Chapter 19
F orty-five minutes early for an appointment was excessive. Sitting outside a therapist’s office for forty-five minutes felt particularly bad. Though, if Neve had a general problem with excessive earliness, she figured her therapist would be the place to go for help.
As it was, she didn’t usually have a problem with excessive earliness. Today, however, she had spent forty-five minutes sitting outside of her therapist’s office, just waiting for her appointment as she scrolled the internet time and time again for answers to her questions. There were pitifully few, and, if anything, more answers that made her feel bad than those that made her feel better. However, she was savvy enough, even in her panic, to know that was just how the internet was.
Now, she sat on one of the hard, wooden-effect chairs in the waiting room, bouncing her knees up and down. She felt like she’d hardly stopped bouncing her knees since Thursday.
A door opened and Neve sat up slightly straighter, consciously halting the bouncing.
“Hey,” her therapist said softly, with that familiar smile. “Come on in.”
She nodded and headed into the office. As she passed Olive in the doorway, she wondered how long it would take for her to realize Neve felt like she was bouncing off the walls.
“So, what’s new with you?” Olive asked, sitting down in her usual seat and watching Neve sit on the couch with interest.
So, not very long then.
Neve scoffed quietly. “I have a problem.”
Olive smiled gently. “You came to the right place. Do you want to talk about what’s going on?”
Neve took a deep breath and stared out of the window to the side of them. “You know how when Roxanne broke up with me I was a little bit broken?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I mean, I know we talked about it and how it was more what she said—and a little bit where she did it—than it was distress at missing her.” Neve shook her head. The first session after the breakup, she’d been so certain it had to be distress at the loss of Roxanne, but, the longer she sat with it, the more she saw all of the places they’d never been working, and all of the tiny bits of relief that snuck in around not being together anymore. Now, looking back just felt embarrassing. “I mean, after all that, I just… kind of felt like… I didn’t…”
Olive waited. She’d been seeing Neve long enough to know when she needed a moment to work up to things.
“I’ve been feeling like I never wanted to be in a relationship again. Like every part of me wished I could not want that. Because what’s the point in wanting that if it always ends the same way? I don’t have anything to offer someone in a relationship.”
“The things you have to offer are more than just sex, Neve.”
Neve sighed. “No, I know. I mean, logically, I suppose I know I have things to offer outside of sex.”
“Do you know that?” Olive asked without judgment.
Neve laughed bitterly. “Okay, maybe I don’t know that, but I want to. I know that relationships can be built on more than sex.”
“Right. And a lot of relationships that are built exclusively on sex fail because people need more than that.”
“Yes, but…” She sighed. This idea had been bouncing around her head since her first proper conversation with Robin. “They fail because there are limits on the relationship. It is sex and nothing else.”
“Right.”
“But if you have a relationship that is everything else and not sex, that’s still limited.”
Olive watched her for a moment. “Because Roxanne broke up with you over sex, you’re feeling like everyone else will?”
“Everyone else has.”
She nodded. “It’s fair that all of that weighs on you and makes it difficult to see that a successful relationship might be possible. Many people go through as many, or more, breakups than you have, but the reasons for the breakups at least feel as though they’re different sometimes.”
“It’s always the same reason for me, and it just feels demoralizing. Like, Roxanne blamed her family, and maybe that was a piece of it, but it was clearly about sex. It’s always clearly about sex. I want so badly to change myself, to just be able to make myself do it, but it’s like… I don’t know, like this wall goes up and I can’t, my body won’t let me.”
“Your body is protecting you, your mind is protecting you. You shouldn’t be forced to do things you don’t want to, and doing so won’t provide the kind of relationship you want, it will likely just end up hurting you.”
It felt silly to cry over sex—or the lack thereof—but tears welled in Neve’s eyes. Olive was right. Every time she’d tried, it hurt. Her brain hurt, her body hurt. Parts of her could respond in the expected way, but she hated it. It felt… violating, only she was doing it to herself. And, afterward, nothing felt right, nothing felt good. All she felt was the need to curl up and cry until she ceased to exist.
