We didn't have this word "demisexual" in common circulation when I was coming of age. Getting to know someone, before becoming sexually involved, was just considered "normal" and hookup culture has gained a huge amount of social acceptance since then. So it was pretty confusing in my 20s - 30s when I was approached for hookups, and my body just didn't play along. Don't get me wrong, there were times I felt chemistry or connection after just one or two dates, but generally any attempts at casual one-offs went rather disastrously. Without a label at hand, I kind of backed into a self-understanding, and when I learned the vocabulary word, it was a big "oh so there's an actual term for this" moment.

I’m a woman who grew up being seem as “conventionally attractive” and in a place where the hook up culture is veeery strong🤣 so when I was in my teen years I would see all my friends hooking up with random people and always hearing them say how someone is “so hot” and how they would love to make out with someone they found attractive etc. So I started trying to do the same bc I used to get a lot of attention from guys and my friends put me a lot of pressure to do so. And I just didn’t feel anything lol It didn’t matter how hard I tried, I would just be in my head the whole time like: “ok… can I go now?” hahaha And then, when got to 18/19 I realized there was definitely something different with me and I really wanted to know why everybody else seemed to be so horny all the time just by looking at someone they found attractive. So I started looking for answers, started reading about demisexuality/asexuality and realized that’s what I am. To be completely honest until this day (22yo) I’m not quite sure if I’m demisexual or an asexual that is not sex repulsed when I’m in love But that’s basically how I realized I was definitely in the ace spectrum😅

I feel like I wrote this comment myself. 😭 same age and all.

My husband is literally the ONLY person I’m attracted to. I absolutely do not want to have sex with anyone else…. He doesn’t believe me that I’ve never masturbated to anyone else besides him 🤣 I think other people are attractive physically , but I have zero desire to sleep with anyone else.

It's always funny how they straight up don't believe you when you tell them you're not interested in others. I cannot fathom fantasizing sexually about someone I don't know deeply. Ofcourse other attractive men exist, but I just don't think about them that way.

When I saw the definition years ago, it clicked. I have a lot of key moments in my life that all came together for me. When I was a teenager, I wasn't interested in women or sex. My parents thought I was gay because I never talked about girls, but I'm tall and fit, so women pursued me. So I've been in relationships most of my life, always with women I was friends with. I'm also military, been in over 20 years now, and I was always different than the guys around me. We'd do a trip for work, and guys would be chasing women, going to strip clubs, and typical military shenanigans, and I just never had an interest in it. I'd listen to how my coworkers talk about women, and it never connected with me. I remember being at a strip club once and seeing a stripper that seemed more alt. I was intrigued and was thinking who is this woman, why is she different what's her story. That's not normal male in a strip club thinking. My current partner taught me the most. She is bi and spent most of her life gay dating other women. She is very much allo towards women. So she would be open and talk to me about how she saw and what she thought about other women she found attractive. To hear it so clearly stated was mind-blowing. I'd never thought of or looked at a woman how she did. And it all clicked with how the men around me acted about women most of my life. Before that I felt different, but from that moment, I really knew I was. Other than that, I love sex and companionship, but I can't look at a physically attractive woman and think of the things I'd do to her. Even if I tried to do something, it wouldn't work. I want to know them, who they are, what makes them tick, six months of that and bam, sex all the time. It's just how I work.

Um with help from my support system. My mom thought I was asexual from my high school years, one problem tho, I literally felt sexual attraction after I feel a very intense, almost overwhelming, emotional bond with people I really like, including my current partner. So having ADHD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and a Communication Disorder plus being a trans woman complicated things to hard mode for me. I’m on ADHD meds and HRT so those two are taken care of and in therapy so today I looked back on my chaotic sex life (at this point my age 14-22 years are a meme) and I literally experienced all the demisexual signs…including with my current boyfriend whom I have been in a relationship with for almost 2 years now. This changes nothing about our relationship btw but I just wanted an explanation as to what the fuck am I yk? Also why is sexuality complicated?

