Fascinating article. I wonder what made her do the steps in finding what's "different" with her, and most of all, why the need to fix it arose. Is it to "fit in", understandably? It somehow felt alien to me, and this shows my ignorance on the topic, that people lacking in empathy department would attempt to understand the reasons and act "good" towards others even if this feeling is only understood intellectually.
"do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is good advice and a rational strategy without emotion or empathy.
The practical problem is figuring out that "others would have" something different than you would like, because they're emotional and irrational (as far as you can tell).
I think it’s easy enough to explain. I’m asexual and don’t feel sexual attraction. In fact I’m completely blind to it.
I definitely noticed something was wrong with me once I started school. Since then, I am constantly reminded of that by everyone around me. They have something I’m expected to have.
Just imagine if you were the weird one because you were the only person with emotions. You can’t escape it. You can’t fix it. Some people try to be “helpful” and “understand” but the entire time, they are pointing out you are beyond their comprehension.
It cause enormous anxiety to know you need to be something you are not. You have to learn to cope with it.
that's very difficult when you have a trait that others can't see, and therefore can't be aware of or understand, and much less empathize with. it feels wrong because you keep getting confronted with expectations that you can't fulfill. and you can't see others that have the same experience. so you end up feeling you are the only one.
Yeah, and people say "being different is fine", "you're not wrong, you're you" and so on, but in the end unless you're one of socially accepted forms of different that are celebrated, they still shun you.
I hope you can find your tribe, so to speak. My best friend is ace and has a large and supportive ace friend group. It is not a cure-all but it sure goes a long way....
i haven't, but thanks for your thought. i have only recently begun to understand what the difficulties i am facing are and how they affect me, and how they were caused growing up, so i haven't been searching. i have also been coping reasonably well, in part because for a long time i was not even aware, which kept me from wondering to much. the only thing i noticed was that i had difficulties making friends, like some others here. so in a way HN is my tribe so far.
as for the challenge of making friends, for some reason, growing up, i didn't feel the need, but saw the benefit of not being submitted to peer pressure. i took my outsider status and relished in it, doing things that few others of my classmates did. i distanced myself and sought friends in after school activities. and as i was able to make a few friends once i joined university i felt that, given the circumstances, things didn't go that bad.
the making friends problem i am addressing by moving out of europe and living among people who are more welcoming than the average europeans, and also by applying this key understanding:
being a friend means to care about someone.
you make friends by showing that you care.
i show that care to everyone who crosses my path, and with repeated interaction some of these people become friends.
Wrong !== Different. This is by design. I can imagine all the birds in the dinosaur times felt wrong because they weren't t-rexes. Well, that's what saved them in the end.
>I can imagine all the birds in the dinosaur times felt wrong because they weren't t-rexes. Well, that's what saved them in the end
It's not about birds in dinosaur times though - as an analogy I mean.
It's more about a particular bird being different from others of its species of bird.
This could be an advantage to their life and acceptance (e.g. they might be too pretty or stronger) or usually a big detriment to their life and the acceptance they get from their peers.
And given that "wrong" is basically socially defined as "the opposite on the majority is like and agrees to", being different in that sense is as good as being wrong.
Additionally, being asexual is 'wrong' in a life / procreation sense. It's a kind of dead-end personality trait.
(I'm specifically not saying 'wrong' for existing in society or having value to offer the world and, actually, if environmental factors make a difference to this sort of thing, then asexuality could well be increasingly common as a response to the state of the world vis-a-vis climate change and resource usage and all the other bad things humanity hath wrought)
> Additionally, being asexual is 'wrong' in a life / procreation sense. It's a kind of dead-end personality trait.
I think that's a bit too reductive: asexuality ≠ not having kids. Even people who dislike the dentist won't mind going if it benefits them.
