It Took Me a Decade to Understand My Own Desire

Dearly Beloved,

You don’t owe anyone sex. Not in a relationship. Not in marriage. Not after emotional intimacy. Not after commitment. Not after years together. Not because love exists. Not because expectations exist.
I have said these words, countless of times, and it only did sink in today. In saying these words, I don’t mean to educate, but rather to confess.

I’ve been working in sex education, research, and counseling for over a decade now. I’ve taught countless workshops, answered thousands of questions, guided people through their most vulnerable moments of sexual self-discovery. And yet, only recently did I finally understand something fundamental about myself: I’m Gray-Ace. Not because something changed in me, but because the language finally caught up to what I’d been experiencing all along.

Most conversations about sex, even in progressive, sex-positive spaces where I’ve spent my entire career, are framed around interpersonal sex. Sex with someone. Sex in relationships. Sex that is shared, mutual, partnered, relational, emotionally legible. Even when we expand the framework to include non-monogamy or queerness, the assumption remains the same: sex must involve another person to be real, meaningful, or healthy. But what about solo sex? What about those of us who experience far more desire for solo sex than for interpersonal sex? What about those of us who orgasm more easily, more frequently, and more joyfully on our own than with another human being?

For years, I couldn’t quite name what I was experiencing. I have a strong sex drive, there’s no question about that. But most of the time, I don’t experience attraction at all. Occasionally, I experience androphilic attraction, but even that is specific. It’s rooted in queer masculinity, not dominance, not alpha myths, not heterosexual performance. And here’s the part that confused me for so long: even when attraction exists, it doesn’t automatically translate into wanting sex with that person. They say, that when desire exists, attraction must exist. But does it?

This combination: high libido, low attraction, deeply confused me. Because we’ve all been taught that desire must always be directed toward someone. That wanting sex must mean wanting a person. That attraction cannot persist without interpersonal sex. But I’ve learned that it doesn’t work that way for me. Sexual Desire can exist independently of attraction and interpersonal sex. Pleasure can exist independently of partnership. My desire doesn’t need a face, a relationship, or a narrative arc to be valid.

The Weight of Compulsory Sexuality

When we design our labels, we often root them in Compulsory Sexuality. For example, “someone who engages in sex with the same gender is gay/lesbian, with the opposite gender is heterosexual, with all genders is pansexual, and those who don’t have any sex at all are asexual“. It’s the idea that everyone, especially those positioned within dominant social hierarchies, must perform that “ideal” sexuality to be considered normal, healthy, or whole. In Western contexts, this usually means heterosexual, monogamous, partnered, reproductive, emotionally scripted sex.

And alongside this compulsory sexuality, there’s a parallel process of hyper-sexualization and de-sexualization. Marginalized bodies, BIPOC people, queer and trans people, are routinely hyper-sexualized. Our sexuality is imagined as excessive, uncontrolled, deviant, dangerous. At the same time, other groups are systematically de-sexualized: older people, children, disabled people, entire populations deemed infantilized, and hence with de-sexualized. So we live in a world where some of us are forced into a narrow, compulsory sexuality, while others are either hyper-sexualized or erased altogether. In neither case is sexual autonomy actually respected.

This is where asexuality, especially gray asexuality, becomes unintelligible to most people. Because asexuality isn’t the absence of sex. It’s not the absence of libido. It’s not celibacy. It’s not fear. It’s not repression. It’s not trauma. Asexuality is about patterns of attraction. Do you experience sexual attraction to people? How often? With what intensity? Toward whom? And under what conditions? For some people, attraction is frequent and strong. For me, it’s rare, contextual, and inconsistent. Gray asexuality lives in that in-between space, the space where attraction partially exists, but not in the way dominant culture expects or recognizes.

What Solo Sex Taught Me

Here’s what I’ve come to understand: solo sex is sex. It’s not lesser. It’s not incomplete. It’s not a placeholder until “real sex” happens. A sex life that primarily involves yourself can be rich, embodied, regulated, pleasurable, and deeply healthy. There is no unhealthy way to masturbate. The only contingency placed on a “healthy sex life” should be “Do you have informed consent?” That’s the only condition. Any claim beyond that is moral judgment and puritanical politics.

I can have a full, healthy sexual life without centering another person. I can enjoy sex without attraction. I can experience attraction without wanting sex. I can choose relationships that aren’t built around sexual availability. I can refuse compulsory sexuality altogether. My sexuality doesn’t need to make sense to dominant culture to be real. It doesn’t need to be legible to my family, my friends, or even my colleagues in the field. It only needs to make sense to me.

And maybe that’s the most important thing I’ve learned in this decade of teaching others about sex: my desire, my attraction, my sex life, aren’t problems to be solved. They’re part of my nervous system, my body, my history, my context. Nobody gets to prescribe how I should want, who I should want, or why I should want them.

The Question I’m Still Asking Myself

So here’s what I’m sitting with now, and what I invite you to sit with too:

If sex didn’t have to involve another person, a relationship, or a social script, what would a healthy sex life look like for you?
If our labels are not based on “whom we have/are interested in having sex with” but are based on “where is attraction directed”, then I invite you to further sexplore your Sexual Orientation.
What does a non-directed attraction look like to you? From what do you gain pleasure that was not based in any attraction style? What Asexual Erotics do you engage in?

Because maybe the most radical thing we can do is stop forcing our bodies and our desires to perform a story they were never written for.

Yours in scandal, science, and serotonin,
Nixi
(Your Friendly Neighborhood Neuroscience and Sex Researcher)