What's it like to be Asexual and Married?

Us on our wedding day!

Ever since starting our relationship, then announcing we were engaged, we have had some people say “but I thought you were asexual, how does that work??”. Rather than repeating myself, I thought I’d write a blog laying down a few facts.

Sex and Love

There is a huge difference between sexual drives and emotional attachments, and though they usually go hand-in-hand, one can still live without the other. So what I'm going to do is reflect on my feelings towards Shane and how we have approached our relationship.

To me, Shane is everything. It’s crazy really, and years back I would have never of guessed it possible to love someone this much. I have not tired of waking up in the morning to see him lying by my side, my heart still flutters when we kiss, and when I return home from work, I continue to get butterflies in my stomach at the sheer anticipation of being reunite with him once again.

Shane is my fuel, he has gotten me through so much just by loving me. I am often amazed that someone so honest and wonderful could love someone like me, but in doing so he’s helped me find my self-worth and makes me feel okay in being myself.

So you get the picture, I'm in love with this dorky git, it's a perfectly normal, healthy relationship!

The only thing that differs for us is there's a lack of interest in sex.

I’ve never been sexually attracted to Shane, but I AM so attracted to who he is. There is nothing about him which I find "sexy", but holy heck is he beautiful to me.

So what's that like?

If we are bored in the evenings, we play computer games together or draw our comics. If we’ve got too much energy we go swimming or walking, or even play fight (I get so many bruises XD)! Whenever the opportunity of sex might crop up for most couples, to us we don’t even consider it. Saying that, this doesn’t mean we don’t like being affectionate, heck, we LOVE our snuggles! We enjoy kissing and sleep in the same bed, but snuggling up and falling asleep in each other's arms is all we need.

Our views on sex?

There is nothing wrong with having a sexual connection with another person, and if you are both in love and just want to make each other feel good, then I think that’s a wonderful thing! It’s not that we are repulsed by it, but it’s just not something we have a drive for.

Asexuals in relationships is not a abnormal, in fact, there are many people who are! And each can have very different or very similar experiences to myself and Shane, if you’d like to read other people’s stories then check out the links below!

• Paul Cox
• Offbeat Bride
• Jenni and Tim
• Dae and Tash
• Sophie and George

Post written by Natasha Dancy

END OF WEEK 11 & 12!

WE HAVE BEEN DOING A MANY OF THINGS!!

Last weekend we went to a place called Stourhead since we now have easy access to all the National Trust places after becoming members. We picked one of the best days to pick for it, totally blue skies! We took 5683472846 photos while there, but the property was so HUGE and awesome (POINTS TO PHOTOS BELOW) you can understand why I went a little nuts! It’s was one of those days where you had to be there to appreciate the beauty and history of the location. If you don’t know what Stourhead is, have a quick read up here. The history behind just the house itself is really amazing, and the stories of the people who lived there are pretty fascinating. 

There is even a natural spring and obelisk there, including the odd structure or two that isn’t really talked about online, such as the one where some truly sexy devil doing a squat in front of >:D it's an old well about 30 minutes walk from the main gardens (it’s also shown on the second the last photo of the second lots of photos on this post) which indicates the start of the Stour River. We spent a good 6 hours there in total, yes, there is THAT much to see! We even saw a little nest of Moorhens there too which was neat surprise. A grown moorhen looks very similar to a Pukeko from NZ!

Seriously I could go on about that place but I better not… XD

Since we didn’t ruin our feet enough that weekend, we decided to head to Southampton for several reasons: Forbidden Planet (a nerdy shop), Ed’s Easy Diner (an American style diner which looks like it has been ripped straight out of Happy Days) and most importantly, YO SUSHI!! I admit that I have really missed sushi since moving over here, and Yo Sushi is one of the places that does sushi similar to what I really enjoyed back in NZ (But it's super expensive >_o).

We ate quite a good amount of sushi, to put it lightly, but it was worth it as it scratched my sushi itch very VERY nicely! Just before that however, we had ‘breakfast’ at Ed’s and had a MASSIVELY NAUGHTY Nutella milkshake for breakfast!! I swear those things are 1000% of your recommended daily intake of sugar, but it was a treat, like the whole day to be honest… UwÚ
The Forbidden Planet in Southampton is the closest one to us, other than London, and I absolutely LOVE it there, cause I’m a big fat nerd, JUST LIKE TASHA!! :D You can see our things that we brought from there, including our new facehugger plush that we have named Fluffykins, based on something from this comic made by Tasha recently, it’s the fifth question down in it! She is happy and healthy. We feed her many faces to keep her in tip top shape! :D

Oh, and the photo of the damaged building above is a church in Southampton that was constructed in 1320, it was damaged during World War 2 by German bombing. I just the amount of history this country holds is really amazing to me...

