Cheated On and ACE

What if you’re ACE (a-segg-ual) and were cheated on? The experience is not as uncommon as you think.

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Hi Chump Lady,

I wrote to you several years ago, where you answered my letter: He Doesn’t Blame Me For His Affair.

It’s been almost exactly five years.

I wanted to tell you that I am still happily divorced and single.

I don’t think about him much anymore, but he still shows up in my nightmares. My nightmare version of him constructs a far more accurate persona than the mask he wore, I think. In my nightmares he’s cold, calculating, cruel, and stares at me with shark eyes.

The reason why I’m writing to you again is because I omitted something from my story. As I’ve been a casual reader and semicasual commenter for a while, I felt like I would share a little more in hopes that it might help someone else out there who might be going through this uncommon facet of chumpdom.

Part of why my marriage fell apart was because after I got married, as a celibate Christian, I discovered after we had made our vows that I was as*xual. I did what I could to accommodate and communicate, and he never once told me that I was not fulfilling him in the relationship. I believed our sexual incompatibility could be resolved through strong communication and mutual compromise. 

He cheated.

Probably a lot more than I was aware of when he started trickle-truthing. Like I said in my letter, he didn’t blame me. He did not cite my as*xuality or my poor initiative over the years. But in the back of my mind I think I felt I deserved to be cheated on, because I wasn’t doing enough and I never have. 

Now, I know that what needed to happen was an honest, difficult conversation about his expectations in the relationship. He needed to tell me that he felt unfulfilled and that if I wasn’t able to deliver, then we needed to ethically end the relationship. I could untangle the skein and blame Christian divorce stigma. But the fact remains that he’d rather abuse me than look bad to our conservative families for initiating a divorce.

As*xuality is pretty rare in the LGBT+ world.

Oftentimes we are invisible in the broader movement, but we face a lot of cultural discrimination. “You just haven’t met the right person” and “I could change your mind” or “you’re just not that into him” are things I’ve personally heard, as well as most of my Ace friends. We’re poorly represented in media (s*x sells), and we’re often coerced and infantilized. Aces often go through a phase of feeling “broken” and trying to force ourselves to be someone we’re not. I have a feeling that the percentage of struggling marriages due to one person being Ace is higher than we think.  

Learning about and embracing my as*xuality has been very healing.

I no longer feel pressure to look “normal” to society and get in a romantic relationship. I just wanted to put this sentiment out there. It is okay and normal to be as*xual, to not have any desire for a physical relationship. I hope that if any of your readers feel this struggle, they can embrace who they are. Singleness is a wonderful life for me, I hope it can be for them too. 

And if they were cheated on it wasn’t their fault. Ace or not, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much or how little I had s*x with my spouse. It wasn’t an excuse for me to be abused. He could have done literally anything else in an attempt to resolve his pent-up drives that didn’t involve abusing me.

Kayla

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Dear Kayla,

Thanks for the LACGAL update on your life and the important message about your identity. I think we’re in an age of understanding all sorts of diversities we kept hidden in the past. Conformity is a powerful force.

What’s striking to me is that you compromised.

You didn’t try to get your partner to conform to you. You felt the need to conform to his desires. While you didn’t fully understand this side of yourself, you tried. Given the upbringing you both had (no seggs before marriage), he didn’t fully understand his needs either. But he went about this exploration completely unethically. Risking your health and well-being.

Which underscores, yet again, that cheating is a character problem. It’s not a s*xual compatibility problem. Or a monogamy problem. It’s a flawed, entitled person problem. We all have things that make us unhappy in relationships. Some of these things may even be deal breakers. It’s what you do with that information and how you conduct yourself that matters.

But the fact remains that he’d rather abuse me than look bad to our conservative families for initiating a divorce.

Why is divorce the bad guy?

This is the conservative calculus? It’s better to commit adultery than call a lawyer? I’m not a conservative Christian, but my recollection is there’s nothing in the 10 commandments about divorce. But two commandments which forbid cheating.

I’m glad you’re out and happy, Kayla. I’m sure you’ve made someone feel less lonely today.