attraction

21 Perfectly Valid Reasons to Have Sex Other Than Sexual Attraction

Kate Sloan

I came out as demisexual recently, and found myself looking back at many of my past sexual experiences through the lens of this new knowledge. It became clear pretty quickly that I haven’t been sexually attracted to all, or even most, of my past sexual partners. But here’s the thing: that’s not necessarily bad!

See, as many asexual and ace-spectrum folks already know, there are plenty of reasons besides sexual attraction that people can and do pursue sex. While many of these people (including me) have no doubt encountered creeps who try to get you to have sex you don’t want, it is possible to want sex even in the absence of sexual attraction. I don’t necessarily advocate or have sex for all of these reasons myself, but here are 21 possible reasons you might like to bang even if you’re not viscerally attracted to the person you’re banging…

1. Pleasure and/or orgasm. I mean, of course. Isn’t this why a lot of people have sex? It feels good. You don’t necessarily have to be super attracted to someone for them to be able to give you pleasure, especially if they’re sexually skilled and/or you’re good at communicating what works for you.

2. Fun. Maybe you’re bored. Maybe you want to let loose. Maybe you just like the “adult playtime” nature of sex. It’s one of the few spaces in adult life where we really get to play around and be goofy!

3. Intimacy. Whether you’re in a relationship, considering a friends-with-benefits arrangement, or just have a crush you want to get closer to, sometimes sex is a way to deepen your emotional connection with someone. Being intimate (in the literal way, not the euphemistic way) is one of life’s great joys.

4. Adventure, exploration, and curiosity. Maybe you’re trying to figure out if you’re ace, and want to give sex a shot just to check. Maybe you suspect you’re kinky but think you won’t know until you try some stuff. Maybe you just like the way sex allows you to explore more parts of your psyche – and of someone else’s.

5. Reproduction. Had to mention it. Perfectly valid. Obviously common.

6. A self-esteem boost. Granted, this practice can get unhealthy fast, particularly if you start over-relying on sex to prop up your self-image – but if you just need to feel better about yourself once in a while, sometimes sex can help with that.

7. Stress relief. Pleasure and orgasm can help relax you after a hard day or take your mind off a difficult experience. They can also help you release your inhibitions, if you’re feeling a little boxed-in lately.

8. Relief from arousal. Look, sometimes your body can feel like it “needs to” get off or you won’t be able to concentrate on anything else. Sex can often relieve that (as can masturbation, natch). Then, once you’re done, you can get back to work, or do whatever else your arousal was making difficult.

9. Pain relief. As this chronic-pain sufferer well knows, the naturally analgesic effects of sex and orgasm can be a godsend at times.

10. To fall asleep. I’ve heard from many aces that they use masturbation basically as a sleeping pill. You can use sex that way too, as long as your prospective partner is okay with you zonking out immediately afterward!

11. Exercise, endorphins, or warmth. Sex (especially the more aerobic varieties) boosts your heart rate, raises your body temp, and gets those sweet sweet endorphins flowing. Yummm.

12. To transgress or make a political statement. It can feel powerful – especially as a queer or kinky person, or someone who’s been socialized to think their sexuality should be kept quiet – to have sex almost as an act of rebellion. Hell yeah.

13. To enjoy kink. You don’t need sex (or sexual attraction) to be part of your kink play if you don’t want it to. There are many ace or ace-spectrum people who derive great joy and fulfilment from kink but don’t necessarily want sex to intermingle with that every time or ever.

14. To nurture and comfort someone. Say your (allosexual) partner’s had a rough day and you know sex reliably cheers them up and de-stresses them. It can be nice to have “sympathy sex” sometimes. (Only if you want to, of course.)

15. To practice or feel competent. When you do something well, sometimes that sense of mastery can be a boon for your mood. Maybe you’re really good at oral sex and want to show that off and feel like a sex genius for a while. Or maybe you just want to practice your sexual skills so you’ll have them under your belt (so to speak) later on when you fuck someone you’re more attracted to.

16. To soothe your heart after a breakup. They do say the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else…

17. Money or gifts. Sex work is valid! Sugar babies are valid! Frivolous materialism is valid!

18. Power. There may be situations where sex can procure you a higher standing in a particular social group, or can even get you a better job. I’m not saying I necessarily advocate this, but… it does happen, and I wouldn’t blame you for making that choice.

19. Religion, spirituality, or transcendence. Lots of people access some kind of “God state” through sex, or include it in their spiritual rituals. It can be a way to escape the bounds of yourself and convene with something bigger than you.

