Acing Life

Editorial Assistant Katrina Wang, is acing Life and sets out to redefine love, success, and self as an ace person

"… and they lived happily ever after."

Happy fairytales always end up with a happy ending, don't they? The brave knight rescuing a princess, a horrible curse broken by a dashing rogue. Fairytale re-tellings also follow that someone finally, after much trial and tribulation, finds their one. ‘The One.’ Maybe they were lesbian knights, sent out to fulfil a quest and discover just how much they cared for each other. Or maybe they were a cute gay couple living their best coffee shop life with half a dozen cats. The world is full of stories of finding ‘The One.’ Lovely, sweet stories that make you blush and kick your feet in joy.

But…What if you didn't find your ‘One’? The answer is almost always the same: don't worry, in time you'll find the right person. You'll meet, whether it be love at first sight, or years of slow build-up, you'll find your ‘One’ and live happily ever after. You will find your ‘One.’ As much as I love stories of exploring worlds and lives that aren't my own, it is quite rare to find material that doesn't perpetuate this notion. What I valued in stories, deep friendships and stunning worldbuilding, well, they were there, but they were never front and centre.

Living in this world, we are bombarded with media showcasing the wondrous life of being in love, and the dark side of being in love, too. Possessive or picture perfect, it's all about love, usually romantic and/or sexual. That's the first thing you think of, isn't it, when someone mentions love. There is a hierarchy: at the very top, romantic/sexual relationships—often monogamous, even with better LGBTQIA+ visibility—followed by family, then friendship solidly at the bottom. The cultural pressure that we experience, the check-marks to find a partner—even briefly, or settling for someone incompatible—have children, whether or not they stay and care, and have a good, fulfilling life from these check-marks, all isolate those within the ace community [1]. It even isolates and traps those for whom the system was designed. The world is being built to not even benefit the stereotypical heterosexual couples, with rising costs and little incentive to bring forth children in an unstable world.

Coined in 2012 by Elizabeth Brake, amatonormativity explains that the idea of society reinforces the notion that people are at their happiest when they achieve this elusive love. Allonormativity is the assumption that all human beings experience sexual and or romantic attraction [1]. Such love is valued above all else—sometimes even above one's own life. It is considered the 'natural' path, the 'normal' way, and those who don't experience it are considered abnormal for the lack of such desires. The relationship structures we are made to interact with ironically label us as inhuman.

Now, for someone who does not care for romance, who does not think or care for sex, the media, your family and friends tell you that you are wrong. You will lead an unhappy life without a partner, you will be lonely, die alone. How have you not found a partner yet? I can help you find one, oh, don't worry, there's nothing wrong with you, you just haven't met the right person yet…Well, have you ever wanted to fuck a cactus? No? Well, you just haven't met the right cactus yet.

I take no credit for this phrase, all of that goes to David J Bradley on YouTube, an Aro/Ace uncle who also posts videos on entertainment media [2]. It is a phrase that made me laugh uncontrollably the first time I heard it; I have not forgotten it since. Though I have close friends in the LGBTQIA+ community, I had to find the term 'ace' by myself. Scrolling through janky websites, watching blurry, poorly recorded YouTube videos, I found myself finally finding others who felt the same; who knew the isolating nature of having your relationship priorities all the way down the bottom of the escalator.

Asexuals are not, despite popular belief, celibate or abstaining from sex as they're not choosing to be asexual; they just are. Nor do they need to be 'protected' from the notion of sex; they're not infants, so stop infantilising them. Aromantics are not, despite popular stereotypes, unfeeling robots [4][5]. Much like other letters of the LGBTQIA+ community, ace people exist on a spectrum. Some people desire romance but no sex, others love sex but don't want romance. Some just don't care for either. Some might only want romance and/or sex after having got to know someone. Some may hate sex, but that does not mean they're going to stop others from having it. Sexual liberation is often assumed to mean the freedom of having sex, but it also encompasses the freedom to not engage at all [3].

