Working at Hallmark during Valentine’s season is a special kind of emotional irony. I can spend my entire shift arranging cards that scream “Be Mine,” “Forever Yours,” and “I Want You” only to clock out and feel like none of those messages were written with someone like me in mind, someone who is asexual and pan-Romantic.
This year, though, I let myself hope. For the first time since 2015, I wasn’t planning to spend Valentine’s Day alone. I had gifts ready—thoughtful ones, the kind you pick out when gift‑giving is your love language. And for once, someone wanted to try something with me that didn’t require pretending I wasn’t asexual or sex‑repulsed. We weren’t exclusive, but we were honest. It felt like a small, quiet miracle.
But when the day came, he was too exhausted from work to see me. No malice, no betrayal—just life. And so my carefully chosen gifts sat in my car for a week, a soft reminder that even when you have someone, loneliness can still find you.
Moments like that don’t just hurt because plans fall through. They hurt because they tap into something deeper—the years I felt misunderstood or treated like a puzzle someone thought they could solve.
Asexuality Explained
Asexuality, at its core, is simply the lack of sexual attraction. It doesn’t mean a lack of love, or intimacy, or desire for connection. It just means the sexual part isn’t what draws me to someone. And asexual doesn’t mean aromantic—I’m a hopeless romantic who’s spent most of my life deprived of romance.
Asexuality isn’t black and white; it’s a spectrum. Some people never feel sexual attraction. Some feel it rarely. Some only feel it after a deep emotional bond. I’m still figuring out where I fall. Some days I think I might be demisexual. Other days I’m not sure—and that uncertainty is normal.
Part of what complicates things for me is that my sex‑repulsion isn’t only orientation; some of it is trauma. Underneath that layer, though, I still identify as asexual. I don’t experience sexual attraction the way most people do. But with deep emotional safety—if the trauma piece weren’t sitting on top of everything—I think I could show up for a partner in ways that feel safe for both of us. That’s why I sometimes wonder if I’m somewhere near the demi end of the spectrum. I just need safety first.
Over the past decade, none of this nuance seemed to matter to the people I tried to date. They didn’t hear “spectrum” or “trauma” or “emotional connection.” They heard “broken.” And that’s where the loneliness began.
The Ace Shape of Loneliness
There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes with being asexual—a quiet, cumulative ache that settles in the spaces where other people assume connection should be.
I’ve built connections that felt promising only to watch them fall apart the moment someone realized I wasn’t going to “get better.” More than one person told me I just needed the right partner, the right moment, the right kind of sex. A therapist even told me it wasn’t normal to not want sex. They weren’t listening to me; they were listening to their belief that asexuality is fixable.
The loneliest part is that I want love—deeply. I want partnership, affection, shared life. But the world struggles to imagine romance without sex, so I end up feeling like I’m offering a relationship with a missing piece. It often left me feeling like I wasn’t enough.
There were years when I wondered if I was the problem—if trauma made me unlovable, or if my asexuality made me less worth choosing. It took a long time to understand that wanting connection while navigating trauma doesn’t make me broken. It makes me human. And it took even longer to realize that my repulsion has more to do with my own trauma and my experience of my body than with sexual attraction itself.
But even in all that loneliness, I kept reaching for connection. I kept trying, even when it felt easier to believe I’d always be alone. Slowly, I began to learn that there are ways to build love that don’t require me to erase myself.
The Lessons Loneliness Taught Me
Even in my loneliest seasons, I never stopped wanting connection. Something in me kept believing there had to be a way to build love without betraying myself.
Some connections didn’t last, but they taught me what I needed to learn—how to communicate my needs early, how to recognize when someone hoped I’d “grow out of” my asexuality, how to walk away before I lost myself trying to meet expectations I could never fulfill.
Those lessons also made it hard to trust that someone could love me for me—not for what I could provide sexually. The person I’m seeing now isn’t perfect, and neither am I, but he isn’t trying to fix me. We’re figuring things out together. I’m working on healing the trauma I need to heal so physical intimacy doesn’t feel frightening because I don’t want fear to be the thing that decides my future.
We’re building something honest—something flexible enough to hold both of our needs without forcing either of us into a shape that hurts. Where it goes from here, only time will tell.
What I do know is this: Connection doesn’t have to follow the script of the cards in the Hallmark aisle. It can be slower, softer, quieter. It can be built on emotional intimacy instead of sexual expectation. It can be shaped by communication instead of assumption. And when it’s built that way, it feels real in a way I didn’t know was possible.
Relationship Styles that Make Space for Someone Like Me
For most of my life, I thought I had only two choices: force myself into a traditional relationship model that didn’t fit, or accept that I might always be alone. No one ever told me there were other ways to build connection—ways that didn’t require me to override my boundaries or pretend to be someone I’m not.
There are relationship styles that make space for people like me, people whose intimacy doesn’t follow the standard script.
Queerplatonic partnerships showed me that deep emotional intimacy, loyalty and shared life don’t need a sexual component to be meaningful. They’re not “just friends,” and they’re not quite romantic either—They’re something in between, or beyond, or entirely outside the binary.
For some ace people, including me, open or flexible relationships can create room for everyone’s needs without forcing anyone into a role that hurts. In my case, being open wasn’t about avoiding intimacy; it was about honesty. It meant acknowledging that I couldn’t meet certain needs because of my sex‑repulsion—and that he didn’t expect me to. It meant building something that worked for both of us instead of squeezing ourselves into a mold that didn’t fit.
And then there’s slow‑burn, emotion‑first romance, the kind that grows like a sunrise instead of a spark. For ace and demi people, emotional safety often comes first. Trust comes first. When those things are in place, physical intimacy—whatever shape it takes—can grow from comfort instead of pressure. That model honors the way my heart works: connection first, everything else second.
The most freeing thing I’ve learned is that I don’t have to follow any script at all. I can build a relationship that fits me and the person I’m with, even if it doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen before. Love doesn’t have to be recognizable to anyone else to be real.
What gives me hope now is knowing I don’t have to choose between loneliness and self‑betrayal. There are ways to build love that honor who I am—not who someone wants me to be. And maybe that’s the real lesson: Love isn’t about fitting into a mold. It’s about building something true.
I’m still figuring myself out. I’m still healing. I’m still learning how to build connection in ways that honor who I am. But for the first time, I’m not doing it from a place of fear. I’m doing it from a place of possibility. And if you’ve ever felt like love wasn’t built for you, I hope you know this: there is space for you too. You deserve a love that fits.
Featured image by Cryssie Nicole