AAAAAAAAND, speaking of sushi, we really felt like some more, so we just went and made our own yesterday as we have pure skill. Well, Tasha made most (ALL) of it while I professionally documented the procedure like David Attenborough. BUT BOY WAS IT ALSO SUPER YUMMY!! We were both starving as we were making them, but I really could not eat anything else when we were done with them. I have instructed Tash to make them for me everyday because I am totally the boss of her, we all know that right?   -UwU-

AAAAAAAAAAAAND today, we went to the amazing Corfe Castle! That place really doesn’t have some nice history, but it’s not all bad, kinda...  XD Just knowing that 22 people starved to death in the the castles dungeon which you end up walking close by, is a very unusual feeling, as you can imagine. The castle has been sieged, bought, had kings and queens stay there, but if you wanna read up on it all of it can be found on the web! 

There was also a falconier show which we accidentally got to just as it started (we always seem to time these things up perfectly). One of the falcons came ‘this’ close to taking out Tasha as it flew down past the crowd and it very nearly clipped the person who was sitting in front of us. The falconers did say that the falcons would come down close to the crown, but not THAT close!! Incredible animals they are, and I really wouldn’t want to have one of them hunting me if I was a small creature!

Other than that, we have been putting in a really good ammount of effort to our comics! I have been pushing the limits of what I thought I could do when it comes to animating in my comics and I do think that people will enjoy the comics that will be posted over the next few weeks to come. Tash has also been working like a little beast to get her buffer up for all her comics because of our upcoming trip to Ireland on Friday which will be super awesoooooome! Expect ten thousand photos for the next blog post because of that!

In total, we have done 62,362 footsteps the last two weeks and why we are both losing weight around our tummies despite some seriously bad milkshake eating!

Oh, and over the last few weeks we have been playing a stupid game to see how many Mini’s (you know, the car) we can see each week… we are normal, HONEST. Our highscore is currently 271… WOOOO! We aren’t allowed to count the same Mini once we have seen it, so each Mini we count must not be one we have seen before. I’m sure we have counted the odd Mini more than once now and again, but we tend to forget what number we are at the beginning at each day and revert back to a number that we both remember from the day before, so it’s a good system!  XD

That’s pretty much it I think! We’ll see you guys in about two weeks or so! <3

That dude in the background has totally been caught digging for gold...

END OF WEEK FIVE!

Whups! I was meant to update this two days ago but life took over and stopped me. I'm currently writing this at 3:45am in the morning on my phone as I couldn't sleep tonight for the first time since getting over jet-lag while listening to the LittleBigPlanet soundtrack from the PS3 game which is truly crazy yet super fun sounding considering I haven’t played it in so long. Ahhhh, nostalgia! I LOVES IT! Go look up the LittleBigPlanet song called Atlas you will have an idea of what I am talking about *DANCES ALONG IN BED A LITTLE WHILE TRYING NOT TO WAKE UP TASH* >U<

The main reason I haven’t updated this blog is because my laptop is starting to pack up and I don’t think another reinstall of Windows will fix it this time, so a new UK one is in the books for this afternoon which will be super duper good! Though some of the keys on the UK keyboard being placed oddly compared to NZ keyboards, so don’t be surprised if you see some odd words with the @ symbol randomly placed into them now and again, or something XD

Last week involved looking for jobs! I'm still really trying to find a job which wasn't available in NZ because opportunities lack there slightly in comparison. I recently asked a comic shop if they had anything available (they didn't unfortunately BUT MAN THAT WOULD BE AN AWESOME THING TO HAPPEN LATER ON) but I'm gonna keep on looking! I just don’t want to settle for a job I don’t particularly enjoy straight away because “that’s what people have to do”. If there is one thing I have learned from life over the last two years it is that anything can friggin’ happen and any small move taken can change your life forever. 

