597 - What are Asexuality and Aromanticism (with Patrick Bex)?

Welcome, Patrick!

We’re so excited to welcome Patrick Bex to the show this week to discuss asexuality and aromanticism. Patrick is an aroace advocate, content creator, and author best known for his Fluently Aspec social media platforms that educate about aromantic and asexual experiences.

Patrick tackles these topics and questions during this episode:

1. What is the number one thing that you think most people get wrong about aromanticism and asexuality?

2. Can you talk to us a little bit about your journey to discovering your identity? What was it that helped you the most with accepting your identity?

3. Can you define asexuality, aromanticism, and aroace for us?

4. What is something you wish more people knew about aromantic or asexual experiences?

5. How would an aro person define romance? Are they more indifferent to romance or actively avoiding it?

6. How does an asexual and/or aromantic relationship with a person who you feel attracted to, differ from deep friendship?

7. From a listener: Do you experience feelings toward others differently from the way you experience feelings toward yourself? In other words, can you still experience romantic or sexual feelings independently of another person, or are those feelings specifically connected to attraction toward others? Also, does your experience of asexuality or aromanticism fluctuate over time, or do you feel that it is a consistent part of your identity and orientation?

8. Do you think it’s possible for asexual or aromantic folks to still have strong relationships? 

9. What are some good questions to ask of a prospective partner who identifies as aro and/or ace to help one understand where they are coming from?

10. How do you navigate the internal expectations that people have around sex and things like the relationship escalator while also learning to be communicative and foster intimate connections? 

11. From a listener: Can you please recommend methods to balance out the mismatch of interest between partners? And do you have any advice for someone interested in reconnecting with lost, or maybe repressed, sexual interest?

12. From a listener: Do you have suggestions for building intimacy, emotional and physical, in a romantic relationship with someone with lower romance and sex drives. I know a lot of this is going to be individual, my aero/ace partner wants intimacy and doesn't have many ideas on how to foster it, but is good at saying that felt good, this did not. So maybe just some examples of ways to do that, that are not highly focused on sexualizing or romanticizing but still loving a person.

13. From a listener: I'm curious about whatever thoughts you want to share about aromantic allosexuality, as it's otherwise been such a rarity in experiences I've seen that I frankly don't even know where to start.

Find more from Patrick on his website, Fluently Aspec, check out the merch he designs here, and find him on YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and TikTok at @fluentlyaspec!

Transcript

If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Patrick: You have to look for the patterns. If you're looking at one or two instances, it can point you in a direction. But anything in life is about following patterns. It's how I figured out that I have ADHD. It's how I figured out my romantic orientation, my sexual orientation. It's how we form our belief systems. It's such a central part of life to follow the patterns of who we are and what's shaped us and where we've come from. And I am hesitant to ever tell somebody who they are. And in fact, I am often the one that says, you don't get to tell this person who they are. They get to say it.

Jase: Welcome to the Multiamory Podcast. I'm Jase.

Emily: I'm Emily.

Dedeker: And I'm Dedeker.

Emily: We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past.

Dedeker: Whether you're monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you and we're here for you.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about asexuality and aromanticism with guest Patrick Bex. Patrick Bex is an aroace advocate, content creator, and author best known for his Fluently Aspec social media platforms that educate about aromantic and asexual experiences. Also, if you want to learn more about our communication tools that we talk about on this show all the time, you can check out our book Multiamory Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. You can get that at multiamory.com/book or wherever you like to get books. So Patrick, thank you so much for joining us today.

Patrick: Thank you so much for having me.

Emily: So Patrick, to start off with, what is the number one thing that you think most people get wrong about aromanticism and asexuality? And if there are two things, because those are, I understand, two separate things, then let us know about those as well.

Patrick: I think firstly people think it's an end-all be-all. They aren't quite aware that there is a spectrum for both cases, so they think that asexuals are completely separated from any interest in sex whatsoever, or aromantic folks are completely disinterested in romance whatsoever. They'll never date if they're asexual, they'll never have relations if they're asexual or aromantic. And there's a lot of nuances to it. There's plenty of folks who still do engage in all those kinds of activities and still are on the asexual or aromantic spectrum. And another that people don't seem to think about, and it's actually quite interesting because I've been seeing it more and more lately is they don't recognize that even if they do understand the spectrum part of it, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's not also another queer identity involved. That somebody who's asexual could also be bisexual, for example. They think almost like they default to heterosexual, heteroromantic. So that's actually been an interesting one that I've seen pop up more and more lately.

Dedeker: So kind of the idea that an asexual or aromantic identity sort of like neutralizes everything else that could be in the mix.

Patrick: Yeah, that seems to be how they interpret it.

Dedeker: Fascinating.

