Aego at 52
Picked the "coming out" flair because this is about that. I'm two months now into finding this microlabel and community and enjoying the improvements in my life that go with it. Also reflecting on how long a road it was to get here and why it had to take so long.
I'm 52. Not the oldest around here for sure but we olds probably are seeing the same thing - not only are there not many aegos to relate to but any older than their thirties are particularly rare.
Why? I can only speak my experience and anything else is speculation. I was raised in Southern California by a Marine drill sergeant turned cop, stepmom was a cop, dog was a cop. In the 70s and 80s that was a conservative atmosphere that felt liberal enough to make you think your limited world view was open mindedness and there was nothing more to achieve. Which was, of course, very wrong.
We played the common variation on tag called "smear the queer" and were quick to question the straight credentials of anyone not tough enough. But learned better along the years and eventually some of us became enlightened.
I thought I was. My first real exposure to sexually graphic material was when I found my mom's Penthouse collection. That created a lot of questions. Then my parents inadvertently steeped me in more confusion when they bought me the full set of Jean Auel's neanderthal/cro-magnon rape fantasy Clan Of The Cave Bear series, thinking it might be about dinosaurs.
I fumbled my way through a couple odd sexual encounters while finishing high school, joining the army for a short stint, and returning to the mid 90s So Cal coffee shop scene where I managed to lose my virginity to a married but unsatisfied friend who came at me passionately enough to not allow time for resistance. I thought I might finally be getting better after being "bad at sex" for long and that let me try a series of short relationships with women who were in one way or another unavailable or unsuitable for anything long term. A couple became long term for reasons even though my interest in sex waned pretty quickly after which we'd retreat to our corners and blame one another for the sex part of our relationship not working. Rinse and repeat.
I thought I knew about the different sexual identities out there. But in aego fashion I thought I might be one of those, then the fantasy of what that might look like faded and I'd go back to being "bad at being straight".
Aego wouldn't be defined on Tumblr until my 30s and for me Tumblr was basically "TL;DR Twitter" so I missed that scene. I met friends in pagan circles and new thought groups of varying identities and learned about some identities that way. But it was largely the 4 food groups - straight, gay, lesbian, and ace - and I didn't feel like any of those. Too horny to be ace and couldn't commit to any of the others. I had seen material on different microlabels but my experience of that was you were one of the main 4 and everything else seemed like "I think that's just made up" or "this is just some way of trying to legitimize somebody's kink".
Old thinking. I still was in the mindset that kink meant deviation where now we know they're really legitimate variations and not embracing them personally just meant you weren't someone who enjoyed that, nothing more.
Long story short (too late) that's how you get through a half century and not find your identity. My speculation is that for other aegos my age raised in similar or even more adverse circumstances they could easily still be out there not knowing who they are and just being bad at trying to be something else. Glad I know who I am now and that gives me an assurance to really explore and understand more about sexualities of all kinds from a confident place, unafraid that exploring new ideas might threaten my sense of self.