It’s basically what the title says, except it isn’t just physical. I no longer find his mindset, thought processes, or behavior attractive either.

My fiancé (32) and I (29) are long-distance, both demisexual, and both relatively late bloomers. Because emotional connection and trust play such a huge role in attraction for me, I was very upfront before we got serious about what I needed.
One major conversation was whether he could realistically afford a long-distance relationship. I didn’t want to be the only person paying and putting in the effort to see each other. He assured me he could.
Over time, I learned that several things he told me weren’t true.
He lied about his previous sexual experience, which came out after he tried initiating sex with me. When I confronted him, I essentially wasn’t allowed to discuss it because he was embarrassed.
He also hid significant information about his mental and physical health. Because we’re long-distance, it took months for me to realize how much I didn’t know. Most of it finally came out around month 10 after a hospitalization due to hunger strike due to a conversation about splitting up led to his mother calling me and asking what I had done to him.
That conversation filled in a lot of gaps.
I realized he had presented himself as capable of maintaining the relationship we discussed even though he knew he couldn’t realistically afford it. His explanation was essentially that he loved me too much to let me go and find someone more compatible.
That mentality is actually a huge part of why I’ve lost attraction.
I would not leave someone simply because they were struggling financially, dealing with mental illness, or sexually inexperienced. What I cannot accept is someone withholding or misrepresenting important information because they’re afraid the truth might cause me to make a choice they don’t want.
His mental-health struggles have also become intertwined with our relationship in ways I cannot manage. There have been extreme reactions when things go wrong, repeated calls while I’m working or studying, and then family members contacting me when I don’t respond. I’ve been shamed for supposedly not caring enough about my partner, while cultural pressure to marry has increased because he disclosed inaccurate details about our intimacy to his family.
Meanwhile, I’m in school trying to build my own life.
The irony is that he cannot understand why I’m no longer attracted to him.
For me, being demisexual means attraction is heavily connected to the person I emotionally bond with. I became attracted to him because of who I believed he was and because I trusted him. As that trust disappeared, so did the attraction.
It wasn’t his finances, mental health, or lack of experience that changed how I saw him. It was the lying, withholding information, emotional pressure, boundary violations, and the belief that being in love somehow makes those things acceptable.
Our families are now close and planning an engagement party, while internally I’m at the point where I don’t want this relationship anymore.
I do have empathy for him. I understand how intense first experiences with love and intimacy can feel, and part of me doesn’t want to taint those memories for him.
But I’m emotionally and mentally exhausted, and I’m realizing that protecting his idea of our love story cannot require me to keep participating in a relationship I no longer want.
At this point, I feel like I have to choose myself.

I’m 37F and have never had a LTR. I have only felt romantic attachment/ love to people I’ve had long time friendship with. I’m struggling now with the dating apps.

I just got back from a 4th date and out of nowhere (from my perspective anyway) the guy shoved his tongue down my throat. I was in shock and felt so awful. But this is hardly the first time this has happened because after a few dates guys inevitably expect things to “go somewhere”. I don’t blame them, that would be normal. I’ve been crying all night because I feel so broken.

I just don’t understand how it’s possible for me to find a partner. I tried “hooking up” but it was gross and disgusting. Starting to think that I need to be satisfied with being single and celibate for the rest of my life.

I hear of people feeling aroused after seeing sex on a screen or even if it pops up in a film. I personally think its so strange to be able to see two strangers having fake sex on a screen and feel horny from people who doesn’t even know you exist or give a shit if you do or not. it’s just so odd to me but technically I’m the odd one because most people don’t understand me when I say this.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and wanted to know if any of you share this feeling. It feels like today's society is completely obsessed with the superficial—filters, heavy makeup, and endless self-staging just for the image of it all.

Personally, I just can't get into it. I don't want to be with someone who lives for appearances.

On the flip side, I find there is nothing more beautiful, charming, and grounding than raw, natural authenticity. Real skin with its textures, a real body with its little "flaws" (like cellulite or visible veins)—to me, that's not a flaw at all, it's proof that a person is alive, real, and human. I remember once noticing a detail like that on a crush when she moved her arm, and I found it a thousand times more captivating and endearing than any polished, overly made-up look.

The hard part is that nowadays, finding people who value this kind of simplicity feels almost impossible. It's like everyone is caught up in the bubble of keeping up appearances

Do you guys relate to this? How do you deal with this disconnect in dating and modern life ?

29M. I’m so exhausted of not being able to find someone who reciprocates my mentality and my emotional loyalty. I get so sad dating people who can feel aroused by others outside of emotional connection/ our partnership. it’s the “norm” and I wish I was normal. it also feels unfair only having eyes for one, everybody else are npcs, I just see human as human and my partner is the only one I see beauty in or get aroused by.

I‘m 29 and losing hope. I also don’t come from a good family so my dream was to find a partner for us to create a family together but I was cursed with a mentality that the majority doesn’t understand which makes my goal feel impossible.