Jase: This is something that has been really interesting to us, and we did one episode about this, but it's been several years since then. And we do have a pretty decent-sized portion of our community that identifies as somewhere on that spectrum of aroace. Because we try to make our podcast about all kinds of relationships and not just the ones that want to be focused on sex all the time or just the ones that look very traditionally romantic. But I'm curious for you. We've been doing this show now for almost 12 years.

Emily: Over 12 years now.

Dedeker: Over 12. Yeah.

Jase: Over 12 now. Okay. So we've been doing this show for over 12 years. I'm curious for you in the time you've been doing your content and just over the last decade or so, what have you seen change in terms of awareness of this or narratives out there?

Patrick: I do feel that there's more awareness now. I think we haven't quite reached a point of everybody understanding it though. And we've definitely got attention from people now, not always good attention. We had about a year and a half ago now, we joined the trans community in the ire of a certain British author.

Dedeker: Hmm.

Jase: Ah, I see.

Patrick: So there's that. But I do think that we've had some pretty good representation over the last 5 or 6 years. I know for me, there was one in particular that really hit home for me. It was actually the DC Comics show Legends of Tomorrow actually had a character come out as ace in their final season. They weren't able to explore that any further, but it was just a really nice scene where it was just gently explained what asexual is, and the character just kind of went, "Huh, I guess that means I'm ace." And that's nice when simple but nice.

Jase: Yeah. Like when you see representation of something and you come away going, "Oh, that was actually pretty good." Like, they did a really decent job.

Emily: For sure.

Dedeker: I feel like I don't often have that experience with representation.

Jase: That's great.

Patrick: Funny enough, comic books seem to be one of the better avenues for representation.

Emily: I wonder why that is.

Jase: For a long time too.

Emily: Yeah.

Patrick: Yeah.

Emily: And maybe just even animated series as well. Like what comes to mind for me is BoJack Horseman, the character of Todd in BoJack Horseman, who's such a lovely character, but also came out as ace in that as well.

Patrick: Yeah, Todd was one of the very earliest representations. I remember hearing Angela Chen, she's the author of a book called Ace, that's a wonderful resource, by the way, but she talked about there was actually a parallel between Todd coming out as ace and the number of people who identified as ace right after. Which is really fascinating.

Dedeker: I guess that makes sense. With people feeling like this is something that's being shown to them, and if it resonates in a particular way, that makes sense. But speaking of that, can you share a little bit about your own journey to discovering your identity?

Patrick: Well, the first time that I heard the word asexual was not in a good context. I had a friend in college, she went to a different college than I did, and she wanted to take our friendship in a different direction. I didn't understand what sexual attraction or romantic attraction were supposed to feel like, but I knew I cared about her a lot, and I thought that what I felt for her was romantic feelings. Now, she only wanted something sexual. She wanted to engage in that over the phone. I couldn't do that. I wasn't up to that, and I tried because I still cared about her. I still didn't want to jeopardize the relationship that existed. But she said to me at one point, you seem to change your mind on this a lot. And this next line will never leave me. She said, we are sexual beings, and if you're not, then you are asexual and therefore not interested in sex. And it just felt like such a dehumanizing outlook that I sort of ran from it for close to 6 years because it felt so not just rejecting in the moment, but like I said, dehumanizing. It felt like I was an other, whatever that meant. And I had already kind of battled that feeling of brokenness, like, is something wrong with me? And it wasn't until 2019 when I did something pretty unusual for myself at the time. I went to a music festival on my own in Phoenix, Arizona, and while I was there, I had met a whole bunch of people online in the months coming up to it that knew that they were going by themselves and started this huge group chat thing to get to know other people. In fact, this weekend I'm actually going to one of their weddings.

Jase: Oh, wow.

Patrick: So I've stayed in contact with them since 2019. And that last night before we all left, one of them wrote for an online publication on health. Specifically, she edited sex articles. So she asked the 4 or 5 of us that were still there to take this survey. And I'm looking through this thing utterly confused and all the things that I've thought were jokes, like the daddy thing and all that. I didn't know that people actually liked stuff like that, that I always thought it was just people joking around. And as they're just nodding along and going, oh yeah, that makes sense for me. That's me.

Emily: That's me.

Patrick: I'm looking around and thinking, 'Oh, so I'm the one.' And that's when I actually reached back into my memory and pulled that line back and realized, 'Huh, maybe there was something to that.'

Dedeker: Wow. Because I was curious. I know for some people when they're first presented with the concept of an identity, whether it's through representation, like seeing BoJack Horseman, or like you had this personal experience with a friend, that I found that for some people it can show up as this big relief, like, 'Oh my God, this actually totally makes sense, and I never clicked. I didn't realize there was a word for who I am,' and that's really liberating and freeing. And then for other people, it brings up this initial resistance. And that's so interesting that for you it was kind of like pushing through these 6 years of resistance until reaching that point of almost feeling like it clicks into place.

