Me/asexual

I've never been into sex (as in intercourse). There was a time when I thought maybe I was interested in it, but in retrospect I was just hoping it would make me feel less dysphoric (as cuddling with cisfemale people tended to do, later on)... and that vague interest was never sufficient to overcome my terror of pregnancy.

So I had a cisfem friend with whom I was intimate over the space of several years, and we just cuddled and explored.

(It was only later I realized that this basically disproved a thing I had long worried about -- that there was this inner male nature lurking within me and which defined the real motives for my actions, regardless of what I thought they were, and that what it wanted was sex because that's what guys want. Five years of opportunity to talk someone into sex, and I never once tried. So. Hypothesis ruled out.)

And... to shorten a longer story, I'll just say that I later discovered that while I could enjoy intercourse in an immediate sense, it left me feeling empty and slightly effed up emotionally.

Even given all this, it has taken me a long time to work around to the idea that asexual cuddling really is okay. I think a large part of why it took so long was dysphoria, too – partly from having the wrong set of hormones (testosterone really really wants you to think about gendered body-parts) and partly from having the wrong body-shape myself (certain things getting in the way all the time really kind of ruined the experience). Physical transition was absolutely vital for me to be able to feel at ease around my own physical existence.