TIFU by not telling my coworker my opinions on her boyfriend

Apologies for wacky formatting, I typed this on my phone.

To preface, I work afternoons and nights at a big brand craft store. There’s a 50/50 chance you get it right, but my point is the people who work there are kind of eccentric. For example, The co-worker in question has a bit of a motormouth. She’ll tell you everything going on in her life if you manage to stay in earshot for more than five seconds. She’s gender-fluid, has a recently married lesbian sister, a fiancée, she knew a guy who collected ducks with his girlfriend until they broke up and she took them in the split, etc. As you can see, I like to listen.

Last night she was there. Not on the clock, but she was buying something with who I assumed was the aforementioned fiancée. They then sat at the bench near the door with him to wait for a pickup order.

At one point while I was in the cycle of returns I said hi to her. Of course we got into a conversation, and it it quickly becomes about her fiancée.

She suddenly speaks in a low voice and excitedly says “Hey, that’s my fiancé!” and points at him.

“Ha yeah I assumed. That’s the only guy I’ve seen you with.” Was my answer.

“What do you think? Isn’t he one of the hottest guys you’ve ever seen?”

This is where the dread begins.

I don’t find people physically attractive. Or attractive at all. Not to say I think everyone’s ugly, but I look at a person that maybe my sister thinks is ‘hot’ and I think ‘Yep that’s a human. A real person-y human person.’. Physical/sexual attraction is just something I don’t feel. As such, I tend to describe people creatively. Ex. “That guy looks like he eats lettuce with a spoon.”

These observations are never meant to be mean, and are just whatever comes to my head when I first see a person. People often consider them ‘roasts’ or ‘insults’ but I never mean them that way.

To add to that, this coworker does not take ‘negative’ opinions very well. Source: We once had a conversation about a game we’d both played, and when I told her I didn’t like one of the twists in the story she started defending the existence of the character in universe like I had insulted her child.

Her fiancée had a pale white face and black curly hair. The bottom half of his face was covered by an unruly beard, and he had the eyes of someone who didn’t want to be in a craft store at 7pm in the middle of winter. I could see him being the subject in an old oil painting.

I didn’t know what to tell her. Not wanting to accidentally insult her love, what glopped out of my mouth was:

“Hey. I’m. Asexual. I physically can’t have an opinion on that.”

She then followed up with. “Well isn’t he like, conventionally attractive?”

Which made it worse, as the answer to that,

was no.

So I doubled down.

“I- I just said I don’t have an answer for that. I have no reference…”

She stared at me. I stared at nothing.

There was a long awkward pause before I said “Well I’m just gonna go over this way and get back to work bye” and scooted the fuck outta there.

The vibes were in shambles.

I feel like the next time I see her I need to apologize because it would have been better just to lie. It would have been better just to say “Yeah sure!” Or even a “Maybe!” would have been better. But my honest abe clown ass made the whole thing about me. I thought about it the rest of my shift and up until now which is why I’m writing this. I needed to put it somewhere.

TLDR: Didn’t want to lie to my coworker and tell her find her fiancé attractive, ended up coming out to her as asexual.