Patrick: And that's really what all of my platforms are all about because I don't want people to get the wrong idea about what it is before they understand it. Because I was there. I know what it's like to receive it negatively. And I don't want that to happen to other people.

Dedeker: So at that time when this sort of second important moment for you taking the survey, realizing how you're different from everybody else in the circle. What happened then? What's the next thing that you do?

Patrick: So I started to actually research, and in my research, one of the things that jumped out at me right away was the word broken came back.

Dedeker: Hmm.

Patrick: That it wasn't just a word I used. It was a word almost everybody was using before they figured it out. It was this strange universal thing that you could almost call it a canon event that everybody kind of went through, it seems like, or at least a large enough number that it was very significant. But that helped me feel more connected in a weird way.

Jase: So you mean as you were looking into this, reading other people's blog posts or other things about it and them going through that same experience of feeling broken or something? Is that what you mean about seeing that word out there?

Emily: Okay.

Jase: Yeah, that makes sense.

Emily: And when did you decide that you wanted to become an advocate for all of this and start your platform and sort of grow it from maybe where you had started with finding out that this was your identity?

Patrick: Well, it was about a year before I even posted anything, and it was first on Twitter where I started talking about anything. It was right after Pride 2020, and it seems to happen almost every year that right at the end of Pride there's some discourse over do asexual people belong. And I kind of did what we're doing right now. I talked about what my experience was like and how I figured things out. I wrote, I think it was 7 days of threads focused on a different point in my life, and it was very freeing. It was a platform that people didn't know my identity. They didn't know my real name. And so I was able to do it anonymously, which was very comforting for me. But once I did it the first time, I felt this connection start to grow.

Dedeker: Mm-hmm.

Patrick: And then from there, I joined a support group actually here in Milwaukee that meets over Google Meets, and we were able to just discuss our experiences. The first meeting I just listened. I didn't even unmute myself once even to introduce myself, but after that first one, I really started to feel like I could talk about things. And from there I made some pretty strong connections in the advocacy world. And especially once it was pretty obvious that Twitter was not the place to be anymore.

Dedeker: Sure.

Patrick: That's when I transitioned to TikTok and eventually into Instagram, YouTube, and now actually as of a few weeks ago I started Twitch.

Emily: Oh nice.

Jase: Oh nice.

Emily: Lovely.

Jase: Very cool.

Dedeker: I want to rewind going back to the Pride discussion because that's something that I've noticed happening with increasing volume every year after Pride. There's a similar discussion around polyamory, right? Do non-monogamous and polyamorous people have a place at Pride? And I know my own feelings about that feels like they change every single year, and it gets a little bit more nuanced every single year. But what's your stance on that about, is there a space of Pride for asexual people?

Patrick: I absolutely think there's a space for asexual people at Pride. It's interesting when people point at asexuality as if it's some sort of default, and how they try to link it to heterosexuality. But isn't queerness all about not conforming, not being part of the heterosexual norm? So why wouldn't asexuality belong? And especially when there's still quite a bit of rhetoric thrown our way too. People don't necessarily think about what we face too. There's— I'm forgetting which country, but it just became illegal to be asexual there.

Emily: Really? Wow.

Patrick: Yeah. We've been misinterpreted over the years. About a year ago, a guest on Trevor Noah's podcast confused asexuality with incels.

Dedeker: Oh, that's quite a confusion to those.

Emily: Yeah, not the same at all. Goodness.

Patrick: And to my knowledge, they didn't retract that either.

Emily: Oh, goodness.

Jase: Jeez. Next, we're going to get into really trying to understand what these terms mean and how they might show up in different people's lives. But first, we're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors. Thank you to all of them for supporting this show, letting us do this every week for free. Please take a moment, give them a listen, use the links or promo codes in our show notes. That really does help our show. And of course, if you would rather support us directly and get access to things like ad-free episodes, our amazing community on Discord, our monthly video processing groups, you can go to multiamory.com/join and sign up there. We would love to have you as part of our community. This episode is sponsored by Uberlube. Lube is the key to maximizing pleasure. We've said it a gazillion times on this show. You know it, you love it. And of course, the best lube you can use is our favorite, Uber Lube. It's made with the highest quality body-safe ingredients, has no smell or scent, and we absolutely love it and can't recommend it enough.

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Emily: Maybe just for our listeners out there, or anyone who is listening that doesn't necessarily know the difference between these terms, can you kind of give us a definition for what asexuality is, what aromanticism is, and then also aroace, because I know that you have used that as well, which that is something not like aro slash ace, but aroace is one word. I've actually never seen that before. So I understand these are all on a spectrum, but can you kind of give us a quick definition for each?

