When I was younger, my preferred approach to love made me feel like that kid in Little League who was always picking flowers on the baseball field. I knew it wasn’t how the game was supposed to work, but why couldn’t I play around this way? Baseball’s awesome, but why aren’t those flowers cool? As I watched them chase after the ball, I knew my experience was not the same as everyone else. 

 I’m an asexual man, so I couldn’t help but want to pick the flowers. 

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There are many ways to phrase a definition for asexuality, but here’s mine: having a general lack of sexual attraction to other people and feeling either indifferent toward or even a repulsion to some or all sexual acts. If homosexuality is being sexually attracted to the same sex and heterosexuality is being sexually attracted to the opposite sex, asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction. It exists on a spectrum from very little attraction to none entirely. 

Asexual people might engage in sex to make their partner happy, in ways that do not repulse them, or maybe to have a child, but that’s pretty much it. One can also be aromantic, which exists on a companion spectrum from a near absence of romantic attraction to none at all; I am not aromantic. It’s also important to note that asexuality is often paired with a more common sexual orientation; for example, I am both asexual and heterosexual. 

If you’ve never heard of asexuality before, I’m not surprised; I didn’t know the term, either. I grew up in New York City, where expectations around love were — in theory — more progressive but still relatively contained. 

In middle school, I ran out of a sexual education class because I felt like I had to throw up. When I tried to talk about my feelings with peers afterward, I got the sense that I was somehow wrong to have a crush that didn’t involve any sexual attraction whatsoever. I knew it was key to many people, but I just didn’t understand the extent to which certain people want to see specific other people without clothes on. I thought I was somehow mentally ill for thinking this way.

As those thoughts became seriously intrusive, I began to research asexuality last summer. After years of confusion and delusion, I finally had words to describe what I was feeling and why. Most importantly, I felt validated in my feelings for the first time. 

Of course I could love someone without that love beginning with some sort of burning desire — love at first conversation, rather than at first sight. The fact that there was a whole community out there who shared my feelings lifted a gigantic weight off of my shoulders.

In my first semester and change at USC, I’ve been lucky enough to talk with new friends about my newly discovered orientation in private. I’ve been relieved to find a staggering amount of support and curiosity for the way I choose to express myself. 

Still, I feel I’ve gotten lucky with that acceptance. There may be dozens, or even hundreds, in this community that feel they might be “wrong” for the way they want to love someone they care about. If there’s anyone out there like that, this message is for them:

Maybe you’re questioning the way you feel about relationships, or maybe you’ve just learned something new about the way others approach them. Either way, I encourage you to remember, on this love-filled Valentine’s Day, there isn’t only one “look” to love.

Love looks like whoever you love. That’s all there is to it.