Yeah, this is why I was like "now that I know what I want, it's time to get out there and date... um, better get a supply of mounjaro first..."

Yup, I'm the same way! In my case, it came from being objectified ever since I was in my early teens. I'm beyond "over it" at this point, but I would say I first started to resent that kind of attention in my teens.

A weird thing I've noticed is that I'm *less* repulsed when I feel conventionally attractive. I've noticed that at lighter weights, I tolerate that attention way, way better than I do when I'm heavier. If I feel aesthetically pleasing and I'm with a partner I find aesthetically pleasing, I go from "repulsed" to "indifferent". It's pretty screwed up. Like... if my waist is 26 inches, I can kind of forgive the other person in question, but at 36 inches I'm just angry at them LOL.

I just realized something about how I've been decorating my apartments ever since 2020:

When I first got my own place with no roommates in fall 2020, my instinct was to fill it with as many family heirlooms as possible-- including a bed from the 1820s. At first this was just a curiosity thing-- "oh, I've never tried putting together an early 19th century rope bed, might as well try that out since I have all the time in the world to waste on that kind of nonsense right now." Then it turned into kind of hoping that my apartment was haunted just because "that's actually more appealing than being completely alone."

Now it's 4 years later, and I've had one partner break the bed (I got it repaired) and another one get so annoyed he rented a hotel room, and I STILL have a mental block against just upgrading to something modern.

I just realized tonight that I think the mental block is that this is one of the "haunted" objects that I insisted made my apartment feel less empty four years ago. It's like all the weird 19th century stuff that started with me saying I wanted to give my apartment an "Addams Family Vibe" because it was October when I moved in and the world felt creepy has turned into security items lol.

IDK, maybe once I get a cat the "it's too empty" vibe will go away. I'm not sure where that vibe is coming from, because I wouldn't be able to stand living with roommates again at this point.

I'll just go back 100 years and work on making a bunch of art films during the silent era. That's something I would enjoy enough to do it even if I wasn't getting paid lol.

I'm the top middle when I'm with someone I find aesthetically appealing, feel compatible with, and trust enough to do it. I'm the top right the rest of the time.

I'm an anti-lockdown libertarian who talks shit about the "woke", and even I find your comment asinine.

Yeah, I think this is the real story here.

Yup. This is my reason for not having kids.

Why is it that every analysis I see about the low birth rate doesn't mention the obvious: there's a lot more people who are just single now. You need two people to make a baby lol. I think to unscramble the low birth rate, we'd have to analyze why there's also fewer people getting married and more people dropping out of dating entirely.

You know how not all straight people are the same? And not all gay people are the same?

Yeah, it's like that.

Nah, I'm going to be one of those granny chic museum docents who hang around old mansions giving tours.

Yup, takes the pressure off me! I can't picture someone who actually wants sex all the time agreeing to be monogamous with me and having that work out LOL.

I've never gotten the pleasant, massage-like thing. I've had 2 surgeries and seen a pelvic floor therapist.

I'm 99.99% certain that in my case, I can't get it to feel good because I don't trust anyone enough to really want to do it with them.

I wish I could upvote this several thousand times over and send all these lame, whiny buzzkills a copy of "Nourishing Traditions" and "The Indoctrinated Brain" to educate them on how to not be old fucks for over half their lives and actually be healthy enough to, you know, fucking LIVE. My dad is 80 and still goes on motorcycle trips. My mom is in her late 70s and can still stay on the dance floor at the local goth club past closing time. Get your shit together, Millennials.

I get that the lockdowns did a fucking number on us. In 2022, my hair was falling out and I couldn't even hold down a job properly I was so sick. But instead of giving up and making the world a shittier, lamer place, I talked to the doctors at the Brownstone Institute and FLCCC and got. my. shit. together.