Jase: And maybe for a listener, this would be the moment where they go, oh yeah, exactly.

Patrick: Yeah. So asexuality is when someone experiences little to no sexual attraction, but it doesn't have to relate to their relationship to actually having sex. It's about the attraction towards people. And the same way with aromanticism, except it's romantic attraction towards people. Aroace is a term for someone who's on both of those spectrums. And actually, if you're watching this on video, I have the aroace flag hanging here behind me. It's this orange, yellow, white, light blue, dark blue flag. I absolutely love it. We call it the sunset flag.

Emily: Nice.

Patrick: But aromanticism and asexuality are spectrums. There's plenty of experiences along that. If you're questioning, well, I do experience sexual attraction sometimes, like it'll just get very intense and then just drop off. That could be asexuality. There's actually a lot of what we call micro labels, and what I just described is one that we use called ace spike.

Emily: Huh.

Jase: Okay, so that actually leads to something that I feel like is a common source of confusion when people try to think about this or process this. If we're talking about asexuality, how would you describe the difference between that and having low sex drive? And where's the overlap there too?

Patrick: That's actually a pretty common question too. Asexuality is specifically about attraction. Now, I always say that if folks want to include their relationship to actually having the action of sex into their definition for them personally and how they describe it, that's totally fine. I'm very big on people having the liberties to use the language that fits them best and use them as tools, because after all, that's what labels are. But at the same time, that attraction piece is the pinnacle of what we look at as asexuality.

Emily: Would it—

Jase: would it be correct to say it's like the difference between looking at someone and going, wow, that person's sexy, but having no drive to actually have sex or do that in your life versus not even feeling that attraction piece but maybe still do want to have sex? Like you still have the physical urge for it even if you don't experience the attraction. Is that accurate?

Patrick: Yeah. I'll give you an example of something looking back on my high school days that maybe I could have figured this out sooner. Celebrity crushes are always something that comes up for me. I used to say that my celebrity crush was Hayley Williams of Paramore.

Emily: Nice.

Dedeker: Yeah, good one.

Emily: Good choice. Very good choice.

Patrick: But to me, it wasn't about anything beyond, yeah, I would love to hang out with her and watch Twilight. It wasn't anything further than that. Even Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger, she'd be a cool best friend.

Emily: Celebrity crush as well.

Patrick: Yeah. I actually did get to meet her in Toronto, by the way.

Dedeker: So I think when I recall my discussions with, let's lovingly call them normies, about these topics, I do think we're seeing a time where it's becoming easier for people to understand asexuality as an identity. And I think especially from a more normie perspective, it's maybe a little bit easier to compartmentalize and create definitions around what sex is, what sexual attraction feels like, and oh, okay, so someone who maybe doesn't experience those things, got it. Once we get into the aromantic identities, I found then it starts to fall apart a little bit with people's understanding of it. Because it cuts to this question of how can we define romance? So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that, starting from an aromantic lens, how do you define romance?

Patrick: So to me, I have learned from just asking people what their experiences are like, and it's not always the clearest because sometimes I'll hear from one person and then I'll repeat it to another person and be like, yeah, they said that it's like they can't breathe without this person. Is that what it's like for you? And the next person will say something like, that sounds a little dependent. I don't know. That doesn't sound the most healthy.

Dedeker: Mm-hmm.

Patrick: So it's been hard for me to really understand what it is, but I also know if I were to feel it, I would know.

Emily: Mm-hmm.

Patrick: But I think one of the breakdowns is that there's not discussion of what we call the split attraction model amongst people outside of the asexual or aromantic spectrums. But that's a huge piece that we talk about in our communities. The split attraction model focuses on the fact that attraction doesn't have to all run this parallel track. That there's all these different types of attraction you can experience, from sexual to romantic to platonic to a term that we use a lot, queerplatonic, which is like the easiest way to put it is like a super, super best friend.

Jase: Yeah, I like that definition, actually.

Dedeker: Yeah. We did an episode on queerplatonic relationships also several years ago, but no one said the word super, super best friend.

Emily: Yeah.

Patrick: But the fact that so many people experience them going in the same direction, especially sexual and romantic attraction towards the same groups of people, they don't consider the fact that they could split off and go in different directions for folks, which is actually what's happening in asexuality or aromanticism for folks who are on one or the other. But like I mentioned earlier, you could also be, for instance, asexual and bisexual or pansexual or homosexual or straight. You could be any which direction, but the idea that it runs parallel to each other is not quite accepted outside of asexual and aromantic circles. And I think because we have— I like to say that instead of saying I'm not attracted to anyone, I rephrase it to I am attracted to no one.

Dedeker: Hmm, interesting.

Jase: Okay, interesting distinction. Tell me what's at the heart of the nuance between those for you?