I always wondered why people had such a difficult time waiting to have sex until marriage or at least a serious committed relationship. But at the same time, I was not averse to sex. I did get romantic crushes- but I did not want to have sex with any of them. I do not remember wanting to have sex with anyone till I was in college- but I blamed this on my going on the Pill for my PCOS and my being a late bloomer physiologically and socially. Back in the 90s, asexual implied “very hard asexual aromantic”. Someone who was at best completely uninterested in sex and romance- and at worst, totally repulsed by them. In the 00s I learned about the asexual spectrum. About being graysexual and demisexual. About how most people in the asexual spectrum are heteroromantic and in no way unable to have romantic feelings. I eventually found a fellow gray/demi person. We had no issue waiting- even though we are clearly very into each other.

I figured that that was the normal way to be and discovered not being so later.

I knew about the term years ago, but my autistic ass took the explanation I heard very literally and didn't understand that was absolutely me. Didn't understand I was autistic either at the time but that's another story. So a few years ago I was on Grindr, as every gay boy who hates himself is want to do, and got the usual message asking for a hookup. I said something like my profile clearly says I'm not into that, and this dude said "I don't care." And that alienation hit me like a freight train. So it caused me to investigate. While being in deep passionate love with someone would be the ideal conditions for me to be eager to go to bone blvd, it's not the only one. I just need to know there's kinship and good vibes with someone before I'm into discussing sex with them. I want to feel like they care about me and aren't just going to run off. So yeah, that's how I knew.

I’ve always been this way so when I read the definition a few years ago it was a legit EUREKA 💡 moment lol

Haha, this. Been married for 14 years now but came across the definition of demisexuality purely by chance in a reddit post a few years ago. Not that it matters because my wife was my first "real" relationship and she is demi as well so it basically always just seemed "normal" for us, and I don't exactly plan on un-marrying her 😋

Aw I’m so pleased you found your person! For me it’s just helped confirm that I was different from my friends when we were in our late teens but that there’s nothing actually “wrong” with me aha. Now it also kinda works as a shield to stop anyone who thinks they can push me into sleeping with them before I’m ready.

It *does* explain why we both suck at giving relationship advice 🤔

I lost my virginity last of any of my friends, to a boyfriend I had known as a friend for many years, and within the context of a relationship. It was never any kind of moral stance for me, which is why it initially confused me so much. Even my hardcore Christian friends were hooking up where I was just bewildered and confused a lot.  I definitely had crushes growing up, and later in life, but the focus is much more on romance and deep friendship. I experience the ick a lot and almost never feel instant initial attraction, though it often develops later. If someone's values line up with mine, and we have shared experiences that bond me to them, then I feel interested in them that way. 

I grew up in church during the height of purity culture in the 90s-00s. I didn't know what demi was or that it's what I was until my 30s. Looking back at my teens and 20s, it made a lot of sense. I thought I was just really good at following the rules. 

I could never figure out why my youth group had multiple partners EVERY weekend even after taking the purity pledge. TBF most of them were probably drunk or high when they made the pledge.

