An 18-year-old asking whether a lack of physical or sexual attraction will ever change is not asking a question that needs panic. The answer has to leave room for asexuality, anxiety, late development, future relationships and future parenthood without treating any of those possibilities as a failure.
Annalisa Barbieri's advice-column frame starts from patience. A young person may already be asexual. They may later find that demisexuality, queerness, heterosexuality, bisexuality or another description fits better. They may discover that attraction changes when they feel safer, older or less pressured. They may also find that it does not change, and that can still be a complete life.
Asexuality Is Not a Problem to Cure
The first mistake is to treat asexuality as a diagnosis to rule out. It is a valid orientation. Some asexual people want romance. Some do not. Some have sex in certain relationships. Some never want it. Some want children. Some do not. There is no single script that decides whether a life is full.
Anxiety can also affect desire, safety and trust. That does not mean anxiety explains away every absence of attraction. The two can overlap in one person's life without one cancelling the other. Good advice should make room for both: respect the possibility of asexuality, and support the person if anxiety is making daily life smaller or more frightening.
Early Adulthood Makes the Question Feel Urgent
University and early adulthood can make sexual identity feel like an exam everyone else has already passed. Friends date, hook up, label themselves, joke about sex and build belonging through romantic experience. Someone who does not feel the same pull can start to believe they are behind.
That feeling is social pressure, not proof of defect. A patient first step is observation: what feels absent, what feels frightening, what feels neutral, what feels possible and what kind of closeness is actually wanted. A permanent declaration made under stress may bring temporary certainty, but curiosity usually gives a young person more room.
Therapy Should Support, Not Correct
Counselling can help if anxiety, isolation or fear is painful. It can help a person think about safety, boundaries, shame, family expectations and relationship pressure. It can also help them separate what they want from what they think they are supposed to want.
But therapy should not be framed as a way to manufacture attraction. The aim is not to make someone more acceptable to a sexual norm. The aim is to give them enough steadiness to understand themselves, choose relationships honestly and avoid making decisions from fear.
Parenthood Is A Separate Door
Wanting children does not require wanting sex. Asexual people can be parents. People with anxiety can be parents. Single people, partnered people, queer people, platonic co-parents, adoptive parents and biological parents can build families in different ways.
At 18, the practical details of fertility treatment, adoption, co-parenting or partnership do not need to be solved immediately. The priority is keeping the door open without turning it into a deadline. A person can say, for now, that they do not feel sexual attraction and still keep future parenthood as an open value.
Modern identity culture can be cruel when it demands instant clarity from young people. Labels can be freeing when they describe a lived truth. They become another burden when they are treated as exams to pass before adulthood begins. The humane response is to avoid rushing sex, labels or family planning. Build a life that feels honest now, keep listening to the body and mind, and let later decisions come from steadiness rather than fear.