@Pearlallmighty no problem! I'm glad I could use my experiences to help you ❤️
That makes sense that you would feel it a lot in public and with friends- it must be really difficult in the moment to start having those thoughts. I'm happy you got to see a psychiatrist about it 🙂 How do you feel about your diagnosis?
I'm happy to explain what I find helps 😊 essentially the asexual spectrum is just that- a spectrum. To me it all comes down to not feeling any, or noticeably less, sexual/physical attraction than the average person as a general part of your life. I generally find it helps to divide it into attraction levels, comfort with sex and sexual topics, and romantic attraction.
Attraction levels you can divide roughly into three: asexual, grey-asexual, and demisexual. An asexual person will essentially never feel sexually attracted to someone, they'll experience 'aesthetic' attraction as you mentioned. Grey-asexuals will maybe rarely find someone 'hot'. I have a friend who identifies this way and she has a very particular 'type' which she will feel attraction towards if she sees, but never any other time. Demisexual describes asexual people who don't feel physically attracted to someone until they have a close bond with them, for example a partner they love. It can be a funny thing to find someone attractive and then break up with them and not feel that way anymore 😅 I think 'hot' vs 'cute' can be a good way to define your level of attraction. There's a big difference between your friend talking about how they'd want to get close and personal with someone, and going 'wow I'd love to give that cute guy a squeeze and stare at him from afar' if that makes sense.
There's also three 'levels' of comfort around sex and sexual topics. Sex-repelled/repulsed asexuals have no interest in any sort of sexual activity and will avoid it, sex-positive asexuals are fine with it and may seek out intimate relationships, and sex-neutral asexuals don't care either way. Libido/physical drives are different to sexual attraction. This may be one reason why asexuals may enjoy that sort of content while not feeling attraction to people in their everyday lives, or want to do it themselves 🙂
Romantic attraction is which gender identities you would be happy to be in a relationship with, hugging or kissing but not the sexual aspects. For example, if you are bi/panromantic, you could imagine yourself dating men, women or nonbinary individuals. If you are homoromantic you would want to only date members of your own gender. It's the same as the '-sexual' terms but refers to everything but the physical attraction. Sometimes asexual individuals may struggle in with romantic touch too (it is physical after all) but will become comfortable with it, but a sex-repulsed asexual who feels romantic attraction will still never feel comfortable with anything sexual.
An honourable mention here is aromantic. Aromantic people find they don't connect to people romantically, like a girlfriend/boyfriend/partner would. I've heard of non-asexual aromantics but the two often come together.
If I've missed any terms that you've seen online that's not my intention to exclude them! I'm just going off what I am familiar with. I would say (if you feel comfortable) an easy way to figure out where your attraction sits is to listen to what your friends who are confident in their sexuality experience. I have a friend who is the straightest person I know and I learned a lot about my sexuality off her 😅 I hope that it helped a bit.