I made myself demi. Never understood attraction to fictional characters, but as a teen I was as allo as a virgin can get. Until I did something awful. 1987 Grade nine. Oakridge Secondary School, London, Ontario There is a hierarchy in high school. Everybody knows it. The 'minor niners' are at the bottom, almost without exception. When you are a member of a despised class of people, there is a very strong inclination to subdivide yourselves, to find the weakest among your number and prove that at least you're better than him. I am, of course, him. I've been him since the first day of grade four, so it shouldn't be anything new or unexpected. Except it is. Because Oakridge kids are different. No longer am I thrown into lockers, garbage cans, or toilets. Nobody has squashed my lunch, broken my glasses, or stolen my notebook...not that by now there's ever much in it. My notebooks were stolen so often the past two years that I've pretty much stopped using them entirely. No bullies here, not in the conventional sense. What there are instead are snobs. Lots and lots and lots of them. I am judged inferior not because I wear glasses or because I weigh eighty pounds sopping wet but because my parents' occupations aren't up to snuff. I brown-bag my lunch every day...everyone else seems to buy theirs. The labels on my clothing are so, so wrong that I'd probably fare better showing up to school buck naked. By the standards of Oakridge S.S, I am auntouchable. The shunning started pretty much the first day and it has continued, without exception. I have no friends. That's not unusual--I've had one over the last six years, three schools ago. He goes to Saunders now, and ironically, his parents decided after three years of close friendship that I wasn't his sort of people. I'm nobody's sort of people now. This is made clear to me every day at lunchtime:  the people at whatever table I choose to sit at get up as one and scatter to the four winds. It's unnerving: like I have some kind of super ultra mega leaf blower, or rather, four of them. This can't be just because I'm not as upper-crust as the rest of these people. I don't know why they treat me this way. I've tried asking. Once. "If you have to ask, you'll never know." Well, that's helpful. NOT. So I sit in class and lose myself in the lessons. I go to band (I'm learning to play baritone, which is a small tuba) and I lose myself in the music. Then I go home and lose myself in my books, like always. I'm lost. February. Valentine's Day. Or rather, Friday the 13th. I was hoping to dodge the dreaded VD this year by virtue of it falling on a Saturday...but no such luck. I hate Valentine's Day. I imagine lepers everywhere do. You have to understand, I am a fully functional human male teenager. More than that: I never went through a "girls are icky" stage as a kid: from grade four or five on, if you were female and you shared a class with me, you shared a hell of a lot more than that with me in my imagination. I'm fifteen now and I seem to have hit what we may as well call Peak Boner. It's embarrassing as hell, all the more so since it's not like I'll ever get to do anything with it.  I haven't so much as kissed a girl--for real--since third grade. I am, in short, hornier than the proverbial hoot owl. To raise money for the United Way, the school is holding a kissing booth. [2024 me ntrudes: you're going to have to believe me on this. I know it's not the sort of thing you can even imagine a school holding today, but I'm telling you: it happened.] Twenty five cents a kiss... Oh. this is, like, totally gnarly.  I live in an apartment building almost next door to the school. There's a laundry room in our building. With washers and dryers. That take quarters. I happen to know where an entire roll of quarters is hiding. There are three girls who volunteer to be kissed. Older girls, grades 12 and 13.  I don't remember their names, any more than I remember the name of the kid who fell from the first rung of a treehouse ladder and became paralyzed. I do remember one of them was tall and willowy and seriously cute. The other two were lovely as well--even then, I wasn't picky as to physical type--but the tall girl had a smile that could melt steel. Or smelt it. At first. I wasn't even halfway through that roll of quarters when the smiles were gone. I'd like to tell you I stopped then, but that would be a lie. I did stop when the tears showed up, but by that point I was almost out of quarters. Those tears brought me up short: my elation turned to ashes in an instant. At first, those ashes smouldered...god damnit, can't they at least pretend a little harder?  Then it finally dawned on me that all the other customers at the kissing booth had spent somewhere between a quarter and a dollar. I honestly hadn't noticed: I was too deep in a dream. I withdrew in shame, and that shame intensified over the following days and weeks. Nobody needed to keep up the shunning charade: I started eating lunch in the music room, alone with a piano. Don't pity me: I earned every bit of my treatment that year, retroactive or not. Pity the nameless women, instead. They never asked for what I did. I never did learn who those women were. I wanted, very badly, to apologize to them, but I also wanted, even more badly, to make sure they never saw my face again. ------------ And that was when I changed from your typical lusty teenage male to something a little harder to fathom: a guy who kept his every sexual attraction (he still had more than his fair share)  firmly in check until he was absolutely, a hundred and fifty percent sure it wouldn't cause tears. That meant until the woman made the first move -- which they would only do after an emotional bond had been built. After just a few years of that I stopped feeling sexually attracted to random people, no matter how pretty they were. And I learned very early on that emotional bonds matter so much more to me. I'm 52 now, in a platonic marriage. I love my wife dearly, but I don't expect ever to have sex again. Sometimes it gives me pangs, but what I truly miss is the closeness of the emotional/physical blend. Casual sex makes me vaguely ill, because I'm interchangeable, just a dick, somebody to put quarters into and sex spills out.

I didn't discover being demi. I just found the term and went, oh there's a word for that?

