absence of sex do not count as faithful symptoms, in my case, of good or bad mental health.

A deeper, cultural issue, to consider during therapy: I think for demisexual and asexual women especially, sexual freedom is important. Because it leaves you free not to have sex, or have it in your own time. It is with a profound relief that I can say that I’ve never experienced sexual assault, and only rarely heard of it second hand.

A general openness towards different sexualities (to the LGBTQ community), translates into a more welcome place in which to be ace or demi, I feel. Both because you’re encouraged to explore your own sexuality during your teenage years and because it’s less hard to get people around you to accept there’s variations in levels of sexuality, the way there is variety in who that sexuality is aimed at.

In an openly sexual country (aka the western world) I think you’ll have to deal with the pressure to have sex, in and out of a relationship. It’s probably the biggest point of inner conflict for me. In a more traditional culture, you’ll have to deal with the pressure to marry and have children. For women, that translates in having to have sex with your husband, whether you want it or not. I think that is a deeper horror when you don’t want sex at all.

In general, the drive to just have sex is like a foreign language. It’s harder to understand. Entire genres of commercials and music clips don’t make sense. You can go along in jokes and behaviour, the way you learn to buy a certain type of shoe or shirt. But you wouldn’t do it on your own.

Consider this: a girl walks down the street in a short skirt and is accosted. The assaulters claim she wanted it, and general audiences do, at least, agree she ‘dressed slutty’. This is a travesty. How much more so, if that girl didn’t just not want to have sex at that point in time, but never in her life has, or will, and doesn’t even really understand why other people do. And, because of a lack of information, can’t even articulate her confusion.