Think You Might Be Demisexual? Here’s What It Actually Means. - VICE

Some people have never looked at a stranger and thought, I need to sleep with that person. Not at 17, not after three drinks, not because everyone else at the table agrees they’re hot. They can see and agree that someone is attractive. It just doesn’t give them the tingles. 

There’s a word for it. Demisexual people only feel sexual attraction after they’ve formed a strong emotional bond with someone. The term first made an appearance on an asexuality forum in February 2006, posted by someone trying to describe being mostly, though not completely, asexual. Twenty years later, Tinder lists demisexual as an orientation option.

One demisexual woman named Olivia explained her own experience to Wired. “I’ve only ever been sexually attracted to three people in my whole life,” she wrote. “My partner is sexually attracted to that many people during particularly sexy bus rides.”

The ace (asexual) community has long talked about attraction in two categories. Primary attraction is the immediate stuff: you see someone, smell their cologne, and notice whatever catches your attention. Secondary attraction grows once you actually know the person. For demisexual people, that second kind is usually where anything sexual begins, which can take a long time or sometimes never at all. 

That’s also why demisexual people hear “Isn’t that everybody?” constantly. Lots of people prefer getting to know someone before sleeping with them. They might wait because they want trust first, or because going home with somebody they met 45 minutes ago sounds exhausting. That’s different from not feeling sexual attraction to them in the first place, though.

YouTuber Christi Kerr, who came out as demisexual in a video, told PinkNews that people sometimes congratulated her on her restraint, saying things like, “Good for you for making that choice.” But there wasn’t really a choice to congratulate. Being demisexual, she explained, meant “genuinely not being interested in sex with people outside of a relationship or close friendship.”

The label doesn’t say anything about gender. Someone can be straight and demisexual, gay and demisexual, bi and demisexual. Once sexual attraction does happen, there’s also no rule about what comes next. Demisexual people can have sex, love sex, hate sex, or feel however anyone else does about it.

Figuring all this out can make adolescence feel lonely. Relationship therapist Domenique Harrison told AOL that demisexual people “may have very few examples of sexual and romantic feelings to reflect on in their life.” When everybody around you is losing their mind over the hot substitute teacher, and you’re mostly wondering when lunch period is, it can be easy to assume you missed something or you’re “broken.”

For many people, finding the word explains a lot in hindsight. Attraction might take months to progress, and with some people it just won’t happen at all. Not everyone is having a sexy bus ride.