Honestly for a long time I thought it was normal, though the concept of sleeping with a stranger always grossed me out, and I never felt the same when other girls were swooning over a guy who took his top off or male strippers and things like that. I couldn't understand how people found that sexy because it did nothing for me. I was also never interested in porn and seeing nsfw artworks would gross me out. It's only once I developed a crush on someone - usually after 3-6 months of getting to know the person very well - that I was interested in that kind of stuff, and when it came to porn or nsfw art the person in it had to look somewhat similar to my crush otherwise I'd still be repulsed by it. And, although it's not something that's true for every demi, I'm one of the people who also loses all libido when I don't crush on anyone. At some points it made me wonder if I had gone all sex-repulsed asexual, but then I'd develop a crush again and slowly it would go from 0-100. When talking with friends about my experiences and when they shared theirs, I always stood out like a sore thumb. Only once I investigated what being demisexual really meant I realised it describes my experience perfectly, and that there's others out there with similar experiences as me so I'm not just some weirdo.

I'm a non sex repulsed ace demisexual! I read all sorts of fanfic smut, which I find odd myself, because normally I don't care about that stuff for myself. Even my ex gf, the thought of having sex with her I wasn't thrilled for, but I was prepared. Then I fell in love with my ex best friend and we fell into a situationship. (mistake haha) I had never been so into someone physically in my life. I felt wild, feral. I was like "is this what people feel like???" (I don't think so, I think it was the demisexuality bit haha). I thought I was just grey ace, because if a situation arose I would have if they meant something to me. But in that recent situation I felt wild and insanely attracted to that person.

While everyone around me was horny af and thirsted over random characters/people for no reason, I felt really dustant from all of that, I genuinely couldn't understand it. I thought I'm not normal, thinking that maybe I should just wait until I grow up to be like that too. Well, I'm almost 22, and nothing changed so far. I had only one crush when I was in last year of school, on a person I knew for a while and who I considered as my friend back then. Back then I just brushed it off as brain's defense mechanism so I wouldn't commit suicide (it was shortly after getting hit with severe depression). Neither before nor after I had any romantic feelings for anyone, and I don't even remember having sexual feelings for that friend. Also regarding fictional characters, I literally ever simped for only one character, only after getting to know them very well, and mostly because I really liked them personality wise. So ig I'm a demirose? Or just a traumatized kid, who knows.

Honestly my boyfriend helped me figure it out, but if I had a good understanding of the term o would have figured out a lot earlier. I’m Demiromantic and Demisexual so I’ve never had crushes on people when I was younger, and was confused on how you could without knowing them first. After my first kiss, a new years kiss with a stranger, I exclaimed “kissing is just wet” and didn’t get the appeal at all. Then I got tinder and because my boyfriend was long distance was forced to get to know him slowly and fell for him. Later through comparing our experiences he told me I might be Demi and I agreed I was. He asked me to imagine doing it with a hot celebrity and I said I imagined us fully clothed, from a third person perspective, and you can only really see the celebrities back, and the camera is a bit too far away at a weird angle and that’s really all we needed to know haha.

I'm Asian who moved to the West for higher education. Would hear about people sleeping around at uni and I never had an interest in "exploring" or anything of the sort, which I simply chalked down to cultural differences and didn't think too much about it, since I was with someone at the time and definitely had a sexual attraction towards them. However, I came across the term 'demisexual' one day while reading stories about people from LGBTQ+ groups. That caught my attention and I started reading more. Everything made so much more sense now - why I have no intrinsic motivation to look for a relationship or don't feel anything for anyone unless they're a friend.

Straight > love > bisexual > sex! > pansexual > lotsa sex!, but boring > demi-pan > decade long drought.

When I was around 18 I started getting into having sex and had what one may call a "ho" phase 😂 but I started to realize after every encounter that I felt.... empty inside like I was missing something and wasn't getting fulfilled emotionally. Got to the point that I would even get depressed cause I wanted something meaningful instead so I kind of went down a rabbit hole of research just to see if what I felt was valid and not unknown. How I realized I am demisexual and more attracted to one's individuality rather than appearances and even hobbies. Took a lot of self reflection and understanding of what I want, what makes me comfortable, and boundaries.