20. Gender affirmation. Maybe particular kinds of sex, or sex with particular kinds of people, makes you feel better in your gender or in your body. Totally cool and probably common!

21. Empowerment or reclamation. For some people, it’s powerful to reclaim sex and pleasure after sexual trauma – in your own way and on your own terms. I support you wholeheartedly.

What are some non-attraction-related reasons you like to have sex?

You’re Someone’s Favorite Flavor

Kate Sloan
Eating cinnamon/coconut gelato in Malta

While I’m a strong proponent of the fact that we’re all different and have unique perspectives and experiences, the subjectivity of attraction has always been hard for me to wrap my mind around. I’ve told countless friends and readers who felt unattractive, “There are people out there who would be so into you; you just have to find them!” but it’s often been tough for me to believe that about myself.

On free adult dating sites and apps, it can seem like we’re being reduced to how we look – and this can be discouraging for those of us who feel like our appearance is subpar in some way. I’ve thought of myself for so long as someone whose Tinder bio you have to read to truly understand my charm. This self-perception was so ingrained, I didn’t even believe my partner when he recently told me he thought I was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, the first time he laid eyes on me.

So it seemed like a good time to revisit a lesson I often impart on friends and readers when they just can’t comprehend or accept their own attractiveness. I call it “the ice cream metaphor,” and it goes like this:

Imagine you go out for ice cream with a friend. “I’m gonna get my favorite flavor,” they announce excitedly, rubbing their hands together.

“What flavor is that?” you ask.

And then they name a flavor you find absolutely vile. Cotton candy, butter pecan, rum raisin, whatever it may be… A flavor you can’t imagine anyone eats, let alone enjoys.

But you look at their big grin, and the spring in their step as they march up to the counter at the ice cream parlor, and the expression of total bliss on their face when their tongue first touches their treat. And you realize then that while you don’t agree with them that it’s a good flavor, you believe them when they say it’s their favorite.

This is how attraction works, too. You don’t have to agree with everyone who thinks you’re hot. In fact, when they compliment you, you may feel a full-body reaction of doubt and dismissal, because what you see when you look in the mirror certainly doesn’t register as “hot” to you. But you should still do your best to say “Thank you” and to believe what they’re saying. Their perceptions and tastes are different from yours. This happens in every area where humans can have preferences, from ice cream to music to, yes, people. Suspend your disbelief and allow yourself to accept that you are hot to somebody, even if you’re not hot to you.

You may be a flavor you personally wouldn’t eat if there was no other ice cream left on earth, but there are people who could lick you all day long and still want more. Know what I’m sayin’?

You’re someone’s favorite flavor. Don’t forget it.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Do You Have a “Type”?

Kate Sloan

“You should date this guy,” my friend said, forwarding me a screenshot of someone they’d encountered on Tinder. “He’s totally your type.”

I stared at the picture, trying to see what my friend saw. The dude was scrawny, bespectacled, and looked like he’d probably make an obscure Sondheim reference in the same breath as telling you why your favorite Pokémon’s stats sucked. Yep. Definitely my type.

Curious, I took to the internet. “What kind of person do you think I’ll end up with?” I queried my Facebook friends. The answers were very interesting indeed.

“Good sense of humor? Which I guess is subjective, but someone who is good with joking around and not making asshole jokes and stuff. Someone who’s passionate about some hobby/job/pastime. Not necessarily something nerdy, but maybe.” -my friend Dan, who’s known me for a few years

My first girlfriend was an improvisor, and I’ve been drawn to improv weirdos ever since. There is just something about a person who can not only make you laugh, but can do so with a quick wit and a theatrical committedness that dials their jokes up to eleven. Being on a competitive improv team for a few years saddled me with some of the most intense crushes of my life, simply because seeing people be that funny, that fast and that often, is bound to give you Feelingz about at least some of them.

That first girlfriend also cursed me with a permanent attraction to purple fauxhawks, squeaky laughs, and – most crucially and most enduringly – puns. I practiced my punniness to impress her, and now, all these years later, wordplay still makes my ears perk up. If you can outpun me with aplomb, I probably want to kiss you.

“Somebody intelligent, who has a working knowledge of something you’ll develop a passion for after you meet them (you’ll teach them about something you know lots about, like theatre or something, and they’ll teach you about the new interest). Somebody calm/level-headed who isn’t drawn into an argument easily.” -Max, my brother

My first serious boyfriend was a game developer, and ever since that years-long romance, I’ve been hopelessly attracted to other developers of games and apps. If you can ramble my ear off about code, interactive narrative, and the evolution of iOS, I’ll have very little idea what you’re talking about, but I’ll probably wanna listen anyway. Especially if I already think you’re cute.