To be ace is to challenge the world and its rules; our sheer existence disproves the notion that we need romance or sex to lead fulfilling lives. I didn't know this until the end of high school. I perpetuated many common stereotypes without knowing. I thought myself lacking something, that I was behind my peers who were happily engaged with relationships already, that something was wrong with me, that I was broken in some way because what I felt was not the same as everyone else. I told myself it would just take time, that I haven't found my ‘One’ yet, that there may be several ‘Ones’ out there that I just needed to reach out and find. I often found myself flipping between that and a strangely desperate moral superiority; that I was not ruled by such thoughts of lust or love, that I could not be troubled by the world that made others lose time, crying after breakups or flouncing off to date instead of studying. That my coldness, my aloofness, is a feature, not a bug, and in some ways it was true; it is a feature. But I was not cold. I was not uncaring. I had feelings just like every other human being on this planet.

I am subscribed to a Substack made by Canton Winer, PhD, who researches and teaches about asexuality, aromanticism and the interactions of gender and sexuality. An article he wrote earlier this year still lingers in my mind. He had posed a question in the title, and I had found myself too speechless and overwhelmed to answer: Is it desire? Or the desire to desire?[6]. Personally, I had struggled?juggled with where I lay on the ace spectrum. I knew I strongly desired to have a close relationship, like a romantic one, and so I considered whether or not I was demi-romantic, i.e. being interested in a romantic relationship only after having established strong emotional bonds.

But through that question I realised, bitterly, that what I sought was not romance but the desire to desire. There's nothing inherently wrong about wanting romantic partners. But I had taken that, and the want to be somewhat 'normal,’ and made it into something that hurt myself, that perpetuated the check-mark of ‘find a partner.’ Where I could have spent my time on hobbies, studying, friends, I instead thought about what qualities I wanted for this extremely hypothetical 'partner.’ A little late to the party, I had thought. But still at the party, no?

It is very common within the ace communities to see and relate to characters on screen who were cold, ruled by logic, who didn't participate in romantic/sexual relationships, who were logical and othered by that. Common media perpetuates the narrative that we are uncaring robots, common characters we relate to like Sherlock from BBC series or the original books by Doyle, or Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Too smart for their own good, othered and mocked by their inability to participate in the common experience of falling in love, of having mind-blowing sex, we saw ourselves in flawed representations that hurt our perceptions of ourselves [4]. It reinforces the notion that we are something other; we are inhuman, non-human. I love Sherlock and the idea that he is ace, but it does not mean I am no less aware of what the message is saying about us who relate to him.

There are so many hurtful stereotypes, and I found myself returning to certain people and resources to understand myself better. Many of which, that I have referenced in this article. On YouTube, Rowan Ellis, David J Bradley and Ace Dad Advice are key figures who helped me understand harmful stereotypes and discover more about my identity. Communities like the Asexual Visibility and Education Network and the Trevor Project help connect ace members in safe communities. Scholars like Professor Elizabeth Brake and Canton Winer, their work shows us that we're not forgotten. It validates our existence in a world that is consistently undermining our trust in ourselves, our sense of self-worth and our very existence. In a world not built for people like us, it is isolating, exhausting, to be ace. It is sometimes easier to believe we are nonhuman than to repeat all that the world says we are missing, that we are lacking. But human beings are messy; we are messy. Being messy is to be human.

by Katrina Wang

References

[1] Hierarchy of Love. (2023, April 14). Department of Linguistics. https://www.colorado.edu/linguistics/2023/04/14/hierarchy-love

[2] David J Bradley. (2019, June 26). Maybe You Haven’t Met The Right Person Yet | An Asexual Video Essay. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkRPPcxPPjA

[3] Library Research Guides: Asexuality: Home. (2026). Indiana.edu. https://guides.libraries.indiana.edu/c.php?g=454970

[4] Rowan Ellis. (2021, December 18) The Problem With Asexual Representation. YouTube. https://youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6v1J7kQv_c

[5] Ace Dad Advice. (2025, October 24). Four Things About Sex and Romance that are Bulls%$t. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIwqAV9ndl4

[6] Winer, C. (2026, January 30). Is it desire? Or the desire to desire? Substack.com; The Sociologist Speaks. https://cantonwiner.substack.com/p/is-it-desire-or-the-desire-to-desire