If I could go from barely able to get out of bed every day to running a fucking museum that's like the 9/11 Memorial but for the stupid covid lockdowns (I'm serious... I legit run a traveling art exhibit about how much the lockdowns fucked us up) and running around the woods naked on mushrooms for a week at a festival like I'm in my early 20s again, you get it together, too.

Just stop eating processed foods, go on the Weston A Price diet, and you'll be kicking ass within like 6 months. And then you'll be irritated with this generation, too.

"I just want more platonic friends and don't care what gender they are." But only say it if you really mean it.

*Shrug* I guess I'm helping.

You should look up the list of words the Ancient Greeks had for love. "Eros" is only ONE of many types.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love

Maybe some people just feel other ones instead of eros. How is that worse than something like feeling eros but not other types? Maybe what you felt is a deep version of something like "philia" or "agape". There's no hierarchy to these things in my view.

The "eros" other people are feeling is also very real to them.

I also think we should make it a trend to use all the different Greek words for love to differentiate, because that makes asexuals seem a LOT less cold if we describe something like having lots of other types of love even if eros isn't really that present.

Your first gray?

Damn, I found my first in 2013. By 2018 I could pull off looking like I was in an 18th century portrait. Post-lockdown, my hair is about 50% white.

Now, the answer to your other issues is: read the book "Nourishing Traditions". Seriously, I use the advice in that book to match the energy level of the people around me who are in their early 20s.

Also, if you ever want your hair to be a color besides gray: https://www.mehandi.com/ Those products won't weaken your hair the way chemical dyes do-- they actually thicken it up and solve a lot of issues with texture in addition to adding color. Once you reach 50% gray or over, I recommend the blonde kits so there isn't an obvious line when it grows out.

The good news is that the info in "Nourishing Traditions" made my hair VERY thick after I lost a ton of it from a bad covid infection. It's awesome that it's so thick now that I can't keep up with the natural colors because there's just so damn much hair to cover. A few years ago, it felt like the ONLY way to not feel like I was balding was to use that stuff.

The other weird thing I found out from having "long covid" type symptoms and hanging out around alternative doctors that there's a drug I can get fairly easily that has zero side effects and basically works as an incredibly powerful anti-inflammatory that can get rid of symptoms that come with drinking binges, all nighters, etc.

I have NO IDEA how people my age who aren't doing all this natural healing stuff with Weston A Price food recommendations and special, secret anti-inflammatories are still alive and able to function. I would be dead several times over if I hadn't figured this stuff out just because I'd be too annoyed with the state of my own existence to keep going lol.

I would read the book "The Invisible Orientation" and see how much of it sounds like things you've already thought frequently. Sounds like you're most likely ace. The sooner you know, the better-- once you have that figured out, it's easier to figure out what you DO want and go for it. Don't want a relationship where sex is expected? Look into alternatives and figure out which one makes you feel a zest for life! For me the answer is basically "bisexual polyamory minus the actual sex part"-- just have a few very close friends of whatever gender who want to engage in emotionally intimate conversations and sensual touch like massages and cuddling. That sounds like Heaven on Earth to me (which hilarious because I think polyamory WITH the sex factor is just a big dumpster fire headed to Jerry Springer lol)

Easy:

If you feel like it's necessary to find a work around for your issues until things work out for having pleasurable sex, you *might* not be asexual.

If you're feelings are more like, "this isn't working and I can't be arsed to fix it because there's literally no point to this anyways-- I'd rather be doing something else," then you're probably asexual.

An even weirder one: if you happen to meet a sex shaman and he does whatever mind tricks it takes for you to finally relax during sex, but you have intrusive thoughts about how much you hate him and want him to die for a few weeks after that experience, but then decide later that actually, you can tolerate him, as long as you never, ever, ever have sex with each other again, and then he tells you that the relationship would have never worked out anyways because you're asexual... yeah, at that point you can safely call it.

