Am I Asexual?
Lately I've been struggling a lot with whether I'm ace or not. I might meet someone and think they're attractive, but sex isn't really something that ever crosses my mind. However, I might think about them later and think "yeah that's something I might do" but as far as I've heard from people sexual attraction is like an immediate feeling? Also the only time I really think about whether or not sex is something I want is when I'm thinking about whether I'm ace or not, so I'm not sure if I'm just reading into hypotheticals too much and I really am ace or if that feeling really is sexual attraction and it just takes a long time to present itself. Any advice/thoughts? Thanks so much.
It's possible, but that's ultimately something you'll have to decide for yourself. Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction, but some aces are open to the idea if they have an allosexual partner. There are also different subsets of asexuality that you might fall into as well. Gray-ace and demisexual are two better known ones, as well as aegosexual (arousal from thoughts or from visuals, but no desire to actually partake in such things). Sex-repulsion isn't necessarily asexuality either, as you can have sexual feelings for people and just hate the thought of that. There's a lot of words out there, so don't rush into giving yourself a label. You may never find a truly perfect label, and that's okay too. As long as whoever your with knows what the boundaries are and respects them, that's what matters. :)
So, asexuality is a spectrum, and it sounds like you might be on it.
Keep in mind, you can be romantically attracted to people and still be asexual. Romantic and sexual attraction are separate things, and it's possible to have one but not the other, have both, have neither, and have romantic attraction to one set of genders and sexual attraction to another set. Being romantically attracted to someone doesn't mean that you're allosexual, it just means you're not aromantic.
I agree that this is something you have to think over for yourself. Here's a good source of information to help with that: https://wiki.asexuality.org/Main_Page
Do you really think of having sex with people because you want to, or because you're supposed to (because of societal expectations, or what your friends and family think, etc.)? And if it's because you want to, does that only happen after you've been close to them for a while?