Bi/pan, trans, mental illness, and autism intersections in my abuse.

This is a guest post for our intersectional ace survivor story series by someone who wishes to remain anonymous. Please respect their privacy and do not speculate about their identity.

Trigger warnings: intimate partner abuse, gaslighting, invalidation of ace identity, mentions of CoCSA and parental abuse, personality disorders

I was abused by my ex romantic partner. When we first met, it was at a LGBT youth group.
Soon, after a lot of flirting, we both came out to each other as ace on my end, demisexual on his.
We were both pan, trans, non-binary, and mentally ill.

However, he came from a supportive home, while my parents are abusive. I feel like my aceness influenced my abuse because during/after make-outs, he’d often gaslight me about my ace identity.
Like “are you sure you’re ace? You seemed pretty into me. I don’t think you’re really ace. You should consider a different label” even though I’d tell him multiple times, no, I’m sure I’m ace, but that was just the beginning of gaslighting from him.

As the abuse went on, I lost a lot of resources due to my autism, mental illnesses and personality disorders, as well as my home environment, all of which he used to skew my words and to isolate me.

Being ace has intersected my troubles in recovery in a few ways. I’m also a cocsa survivor, and that and my aceness has led me to doubt myself, as well as flux between hypersexuality and sex-repulsed was.

My advice to similar aces?
Be careful. The moment someone starts to treat your asex/rom identity as a toy or joke, get out of there, because it can lead to worse things.
I wish I had stood up for myself when it all began and left him sooner.

More support for asex/rom abuse and CSA victims. We need to be understood/respected, and given better treatment and therapy.

Please, all a-spects, don’t leave your a-spec siblings behind. If someone tells you their partner isn’t treating them right, don’t shrug it off.