However, there might indeed be an issue in finding a properly fitting other half, but it seems[0] that the trait is not that uncommon either (order of magnitude seems to be about 1%).
is it seeing someone and wanting to have sex with them? it never occurred to me that not wanting to have sex with everyone i find otherwise attractive is something unusual.
if anything i think many problems today come from people wanting to have sex with anyone they feel attracted to, or choosing a partner only because they are sexually attracted.
instead of choosing a partner because they love them and only wanting to have sex with them because of that love.
seems to me that being able to enjoy sex in the way you say is the better and healthier approach.
i think i feel similar to you and i always felt that this is normal and that sexual attraction is a concept sold by media and advertising. i never considered myself asexual because of it. i don't think sexual attraction mattered much in choosing a partner at least until a century ago or so.
The best way I can describe sexual attraction is having an emotional level awareness of sex as a category. It's not limited to physical appearance. There is something would make you want to have sex with another person.
> instead of choosing a partner because they love them and only wanting to have sex with them because of that love.
Given what you already said, this isn't a question an asexual person is likely to ask. They would already know the answer. :)
> seems to me that being able to enjoy sex in the way you say is the better and healthier approach.
Not really. I don't understand why sex is important. I don't understand why anyone would want to go out of their way to have it.
Sure, it's fun, but not enough to justify all the hype about it. If you want to get hot and sweaty, can we go play laser tag and gang up on some over-confident teenagers instead?
Why the heck does the entire history of human society care about this?
What would get me to want sex? When it's an add-on to another fun activity. Cuddling and sex! I'm listening. (Note to self, never suggest naked laser tag again.)
There is something would make you want to have sex with another person.
i have never felt anything like that.
Given what you already said, this isn't a question an asexual person is likely to ask. They would already know the answer. :)
i wasn't actually asking a question but making a statement.
i think my understanding and my feelings about this are much closer to yours than i am comfortable describing in detail in a public post here. (but i am open to continue this conversation in private, as i am very interested in getting a better understanding about this question.)
I don't understand why sex is important.
i understand it about as well as i understand why people want to have a car. (i don't have a car, and i don't drive). more specifically, i see sex as just one of the many ways that one can show affection to someone else. the trouble is that it has been overloaded with taboos and expectations unlike most other forms of showing affection. and i agree it is overhyped.
Sure they can. Mine is just variation of the traditional furry fandom [adjective][species] username. Plenty of furry writers have much cooler names than me.
I'll leave figuring out which species as an exercise for the reader. Hint: highly-gregarious African canid with the same initials as All-Wheel Drive.
Kayodé is the approximate spelling from the syllables. I was playing around with sounds for a constructed language and ended up with combination I liked.
It's fascinating. I've read a fair bit about sociopaths (but I'm no expert, obviously) and her compulsions feel pretty unique to me. It's not something I have really seen mentioned with sociopaths too often.
A lot of sociopaths lead pretty normal lives. Pro-social behavior is generally pretty beneficial, even if you are doing it for practical reasons and not out of empathy.
It would be interesting to know if this is a common experience among sociopaths. I had always thought that behaviors like theft resulted more simply from the lack of empathy (and desire for the stolen item), rather than resolving some kind of internal tension.
Yes. She says "I was sorry I had to steal to stop fantasizing about violence" - it seems there is something else going on here, not just being a sociopath.
I would say not necessarily. Attempting to understand someone that totally lacks a personality trait means that their motivation pathways could be entirely different. Un-understandable by those who do have the trait.
In this case, do something minor (stealing) to scratch the itch that, if left unscratched for long enough, could result in doing something major (violence).
It feels like a reaction to societal rules that don't make sense in their experience of the world, and so maybe the itch exists because the rule(s) seem irrational and arbitrary to them.
Or maybe the lack of empathy leaves a hole to be filled with mischief.
Special books for special children did an interview with a self identified sociopath that shows the same level of self awareness and openness to discuss the problem[1].
I think it is always difficult to analyse why someones does something. In Psychology, behaviour is like a Feynman diagram, you can always rotate the picture and get a valid particle interaction. What is cause and what is effect is hard to tell, but yes some people steal out of a sense of justice if you can call it that.
