Sooooo, I might be queer?
/Ok, this is supposed to be a travel blog, but I just discovered what demisexuality is, and it was like a fucking lightbulb turned on. It seemed like the kind of thing you should write about. And since I have paid for this site for years and kept it for some reason, I might as well use it. So here’s my recent revelation. My epiphany. My breakthrough.
Learning about demisexuality just clicked for me. It answered a zillion questions I could never answer before and explained some pretty confusing choices I had made. I’ve always felt like I’m not 100% straight. It's like something just never quite fit. But I could never figure it out. I’ve had countless thoughts of, ‘Am I a lesbian? Am I bi? Or pan?’ Because I could always imagine being in love with anyone I fell in love with. Haha, that sounds so stupid and simple, but like, now that I understand what demisexuality is, that phrase makes crystal clear sense to me.
So the definition of demisexuality as I understand it, (I claim to be no expert in this matter, I’m learning and have a lot left to go) is when a person does not feel sexual attraction toward someone until they’ve established an emotional connection with them. People respond, ‘Isn’t that everybody?’ And no, it honestly isn’t. There is a difference between wanting an emotional connection with someone before you have sex or needing an emotional connection to be more satisfied with sex, versus not feeling sexual attraction toward someone at all until there is an emotional connection. Another concept I learned about was that primary attraction is when you are sexually attracted to someone based on their looks, smell, voice, or something physical that you notice immediately. While secondary attraction is to someone’s personality or after some time passes when an emotional connection develops. Most people experience primary attraction first upon meeting someone, and then secondary attraction comes later as they get to know them better. Demisexuals do not experience primary attraction, only secondary attraction.
It was like the light was just turned on and I could see things clearer than ever before. Duh, this was why I’ve never had a ‘type.’ I can walk into a room with 100 people (and 99 of them don’t believe in you…. Gaga? Anyone? Star is Born? Sorry… had to) and not find a single person attractive. I can find someone objectively attractive but I don’t feel the tinglies, don’t wanna jump their bones, don’t mutter to myself, ‘god they are so hot.’ I just don’t feel that. I’ve never had that experience of primary attraction to a person. But I’ve felt sexual attraction to people after I’ve essentially fallen in love with them. It’s almost as if the person’s appearance changes after I develop feelings for them and begin to find them sexually attractive. Their physical features begin to look appealing whereas before I never noticed. They start to smell different to me and it becomes intoxicating. I start to get the tinglies and feel that urge to want to get it on with them.
I’ve had crushes on some pretty unusual people in the past. Friends, teachers, co-workers, people I got to know well. Or celebrities who I felt like I knew. They always develop after a while of knowing the person and being intrigued by something they do or say. And I think I got good at building that connection off the smallest bit of someone’s personality that I’d get a glimpse of. I learned at a young age, girls have crushes on boys and if I want to be normal I need to have a crush on a boy. I remember just picking a boy to be my crush in grade school, on more than one occasion. And it was always whatever boy I knew the best. Once I picked a boy and zoned in on what I already knew, it was easy to grow a decent crush from there.
So many times I’ve thought maybe that was evidence of me being closeted but that didn’t make sense because I didn’t have feelings for girls either. I just didn’t have feelings for anyone. Then as I got older, hit puberty, and began to experience horniness, (oh the joys of adolescence) I started to have crushes that weren’t as arbitrary. They still developed from a connection of some kind though. And they were always boys. As I got even older, became an adult, moved out into the world on my own, and began to meet lots of different kinds of people, I even had little crushes on girls at times. Again, this prompts the thoughts of ‘Am I lesbian? And I’m just too scared to admit that to myself?’ I got to the point where I opened up my dating profiles to say I was interested in anyone, not just men.
But something still didn’t make sense to me. I hadn’t experienced sexual attraction toward a girl before so could I be a lesbian? And as the apps started to show me pictures of girls, I began to feel like that made less and less sense. None of the girl’s profiles I saw did anything for me so I never ended up talking or meeting up with anyone. I thought, maybe it was because all the girls I saw were feminine and petite. Any crushes I’ve had before were on more masculine presenting women or someone who held both masculine and feminine energies. That’s why Pansexual always intrigued me. I felt like I could fall in love with almost anyone if the circumstances were right. I just had never been intimate with anyone other than a guy before, so I wasn’t sure if that made sense either. Well, no, that’s not entirely true either. I have kissed girls before, in college. I mean we all experiment in college right? But even those kisses, (which were with friends when rolling on ecstasy btw, yeah, I know), didn’t ignite that sexual arousal. Now I know the reason was because I hadn’t fallen in love with them so there was never any chance of tinglies. And again I say, I DON’T KNOW if I’m hetero, bi, pan, or what.
Cut to, I’m 37 years old, scrolling through tiktok, and Chappell Roan pops up speaking into a microphone. I stop to watch of course because she is amazing and I watch anytime she comes across my fyp. She mentions that she’s demisexual and talks a little about it. That was the first time I had ever heard of demisexuality so I looked it up. And that was when the lightbulb turned on. Things just started clicking and making so much god damn sense. Why were dating apps so hard for me? Swiping through profiles was always difficult for me. I recall drunken nights with friends where we would fast-swipe through our tinders to see if there were any cute guys we wanted to meet up with. And I always dreaded taking my turn because I could never make snap decisions like that. I had to look at each profile for a long ass time to see if anything even struck me as attractive about this person. I was always confused as to why it was easy for my friends to swipe so quickly. The same thing when hanging with friends and someone would spot a hottie walking down the street. I would get the elbow nudge and the whisper, ‘Isn’t he hot?’ And yeah, I can agree usually if he’s objectively hot or what society says is attractive. But I never felt what they felt.
Back to my initial thought, I might be queer…. But I’m not entirely sure. Demisexuality falls under the asexual umbrella, which I guess means demisexuality is a type of asexuality. I did hear someone explain that they feel asexual…. Until they don’t. Which, yeah, same. I don’t have any sexual attraction towards anyone until I do. And it can be for a long time that I don’t. This doesn’t mean I don’t have sexual feelings or the desire to be sexual. I do. This is why it can be incredibly frustrating to have it be such a rare occurrence I am attracted to a person. So I guess, I am technically queer since the A in LGBTQIA+ stands for asexual? It’s all so new and I don’t know if I can truthfully say that yet. It feels wrong to claim a community that has experienced such prejudice and scrutiny when I’ve walked in the skin of a cis-gendered heterosexual person and not personally felt that.
And just as discovering this information about myself answered tons of questions for me, it also poses some more big ones. I still don’t know if I’m hetero or pan or bi or what. I still don’t know if I could be attracted to a woman, a transgender person, or a nonbinary person. Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it can’t happen. And knowing I’m demisexual, maybe now I can be open to those possibilities a little more. It’s also posed the question of, do I want to actively date again. For so long I’ve just been like, ‘nope!’ It’s so difficult, I never have success because I never feel that spark or whatever I thought you’re supposed to feel when you first meet someone. So I just gave up on dating. Not in a super sad way, more in a, I’d rather focus on myself and quit working so hard at something that just doesn’t make sense to me, kind of way. So now I’m starting to open myself up to the possibility of what life as a demisexual person could look like, and how I might experience dating differently knowing this about myself. It’s all very exciting and confusing, but I’m up for it. Just finding language to explain something that has always been true about me, has lit a fire in my belly that hasn’t been lit in a long time. And I’m anxious to see what kinds of choices I’ll make now. So I guess, I still don’t know if I can say I’m queer loud and proud, but I do know I can say I’m demisexual because few things in this world have made as much sense to me as this does.
