Blank Space

As More and more millennials ‘come out’ as having a sexuality defined by its absence, Nellie Eden reports on the reality of dating an asexual.

- Nellie Eden

Six years ago, I was lying in bed with my then boyfriend. I still had my trainers on. Everything was about to fall apart. I knew he was going to ask me why this was the first time, after four months of dating, that he’d been admitted into my apartment, and why we had not had sex, and why, when he put his tongue in my mouth, I had recoiled. How do you tell someone that when they kiss you, it feels like someone is putting a scarf over your face and pulling it tight? That you feel sheer panic? I thought, “Tell him now, because when you say it is because you’re asexual, he’s going to leave.” So I did and he did.

My friend Sarah, 28, works in marketing and is now in a happy relationship with a non-asexual man. This year, she ‘came out’ to me as asexual. Asexuality means a lack of sexual attraction towards anyone. Initially, I was shocked, not least because she’s in a relationship. A 2015 survey suggested that Brits in relationships have sex three times a month*, on average. I had assumed Sarah and her boyfriend were no different.

Being asexual is not like being forced to sit at a banquet, starving and salivating, with your jaw wired shut. As Sarah puts it, “You don’t like mushrooms, right?” I stick my tongue out to show distaste. “But if someone you loved wanted to eat them all the time, then you might, say, let them put some in a risotto and you’d swallow them down. That’s what an active sex life is for me.” I probe further, “Do you mean, then, that you occasionally have sex?” Sarah pauses. “Only very, very occasionally, and that’s preferable for me to giving oral sex. But yes, that’s a hyper-rare compromise I make.” She pulls a disgusted face.