“A demisexual person is someone who does not experience sexual attraction to another person unless or until they have formed an emotional connection with that person. It’s more commonly seen in, but by no means confined, to romantic relationships. The term demisexual comes from the orientation being ‘halfway between’ sexual and asexual.” -the AVENwiki page on demisexuality
Have you ever heard of demisexuality? Prior to this one, my only post about it was from many years ago, when my boyfriend at the time told me he thought he might be demi. I wrote about it with skepticism, because the premise of it seemed strange to me. You can only become sexually attracted to someone after you have an emotional connection with them? Okay, how is that different from how… many, if not most, people experience attraction?
But in the years since, my own sexuality has shifted and mellowed, and I’ve come to understand that I myself am demisexual. Plot twist!
When that (now ex-)boyfriend came out to me as demi, in struggling to understand his orientation, I asked him, “So when you’re walking down the street, you never see someone you find sexually attractive and would like to have sex with?” and he told me, “No.” I later heard him say to a friend that, while he could appreciate that women other than me were pretty, he didn’t see them as hot; he just “didn’t work that way.”
While my attractions are not as monogamously-focused as that, I’ve come to understand (I think) what he was feeling. I used to see people on the street I’d like to fuck, and now I don’t anymore. My desire to have sex with someone is rare and highly contextual. Usually it pops up after a few dates, or a lot of texting, or reading their tweets for months. I have to know their brain and their heart, or my genitals just aren’t interested.
I sometimes wonder – as so many folks on the asexuality spectrum do, when grappling with internalized acephobia – if this orientation is the result of difficult past experiences. While I wouldn’t describe any sexual encounters from my “slutty phase” as traumatic, I do think that all those lackluster hookups with people I barely knew probably had an effect on me. Too often, I basically dissociated during sex from the utter weirdness of banging someone you’re not (yet) attracted to, which meant that not only did I not enjoy the sex, but I wasn’t always able to make it a fun experience for my partners either. Maybe I came to associate “not knowing someone well” with “terrible sex,” or maybe demisexuality crept fluidly and reasonlessly into my sexual orientation as these things are wont to do, or maybe it was a combination of both. Either way, I’m now saddled with the reality of never wanting to fuck someone unless I’m intimately acquainted with, and excited by, their mind.
The only exception to this, in the years and months I’ve been turning over this identity in my mind, is my current partner. I knew after just a few minutes of conversation that I wanted to fuck them. But then again, those minutes of conversation were unusually intimate and cerebral for a first date, and we had already flirted a little in our Twitter DMs. We weren’t starting from zero – and if we had been, I don’t think the date would have ended as wonderfully and lasciviously as it did.
My partner – who is not demi, but understands it well – has pointed out to me what appear to be hints of burgeoning demisexuality in my work and my life. They’ve noticed that when I write about crushes, usually I’m writing about their competence or their words rather than their physicality. They’ve heard me waffle and groan about dates I didn’t want to go on, simply because I hadn’t given myself enough of a chance to become attracted yet. They’ve seen the way I melt moreso from things they do or say than from the way they look, smell, or feel (though those things are great too). It felt validating to have someone confirm to me that my attractions operate a bit differently from the norm, and that the demi label therefore fits.
The other biggest confirmation of this identity, for me, has been the random men on the internet who try to sext with me. Granted, most women don’t respond well to this type of thing in their DMs – but even in contexts where sexting is expected and perhaps even consensual, like Tinder, it leaves me cold if the person on the other side of the screen is a stranger. Even if they’re weaving beautiful sentences backed up by anatomical knowledge, sexual adventurousness, and feminist ideology, I am only ever, at best, mildly interested. But sexting with someone I’ve had hours-long conversations with? That’s a totally different story.
I think that this development directly contributed to me abruptly losing almost all interest in dating apps and hooking up, way back in early 2017. Scouring potential matches’ bios while all but ignoring their photos, and automatically recoiling if they got too sexual too fast, made me all too aware of how different my preferred approach is from what’s being offered on these apps. Even sites traditionally understood to be more personality-focused, like OkCupid, make me feel lost in a sea of “maybes.” How am I supposed to know if I find someone attractive enough to talk to them… if I haven’t already talked to them?!
If and when I ever get over my distaste for dating new people, I think the best approach for me will be to meet up with people IRL as soon as possible if they seem interesting. Maybe that seems counterintuitive, but I’d rather get an attraction simmering ASAP than lead someone on by messaging back and forth for weeks when I’m not even sure if I’m into them.
I’ve also found it helpful to state upfront in my dating bios that I’m looking to date, not hook up. And when it comes to actual dates, I now prefer to schedule them for mid-day – say, coffee or lunch – so that sex isn’t really presented as an option, at least until I know them well enough to know if I want to fuck them. Knowing about these “demisexual life hacks” helps me feel more confident in my ability to rejoin the dating world when I’m ready.
For now, though, I’m predictably really enjoying having consistent sex with two people I know quite well. It’s a demisexual’s (wet) dream.
