An introduction to dating grey-/asexuals
I thought it would be a good idea to make an
x-post from the Thai thread for better visibility. Those who have read that write-up
there don't need to read the rest of this post (the almost verbatim copy of the write-up).
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Disclaimer: what follows represents my personal opinion; 'official' info about asexuality can be found on
AVEN or in some Tumblr pages; also, there was
an excellent OOT AMA about it years ago.
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Cliffs: grey-/asexuals are very diverse, quite open-minded and, as a rule of thumb,
very vulnerable human beings.
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Asexuals (aces) are, by definition, those who don't experience sexual
attraction (but some of us even enjoy sex, it's just not a basic need for them).
Gray-sexuals are those who're somewhere between sexuals and aces, i.e.still don't experience sexual attraction as often as most people.
The dating sites where aces and graces are easy to filter are OKCupid (where these orientations can be selected) and specialised ace dating sites, the most popular of which is Asexualitic.
The majority of the ace community are from the US (which, I assume, is not good for you if you want to play at ROW poker sites), but there are a lot of Canadians and British there as well.
Here are a few
population tendencies that you should expect if you go this route (we, aces, come in
a lot of varieties but are taught to understand the differences and be very tolerant to each other):
- The best part is that the
vast majority of us are female, and most of those women do desire romantic closeness and are open to potentially being in a relationship with a sexual person, as long as that person is caring and understanding.
- Most of us are monoamorous, i.e. won't let a partner have any romantic encounters on the side, demand that the partner is invested emotionally into no one but 'the one and only'. Some of us, however, do allow an 'open relationship', i.e. allow the partner to have sex on the side, which is up to negotation.
- The sex frequency is also up to compromise, though it's usually going to be lower than the majority of people would be comfortable with. Some are sex-repulsed and won't let you penetrate them ever, whereas some are neutral or even positive about that and will let you penetrate from time to time.
- The same applies to other displays of affection like open-mouth kissing with all that saliva flowing (FYI, kissing with mouths closed is just as good). Most do like cuddling, though.
- Curiously enough, as many as 60% of us want to have children, either adopted or conceived by artificial insemination or even in the natural way (!)
- Contrary to the popular belief, we're generally not ugly, and some of us like wearing makeup and beautifying in general.
- Moreover, we're generally much like other people (
'too human' to my taste
), except that we're kinder and less greedy on average. Because our dating pool is really small, we generally don't look for sugar daddies, we look for just anyone who's affectionate and caring.
- We tend to have 'childish' hobbies, though, for obvious reasons, e.g. there are a lot of anime otaku among us because anime / manga / videogames are pretty much the best of the media content that is not overly sexualised nowadays.
- Cake is the unofficial symbol of asexuality (which is believed to be better than sex), but some aces aren't fond of it.
- We
hate being told to change our beliefs on any matter. Either tolerate or get out.
- Due to the natural inclination to deep self-inquiry and taking every societal norm with a grain of salt, we're more likely to have a non-standard gender identity (incl.
demigirls, demiguys and agender) than the general population, though most of us still identify as a belonging to a standard gender (male / female).
- Because of being misunderstood by the society, we're unfortunately prone to anxiety and depression, though a significant part of us are totally sane.
- Our median age is 23 (as of November 2014) because the concept is relatively new and spread mainly over the web, and thus it's hard for older aces to get familiar with it and discover their true nature.