Page 64 of Finally Loved

Neve sighed. “No, I know. I mean, logically, I suppose I know I have things to offer outside of sex.”

“Do you know that?” Olive asked without judgment.

Neve laughed bitterly. “Okay, maybe I don’t know that, but I want to. I know that relationships can be built on more than sex.”

“Right. And a lot of relationships that are built exclusively on sex fail because people need more than that.”

“Yes, but…” She sighed. This idea had been bouncing around her head since her first proper conversation with Robin. “They fail because there are limits on the relationship. It is sex and nothing else.”

“Right.”

“But if you have a relationship that is everything else and not sex, that’s still limited.”

Olive watched her for a moment. “Because Roxanne broke up with you over sex, you’re feeling like everyone else will?”

“Everyone else has.”

She nodded. “It’s fair that all of that weighs on you and makes it difficult to see that a successful relationship might be possible. Many people go through as many, or more, breakups than you have, but the reasons for the breakups at least feel as though they’re different sometimes.”

“It’s always the same reason for me, and it just feels demoralizing. Like, Roxanne blamed her family, and maybe that was a piece of it, but it was clearly about sex. It’s always clearly about sex. I want so badly to change myself, to just be able to make myself do it, but it’s like… I don’t know, like this wall goes up and I can’t, my body won’t let me.”

“Your body is protecting you, your mind is protecting you. You shouldn’t be forced to do things you don’t want to, anddoing so won’t provide the kind of relationship you want, it will likely just end up hurting you.”

It felt silly to cry over sex—or the lack thereof—but tears welled in Neve’s eyes. Olive was right. Every time she’d tried, it hurt. Her brain hurt, her body hurt. Parts of her could respond in the expected way, but she hated it. It felt… violating, only she was doing it to herself. And, afterward, nothing felt right, nothing felt good. All she felt was the need to curl up and cry until she ceased to exist.

“I just wish I could be normal,” she said quietly. “I wish I could want it.”

Neve still hated the whole concept of normal. She’d been over it with Olive before, and this was the place it kept coming up because she felt so desperately like she was lacking something, because so many people had made her feel alone in her asexuality, or like it was something she needed to fix, because to be normal was to want and enjoy sex, and she couldn’t do that.

“What would your ideal relationship look like?” Olive asked after a moment. “Ignoring what you think is possible, and what you’ve experienced so far, if you could create the perfect relationshipfor youwhat would that look like?”

Alba popped immediately into Neve’s mind. It wasn’t a helpful thought, it wasn’t what she needed, but it was there.

She chewed her lip and thought. It was so difficult to even let in the idea of what she’d want because she believed doing so would be costing someone else something they needed. “I don’t know.”

Olive watched her softly, knowing. “It doesn’t have to feel possible, it doesn’t even have to leave this room. Just for you, what would you want?”

“Probably… I don’t know, intimacy, connection, but, like, not the kind that’s sexual. I want someone who likes spending time with me, someone who likes talking to me. I want someonewho I can cuddle on the couch and watch movies with. Someone who gets me. Like, when you’re in a group of people and you can share a look with someone and you both just get each other. I want that. I want someone who knows all of my favorite things. Someone whose favorite things I know. Someone who holds my hand.” She looked down at her hand remembering Alba holding it so tight on Thursday night. She’d felt so safe there. “I want someone who is honest, who isn’t trying to manipulate me, and isn’t judging me because of who I am.”

“All very reasonable things to want. Anything else?”

Neve clenched her eyes shut. This was where it got really complicated and felt especially unfair. “You know how, when you’re in a couple, there are things you’re privy to that nobody else is?”

“Such as?” Olive prompted quietly.

Neve huffed. It wasn’t just the physical things, she wanted all of the emotional things too, but, those parts, she didn’t struggle with, they weren’t loaded and unfair to ask for. It was the physical things that were. “I want… incidental nudity, I suppose? Like, when you get out of the shower and you don’t have to worry about your partner seeing you, and vice versa. But I don’t want it to be sexual, and it always somehow is. It always turns that way.” She worked hard to shut out the memory of an ex telling her she was tempting them, playing with them, simply by changing for bed, that she shouldn’t be such a tease if she didn’t want sex. “I want it to exist without it being a big deal. I want to be able to touch someone’s skin without it becoming sexual.”

“That’s very fair.”

“It’s not, though, is it? Not really. It’s a lot to ask of someone who is just having those responses naturally.”

Olive shrugged. “That depends. The physical, emotional, and mental reactions are not necessarily something we havecontrol over, but what we do with them is something we can control. Is it a problem if someone becomes aroused while they’re kissing you?”

Neve thought about it. “No. Not if they’re not doing anything with that. It’s like my body shutting down. I can try not to do that, but it just happens. If they experience sexual attraction, they can’t help that their body is reacting.”

“Right. So, the problem is the reaction to that. It’s not that someone is aroused, it’s when they’re putting that arousal on you—blaming you for it or insisting you fix it—and that’s a problem regardless of whether you’re asexual. No matter your orientation, nobody should be forcing their arousal onto you.”

“I know that,” Neve said, knowing that, logically, she did. “But…”