Q&A: “So I got a very flirty personality. My flirting however is I’d say 90% non sexual…”

songsandtimetravel said:

Ok. So I got a very flirty personality. My flirting however is I’d say 90% non sexual, and the other 10% is with the people I feel a mutual sexual “connection” with. I know that my friendliness have been confused with sexual attraction before with non-ace people. I love my personality but as I get more involved with the queer and non binary community I get get to know more Ace-people too, and I don’t want to come off as overly sexual or make them uncomfortable.Got any thoughts on what I can do?

sorry for taking so long getting back to you. not sure if you even still want to hear my thoughts, but…

i think that the situation that you’ve found yourself in is reflective of an overarching problem within society as a whole rather than being reflective of a problem with flirting or your personality. there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with being flirty, regardless of your experience (or lack thereof) with sexual attraction (or romantic attraction for that matter).

the act of flirting is not inherently sexual, imho, but society tells us all otherwise. people misinterpreting your behavior / words / etc for sexual attraction is a byproduct of the problematic society that we live in and the queer, non-binary, ace etc communities all fall subject to the very same problematic things as the rest of society. they (we) are not except.

which isn’t to say that people who are uncomfortable with flirting and / or things of a sexual nature are the problem or are otherwise at fault in any way. far from it. the very same problematic, sexually charged society that makes them uncomfortable is the very same problematic, sexually charged society that has made you less comfortable with your own personality. we’re all navigating this shit together and no one person or group of people is at fault.

you said yourself that you love your personality, so don’t change it. keep being you. it’s possible to be more conscious of the things that you say / do and refrain from doing / saying a certain then if and when someone has explicitly requested you do so (or when you notice someone’s discomfort, whether they explicitly state it or not) without changing yourself or your personality into something that you are not. i’m sure there’s a lot more to you and your personality than just your flirtatiousness, but even that flirtatiousness can be tweaked to suit the occasion or person without discarding it entirely.

speaking of which, it’s worth noting that what is considered “flirty” or even “sexual” differs from person to person and while a person may feel that X behavior / word / etc is uncomfortable, that doesn’t mean that they feel the same way about Y or Z. similarly, while some aces are uncomfortable with flirting or behavior / words / etc considered to be “sexual”, not all of us are.

tl;dr: instead of trying to solve what may appear to be (but actually is not) a problem with your personality all by yourself by contorting yourself into knots for someone else’s comfort, talk to the person in question. talk to them about what they’re okay with, what they’re not okay with and what you can do to help and remember that that talk– these questions– should go both ways. relationships, conversations– any kind of interaction requires effort from everyone involved; everyone needs to communicate with each other if things are going to work out without anyone getting hurt. be it a friendship, a  collaboration, an intimate relationship or anything else, talk with the people involved on a person-by-person basis so you can navigate these things together.

there shouldn’t be a need for personality contortions, be it on your part or the other person’s (/persons’) and if for some reason there is such a need… then it’s hard for me to consider such a relationship a healthy one.