Ace Dad Advice: How do I stay true to myself in a small town?

If you have questions or need advice about asexuality, sex and relationships, send ‘em to acedadadvice@gmail.com.

SM writes:

I go to a very small school in a small town. Less than a hundred kids go to my school. Yes I like people more than just platonically. And I desire to be in a romantic relationship. The only problem is a lot of the kids there make fun the LGBTQIA+ community. Since I am in it, I always feel like an outcast. I want to date someone but some people are rude to people in the community and others I'm not sure if they will date me. There isn't a whole lot of selection at my school. I want to date someone but I don't want to force it. I'm scared to be rejected because of something I cannot change. The way I dress also might send some flags that I may not swing a certain way for them. I like the way I am. How can I navigate dating as a biromantic sex repulsed teenager when I am not out to my family which I live with?

Hey SM —

I think I answered a previous submission of this question here. But I’m glad you resubmitted, because it’s given me an opportunity to share some thoughts on another part of your question.

We have something in common, SM. We both grew up in small towns. I grew up in a small town in south Louisiana. We basically lived on a farm, sharing the property with my paternal grandparents. My grandpa raised pigs and chickens and a few cows here and there. All the men in our family were auto mechanics by trade, and those blue collar southern ethics were pushing in around me from the time I was born. I grew up with all of the expectations that kind of world carried with it for boys: be straight, be butch, get married, have some kids, live a normal life.

I didn’t end up doing any of that. Yes, I got married, but I didn’t even get married in the socially acceptable way (I’m married in a four-person polycule made of three romantic relationships intertwined). The rest of it: hard pass. And that was an incredibly difficult and painful thing to be in that small town I grew up in. I knew from the time I was 14 that I was queer, knew it as clearly as I knew my own face in the mirror, but there was no space for that person to exist in my community. (At least not a space I could see at 14.) And I struggled with a lot of shame and frustration over it.

But I don’t think who we want to be or who we know ourselves to be is always the right person for the place we’re in. Sometimes, we’re the right person in the wrong place, and we’ve got to bide our time so keep the person we are and love safe.

The person who lives that life you see now — Ace Dad on the internet who’s confident and composed and has all the answers and lives his big ace life joyfully and proudly — is strictly the invention of a life outside of that small town I grew up in. He’s entirely and only possible in a somewhere else. He could never be this person in that place. And maybe some of the frustrations you’re feeling right now are less about things you need to change and improve about yourself and more about your place not being right for this version of you.

You say in your letter that you like who you are. That’s incredible. Do you know how far ahead that puts you? I’m 46 and still have trouble liking who I am sometimes. So you’re exhibiting some major superpowers. But loving yourself like that — especially when you’re queer in a small town — has maybe grown you in ways that make you no longer fit the very strict spot in the puzzle your community has in mind for you. You’re destined to be a piece in a different puzzle, one where the things that you fear being rejected for now are going to be the things you’re celebrated for.

What I’m saying is this: some of the challenges you’re having in the dating scene might not be solvable through behavior or tactic changes. Maybe, the challenges are built into an irreconcilable gap between who you are and where you are. And that’s okay! It happens to the best of us. But don’t beat yourself up if dating in a restrictive, queer-unfriendly community doesn’t resolve happily.

Know that there’s something on the other side of this incongruity. You’ll find the place where the puzzle fits you.

Just hold your head up in the meantime. The future gets here before you know it.