How sexual attraction works in me as a demisexual person
icon: "analytical (a close-up photo of my eye in bright sunlight, showing the green and grey and roots-looking patterns)"
Being demisexual means different things for different people. I identify as demisexual because I don't experience primary sexual attraction: that is, I never just want to have sex just for its own sake. I never get a physical tingle from looking at someone. I can feel aesthetic attraction to strangers but that just means I enjoy looking at them: I don't want to fuck them any more than I want to fuck a complex abstract painting. The painting is honestly more likely to give me a physical reaction (not a sexual one, but like a shiver down my back or something).
I think allosexual people (people who want to have sex for its own sake) tend to think that if people don't know if they want to have sex with someone, that means they don't really care, or that the sex will be tepid. But while I can't speak for all of my past sexual partners, I'm confident that at least half of them thought our sex was some of the hottest they'd experienced. For me, being demisexual doesn't mean my sex drive is low-power in general -- it means that most people can't even get to the key to turn it, but when it is turned, it's actually a very powerful engine. I would say that compared to average, I feel stronger sexual desire than most - I just only feel it about a very, VERY particular kind of person. I don't need any particular look, or body shape, or gender, or even personality, but my list is very specific nonetheless.
For me to experience sexual attraction, I need a potential partner to 1) be connected with me on an emotional/spiritual level; 2) be self-aware; 3) want to have sex with me and be good at consent; 4) be able to maintain mental/emotional presence during sex; 5) respect my body and not gender me; 6) be sexually compatible with me.
[being connected with me]
being connected with me:
I need to feel some kind of emotional connection with the person for there to even be a chance of sexual attraction. Often this is a connection on the spirit, soul, or heart level, but sometimes it's purely a mental connection in that we have shared a lot of intimacy in our conversations. I need emotional intimacy to want to have sex with someone because without that, sex is not fun for me. I need a reward beyond getting off. Emotional intimacy is something I am very good at creating as long as the other person is self-aware and wanting to know and be known; but that self-awareness is hard to find. Spiritual connection is one that is very hard to define, but it has to do with a certain kind of shared intuition. Where I can feel a person's emotional reactions as clearly as I can feel a physical reaction. This is something I can't create -- it either is there or it isn't. I have had this with everyone I can remember being sexually attracted to, so it is either necessary or it automatically goes with something else.
[being self-aware]
being self-aware:
I need them to be self-aware because people are rarely (if ever) able to express their boundaries when they don't even know what they are. I can't be sexual with someone who can't tell me what is and is not okay and good for them in sex, because I am not willing to take on the task of reading their mind in order to avoid violating them. I think this is far too much responsibility for any human and while I have taken that on in the past, it takes a massive toll on me mentally and emotionally and the last time I tried it I had a breakdown afterwards. I'm good at guessing but the cost of guessing wrong is just too high. If you must rely on your sex partner to guess what you want, I will not have sex with you.
[wanting to have sex with me and being good at consent]
wanting to have sex with me / good at consent:
If I have a connection with someone who is self-aware, that will make me curious if we could have a sexual connection, but curiosity is as far as it goes unless they express interest or curiosity of their own. For me to feel desire, I need them to actually flat-out say "I want to have sex with you" or say an unequivocal "yes" if I ask if they want to. If they are also demisexual or grey-asexual this can get a little convoluted, but if we are both curious and want to try it that works for me. I also need them to be fully invested in my consent, not just asking but also showing awareness of my reactions and adjusting accordingly.
[able to maintain presence]
able to maintain presence:
ability and desire to maintain awareness of me throughout the sexperience. To feel sexual desire for someone I need to be able to sense them letting my touch reach them emotionally. I need a balance of reactive and attentive. I do not want someone who always turns into pure reaction (sometimes I might want to provide that space but not often, as it's exhausting!), but I also don't want someone who isn't reactive. I want a person who can stay mentally, spiritually, and emotionally present at least half the time while feeling intensely. Someone who will still notice if I seem 'done' even if they are in the throes of sexual ecstasy. Someone who can grip my hand or make eye contact with me during sex and I can feel the 'click' of that connection.
[bodily respect]
bodily respect:
I need a partner to not assign stereotyped personality traits to body parts or looks. My body has no gender, and I won't have sex with someone who wants to gender me or my parts. My fatness has no meaning, and I won't have sex with someone who treats it as any more unusual than the fact that I have hands. You gotta be over that shit: I don't do 101-level sex. Be ready to approach my body as if I am the only creature of my species in the universe.
[compatibility]
compatibility:
I need to be able to give and receive big chompy hard bites. I first discovered my penchant for biting with Kylei, and since exploring biting more with Topaz it has become as central to my sex as kissing. Kissing is a close second: I need someone who loves kissing and has a compatible kissing style with lots of lips a little bit of tongue and not too much spit. I could more easily give up genital touch than biting or kissing.
I need someone who is not more than 85% of any binary and is not primarily sexually attracted to binary traits. I need you to fully understand and know that not all my parts are physical but that doesn't make them less real. I need you to have at least a token amount of initiator/leader/giver and receiver/follower/taker. I don't want to only ever be one part of myself with you so you need to want all my aspects even if you don't want them all equally. I need to be able to wrestle and be fierce and wild. I also need sex to be taken seriously AND playfully -- don't be too proud for me to laugh at your farts, don't be too easygoing to say pause if something is uncomfortable, and don't be too cool to cry or be loud. And above all don't approach sex with me as something to cure you of what ails you. I can feel that as clearly as I can feel a physical tug and I can't stand it. I do not want to be a thing you need, ever. That is a huge turn-off.
If all of that is aligned, then I have strong curiosity about sex with this person and I want to try it. At this point I still don't feel actual desire for sex, but just for knowing what it is like. I start feeling desire for sex when I start being sexual with the person. I feel it when we're in it and I feel it after, inspired by memory. In a way, I am only sexually attracted to people I have had sex with before.
So with all these things I need to even want sex you may be asking how have I ever managed to find sex partners and the answer is -- mostly I don't. I have found 3, mayyyybe 4 people who match all of this and most of them are unavailable. So I feel both really lucky to have found the people I did, and really pessimistic about future possibilities.
Mostly I just don't try to find new sexual partners. There are a lot of experiences I am curious about and want to try, but Topaz is up for trying most of them and the others are not important enough to me to try to find a way to increase my chances. I am so lucky to have near-perfect compatibility with Topaz; our sex is still the most exciting every time, after five years. Honestly, I think that sex with anyone else is unlikely to reach the level of connection and compatibility that I have with Topaz.
Mostly the reason I want to still have sexual experiences with others is that when I have more than one sexual partner during a period of time, I am able to learn things about myself based on having similar experiences with different people. I can take the common denominator and realize what is all me. That's just not something you can do if you only have one sexual partner for a period of time. So I still want to have sexual experiences with others, but it's so far down on my list of priorities that it is unlikely I will ever devote effort to it.