“I just wish I could be normal,” she said quietly. “I wish I could want it.”
Neve still hated the whole concept of normal. She’d been over it with Olive before, and this was the place it kept coming up because she felt so desperately like she was lacking something, because so many people had made her feel alone in her asexuality, or like it was something she needed to fix, because to be normal was to want and enjoy sex, and she couldn’t do that.
“What would your ideal relationship look like?” Olive asked after a moment. “Ignoring what you think is possible, and what you’ve experienced so far, if you could create the perfect relationship for you what would that look like?”
Alba popped immediately into Neve’s mind. It wasn’t a helpful thought, it wasn’t what she needed, but it was there.
She chewed her lip and thought. It was so difficult to even let in the idea of what she’d want because she believed doing so would be costing someone else something they needed. “I don’t know.”
Olive watched her softly, knowing. “It doesn’t have to feel possible, it doesn’t even have to leave this room. Just for you, what would you want?”
“Probably… I don’t know, intimacy, connection, but, like, not the kind that’s sexual. I want someone who likes spending time with me, someone who likes talking to me. I want someone who I can cuddle on the couch and watch movies with. Someone who gets me. Like, when you’re in a group of people and you can share a look with someone and you both just get each other. I want that. I want someone who knows all of my favorite things. Someone whose favorite things I know. Someone who holds my hand.” She looked down at her hand remembering Alba holding it so tight on Thursday night. She’d felt so safe there. “I want someone who is honest, who isn’t trying to manipulate me, and isn’t judging me because of who I am.”
“All very reasonable things to want. Anything else?”
Neve clenched her eyes shut. This was where it got really complicated and felt especially unfair. “You know how, when you’re in a couple, there are things you’re privy to that nobody else is?”
“Such as?” Olive prompted quietly.
Neve huffed. It wasn’t just the physical things, she wanted all of the emotional things too, but, those parts, she didn’t struggle with, they weren’t loaded and unfair to ask for. It was the physical things that were. “I want… incidental nudity, I suppose? Like, when you get out of the shower and you don’t have to worry about your partner seeing you, and vice versa. But I don’t want it to be sexual, and it always somehow is. It always turns that way.” She worked hard to shut out the memory of an ex telling her she was tempting them, playing with them, simply by changing for bed, that she shouldn’t be such a tease if she didn’t want sex. “I want it to exist without it being a big deal. I want to be able to touch someone’s skin without it becoming sexual.”
“That’s very fair.”
“It’s not, though, is it? Not really. It’s a lot to ask of someone who is just having those responses naturally.”
Olive shrugged. “That depends. The physical, emotional, and mental reactions are not necessarily something we have control over, but what we do with them is something we can control. Is it a problem if someone becomes aroused while they’re kissing you?”
Neve thought about it. “No. Not if they’re not doing anything with that. It’s like my body shutting down. I can try not to do that, but it just happens. If they experience sexual attraction, they can’t help that their body is reacting.”
“Right. So, the problem is the reaction to that. It’s not that someone is aroused, it’s when they’re putting that arousal on you—blaming you for it or insisting you fix it—and that’s a problem regardless of whether you’re asexual. No matter your orientation, nobody should be forcing their arousal onto you.”
“I know that,” Neve said, knowing that, logically, she did. “But…”
“You’ve heard a lot of times that it is your fault.”
“Right. From partners, from society, from the internet. It’s my fault for getting them into that position if I’m not going to follow through.”
“Anyone can revoke consent—or not give it in the first place—for anything they want to, at any time. It is not your job to manage someone’s reaction to that.”
“Easier said than done.”
Olive smiled ruefully. “I know. In practice, so many people have been in situations they were uncomfortable with, so many people’s needs have been ignored, but that doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t mean you are responsible for it, or that you don’t get to ask for the type of relationship you want.”
