Ace Dad Advice: How do I grieve the life I could have had if I'd learned about asexuality sooner?

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D writes:

I just turned 48 recently and I finally got confirmation a year and half ago that I am Ace. I am having a very difficult time not grieving the life I could have had if I had known this and knew I wasn't alone. I always felt like I didn't belong in this world. I always thought that I could not have a true romantic relationship because I was not sexually attracted to anyone. I thought that there was something wrong with me that the guys that I had crushes on and wanted to kiss and cuddle them that I couldn't imagine and couldn't fully envision having sex with any of them. I thought so many things, that I had a hormone imbalance, that I was repressed because I was raised in the church, that I was afraid to be truly vulnerable with someone and be naked emotionally and physically etc. etc. So many tears were cried at night on and off for decades! Now knowing that if I knew I could have a romantic relationship without the sex things would have been SO different.

Do you have any advice on grieving the past, letting go and moving on?

Hi D,

This question really hits home.

When I first came out as ace, I spent about six months in therapy working through things. After one particularly hard session, I got in the car and drove to work.

(I insanely scheduled therapy appointments before work. What was I thinking? Expose your deepest emotional traumas, then pop into the office and shoot off some emails?)

I had a long commute, and about twenty minutes into the ride, I had to pull over to the side of the highway. I was sobbing. The center of my chest felt like an iron weight. I was shaking and my hands gripped the wheel so tightly I was digging little wounds into it with my fingernails.

Why? Why was this happening to me? It was bad enough I was a man into other men. It was bad enough I was a fat guy. It was bad enough I had anxiety and depression that made relationships difficult. Now this? I had to be ace, too? At 42. I have to learn how to navigate another social liability on top of the ones I already navigate, NOW? Look at all this time I wasted not understanding myself. Look at the relationships that failed. The self-loathing I endured. The way I judged myself for being a lousy lover. An inadequate partner. All of that unhappiness and pain and disappointment. I lived an entire life through the lens of a misunderstanding of myself that I can never get back. How is that fair? How is that just?

That was a hard morning. And despite all the Ace Dad empowerment and positivity I dole out day after day, that hard morning is always sort of with me. It’s a perennial passenger on this ride through the rest of my life. As you’ll probably relate to, it’s hard to shake off four decades of self-construction even with the best of intentions.

"So where’s the advice, Cody?” you’re probably asking yourself. I’m getting there.

The life I was grieving that day in the car felt incredibly real in the moment. But it’s not real. It never was. The life we “could have had” is a fiction. There is no life we “could have had.” There’s only the life we have. The one we’re living, complete with its bruises and battle scars, its late entrances and last-act revelations. We can imagine a million possibilities about what we could have done or would have said or should have been, but they’re imagined.

All we’ve got is what we did do, what we did say, what we are.

So the way I keep myself from sobbing in the car every day on my way to shoot off some emails is consider that grieved life for what it is: a thing my brain made up from my wishes, my insecurities, my disappointments, my doubt. I tell it, “Hey. I hear you. That life would have been great. It would have been easier. It would have maybe been happier. But it’s not real. So you’re welcome to be there. But you’re not welcome to run the show.”

Then, I focus on the only thing that is real: right now. Right now, I know who I am. Right now, I understand myself as clearly as I ever have. Right now, I have a lived experience that allows me to make smarter decisions about what comes next. Right now, I’m too old to put up with bullshit and games. Right now, I’m the most “me” I’ve ever been. I can do something with that. I can make something out of that. I can take those things in my hands and construct a life that I don’t have to grieve. I can make a life I can LIVE.

That’s better, right? Of course it is. The real is always better than the imagined. The now is always better than the past or the future.

Give yourself permission to feel those lousy feelings. Let yourself feel the grief and regret. But don’t get consumed by it. As a dear friend used to tell me, “They can always deliver the package, but you don’t have to sign for it.” Let the grief show up, but don’t sign for it. You’ve got better things to do.

You’ve got this present, ace version of you to be. Step into her shoes. Wear her joy with pride. See what she’s capable of. Because she’s real.

Don’t create new things to grieve five, ten years from now.

Live.

The world, my friend, is yours.