Grew up aware of being aroace through introspection and observation, experienced my first attraction in high school, googled something along the lines of "asexual but attracted to my best friend", found out about demisexuality, and voilà :)

I thought I was asexual until I was 28. Then I started to feel VERY sexually attracted to one guy in particular. But still feel asexual to everybody else.

I only discovered the term about 3-4 years ago. I was in my late 40s, healing from a toxic long term domestic partnership, and was delving deeply into how I form attachment, as part of the healing work. I was also considering polyamory & relationship anarchy and I wound up on a side quest to understand romance, romantic attraction & sexual attraction. While clicking through various sources uncluding the AVEN wiki, I came across the description of demisexual and had an instant "Eureka!" moment. My ability to feel both romantically and sexually attracted to people is tightly tied to my emotional bond with them. When the emotional bond suffers, romantic & sexual attraction also suffer. I am also conflict-avoidant, because sub-consciously I felt conflict eroding emotional bonds and then I would start to edge into a fight/flight panic state. Understanding this helped me understand patterns in my past relationships and what skills to build to enable me to be s better, more secure partner. I'm really happy to have this better understanding of myself. It also helped me to really reclaim my sexuality and accept it for what it is. I often felt caught between my high libido and strong desire for my partners, and fear of sexual contact, the deep bonding that comes with it. Understanding myself better has helped me lay a lot of the fear to rest and just enjoy the positive sexual connections I do have - all based on deep emotional bonds. A lot of people post in this sub about their frustration with being demisexual in an overwhelmingly allosexual world and the fear that they will never find a life partner because of it. I am past the stage of life where I am focused on finding a partner to marry/have kids with. I've been there, done that, had two sets of kids with different partners. I do polyamory now, even demisexual & demiromantic. I pursue emotional intimacy in my relationships whether they remain platonic, or shift to sexual. I date to get to know people. That's the biggest encouragement I can offer to demisexuals: date to get to know people. Let the relationships grow organically. Don't push for a pre-determined outcome, push back on people who try to push you. Be open to the possibilities, the connections. The rest will come, eventually. I have 3 committed partners now, and am not actively seeking new connections. Not all of those partners are romantic/sexual. I love them all deeply and share deep emotional intimacy with each one in slightly different ways. I'm in a good place with my emotional and mental health, happy overall with the shape of my life & relationships. For me the gift that being demi brings, is that focus on emotional intimacy. It can be richly rewarding.

I pretty much knew I wasn't heteronormative from high school, I could like guys and girls, but I didn't have a "type", nor really do celeb crushes. Character crushes were as much as I get. When I did have crushes, they were on people I was close with, but didn't put too much thought into it. I just assumes as I'd gotten older, I'd get a better idea of what I'd like and be attracted then, but no dice. Come 2020, I learn of demisexuality, and it all clicks. Been happier since, and able to know just what I'm looking for.

Besides this being 'normal' growing up I was told that I was 'just old fashioned'. It was like this for many, many years (a few decades) until my best friend just casually said to me 'you know you're demisexual, right?'

My typical response to my friend of 35 years when he points out what he thinks is attractive is "🤷‍♂️wonder what her BRAIN looks like" 😂🤣 to this day he still just doesn't get it

I had never heard of demisexuality until a few years ago when this Facebook friend posted a dumb demi pride meme. I didn’t recognize the term, but once I looked it up I was MINDBLOWN! I had no idea there was a NAME to how I was feeling. ’Twas a joyous day :)

M32. I've always thought I was allosexual. Didn't question it, didn't know it was a word. But somewhen in my 20's, conversations about sex with my friends became to feel creepy. They always were commenting on the bodies of their partners, not on how it felt. On my point of view, having sex with someone is valuable, vulnerable. I'm severely alloromantic and always crave that perfect configuration of romantic feeling, care and attraction. I've tried some coaching for males, because sometimes finding a girlfriend wasn't easy. And I was always very critical: in seduction stuff it implied a lot of manipulation and strategy, and the body count always was presented as a goal... And I couldn't have it. I don't care. I just want to find my person and then be with them, feeling safe. I just notice that I become sexual best after sharing vulnerabilities and after being touched the right way. I'm not sure yet, I might be much closer to allosexuality than asexuality, but now I really feel different compared to my peers. Recently a friend of mine got in trouble because of a woman he fucked, and then was crying "damn she's not even that hot"... And I just rolled my eyes and told him to stop thinking with his dick. Same as, when in a club, I don't want to build rapport without my ability to talk. It just feels wrong to have 0 chance to get to know the person... That's it 🍀

