I’m asexual. I don’t experience sexual attraction, and that’s perfectly fine. Who cares, right? It would be reasonable to assume that asexuality only affects whether or not a person has sex. Reasonable, but sadly wrong. The problem is how interweaved sex is with our society’s way of viewing relationships and intimacy. Let me explain.

Picture a romantic relationship. These imaginary partners are very much in love. They fall asleep in each other’s arms, they spend evenings together watching TV, snuggled up so that one person’s head is resting on their partner’s chest listening to their heartbeat. Their relationship has all the hallmarks of a typical romantic partnership.

Now add to the narrative that they don’t have sex. No particular reason, it’s just that neither of them have ever wanted to. Is that difficult to picture? Nothing just described was sexual in any way. It was about love, and physical intimacy. It’s difficult to imagine physical intimacy without sex because society says they can only come together as a package.

This is why asexuality affects my life, and why I’m annoyed about it. It is still difficult to even picture a future for myself where I am in the kind of relationship I want. Even though asexuality is about a lack of sexual attraction, not necessarily a disinterest in love or relationships.

Part of the problem is the assumption of sex in our cultural understanding of relationships. We have romantic conventions that provide a convenient shared idea of what dating a person will look like, even before we get to know them. This is like a culturally-agreed shorthand, and without these shortcuts and shared expectations, figuring out a relationship from scratch can be somewhat overwhelming.

One of these pieces of shared understanding is that sexual attraction is an essential marker of a healthy or viable relationship. We always hear advice that if there’s no “spark” then a potential relationship is probably not to be. Even if everything else is perfect.