Autism and Asexuality: Making Sense of Attraction and Identity

If you have found your way here because you are wondering whether you might be asexual, autistic, or both, the first thing worth saying is that asexuality is a perfectly normal way of being. It is not a fault, a symptom, or a sign that something has gone wrong. For a lot of people, putting a name to it comes as a relief rather than a worry.

What sends people looking, though, is usually a harder question. Is this simply who I am, or is something else going on. For some people, part of the answer is finding out whether they are autistic at all, which is where an autism assessment can bring some clarity. For others it is a matter of recognising an orientation they have always had. Either way, it is worth taking care over, and it is what this article is really about.

What is asexuality?

Asexuality is when someone feels little or no sexual attraction to other people. It is a sexual orientation, in the same way that being straight, gay or bisexual is an orientation. It is not a medical condition and there is nothing to cure.

Asexuality also sits on a spectrum. Some people feel no sexual attraction at all. Others, who often describe themselves as grey-asexual, feel it rarely or only weakly. People who are demisexual feel sexual attraction only once a strong emotional bond is already there. All of these fall comfortably under the same umbrella.

Asexual does not mean the same as aromantic

One point trips a lot of people up, so it is worth being clear. Sexual attraction and romantic attraction are two different things. Plenty of asexual people still fall in love, want a partner, and enjoy closeness and physical affection. Wanting a relationship and being asexual sit together perfectly well, something we look at more in our piece on high-functioning autism and relationships. Some asexual people are also aromantic, meaning they feel little romantic attraction either, but many are not. Being asexual tells you very little about whether someone wants a relationship.

What does the science say about autism and asexuality?

Yes, autistic people are more likely to describe themselves as asexual than people in the general population, though the exact figures vary and the research describes a link rather than a cause.

The largest study of its kind was carried out in 2021 by researchers at the University of Cambridge, who surveyed almost 2,400 adults, around half of them autistic. Autistic people were more likely to describe themselves as asexual, or as an orientation other than heterosexual, and less likely to call themselves straight. Just as importantly, most autistic adults in the study were sexually active, and there was no difference in the age at which they first became sexually active. That finding quietly dismantles an old and unhelpful assumption that autistic people are simply not interested in sex or relationships. Some are, some are not, exactly as with everyone else.

Across the wider research, somewhere between roughly five and ten in every hundred autistic adults describe themselves as asexual, which is higher than in the general population. The number moves around depending on how the question is asked, so it is more honest to talk about a range than a single headline figure. An earlier study from 2018 found that nearly seven in ten autistic participants described their orientation as something other than straight, with more of that diversity, asexuality included, reported by autistic women.

The most recent research, published in 2025, came at it from the opposite direction and studied people who already identify somewhere on the asexual spectrum. Around seven in every hundred reported a formal autism diagnosis. Within that group, autistic and non-autistic people were just as likely to have been in relationships and to have had sex, and reported similar levels of sex drive. Being autistic and asexual, in other words, says almost nothing about whether a person wants connection, intimacy or company.

What all of this points to is an association, not a cause. Autism does not make a person asexual, and asexuality is not a form of autism. The two simply sit together more often than chance would suggest, and researchers are still working out why.

Why might autism and asexuality go together?

Nobody knows for certain, and every explanation on offer is still a theory rather than a settled fact. It is worth holding all of them loosely.

Some researchers point to differences in how autistic people read and follow social and sexual cues, which can shape relationship experiences. Others look at sensory differences, since sex is an intensely sensory thing, and what feels pleasurable to one person can feel like too much to another. That side of things, the sensory and practical experience of sex, is covered properly in our piece on autism and sex, and it is a separate subject from orientation.

There is another possibility that deserves equal weight. Autistic people are often less swayed by what everyone else appears to be doing and more willing to describe their own experience honestly rather than force it into an expected shape. Seen that way, some autistic people may not be more likely to be asexual so much as more likely to notice it, name it, and feel settled about it.

Asexuality, or low desire? How to tell the difference

This is the part that matters most, because these are genuinely different things and they can feel similar from the inside. Asexuality is a lasting pattern that fits as a description of who you are. Low desire, aversion and avoidance are usually a change, and they tend to come with a sense of loss or fear attached.

The useful question is rarely “am I asexual or not”. It is closer to three quieter ones. Has this always been true of me. Does it cause me any distress in itself. And did anything change, and if so, when.

There is a reason to take care here. A 2021 study that asked autistic adults how they made sense of their own asexuality found that some were using the word as the closest label to hand, for a low libido that arrived with an antidepressant, for feeling flooded and overwhelmed by relationships, or for pulling away from sex after something painful. None of that is asexuality in the real sense, and it is worth gently untangling, because those experiences can be helped and asexuality itself needs no fixing at all. If there is a fear or an aversion sitting underneath, that part can be worked with. The orientation, if that is what it is, can simply be accepted.

Autism, asexuality and women

Autistic women are often recognised late, and asexuality can be part of the picture that gets missed for years. Many autistic girls learn early to copy the people around them and hide the ways they differ, a pattern known as masking. That can extend to relationships and sex, where someone goes along with what seems expected while quietly feeling out of step with it.

By the time some women start asking whether they might be autistic, they have often spent a long time assuming they were broken in some way, when what they were actually experiencing was a different orientation and an undiagnosed neurotype sitting side by side. Recognising both can be steadying rather than unsettling. Our guide to high-functioning autism in women covers why so much of this goes unnoticed until adulthood.

Is this autism, asexuality, or both?

They can exist separately, they can exist together, and you do not have to resolve one to understand the other. Someone can be autistic and not asexual, asexual and not autistic, or both at once, and each of those is fine.

The same questions come up around ADHD, which frequently overlaps with autism. People sometimes wonder whether difficulty staying present, or a restless on-off relationship with desire, is an ADHD thing, an autism thing, an asexuality thing, or just how they are made. Often the honest answer is that it does not have to be pinned to one label to be understood.

Where an assessment helps is with clarity. Knowing whether you are autistic can explain a great deal that has never quite made sense, including how you relate to attraction and relationships. In the UK, this usually starts with your GP, who can refer you for an NHS assessment. Those waiting lists are long, often far longer than the recommended maximum, which is part of why many people look at a private route when they want an answer sooner. A formal assessment is usually carried out by a psychiatrist or a specialist psychologist. Where therapy helps is different, and it is for the distress, the aversion or the difficult history if any of those are present, rather than for the asexuality itself.

Finding clarity, at your own pace

At The Private Therapy Clinic we work with a lot of people who are trying to make sense of exactly this, the point where identity, neurotype and past experience all sit close together and are hard to tell apart. If part of what you want is a clear answer about whether you are autistic, an autism assessment is one route to that, and it points towards understanding rather than fixing something that is not broken. If what is really there is a fear or a difficulty around sex, that is something our therapists can help with directly.

If you are not sure which of those fits, or whether you need either, you are welcome to book a free 15-minute consultation. It is a short, low-pressure conversation to talk through where you are and what, if anything, might actually help.