Being ace means identifying as asexual, meaning you experience little or no sexual attraction to other people. “Ace” is shorthand for asexual and also serves as an umbrella term that covers a range of related identities, including demisexual, gray-asexual, and others who fall somewhere on the asexuality spectrum. Roughly 1.7% of sexual minority adults identify as asexual, though the true number across the general population is likely higher since that figure only captures people who also identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.
What Asexuality Actually Is (and Isn’t)
Asexuality describes the absence or near-absence of sexual attraction toward others. It is not celibacy, which is a choice to abstain from sex. It is not a phase, a medical condition, or the result of trauma. It is not sexual repression, fear of intimacy, or something that can be “fixed” by meeting the right person. The DSM-5 draws a clear line between asexuality and sexual dysfunctions like Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder: people with those disorders feel significant personal distress about their lack of sexual interest. Asexual people do not.
There are many different ways to be ace. Some asexual people have sex regularly. Some never do. Some experience romantic attraction, some don’t. The identity describes who you’re attracted to (or not attracted to), not what you do in the bedroom.
Attraction, Libido, and Desire Are Separate Things
One of the most important concepts for understanding asexuality is that sexual attraction, libido, and sexual desire are not the same thing. Libido is a physical drive, sometimes compared to needing to scratch an itch. Sexual desire is the broader want to have sex, whether for pleasure, connection, or conception. Sexual attraction is about finding a specific person sexually appealing and wanting to have sex with them.
Asexual people may have a functioning libido. They may masturbate. They may choose to have sex for any number of reasons: satisfying a physical drive, conceiving children, making a partner happy, enjoying the sensual pleasure of touch and closeness, or simply because it feels good. What distinguishes them is that they don’t look at someone and feel a pull of sexual attraction the way allosexual (non-asexual) people typically do.
The Ace Spectrum
“Ace” covers more than one experience. Some people on the spectrum include:
- Asexual: experiences little to no sexual attraction under any circumstances.
- Gray-asexual (gray-ace): experiences sexual attraction rarely, at low intensity, or only in specific situations. This identity sits in the gray area between asexual and allosexual.
- Demisexual: experiences sexual attraction only after forming a strong emotional bond with someone. Without that bond, the attraction simply isn’t there.
These labels aren’t rigid categories. They’re tools people use to describe their experience, and someone’s place on the spectrum can feel different at different points in life.
Romantic Orientation and the Split Attraction Model
Many ace people use what’s called the split attraction model, which treats sexual orientation and romantic orientation as two separate things. Your sexual orientation describes who you’re sexually attracted to. Your romantic orientation describes who you want to date, fall in love with, or build a romantic partnership with. These can match up, or they can point in completely different directions.
An asexual person might be heteroromantic (romantically attracted to the opposite gender), homoromantic (same gender), biromantic (more than one gender), panromantic (all genders), or aromantic (experiencing little or no romantic attraction at all). Someone might also identify as demiromantic, meaning romantic attraction only develops after a deep emotional connection forms.
This framework helps explain something that confuses people unfamiliar with ace identities: how someone can want a loving, committed relationship without wanting sex, or how someone can be uninterested in romance but still enjoy physical intimacy.
How Ace People Approach Relationships
Ace people date, fall in love, get married, and build families. But because mainstream culture tends to treat sexual and romantic attraction as inseparable, ace people often have to build their own relationship scripts from scratch. Researchers describe this as requiring “greater flexibility, self-awareness, and adaptivity” since there’s no default template to follow.
Some ace people are in relationships with other ace people. Others partner with allosexual people, which often involves ongoing conversations about physical intimacy, boundaries, and compromise. These negotiations can be challenging, but they also push both partners toward unusually clear communication about needs and expectations.
Some ace and aromantic people form queerplatonic relationships (QPRs), partnerships built on deep emotional connection and mutual commitment that don’t fit neatly into the categories of “friendship” or “romance.” QPRs can involve living together, co-parenting, financial partnership, or physical affection, all without a romantic framework. The aromantic community also uses the term “squish” to describe what might look like a crush but is actually a strong desire for a close platonic connection with someone.
Navigating a World Built Around Sexual Attraction
Ace people live in a culture that treats romantic and sexual partnerships as the ultimate life goal. Researchers call this “amatonormativity,” the assumption that everyone naturally wants a central, exclusive, romantic relationship and that this type of relationship is inherently more important than friendships, family bonds, or other connections.
This creates specific pressures. Ace people frequently encounter the belief that they just haven’t met the right person, that something is medically wrong with them, or that their identity is a phase they’ll grow out of. Partners, family members, and even healthcare providers sometimes treat asexuality as a problem to solve rather than a legitimate orientation. These responses can be isolating, which is part of why community language like “ace” matters. Having a word for your experience makes it easier to find others who share it.
Asexuality is not something that needs to be changed, treated, or explained away. It is one of many ways humans experience (or don’t experience) attraction, and for the people who identify with it, the label often brings relief and clarity after years of feeling like something was missing or broken when nothing was wrong at all.