Patrick: To me, it's that when people think of identities in these terms, sexual or romantic, they're looking for a direction, they're looking for where it goes, and saying I'm not attracted to anyone feels like a roadblock.

Jase: Hmm, interesting. Like, it's not going any direction, but you could potentially be attracted to someone.

Patrick: Yeah, I think it's possible, but I also don't necessarily feel a need to look. And I mean, I'm in my mid-30s. If I were to feel attracted to somebody by now, I'd probably know it. Not to say that sexuality or romantic identity aren't fluid, because they are. They absolutely could change. But at the same time, it's a very difficult tightrope to walk when talking about, well, you might meet someone someday. Because that can also lead to—

Jase: well, that's the whole—

Patrick: some pretty rough stuff.

Jase: Myth of how it shows up, right? Like, the biggest example I think is the character of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, where for the first season or two, you're like, oh, maybe this guy kind of represents asexuality, like maybe even a homosexual asexuality or something. And then it's like, oh no, he just had to kind of figure out how to come out of his shell or find the right person or whatever.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: And I feel like that's the trope that we've seen for forever about that kind of seemingly asexual person that's, oh, not really, they just needed to find the right circumstances or something.

Dedeker: Yeah, I want to go back and just give some major props to the split attraction model, to whoever came up with that one. I know for myself, understanding that model has helped me understand myself and my own identity and the ways that I communicate about it a lot better. For a number of years, I've identified as pansexual, and I think the biggest misconception that I run into when I talk to people about that is there's the joke that floats around of like, oh, they're the ones who are just the whores, right, who will just be attracted to anybody and ready to have sex with anybody. Where I'm like, that's definitely not my own experience of my own attraction. My experience of myself is that there are certain people where I know that I'll trend towards that very traditional sense of the attraction is bound together, both sexual and romantic together. But then there are certain people where I'm just like, oh, I know that I feel a very strong romantic attraction to this person and might fantasize about what is it like to cuddle with them or hold hands with them in public or be all mushy in public, but I don't have that sexual attraction or the sexual drive at all, right? Basically, I love the split attraction model, and I love folks doing the work that you're doing to bring in the nuance, because I love anything that enables us to paint with more colors of the palette, as it were.

Emily: Yeah, I want to transition into discussing how people with these identities have and conduct themselves within relationships. And first of all, how does an asexual and/or aromantic relationship differ from a friendship? Or is there no attraction necessarily at all? If there was maybe attraction, if you were on the asexual spectrum and you feel romantic attraction for that person, is there any difference between that and a friendship, for example?

Patrick: I think there would be some nuances between those. I know that when I was talking earlier about that friend I had in college, it was really hard for me to understand what was romantic and what was platonic. For me, platonic attraction is the strongest attraction that I experience. I honestly felt ashamed that I thought I was falling for all of my friends growing up.

Dedeker: Oh, interesting.

Emily: Interesting.

Patrick: And I could never tell them. I was always afraid that if I did, it would blow up in my face, ruin the friendship. In my senior year of high school, I actually did tell someone and my worst fear came true and that just became a disaster.

Dedeker: Hmm.

Patrick: So it's a little difficult to distinguish for me personally, but I know that there's plenty of folks who, for instance, when we talked about earlier queerplatonic attraction and queerplatonic relationships, that kind of does walk that line of it can be what you want it to be. There's another term also called waverships. Where it can come in waves and it can be romantic at times. It can be platonic at times. It can be sexual at times. You may have thought of it as friends with benefits in the past, but a wavership is actually a really neat newer term that I learned about a year and a half ago. And it's something that I feel is really not talked about anywhere near enough.

Jase: Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm thinking back, I'm like, yeah, huh, if I had a term for that, maybe some relationships I've had in the past could have felt more stable rather than feeling kind of unstable by their nature of being a little wavier.

Dedeker: Yeah, I guess I'm curious to open up a discussion about relationship formation and dating, for lack of a better word. I know not everybody calls what we call dating doesn't look the same among everybody. So let's start on— I want to ask about this from two different perspectives. So perspective number one I want to ask about is, if you're someone who is allosexual, aromantic, does experience sexual attraction, romantic attraction, but you start dating someone or start being drawn to someone, you have a prospective partner who identifies as some flavor, as aro or ace, what are some good questions to ask to help understand where that person is coming from?

