There is a particular difficulty in telling someone something about your life and discovering that they regard it as the beginning of an investigation. Are you sure? Could there be another explanation? Have you simply not met the right person?
A question can be kindly meant and still leave someone having to defend their own account of themselves.
DIVA Magazine reports on a paper examining discrimination faced by asexual people around the world. The report’s headline alone cannot establish the paper’s findings or how experiences differ between countries. It does, however, invite us to examine something much closer to home: what happens when our expectations of a fulfilling life become requirements we impose on other people.
Sexual attraction is one area in which that distinction matters. Someone describing themselves as asexual should not have to demonstrate that their life contains some equivalent compensation before the description can be accepted. Their friendships, ambitions or relationships need not be presented as evidence that everything has worked out satisfactorily.
Even that apparently generous verdict gives the listener rather too much authority.
There is a complication, of course. How people understand themselves can change. People can also misunderstand one another, and an intimate relationship may involve needs that cannot simply be wished into compatibility. Respect leaves room for an honest conversation about those differences. A partner has a life to consider too.
But that conversation becomes difficult if one person’s account is treated as provisional while the other person’s expectations are treated as reality. There is little room for honesty when only one answer will be believed.
In families and friendships, the practical change may be quite small, though it asks something substantial of us. We can stop treating every unfamiliar disclosure as a problem requiring our explanation. We can ask what someone wants us to understand, rather than set about finding the missing piece that would make them more recognisable.
And if they later describe themselves differently, that need not vindicate everyone who doubted them. Being allowed to change is part of having a life of your own. So is being believed about the life you are living now.