Another thing that I have realised is that your life choices are in your own hands, despite what a lot of people make the world out to be. You are responsible for where you are in your life most of the time, and most of the time, you are the only one who can change it. I personally just don’t want to be  another name in human history who just existed, I want to leave something behind that isn't simply genetic or that can inherited, which is another reason why I am doing Beefpaper! I don’t ever plan to stop it so hopefully it will be a record of my life from when I was 23 all the way up until I can no longer draw/breathe, but we will see what happens! SO YES ANYWAY I GOT SLIGHTLY DISTRACTED THERE I AM JOB HUNTING AT THE MOMENT  XD

I also saw some of the legendary bluebells that Tasha has been telling me I needed to see since we basically met roughly two years ago AND THEY ARE VERY PRETTY! Odds are we are going to go back and have a look at them again shortly as they were not all out, so expect some pictures next week too! We went there with Tasha’s uncle Neil and her Grandma Jill, who has been working on my family tree for me over the last few months now which I really can’t thank her enough for!! It really is amazing to see where you actually come from and to actually some faces next to those names! If you don’t know much about your ancestry then MAN GO HAVE A NOSEY! Odds are we are probably somehow related, everyone seems to be by the freakin’ looks of it if my tree is anything to go off! 

I've also been gaming a heck of a lot with many different pals which has frankly been awesome toos, including our comicing pals Red and Flynn (playing Don’t Starve Together), the super mega awesome TK (playing Borderlands 2 as pictured above) and even one of my super old friends from way back on Star Wars Battlefront which was a big surprise but an awesome one at that! I do feel like my comic work has suffered a bit because of it all so this week is gonna be all about getting back on track, hopefully…… I feel like I have just jinxed it terribly by saying that….. *GLARES AT DYING LAPTOP IN CORNER OF ROOM* >____>’ 

END OF WEEK FOUR/ONE MONTH!

GEOCACHING GEOCACHING AND MORE GEOCACHING!! 

And comics, of course!

Most of this week has been taken up with a large amount of comic work as my comic 'buffer' had gotten down a little since all this moving and adventuring guff started happening, but it's mostly all back up to date! My comic is also about to become fully freehand (for the characters anyway) as I have always drawn my characters off a template of sorts to help me draw them accurately, but no more! The first comic is this style is going up next Thursday UK time and I am super happy that I have finally gotten to the stage where I can draw like this as I am no longer restricted to preparing comics on the computer. I can do it on paper like they used to do it back in the day so comic production should go up a little bit hopefully! YAY FOR GOOD STUFFS!

We geocached LOADS this weekend and we walked about 9-10 hours this just exploring around the place and caching it up! I know I have said it before but if you can go Geocaching freakin' DO IT, especially if you have a buddy to do it with! IT'S SO MUCH FUNS AND IT'S EXERCISE THAT DOESN'T FEEL LIKE EXERCISE AND IT MAKES YOU THINK! In the second image above, for example, the little pink capsule was suspended up in a tree, held up there by a little log that Tasha can be seen holding and you can see a few more images below of some peoples handiwork of hiding their caches around. And also, if you are a clumsy muppet like me, you could even fall over and tear your hands and knees to pieces! :D Tasha, being the big caring dork she is, patched me all up super good so I'm all better now. I was super lucky to not wreck my DSLR camera that I was carrying with me at the time as it had it's lens cap off and I fell pretty badly, but it only came out with a little scratch on its case which is cosmetic so it's all super good!

We also came across a house that had a couple of really grumpy alpaca's in their back garden munching on their trees...I think we should perhaps phone Peru in the morning to let them know D:

I also had my first ever hot dog ever this week which was a thing! They were Quorn hot dogs which are meat-free (I can't even tell the difference with Quorn products, honest to glob) and I can say is NOM NOM NOM! They are a thing in my life now which is not going away any time soon. It's just another thing that Tasha has made me addicted too, as well as tiger bread which is probably the yummiest bread I have ever eaten.... CURSE YOU TASHA! CURSE YOOOOOOOOU!! She had also told me off a couple of times because I may or may not have eaten half of it before we even made it home <_<;

Other than that it's pretty much been life as normal (as normal as life is here) and soldiering on with day to day things! Boring stuff like playing Star Wars Battlefront on the PS4 and destroying rebel scum dramatically. Y'know, day to day stuff! (SERIOUSLY THOUGH THAT GAME IS SUPER MEGA FUN I MAY BE ADDICTED AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH). OH! We are also up-to-date now with the Walking Dead :D We watched the last episode of season 6 last Tuesday and GHFJDKGHSDKLJGHJFKSD DANG THOSE CLIFF HANGERS!

I now leave you with these lovely images from using the app FaceSwap <3

WEEK, THE THIRD!!

I'm officially all set to go for being a working joe here in the UK! My National Insurance Number came through which means I can officially work now, so the great job hunt can really begin! I am not really rushing out to get an office job straight away considering there are so many opportunities for all kinds of different work here so I am keeping my eyes open for anything that may catch my fancy, but I am really unsure as to what my fancy is at the moment.... WE SHALL SEE!