Patrick: That's great, because to me, communication is one of the biggest keys to any relationship, but especially in a relationship between an ace-spec person and an allo person. And also, thank you for defining allosexual and aromantic. I am a big believer in constantly checking in. It doesn't have to be this big overarching thing, but it's important to have that dialogue open and ask, what are you comfortable with? Do you have boundaries that I need to know about? Will you let me know if I encroach on those boundaries? And for the aspec person, it's also a good idea for them to ask similar questions because in any relationship, there's bound to be some boundaries that we all have. There's things that we need to be open to discussing. And I think that everybody has that hard line of, I can't go past this. But in a relationship like what you just described, it can come up a little bit sooner depending on the person. Or it could be you could even be surprised how far down the line it might be. You just never know because asexuality and aromanticism are such wide spectrums, and it really just depends on the person. So when asking, like I said, boundaries is a big one. Checking in occasionally and just showing that you genuinely care. That your partner is in a place where they're comfortable, in a relationship that they're comfortable with. And if you are the one feeling some discomfort, also make it known to them, because we need to know it too.

Dedeker: So then, to ask about perspective number 2, which is the perspective of the aro or ace person, I'm reminded of I had a client many, many years ago, and they were completely disconnected from this world, from queer, poly, ace, had not found any entry point into that, but came to me because they were struggling a lot with dating and with finding a partner. They wanted to find a partner, but they exhibited at least what from my perspective looked like, oh, I think this person is either very extreme demisexual or they're somewhere on the ace spectrum. And that's kind of what they're bumping up against in traditional dating, is that everyone out there has all of these high expectations around sex, when sex is supposed to happen, around how it's connected to attraction, to the relationship escalator. And so this client was really, really struggling. And unfortunately for me, I really was like, yeah, I don't know how to guide you through navigating that, with you being who you are, putting all this pressure on yourself to feel like you need to change yourself in order to be able to successfully date. I don't know how to guide you towards that within a traditional dating sphere. So I guess I was kind of curious about, to continue this conversation about someone on the ace spectrum who is looking for some kind of partnership or dating, and not just dating within the circle of other people who identify on the spectrum. What do you see helps people, works for people?

Patrick: Well, one thing that I could say I see works for a lot of people is honestly, it's not that different from allo folks. Asexual and aromantic folks still can find connection in hobbies and interests in just about any way that an allo person could. And again, it depends on the person, but there might be some hurdles that are a little more substantial. I know for me, one that was always difficult was I always had a really hard time picking up signs.

Jase: And like signs of flirting or interest. Yeah.

Patrick: And I don't know if it's— I've never been able to figure out if it's more to do with being aroace or just 2 years ago I was also diagnosed with ADHD. So I don't know if that plays a role into it, but I always had a hard time figuring out where I stood in a relationship, and that I think is also a big reason why communication is so important to me, because I need a little more direct direction.

Jase: Like more explicit intent. Yeah, more clear.

Patrick: Yeah. I had a long-term relationship and I am still very good friends with the person, and when I came out to them, they weren't all that surprised. They were but weren't, you know. And I asked, well, did you ever think maybe this was a thing for me? And she said, I didn't think in the moment, but I mean, we stayed in a hotel together and nothing happened.

Dedeker: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Patrick: And I didn't think about it like that. And we had been together over a year at that point. And she said, you played Pokémon and we went to get pizza. Yeah, that pretty much was how it happened, but I hadn't thought that that was a moment to do anything. But I also know that there's aces who are neurotypical and maybe that's not their experience. It's hard for me to tell really where that line is between my neurodivergent side and my aspec side.

Dedeker: Right?

Jase: Right. Now it's time to get into some questions that we've gotten from you, our listeners. We're going to get to those in just a second, but first we're going to take another break to talk about our sponsors. Again, check them out, read our show notes, use those links and promo codes. That really does directly help support our show, and that's what lets us keep putting this out there into the world for free every week, even after 12 years. But of course, if you'd like to join our amazing community, you can go to multiamory.com/join. And for being part of that community, you get things like ad-free episodes, our video processing groups, access to our really cool discussion channels, threads, all sorts of regional threads. It's a really great place to be, and we would love to have you there.

Dedeker: At multiamory.com/join.

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Emily: Now we want to get into a couple questions from our listeners, and many of them come from people who have partners who are ace or aro, and some of them are from listeners who just are interested about this topic or are ace or aro themselves. So this first one is going to be from someone who asked, does your experience of asexuality or aromanticism fluctuate over time? Or do you feel that it is a consistent part of your identity and orientation? And I know this is probably a very personal question, so maybe if you can answer it specifically to you, and then also maybe just other people that you've seen or that you've discussed this within your groups that you've gone to.

Patrick: Yeah, for me, I haven't noticed any fluctuation. I know that it was more difficult for me to accept my aromanticism, which, given our earlier conversation, might seem surprising since it took me 6 years to learn what asexuality even meant. But once I learned what it meant properly, it clicked. But with aromanticism, it was harder for me because there was still closeness that I wanted, and there were still things in the realm of romance that I wanted. And that was difficult to really navigate where I fall. I often say that I don't feel any need to define my asexuality beyond asexual, but with aromanticism, I find that it takes a lot more to peel back. In my experience, I've used multiple micro labels. I've never fully felt that the word aromantic defines me properly if I just use it by itself, as opposed to how I feel with asexual. But for other folks that I've known and spoken with, I know there's plenty of people who do feel that fluctuation at times. There's friends of mine who are in relationships who are on the aromantic or asexual spectrum and are still very comfortable with being romantic or being a sexual person and having those experiences. And even myself, in terms of sexuality, there's kind of a running joke about aces, there's two different kinds of aces. Either they're the most wholesome, innocent type of comedy that you'll ever meet, or they have the dirtiest minds you'll ever meet in your life.

