thank you for putting in the effort to even think about the ace homies lol. it was actually really refreshing to see it even brought up in this thread since it isn't talked about a lot!

from what i've read it can vary a lot from person to person, and it is a spectrum. in my experience i can compare it to aphantasia, where i haven't experienced this thing that many people consider central to their lives and those around them but it really hasn't affected me in a negative way that i can perceive. as i understand it, asexuality is purely the lack of sexual attraction, and theres plenty more words to further specify where people fall on the spectrum if you want to look it up.

i think a lot of the "iffy" ace identification/definition you can read about online simply comes from it being so hard to prove the absence of a thing, when the opposite can be so easy.

So, I'm not completely ace, but I am 95% and seemingly get more ace every year that goes by. Thing is, there's a difference between sexual impulse and arousal on one hand and attraction to an actual person on the other. I get horny as hell every single month during my ovulation because my uterus is screaming and begging me to make babies, and that's usually when my once or twice a month masturbation happens. But the last time I met an actual real life person I was sexually attracted to was 4 years ago.

I can also find the idea of a person sexually arousing, but still won't find the actual person attractive. I know this from experience, because when I was much younger and didn't know myself as well I did act on the attraction to the idea of a person only to be sorely disappointed when it actually happened and I felt nothing.

This is only my own experience of course, but I hope this helps a bit in understanding it.