This week has been rather quiet adventure wise as THE Tasha has gone back to work and stuffs, and it wasn't even a full week because of Easter! DX Still, we are still making the most of the time we have together! We have both wrecked our feet a little (AGAIN) after a walk we did yesterday to the beach. My little toes were like little cherries and Tasha's shoes just EXPLODED, so we will need to go buy her some new ones, WON'T WE EGG?? HMM?? >__>

My bank account for the UK is finally all sorted too! For some reason they failed to fill it with money. I will call them on Monday to sort that out...

To reward ourselves for maiming our feet on Saturday we spontaneously went to a Thai restaurant for lunch (I actually had the brochure for it up on my bedroom wall back in NZ for the past 5 months, it was just by chance we decided to go there). And, well.... IT WAS SOME OF THE YUMMIEST THAI FOODS WE HAVE EVER HAD EVERNGJEHOIHGKEHHGRWJKN!!!! It was only a small portion, being lunch, but HOLY MOLY IT WAS SO SUPER YUMMY!! It was called Sakuna Khrua Thai and DANG GO THERE IF YOU CAN! I can recommend it to the moon and back, because it will send you there with it's yumminess...  >U>

My mums fish tanking business all the way over there in NZ is all in full swing too and Tash recently designed this super freakin' amazing logo for it!

Not too shabby if I don't say so... UwU

If you click on this link it will take you to her Facebook page, so if you know of any places in Whangarei that need an amazing fish tank or if you have an existing tank that needs a darn good spruce up, then you know what to do!

We have also acquired two new additions to our little family just today! Two tiny little hiss cockroaches named Red and Flynn (based off our super mega awesome webcomic pals who do the equally amazing webcomic Liar's Dice). Tasha's sister TK owns the two hissing cockroaches shown in the photo on this post and we don't think they are old enough to start hissing yet... but we are waiting patiently like two strange, proud parents for the day Red and Flynn hiss their first hiss!  >w<

SPEAKING OF WHICH, THEY ACTUALLY MADE A COMIC ABOUT IT! They also demand that you listen to this song as you read the comic, which is indeed very fitting! :D

Tash and I have just finished our monthly gaming hangout with our Patron's who support our work on Patreon and I am completely knackered for some reason so I am going to it the hay. All I can hope is that Red and Flynn don't crawl into our brains as we sleep.

About

What's this blog all about???

I've just moved to the UK from New Zealand for two years on a Youth Mobility Visa and have decided to make a blog to keep a diary of my adventures here, as well as hopefully provide a useful insight to others who might want to do the same.

Who Are We?

We are Shane and Tasha, a couple of crazy asexual comic artists who have a hunger for adventure! Originally meeting online, we instantly struck up a friendship, where we would talk for hours about the places we wanted to visit and what we had on our bucket list. 

It had been settled that we definitely had similar interests in what we wanted to do, and that it would be flipping awesome to do it together, the only issue? We lived on the opposite side of the globe from each other. Literally...I come from New Zealand and Tasha's from England.

So to make a start, Tasha booked her ticket to New Zealand, a place she had wanted to visit for over 10 years now. We thought it'd be cool to do it during her birthday, plus it gave us an excuse to do something a bit more crazy, so we settled on Skydiving onto a traditional North Island beach!

After that our taste for adventure grew, soon after Tasha arrived back in the UK I booked my ticket to spend a month over there. We had 6 months to plan, so we knuckled down and started booking what we could. 

Tasha did a LOT of driving, we explored a lot of Dorset and around London. I saw my first grey squirrel in Hyde Park! (Yes, I was VERY excited by this!) and my first red squirrel at Brownsea Island waaaayyy down south (Even more excited by this!). The culture in the UK amazed me too, it made me realise just how young New Zealand really is. 

To say the least, I felt one month was not enough. Tasha and I grew closer by the end of it, and decided to make it official and become life companions (our asexual alternative to 'boy/girlfriend'). It was pretty painful leaving, but we kept positive and thought about looking into me getting a Visa to stay in the UK for longer.

Tasha then contacted me and told me about the Youth Mobility Visa which is available for people aged from 18-30 in selected countries, where you are able to stay in a country for 2 years and work. Perfect!

My Visa was thankfully successful, and now I am finally living in the UK with my best friend!

I hope you enjoy reading through my blog as we continue our adventures together, and that perhaps it will inspire you to do the same. There's a LOT of world out there to explore, it's a shame to let it go to waste, and let's face it. It's so much more amazing when you can share it with your best friend :)