This proclivity got so bad at one point that I would start flirting with someone and only find out after the fact that they were a game dev. “Of course you are,” I’d say, smacking myself in the forehead. I could not escape the devs!

I was mystified by this for a long time, until a game-dev friend of mine offered a potential explanation. He said I’m attracted to nerds, but especially creative nerds – and software development is where hard-nosed geekiness crosses paths with starry-eyed dreaminess. To make a good game or app, you gotta have both imaginative vision and nerdy know-how. It makes a lot of sense to me now why I’m attracted to people in this career so frequently.

“They will be laugh-out-loud funny, have empathy out the wazoo, be a good listener, and spontaneous. Funny is so important. I think a unique sense of humour is big too, and owning their own quirks.” -my friend Georgia, who’s known me for 10+ years

When pondering whether or not I have a “type,” the phase “charismatic nerd” kept floating through my consciousness. It’s really the most succinct and accurate description of the people I’ve dated. My physical preferences have shifted over time, and usually haven’t been all that important to me – but charisma and nerdiness have endured as crucial qualities in all my crushes.

See, I love the zany zeal that characterizes nerds – their no-chill enthusiasm for whatever captivates them, and the ways that passion can translate to sex and dating. But while I find some nerds’ shyness and awkwardness endearing, it feels too familiar to my dorky heart; I tend to enjoy dating people more outgoing and socially smooth than me, because they pull me out of my introverted shell and take me on adventures.

S. Bear Bergman says you should date “someone who is similar enough to you to make you feel comfortable, but different enough from you to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.” Nerdiness sets me at ease. Charisma sets my nerve endings on fire.

“I mean, they’d need to love BJs and you’d need to have good sex with them, but I feel like as long as they weren’t selfish dickwads in bed, you’d be able to have good sex with them. Like, obviously you have your preferences, but I feel like your sexual priorities are a little more mutable than the things you’d need from their personality. So if they were amazingly funny/supportive/creative and willing to learn (because they’re supportive of your pleasure) then you’d be happy to do the work to make sure y’all were having good sex.” -my best friend Bex

Last year, I was telling my then-boyfriend about a man I’d previously been in love with, and he said, “Why did you fall in love with him? Wasn’t he vanilla?”

It struck me as an odd question, because at the time that all that shit went down, someone’s kink orientation didn’t really enter into my vetting process vis-à-vis crushes. If they were smart, funny, feminist, enthusiastic, and kind, I figured great sex could come later. Or I could settle for pretty-good sex. Or we’d figure it out when we got there. I dunno, man.

These days, though, I lean toward viewing my submissive identity as integral to my attractions. Someone can capture my attention by being a little dominant when otherwise I might’ve skipped over them. Admissions of risk-aware sadism or daddy-esque predilections get my blood pumping. I consider kink compatibility alongside humor, temperament, and lifestyle when deciding how deep to wade into a new crush.

But I still get all swoony for mega-vanilla people sometimes. Hey, you can’t win ’em all.

“Smart. Open-minded. Probably a goof or you’ll get bored, let’s be real.” –Sofi, who is a literal matchmaker for a living

Ultimately, the qualities that draw you to someone, and keep you interested in them, are to some degree ineffable. You can write out what you think is the precise formula of your attractions, but you can always prove yourself wrong.

All my major crushes have shifted my own perceptions of my “type” in some way. I never knew I could love an extrovert until I did; I wasn’t sure I could fall for a bald guy or a short guy or a vegan guy until I did; I’ve dated people older than I thought I ever would, younger, louder, quieter, farther away. They’ve probably all had some kernel of something in common – some clever glimmer, some magnetic tenderness – but it’s hard to see their similarities at a glance. If you put ’em all in a lineup, they’d look like a pretty disparate crew.

I love that about attraction, though. I love never knowing who I’ll want next, and why. It reminds me that life is a wild ride and there’s no use in trying to predict anything. Just enjoy it while you’re on it.

Do you have a “type”? How do you feel about it?

Magnet

Kate Sloan

Though I’ve had seemingly infinite crushes in my short, limerence-loaded life, few of them were magnetic in the way often described in pop songs. Usually my physical attractions are clipped onto the sides of more romantic lures; it’s rare for that sexual pull to exist loudly and fully as its own boisterous thing.