Neve groaned and pulled one of the couch cushions closer to her. Maybe if she built a fort around herself, she’d be safe forever.
“Have you thought about dating other asexual people?” Olive asked.
Neve nodded. “I’ve definitely considered it. I just don’t know that many and I’m not interested in the ones I do. Maybe I should have been trying harder to meet others.” She slumped, feeling slightly defeated. “There’s nothing wrong with that idea, and it would probably be wonderful, but, is that the only answer, then? Only date asexual people?”
“Of course not. I wasn’t suggesting that, just wondering whether it might be helpful for you, since you do want a relationship but navigating a relationship with someone allosexual might feel overwhelming right now.”
Neve tensed. “That’s kind of the other part of the problem.”
Olive nodded, urging Neve on, but something about her expression told Neve she already knew where the thought was going.
Neve took a deep breath. “I currently cannot be interested in dating a fellow asexual person because I… like someone else.”
“Someone who isn’t asexual?”
“Correct.”
Why couldn’t it just have been simple? Why couldn’t Neve have purposely set out to find someone asexual? She could see all of the ways it would be amazing. Maybe they wouldn’t be on exactly the same page all of the time, but they’d understand each other so well. Maybe she’d finally start truly appreciating all of the wonderful things about being asexual if she saw them in someone she loved? She’d known them before. Deep down, she thought she might still know and love them now, but she’d been so beaten and broken by her dating experiences that she felt wrong every time she liked being asexual. It was like getting punched every time she thought about it. Until, one day, she didn’t even think it anymore. She just wished to be normal, to be like everyone else.
Everyone else. As if there wasn’t an incredible world of asexuals out there.
She hated the way she’d been so subtly punished and trained by the people she’d dated. And by Charlie. Maybe that was even worse because of the subtlety of it, because it was by someone who wasn’t directly affected by her sexuality. How was she supposed to proudly love her asexuality when even her friends were telling her it was wrong?
How was she ever supposed to feel safe in a relationship with someone who wasn’t asexual if this was where those relationships had gotten her? But, Alba…
“Is it someone who knows that you’re asexual?” Olive asked.
Neve nodded. “It’s Alba.”
So quickly Neve wasn’t sure whether she’d really seen it, something flashed across Olive’s face as if she’d been expecting that. Although, Neve was sure she must have been imagining things. Olive was a professional.
“And is Alba interested in you too?” she asked.
Neve shrugged. She suddenly felt like a teenager, discussing this in the schoolyard with her friends, feeling slightly out of step because she wasn’t totally sure she knew what they meant when they said someone was hot.
“You haven’t had a conversation with her about it?”
“No. I just… can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not supposed to be feeling like this, let alone putting it all on her. She’s been so good to me in all of the stuff with Roxanne, and now Charlie and Alice. We’re friends, and she’s allo, and I just can’t do that to her.”
“You know,” Olive said gently, “we can’t decide what’s best for the people around us, only for ourselves.”
“I know that,” Neve replied, not one hundred percent certain that she did. “But it’s not fair. If I bring it up, I risk ruining our friendship, and, if I bring it up and she wants to be… something more, I don’t know how I’d cope with eventually pushing her away too.”
“What makes you think you’re going to push her away?”
“History. Experience. The fact that she wants and enjoys sex.”
“One can enjoy something without always needing it.”
“Yeah, but it’s…” Neve threw her hands helplessly into the air. “History.”
“There are lots of successful couples who have differing sex drives. It doesn’t have to be the end of their relationship.”
“The internet thinks it does.”
Olive smiled wryly. “The internet thinks a lot of things, but that doesn’t make them true.” She shook her head. “In fairness, it can make things more complicated sometimes, and it requires work and communication and vulnerability, but so do all successful relationships. And, from what you’ve told me, Alba seems open and communicative.”
