I Am Ace: Advice on Living Your Best Asexual Life

by Cody Daigle-Orians

If it’s just holding hands and cuddling sometimes…then that’s a satisfying sex life.

If it’s no physical intimacy but a lot of emotional intimacy…then that’s a satisfying sex life.

You take the first step when you say, “I’m ace.” You reject norms when you say, “I’m ace.”

I’m ace, so I think it’s time we talk about what a healthy, satisfying, consensual sex life looks like for me.

you can tell me about what that looks like for you. And we can see where we go from there.”

Your partner’s needs aren’t more important or legitimate than yours. Just talk about it. See what common ground you can find.

you don’t have to give up who you are and what you aren’t to balance the columns for anyone.

Sliding SexyTimes Scale, a very simple negotiation tool to help guide these moments in a way that ensures everyone feels safe, supported, and able to freely consent. It uses a 1–10 scale to articulate how each partner is feeling about intimacy in the given moment.

Feeling seen and understood is a big part of feeling loved, and for an ace person just coming to understand themselves, having someone to share that space of understanding with is everything.

I’ve just had, thanks to a lifelong case of social anxiety disorder, a distaste for crowds and any extended social interaction that exceeded maybe ten minutes.

We found a spot not far from the main performance stage, close enough to get a good view of the performances and speakers but far enough from the crowds that it wouldn’t raise my blood pressure.

There were so many rainbows. Rainbow flags, rainbow shirts, rainbow wigs, rainbow shoes.

Belonging was something I’ve always struggled with feeling.

always felt like an outsider, not quite fitting in anywhere: not in my family, not with my friends,

not with work col...

lived my life always feeling slightly off to the side and never really feeling l...

that day at Pride, I felt belonging. I knew who I was. I knew who my people were...

“Queer” includes all of the communities that make up the LGBTQIA+ acronym: gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender folks, nonbinary folks, asexuals, intersex folks, agender folks, aromantic folks, two-spirit folks, questioning folks, and more.

every queer person is othered by their queerness.

Asexual people who are heteroromantic—who date and form relationships that socially code as heterosexual—are still asexual.

How we are perceived by the world does not change the truth or legitimacy of who we are.

For many of us, “queer” is a powerful and useful bit of identity language. It’s a word that empowers us, describes us, and helps us find our people.

When injustice starts a fire in you, use that fire to light the way to something better.

Advocacy doesn’t have to be big to matter.

Small things count, too. In fact, small things can sometimes count more than the big things.

The power you have as an individual ace person to enact change is enormous.

if you change the mind of one person, you’ve already achieved something monumental. Change is change, no matter the scale.

Advocacy and activism are acts of love.

Advocacy and activism happen because we love: We love the people experiencing injustice, we love the communities that are expressing need, we love the ideas of fairness and justice for everyone, we love the vision of an equitable world that treats everyone as they deserve to be treated.

The kind of love that fuels advocacy and activism is, to me, the most radical kind of love.

I never had to grapple with what it meant to be ace in the world.

makes asexual people feel responsible to provide sexual activity to a partner when they don’t want to or to allow and forgive a partner for infidelities.

Asexuality, however, is not a state of brokenness. Asexuality is a full, whole human experience.

Heteronormativity is everywhere. Heterosexual couples are the only couples that can comfortably be open about their relationships in all social and professional situations.

Chrononormativity suggests that we organize life milestones, and assign moral values to meeting or missing those milestones,

For asexual folks, chrononormativity compounds the pressures exerted on us by other cultural norms.

Our asexual lives show that you don’t have to achieve certain sexual or relationship milestones at specific points in order to have a full, adult life.

Intersectionality is a framework for thinking about these things.

intersectionality is a way of looking at an individual’s intersecting identities and how those intersections impact that individual’s experience of oppression.

An asexual person also inhabits other identities: their race, their gender, their class, their religion, whether they are disabled or not, whether they are neurodivergent or not.

Who we are outside of asexuality colors how we experience asexuality.

members of our constellation, my chosen family: my husband, Neil; his partner, Dan; and my partner,

“You’re not just finding people breaking one of the normative ways of thinking. You break one, you end up breaking more, breaking them all.”

“You take the first leap,” Neil said, “and every leap after is easier.” “You just have to learn that the norms are lies,” Dan said.

We recognize that those norms are causing us harm and that the harm isn’t within us. The harm isn’t something broken in us. It’s the world and its demands. Then we take that knowledge and leap.

We leap into a version of ourselves that embraces and loves and celebrates our queerness. We leap into relationships that are structured to fulfill us, to allow us the space to love the way we love.

We leap into communities of people that exist the way we do, that have sex the way we do, that love the way we do, that build families the way we do, and we leap...

I felt so much relief, so much comfort in telling the truth about myself. And not just telling the truth to other people, but telling the truth about myself to myself.

It makes me feel like me.”

“Then that’s all that matters to us. That you’re happy. We don’t understand it, but we’ll figure it out.”