Emily: Interesting.

Patrick: And I tend to fall in that second category sometimes. I know my way around a pretty dirty joke, but as far as anything else is concerned, that's really the only thing I engage in with the sexual world, so to speak, is really just humor.

Dedeker: Well, related to the fluctuation piece, I had a question that came up. This is not a listener question, but I imagine that there are a lot of people who might be questioning like, is this me? Is it like I'm asexual or I'm aro or I'm somewhere on the spectrum? Or is it genuinely about my current context of the relationships that I'm in or the people that I'm in? Like, how have you seen people navigate that back and forth? Because I imagine that can be really confusing.

Patrick: Yeah, I always think of it like you have to look for the patterns. If you're looking at one or two instances, it can point you in a direction. But anything in life is about following patterns. It's how I figured out that I have ADHD. It's how I figured out my romantic orientation, my sexual orientation. It's how we form our belief systems. It's such a central part of life to follow the patterns of who we are and what's shaped us and where we've come from. And I am hesitant to ever tell somebody who they are. And in fact, I am often the one that says, you don't get to tell this person who they are. They get to say it. It's their words and their understanding of themselves. Because I go back to this clip from Ted Lasso, where Roy Kent is holding a press conference. This is the episode where Isaac is kicked out of a game, and they ask Roy at the press conference after if the team condones his actions or something along lines. And Roy tells a story about a guy that he used to play with who there was something going on in his life that Roy didn't know, and he made a very insensitive joke.

Dedeker: Mm.

Patrick: And then he follows that with, 'No one knows what's going on in our lives.' And I've always tied that to identity. I don't know what anyone else's experiences are. They don't know what mine are like. So for somebody to define someone else just always felt wrong to me.

Dedeker: I think that kind of tracks, and maybe makes sense about why when your friend was the one who said you're asexual, that it wasn't easy to be like, oh my God, you're so right, such an embrace. No, I think that's really wise, that this is something that we come to on our own. Because you're the only one who's going to know the full picture of what you experience.

Patrick: And there's probably experiences that are buried that we can't even find in the moment, that it would take a lot of processing and a lot of digging to even find them.

Dedeker: Yeah.

Patrick: Which another misconception of asexuality is, was it related to trauma? That's not to say it can't be. There's actually a term for that. It's caedsexual. That's a micro label that is on the asexual spectrum. Somebody that feels that they were allosexual, something traumatic happened, and now they feel cut off from that part of themselves. And that's actually where that prefix caed comes from. It's Latin for cut off.

Jase: Yeah, I feel like that assumption though, that this must just be because of some kind of trauma or some bad experience, gets thrown at polyamory, it gets thrown at lesbianism.

Emily: Yeah, everything.

Dedeker: Sure, everything. It's so good to have that reaffirmed though, because I know I think many of us, I know the three of us often on this show also sometimes suffer from, so many people suffer from this, the whole 'am I queer enough' worry, right? Like this label that I'm adopting for myself, 'do I count enough?' towards that. And I know I've struggled with that with the pansexual label too. And then often at the end of the day, have to just come back to like, oh, but I know what happens in my nervous system, in my body, and who I'm attracted to. I know that that's not a question for me. It's not something I'm putting on. I know that, right? And that's something that I hold as very precious, even separately from how people perceive me from the outside.

Emily: There was another question from a listener that described themselves as aromantic allosexual. So they said, I'm curious about whatever thoughts you want to share about aromantic allosexuality, as it's otherwise been such a rarity in experiences I've seen that I frankly don't even know where to start.

Dedeker: Well, it's funny because I have a friend who's aroallosexual.

Emily: Oh really?

Dedeker: Oh yes.

Emily: Well, then maybe it's actually not that rare.

Dedeker: Well, there's one.

Emily: There's one more. But yeah, do you have any thoughts on this subject?

Patrick: I actually just a few days ago reposted an old TikTok that came up on its anniversary, the On This Day feature, where I discussed allosexual aromantic experiences. Like you mentioned, that's not necessarily my experience, but I am always open to uplifting the voices of folks who do identify with that. And I've actually made a video on my YouTube channel where ahead of time I reached out on all of my socials and I asked, I'm making this video, but it's not my experience. I want to hear from you if it's yours. What would you like folks to know about allosexual aromantics? And there was actually quite a bit of feedback that I got. It's a pretty comprehensive video that gave a lot of personal examples for some folks, but also some pretty vague stuff that a lot of people could connect with. But I was really proud of how it turned out, and I made it clear, like, this is not me, but I see you and I hear you, and I want you to know that you're seen and heard.