Neve nodded. “She is. I’m sure she wouldn’t be too proud or… stubborn? Cruel? I don’t know. Whatever it is, I’m sure she wouldn’t be too that to discuss it or work through it. But I just know where it’s going to go, and I don’t want to lose her.”
“You fear where it’s going to go, but without having the conversation with her, you can’t be certain. In any relationship, we can’t be certain of the way anything will turn out. All you have power over is yourself and the effort you’re putting in. You have to trust the other person to meet you in that work every day.”
Neve felt herself welling up again. She didn’t think she’d ever felt sure someone was going to meet her in that. She didn’t know how to trust that someone would. She nodded as she leaned forward to take a tissue from the box on the coffee table.
“Alba cares about you, that much is clear from what you’ve told me. But trying to control the situation because you’re worried she can’t handle being in a relationship with someone asexual is doing both of you a disservice. She deserves a say in what she can and cannot handle, and what she does and does not want. And you deserve the opportunity to see that you can have the type of relationship you want.”
“I just don’t want to cost her things. I don’t want her to have to give up things for me.”
“People compromise and give up things all the time in relationships. It’s up to each individual what is and isn’t worth it. And there are lots of ways to work with the sexual side of things for a couple that includes an asexual partner.”
Neve laughed. “A friend said something similar just the other day.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Robin. From work. She said she’d happily give up sex for the rest of her life, if that was what her girlfriend wanted, because she’d never miss it more than she would the rest of their relationship.”
Olive smiled. “Sounds like you have some wonderful friends. You deserve to ask for love like that. And you deserve to find it with someone who wants that. We can work on seeing it not as something your partner is having to give up for you, or something you’re costing them, but a choice you’re both making for the wellbeing of each other and your relationship.”
“It just feels like it has to be one end of the spectrum or the other, and I should be the one meeting her at her end.”
“Why?”
Neve shrugged. “Because that’s what’s normal.”
“It might be more common, but that doesn’t mean it’s what should happen. Forcing yourself to have sex is likely far more damaging than someone who wants to, finding ways to satisfy themselves alone while in a relationship with someone who does not want sex.”
“I feel so guilty,” Neve muttered bitterly.
“About what?”
“About all of it. About not wanting sex, about making life hard for partners who do, about being the reason they have to go through a breakup too.” She hesitated, the truth burning inside of her. “About the fact that I wish I could be normal, but, actually, I like who I am. I like being asexual. I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t want to hate this part of myself. Everyone is telling me that I have to, but I don’t. I don’t want to.”
“It’s okay to enjoy being asexual. It’s okay to hold that at the same time you’re struggling to navigate an allosexual world. It’s okay that the way people have treated you impacts the way you feel about yourself. You’re here working on processing that and letting go of the damage caused in those moments.”
Neve was quiet for a moment, a thought aching deep in her heart and her stomach. “I just don’t think I have enough to offer to make it seem worthwhile. People seem to really love sex.”
“Some people do, some don’t. There is no normal when it comes to sex. And you have so many things to offer.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Let’s think about the list of things you wanted in a relationship. Think about each one in turn, and then tell me whether you think most people would want or enjoy that.”
Neve thought for a minute. She supposed they were fairly common things to want, things she heard people talk about wanting, or say they enjoyed. “Yeah, I suppose a lot of people do want those things.”
“And you want them too?”
“Yes.”
“So, do you think you could offer all of those things to your partner?”
Neve stared at her. The tears burned in her eyes again. It was all the things she wanted in a relationship. All the things she’d wanted to share with someone else. It was a whole list of things she could give to a partner—that she wanted to give to a partner—and yet, she’d spent so long thinking it wasn’t enough, like they all meant nothing because she didn’t want sex too. But it was a whole relationship. She wanted a whole relationship—the good, the bad, the ugly, the wonderful. She wanted that with someone, and maybe it was enough, maybe it could be—not for everyone, perhaps, but maybe it could be a whole list of things she had to offer and maybe that would be enough for someone.
“Yes,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Yes, I think I could offer all those things to a partner.”