Not Wanting A Romantic Relationship?

Hi everyone,

I have been diagnosed as having schizoid traits, and a schizoid "style"...but not the full-blown disorder. I do have a question though that I wanted to ask here, to see if anyone else shared my feelings. Does anybody just NOT have the wanting to be in a romantic relationship? I've never truly wanted to be in one, and some people I know see that as abnormal. To me, it's perfectly normal.

The farthest I've come to wanting "romance" is sexual fantasies, and masturbation.

Thanks to anyone who reads this.

I'm asexual. And you're right; it's perfectly normal. The human spectrum of sexuality isn't just one-dimensional gay-to-straight, you know; there's a "desire" dimension that goes all the way from "I want sex multiple times a day" to "I don't even want platonic romance."

You should go to AVEN and read up on asexuality. I think it's kind of annoying how everybody knows about gay and bi people, but not about asexuals. I mean, you're in the twelfth grade, from your sig; and it looks like you haven't even heard of it... whereas you probably heard it was possible for people to fall in love with the same sex by the time you were ten, if not younger. *Sigh* Silly sex-obsessed society doesn't conceive of the idea that it's possible not to be obsessed....

Thanks for the reply. I have heard of asexuality, and when I was younger (maybe 15?) I decided I WAS asexual. But then I realized that I was attracted to both sexes physically...(as in, I can have fantasies about them), but I don't want a relationship with either sex. So I identify myself as a bisexual, but really I'd never go out with anybody from either sex. So I'm not sure what to think. Am I bisexual or asexual?

If you've been diagnosed with schizoid traits - it's a common characteristic to feel this way - not interested in having relationships.

There are people who identify as bi-asexual, who are interested in both genders but who don't want to actually have sex. Also hetero-asexual and homo-asexual (these are terms usually used by people who want platonic relationships) and aromantic/asexual for people who don't want romance at all. There's also the category "autosexual" for people who only masturbate and don't want to have sex with anyone else (many asexuals do masturbate because it's a physically pleasant sensation). Some asexuals have fantasies that they would never want to act on; it's really the lack of desire to actually have sex that's the dividing line. As I said before, though, human sexuality isn't really a list of categories, but a spectrum.

There's nothing stopping an asexual person from seeing asthetic beauty in another human being, really. I do. I just don't want to take them to bed.

You may just be sitting awkwardly on the line between "asexual" and "low sex drive", with probably more in common with asexual than bisexual folks. As you grow and change you may shift somewhat along either axis, but for the most part people don't really go all that far from where they started. Some asexuals even get married and have sex for the sake of their partners (takes an awful lot of compromise but can work for the ones that just kind of think "meh" about sex)... there's more to romance than just sex; a lot more.

I'm not much interested in relationships, romantic or any other kind. Sometimes however I have got involved. Most of the time they are impossible relationships. Finite to begin with. I start something that has no future, so I can later feel bad about how it turned out. It's something I've detected in my own behaviour, getting involved in impossible relationships and avoiding possible ones.

I have no interest either, I'm just not interested at all in having a romantic relationship. I don't think that this is healthy, not for me. For me I think it's more of a symptom of what I suffer from rather than an actual preference.