When I was in high school in the 1970’s, playing basketball and softball, I started to question my sexuality. Many of my teammates were gay, including some of my closest friends, and I began to wonder if I was as well. I didn’t have anyone to talk to about my feelings and I recall feeling confused and unsettled. I watched the friend group I had grown up with start to pair off with boys while I was hanging out with girls and getting high every day. I had a crush on my female coach. I knew she was off limits, but I didn’t know what to do with those intense feelings except to numb them with marijuana.

In college, it was more of the same. I played basketball and softball with teammates who were gay. I lived in a co-ed dorm, but never dated or had a boyfriend. I was either hanging out with my teammates or studying. A little voice in the back of my brain was nagging me, wondering when I would start dating or get a boyfriend.

After college, my first job was in the advertising industry, which had its own softball league – the New York Advertising Co-Ed Softball League. Because I’d played softball in high school and college, I stood out and quickly became well-known. After the games, we’d party at a bar on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I was soon asked to join a women’s corporate team and later a men’s fast-pitch team (I’d pitched fast-pitch in college). Even though the bar was filled with men, and several marriages came out of that league, I never got asked out. When I pitched fast-pitch in Central Park, people stopped to watch the unusual sight of a woman pitching for a men’s team. My first thought was they must think I’m gay.

It was while I playing on these three teams, hanging out at that bar, and feeling confused about my sexuality that I developed anorexia. Part of the reason might have been as a defense, as no one was going to be attracted to a skeleton. Regardless, I was admitted to an eating-disorder unit and my confusion about my sexuality took a back seat to my fight for my life. I never played softball again.

It wasn’t until I started working with my psychiatrist, Dr. Lev, in 2005 that I felt comfortable enough with any therapist to broach the issue of my sexuality in earnest. I related to her the trials and tribulations of my high school, college, and post-college days and my confusion around my sexuality. I tried dating men and women, but neither of those worked out. Then in 2015, I read a Modern Love column in the NY Times titled “Asexual and Happy.” I’d never heard of asexuality, but the author’s description of it intrigued me and I did some further research and found AVEN (The Asexual Visibility & Education Network).

Asexuality tends to get little media or research attention, and many people still do not believe it's possible for anyone to be asexual and so they dismiss it entirely. Common misconceptions about asexuality, as Michael Doré of AVEN told the BBC, include that asexuality equates to celibacy (it doesn’t), or that it’s a choice (it’s an orientation).As I perused the AVEN website, I identified with what I was reading more and more. After reading more about asexuality, I told Dr. Lev what I had found. I told her I believed I was asexual. The fact that it is a sexual orientation explained why I’d felt different from my friends from an early age and explained why this disconcerting feeling persisted throughout my life. Dr. Lev agreed with me.

When I first identified as asexual, I only told one or two people I considered very close to me and whom I knew wouldn’t judge me. I was extremely judicious about revealing this new part of myself. Now, I wouldn’t say it’s something I reveal casually but I do when it’s appropriate to the situation. Several months ago, a new friend was talking about the difficulty she was having dating and meeting available men. She asked me about my experience and I replied I don’t date because I’m asexual. She seemed to accept that and we moved on. But I wondered what she really thought.

When I see and hear news about the LGBTQIA+ community – where the “A” could stand for either asexual or aromantic — I don’t automatically include myself as part of it. I get a newsletter for writers with calls for submissions and often editors will specify they are looking for writers who belong to the LGBTQIA+ community to write from that perspective and I will skim quickly over those blurbs, not associating myself with this group. I don’t know why.

Jennifer Pollitt, an assistant professor and assistant director of gender, sexuality and women’s studies at Temple University, states that aromantics and asexuals are being met with some resistance within the LGBTQIA+ communitys because “when a new identity emerges, or when people try to explain themselves, there is resistance and pushback from within the community with the mindset that 'if we let these kinds of people in, then that will dilute the access to power and resources we have.' And it forces the community to maintain adjacency to white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, ableism and classism, all while leaving behind entire groups of people.”

Some asexual people seek out romantic or emotional relationships with other asexuals. I’ve chosen not to pursue either. I have good platonic friends to whom I feel close and feel supported by. Some of these friends are married and/or have children, but most do not so they don’t have obligations in that respect. These friends are accessible and open to getting together often. They are aware that I’m asexual and it doesn’t make a difference to them. Right now, I’m content with the way things are. I don’t feel any great pull towards the LGBTQIA+ community, and apparently neither they toward us.

Thanks for reading.