Emily: Yeah, maybe that's something we can link.

Dedeker: Yeah, that'd be good.

Emily: So that people can take a look at that, or on our YouTube. That's great.

Dedeker: So let's do one more listener question. We had someone who asked, Do you have suggestions for building intimacy, emotional and physical, in a romantic relationship with someone with lower romance and sex drives? I know a lot of this is going to be individual, but my aroace partner wants intimacy but doesn't have many ideas on how to foster it. They're good at saying what felt good and what didn't. And so maybe just examples that you may know of, of ways to do that that are not highly focused on sexualizing or romanticizing someone that you love. I guess this starts to, sort of like our question earlier of how do we define romance? This starts to get into how do we define intimacy?

Jase: Yeah.

Dedeker: And closeness.

Patrick: I guess I would say that going back to boundaries and knowing their boundaries, if there's something that you want to try with them, you could have that conversation. Let them know if this is something you're uncomfortable with tell me and we can readdress, maybe this isn't for us, but we could try some different things. But I think that dialogue would be really helpful. And just let them know that it's okay that if something does reach a boundary, that they are safe to say so. And vice versa, if anyone in a relationship reaches that point, it should always be safe to say so.

Dedeker: It's like creating a culture of safe experimentation, safe feeling experimentation. Yeah, makes sense.

Jase: Yeah, I think that there's also something valuable to that safety going both ways too, because I know that's something that's often a struggle in that kind of matchup, whether it's a drive mismatch or actual aroace feelings is that it can be hard not to take that personally as the allosexual person, to feel like I'm trying these things and getting rejected. I'm putting that in air quotes because you understand this hopefully in your relationship and you're communicating well, but there's still that. So it just makes me think of creating kind of a space and time for this, of let's experiment now and try some things so it kind of feels more like we know we're going in with a sense of we're exploring together. And it's not just, I want you to spontaneously try these things on me and then I'll tell you what I don't like. That can be hard to keep up as the person who's having to come up with the ideas.

Patrick: Yeah, it's a fine line between let's try to find something you like versus well, now I'm overcompensating and trying all these things that I'm not comfortable with just to find something you're comfortable with.

Jase: That's a good point too.

Dedeker: Yeah.

Emily: I think all of this has made me realize why there's such an intersection between the non-monogamous community and the aroace community, because I think that with non-monogamy, it is sort of getting rid of these notions that love and relationships and caring about people has to look a certain way. And that instead it can look a variety of ways. And what you've talked about today is along those lines so much of caring about people and having intimacy in a variety of ways can look very different from one another, but then they're all still valid and they all still are meaningful. And that's just something for everyone out there to remember instead of constantly going towards one specific way of doing things. And that's the only thing that is valid. So I really appreciate you coming on the show, Patrick, and thank you so much for your expertise and for all of the amazing things that you had to say today. Just to finish out, where can people find more about you and your work? And also you wanted to plug something that's coming up next month.

Patrick: Yeah, you can find me on my website, FluentlyAspec.com. I'm also on Twitch, I'm on YouTube, I'm on Instagram and Threads and on TikTok. And also with this being the start of fall, I know certainly here the temperature's dropping. The end of October every year is Ace week. That's going to be the last full week of October this year, the 25th through the 31st. And there's a lot of resources. I know my feeds are going to be full of them.

Jase: So it's a good time to start following everybody.

Patrick: Yeah. There's a lot of really great educational opportunities during that. I know my state of Wisconsin has recognized Ace week every year since 2022. Our governor has signed the proclamation. I actually have them all right here. I am the one that handles that for Wisconsin.

Emily: Nice.

Jase: Nice.

Patrick: But there's other states that do as well. I have a video with the person who does it for Pennsylvania and we explain how to do it.

Jase: Very cool.

Patrick: That is right around the corner.

Emily: Amazing.

Jase: Well, awesome. I hope some people out there listening find out that there is someone in their state, or if they don't, that they reach out to you to say, hey, I wanna be the person for my state.

Emily: There you go. Alrighty. Well, our question of the week, which is going to be on our Instagram stories, is how do you define romance separate from sex? So very curious to see what you all have to say out there. And the best place to share your thoughts with other listeners is on the episode discussion channel in our Discord server, or you can post in our private Facebook group. You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram @multiamory_podcast.

Emily: Multiamory is created and produced by Jace Lindgren, Dedeker Winston, and me, Emily Matlack. Our production assistant is Carson Collins. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com.