But three times in my life, I have met a magnet. I hope I meet many more.

“I wanna touch your knee, but very casually. I’m gonna get so near you, so I can hear you, silently sitting very, very close.”

The cute boy in my improv class is ruining my entire academic year.

His open face and unreserved grin, his sloping shoulders and sharp collarbones, his long fingers and strong arms, his tall stature, his dirty sneakers, his tight jeans, his barking laugh. I can’t handle any of it. I can handle exactly none of it.

He is very fucking distracting, in a molecular and neurological way I’ve never quite experienced before. One day I’m journaling before class begins and find my pen wandering off the page as my eyes drift toward him. He’s not even doing anything important, just goofing off with the other boys using props lying around in the classroom, but my gaze stays affixed to his form. I feel like a fucking creep. I am a fucking creep. I don’t know what to do about it.

Another day, I’m talking to some friends in the hallway, and suddenly he walks by. I absorb a cloud of his teenage-boy cologne through deep inhalations and lose my words completely. “Kate?” a pal asks me. “Kate, you just trailed off mid-sentence. What were you saying?” I can’t fucking remember what I was saying. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is the way his shoulderblades look, pressing sharply through the lines of his sweater as he saunters down the hall. Fuck.

We perform together in an improv set, and between scenes, I sit beside him in the wings. I am infinitely, uncomfortably aware of his warm thigh alongside mine. I can feel my body singing, humming, buzzing at a frequency that aches to match his. My molecules purr meltily and moonily at his. But he doesn’t even notice. I am nothing to him. I’m just some girl he kind of knows. This pull I am feeling exists only in my body and I just can’t understand how that can be true.

“I’m a magnet. And you’re a magnet. And we are pushing each other away.”

My second magnet is someone else’s boyfriend. Nothing to be done about it but feel it, and try not to feel it.

This time, at least, I am certain he’s feeling it too. We sit close together at a party, our chairs side-by-side so our eyes don’t quite meet, because that would be Too Much. Other partygoers engage us in conversation and we laugh and talk and sip our drinks, but the inches of air between us are warm and whirring. I want to get just a little closer, feel him just a little more, but I don’t. I can’t.

Flirtatiously, tipsily, I admit to him in a low tone, “I really want to make out with you, but I don’t think that’s allowed.” He smiles like the sweetest little imp and neither confirms nor denies – which is, of course, a “no.” I figured as much. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.

Once or twice, I get up from my seat, beer in hand, to totter to the bathroom. Opening the door afterward, I half-expect to see him just outside, forehead pressed to the doorjamb, mumbling, “I just had to come kiss you.” But he doesn’t. He is good. For the most part.

Past 3AM that night, when I’ve long departed the party and am half-catatonic in bed, I get a text from him: “I really wanted to make out with you tonight too.” I know he did, is the thing. It radiated off him like waves of heat. What an awful, wonderful, terrible thing.

I start avoiding parties where I know he’ll be, because resisting that magnetic pull is possible, but not pleasurable. I’m tired of torture. One evening of aching was enough.

“What is the centre between two centres of attention? Is there a centre between two centres of attention? Or only tension between two centres of attention?”

Sometimes you don’t recognize a magnet right away when you meet them. Sometimes the magnetism has to sublimate, stagnate, before it roars to life.

I meet my Sir in a Manhattan coffee shop, before I know he’s going to be my Sir, before I know he’s going to be my anything. He’s wearing a blue button-down that sets off his cornflower eyes, and the excited-but-guarded smile you flash at your Twitter crush when you’re nervous they’re not gonna like you IRL. I suppress my swooning, because we are in public, for fuck’s sake.

We’ve been talking animatedly for almost an hour before I realize the boy across from me is, indeed, a magnetic forcefield. “Would it be too intimate,” he begins, slowly, watching my eyes widen, “if we traded phones and looked at each other’s podcasts?” And then he leans across the table, ostensibly to show me his screen, but really it’s to dial that electric current up to eleven. My eyes want to slam shut as he gets that close to me, because I feel it, I feel the pull, and it’s such a rare and marvelous thing that I want to savor it in every fizzing atom of my little body.

“Love a good table-lean,” I say to him weeks later, over the phone, making fun of him for those perfect flirtations on our first date. But I know it wasn’t so much purposeful flirting as it was his desire to get closer to me. I know this because I wanted that, too.