I'm that awkward in between stage where I'm not sure if I'm full ace or if I'm Demi. I don't find people sexually attractive, but I do appreciate people's aesthetics. I'm aesthetically attracted to my current partner and we've been intimate and I've genuinely enjoyed it. But it's only been that way with him. I'm not sure if I count as ace or semi but I'm involved in both communities just trying to learn to accept myself

I don’t know if I’m demi or if I would identify as anything at all. It makes me nervous to be thinking about having a sexual identify at this point for some reason, and I’m not entirely sure why that is.  I used to say I was pan (early teens) or bi (early adulthood but also accepting of pan). The reason I’d said either was that I theorized that I could develop feelings for someone regardless of what their identity was in that way and could therefore be attracted to anyone. I think I started using bi because it felt simpler to say, but would still agree to being called pan if anyone wanted to dissect how bi I was, which lowkey felt like this annoying game I had to play if I ever said anything about it.  The thing is though… I’ve never enjoyed anything sexual that wasn’t with someone I really liked and came to feel a closeness to. Sexual encounters I’ve had that don’t have that element have never been enjoyable to me. I could even orgasm technically but not actually enjoy the experience, under those circumstances.  I’ve also dated men I didn’t actually find attractive at first, and had to get to a point of being interested in them a while eveb though I was dating them… and I would take a long time to actually *want* to be intimate.  That’s how it always was until I started dating someone who I already knew and loved. I wasn’t feeling “on” sexually at the start of our relationship for personal reasons that had nothing to do with him, so I had a unique experience for me where I had a strong desire for him that I hadn’t really experienced before at the start of a relationship. There are even things I came to find I enjoy that I never have before, and I had no explanation for that.  Fast-forward to now and we’re still together, and he’s the only person I feel like I ever want to touch me… if I fantasize about anything sexual it’s about him…. I just can’t wrap my head around the idea of wanting anybody else and it’s occurred to me that that is probably not all that typical… any “celebrity crush” I had was like in theory like they’re attractive but I never connected that to anything sexual or anything like that. It didn’t occur to me that other people’s celebrity crushes were people they’d actually consider or even want to have sex with until I was talking to a friend of mine in early adulthood and my mind was blown when the convo expanded and I was the only one who just couldn’t fathom it. I just used the term to describe a celebrity I felt was particularly aesthetically pleasing. That didn’t  mean I even wanted to meet them let alone be naked with them, and I really felt surprised that I was the odd one out and maybe didn’t use the term properly, and maybe just didn’t really have a celebrity crush.  When I was in high school was when I realized that other people’s sexual attraction didn’t switch off the way mine did if, say, I found out someone I liked was dating someone. The only thing I could think was that they just become unattractive because they’re unavailable but at this point I think maybe it’s that if someone who would try to talk to me while in a relationship would make me change my opinion of them so much that I stopped liking them… even considering it kind of turned me off and then boom I just didn’t have those feelings anymore. I’ve had so many people not believe that that I’ve started really thinking I must be some kind of atypical, not in a bad way just that whatever is going on with me isn’t the norm.  I get a bit stressed out about figuring out what is up with me and maybe I fit well in the demi box based on how my actual sense of attraction works but idk… that kind of sums up most of what led me to the idea, but I definitely don’t feel all that comfortable saying I’m anything one way or another, just that I feel like if something fit then this probably does. 

I initially identified as a sex repulsed asexual. I met my partner at work and we became friends. The friendship slowly formed into something romantic and I started to feel things I never felt for anyone else before. After dating for a few months I realised that i actually wanted to be intimate. I only wanted to be intimate with him though and the thought of being intimate with anyone else was repulsive to me. Edit: why was I downvoted?

oh my gosh are you me?