That is apparently one way to find out... but I don't recommend it. Just skip the crazy and ask yourself right now: would you rather try to have sex, or would you rather just exchange some other kind of sensual touch like massages with your partner? If the massage option sounds awesome and you think "oh yeah, I could do that all day", but the sex option just sounds like an annoying, tedious waste of time... guess what... you're about as ace as I am. And the guy I slept with? I asked him "On a scale from 1 to 10, where am I on the acedar?" and the answer was, "the acedar goes from zero to you. You redefined what the top of this looks like."

Oh god, where to begin unpacking this one.

It's sometimes in the small details. Driving from northern New Hampshire back to South Dakota and just noticing how oddly expensive supplies are along the way. "How did I just pay $15 for an energy drink and one of those little travel-sized packets of antacids that have like 1-2 doses in them? Really? $15? That seems like a lot even at a rest stop. How did buying one meal at Wendy's and splitting it just cost me $20? Why isn't anything in the motel room working properly?" Those are the boring details.

The more interesting small details that just feel a little "off", like the old world was traded out for a new and slightly shittier model while we were all knocked unconscious are things like, "why does this small town in Pennsylvania look totally abandoned? None of the houses have lights on. Somehow it's darker than rural South Dakota out here. There's no signs of life anywhere... oh shit, this town lost about half its population after 2020. We're basically driving through a ghost town." It's meeting up with my business partner who just spent the week in New York City instead of driving across the country like I did and hearing about how all of his normally successful friends can't find work-- and neither could he. How he saw one of my close friends that I met while working on TV and film in the Before Times, and how she couldn't find a job either-- the film sets are closed. It's the moment when he showed her pictures of "Out of Lockstep" and she teared up-- even though it was pictures of the funny part and she was very pro-mandate in 2021. The really strange details are things like hearing from my dad about how he tracks the crime rates in Rochester NY like they're the weather report now-- he needs to know how bad it is before deciding to go out for the day.

The "no return to normal" is in details like realizing after I left a week-long Liberty festival that I finally got to spend a week socializing the same way I did in the Before Times-- entering conversations with a certain level of trust and expectation that people understand you-- and then leaving at the end and realizing that I won't have that again until I can set my art installation up again somewhere else and inspire those kinds of interactions again, and now this is like my sacred calling in life to basically run the COVID lockdown version of the Traveling 9/11 Memorial. Once people walk through Out of Lockstep, it's like a switch goes off in their brain that allows them to be vulnerable in their conversations again. The friend who revived me when I drank way, way too much in the summer of 2020 was pro-lockdown until she saw that exhibit. Until I use this exhibit to unlock the closed-off parts of people's minds around me, I can never hope to come anywhere close to the sense of belonging I had in the Before Times.

It's moments like the unvaxxed gathering at PorcFest, where EVERYONE had stories about losing jobs, friends, and family members. Family members that weren't lost to the political division were lost to "sudden" deaths and aggressive cancers. On the car ride out to the Northeast, I texted some friends in NYC while my travel buddy was taking the wheel. On the way back, I heard from one of those friends that her mom has cancer now.

The fact that I *have* what people at PorcFest referred to as "The Covid Museum" says it all. I channeled years of anger, grief, and dark humor into an art installation that fills multiple rooms. There was enough of those feelings to keep growing it larger and adding more. I don't know if I'll *ever* find closure by doing this project, but at least I'm doing way better than I would be without it. There's moments where I wonder if it didn't prevent my business partner from offing himself a few times.

Yes, things are that bad even years later.

In a situation where I'm in a securely attached, emotionally intimate long-term relationship where we both want kids, that would make sense. I've done it for other reasons in the past but don't have any interest now.

I'm a biromantic asexual woman and find women more aesthetically pleasing in general *shrug*.

Yes, but not in the Christian sense. More in the Shaman sense. And something tells me intuitively that being ace makes me even better at being a shaman.

"Diminish the labor force"-- why don't they come out and just say they want to use women as incubators to breed more of a slave class?

Joke is on them, I'm asexual :)