Our second date comes after weeks of planning, sexting, flirting, and dirty-talking over the phone. I’m so nervous, I sweat through my winter coat. I’m so nervous, I swill his peppermint tea from a paper cup I’m clutching with trembling hands. I’m so nervous, I start exhibiting actual goddamn panic attack symptoms at dinner. He talks me through it all, and holds my hand, patient and forgiving and endlessly kind.

After dinner, we wait in the restaurant’s entryway for our Lyft to arrive. It’ll take us to the hotel where we’re going to fuck each other’s bodies and minds all night – but all moments until then are torture. He steps toward me and gives me a soft kiss, quick, like he’s releasing a little air from a valve so the whole machine doesn’t fucking explode. I whimper and keen and swoon forward against him, my whole body wanting the kiss to continue, but it doesn’t. Not yet.

“I feel like a magnet,” I mumble, and it has never felt more true. The heat of my skin and the knot in my gut and the twinge in my heart are all insisting: Touch this boy. But I am good, and I wait.

“Me too,” he says, the bridge of his nose pressed into mine, and then our car arrives, and we get in, and I pray for the invention of time travel solely so I can skip this goddamn car ride and be naked in bed beside this perfect boy in an instant.

I meet his eyes in the dim backseat, and I can see my smoky desire mirrored back at me. I can feel our pulses pounding in sync. I know what’s going to happen. And I know I’m going to like it.

Slow Burn

Kate Sloan

There is no sex hotter than the sex you almost had.

We almost had it. But the timing wasn’t right. Time was not on our side. Out of time. Time to go.

So we took to our phones and made up for lost time.

There is no sex hotter than sex you picture for weeks before having it. Months, even. In slow-unfolding sext-a-thons and wandering phone calls. In café daydreams and bathtub reveries. In subway imaginings too carnal for public consumption.

Do they know? Do they know I’m thinking about you?

Do you know?

I’ve considered your body. A body I don’t know well. I’ve considered its weight.

I’ve been crushed beneath you in my mind a thousand times. A myriad of melting me’s, acquiescing in sequence. I’ve looped the mental tape like a well-loved song. Your kiss is catchy. Your eyes, an earworm. Your heart, a hook. And I’m hooked, and I’m helpless.

They say a memory’s not just a memory. It’s stacked with neural residue from each time the file’s been reviewed. Date Modified: Today.

So the image of your touch isn’t really your touch; it’s the ways I’ve remembered it, the ways I’ve reshaped it by remembering it. I wish I’d made duplicates. I wish I had the pristine originals, tucked away in a lockbox deep in my limbic system. But even those, I would take out too often and muck up with dust.

A few days after our first date – that blazing conversation over coffee, and the rough kisses that unavoidably ensued – I texted you, “I wish I had paid more attention, even though I was paying very close attention. I wish I had it memorized.”

“I wish I took notes,” you wrote back. “I wish I had it recorded somehow. I wish I could rewatch it.”

So we replay it in micro-detail, a back-and-forth volley of “Remember when…?” and “Then you…” and “I thought…” We layer and re-layer memory engrams, like neuropsychological Jenga. We fill in every blank for each other until our first date becomes not just a story but a legend. Not just an anecdote but a prophecy fulfilled.

Sometimes you think you know tiredness, because bleary-eyed yawning is part of the fabric of your life – but then one day you come up against exhaustion, and it’s a different beast entirely. Its maw opens unendingly and draws you down, down, down. Habitual tiredness is not exhaustion. You know exhaustion when you feel it.

Just like you know desire when you feel it. You can go through life developing quaint crushes, flirting with people in elevators and bars, and spouting wink emoticons like an addictive currency. But those things are no more desire than a handful of potato chips is a meal. You know desire when you feel it. It knocks you over like a truck smashing through glass.

You know it because you can’t ignore it. There are so few unignorable sensations in the world, so few experiences we can’t tune out if we press our brains to the grindstone. Desire gnaws and needs and needles you. It chases you down neural pathways. It whirls pointlessly in your periphery. Stop, you say, and it laughs and says, Naaah.

I’ve considered your body. A body I don’t know well. I’ve screamed into my pillow while considering it. I’ve grasped uselessly at places where you weren’t. I’ve dragged more orgasms out of me than I thought possible, clinging to the notion of your face. And still it’s not enough. And still I desire. And still, I can’t be still.

I hope to find my mind again someday, when the smog of want has cleared. When this slow burn snuffs into smoke. But I hope – my secret, darkest hope – it stays alight a little longer.