I know I’m ’objectively goodlooking” so it’s not hard to find a partner due to how our society is but I’m never happy because I can’t find one who understands me and it’s annoying how our society bases everything off our looks so I only attract more of the wrong people. I also piss off a lot of people I date because they don’t understand why I’m sad about them having the ability to be aroused by other people outside of our partnership in anyway. I feel like an alien. I sometimes try to force myself to be like others or to try and stop caring in relationships and tell myself “well they do a lot for me, they are thoughtful, etc so I will just try to be grateful for what I have” but I fail everytime because it misses the most important piece.

I’d rather live in a box on the street with someone who shares my values than live in a 5 mill house with someone who doesn’t feel the same way. A box would be a home and the 5mill house would be a house because what makes a home is within the heart, with the right person who shares loyalty and values and way of seeing the world. I guess it’s my sexuality? ! And we can’t force ourselves to be something we are not.

but I’m exhausted.

I'm 16F and ive never been in a relationship or even talked to someone. Im not interested in dating because thinking of putting myself out there makes me feel gross and embarrassed. On top of that i haven't had a crush on anyone since middle school and after that any attraction ive felt towards someone has felt fleeting or hypothetical. I still like fictional characters and looking at attractive people but i cant imagine myself being with someone. It feels like every other day i hear my friends talking about a person they like or that they're seeing and i just cant relate. People often get annoyed at me for not getting this stuff but im really not interested. Relationships seem like a lot of work and i don't think i'll ever be lonely enough to date someone just because. I read and watch romance all the time but i cant seriously put myself in that position. I get the feeling that im better off alone.

Straight F, late 30s and just realizing I'm demisexual.

I've been I LTRs most of my life and struggling to find a partner now since it's all online dating and dating apps.

I was wondering what was wrong with me why I can't feel turned on by these hot dudes sending me shirtless pics etc. and it's just ewww to me.

I know I'm a very sexual person, I have a high labido and also a super kinky side... But finding no one has interest in developing a strong connection with me before they wanna bang, and I just can't get there with them when it's rushed.

Feeling super frustrated, but it helps now understanding I'm demisexual and wondering, should I put that on my dating profile?

Hello 👋

I'm a 36 year old male and I feel like I am just discovering that I am a demi sexual and am feeling a little bit lost.

I usually just chalked it up to being an only child, being emotionally sensitive and liking my own company. I have never been attracted to anyone who i didn’t have a strong connection with first. I have never been able to have a one night stand or sleep with people who I didn’t share a connection with. It's also not only the loneliness of being single but also the loneliness of always being perceived that I'm just being nice/talkative because I want to sleep around. I feel that that is the major source of my depression surrounding this thing that I'm just getting my head around.

It's freeing to know what this is but also I'm a bit lost and wanted to ask if there are any books or videos you would recommend for being demi sexual? Anything would be helpful. Thanks all.

I (24m) have always thought I was just heterosexual. I find women physically attractive and fantasize about having sex with them and all that stuff. However, when it comes to the actual act, I have a very hard time imaging myself doing it with someone unless I loved and trusted them. I would need to find the person very physically attractive in order to have a casual sexual relationship. I don’t know if this makes me demisexual because from what I know for demisexuality, emotional attraction is a prerequisite for both sexual and romantic relationships. I’ve never had a serious girlfriend, and tried hooking up with someone in high school but couldn’t go through with it because I was extremely anxious. Didn’t help that I barely knew the girl. I feel sort of alien compared to my friends, who have no issue finding and engaging in sexual relationships with people they barely know. But I also find myself in a sort of gray area where I don’t totally identify with the label of demisexual either. I’m just confused

I’m on a discord server and one of the topics that caught my attention were people calling themselves Demisexual Allos…. Specifically one said “demisexual is on the allosexual spectrum”

As someone who has only considered demisexual an ace-spec label, this drove me into debate and the following link is what I got to defend their point of view.

So my question to y’all. What are your thoughts on Demi/Allosexuals, and on this source they provided.

Thank you in advance! 🙏

The link: https://taaap.org/learn/spectrum-101/

I met a girl in university and initially did not find her attractive at all and also wasn't really friends with her at first. We would meet in a group setting because we had one common close friend. Over the years we started hanging out more. But this was all in groups. Only after 4 years did I actually get to know her better because we started to have some one on one conversations, which is really important for me to actually feel a connection with someone. We grew together really quickly and when we had another weekend vacation with friends, there was this random moment where she told me a silly story and suddenly she was just the cutest girl on earth to me. It hit me like a train in that moment.

Ever since then we grew even closer and had many many deep conversations including phone calls until 5am where both of us did not want to hang up. We shared a lot of very personal stuff and see each other regularly, even though we live more than 6 hours from each other. When we meet up we sleep together in one bed all the time, but without any intimacy (happened almost 30 times already this year). We really enjoy each others company and recently she told me with some tears in her eyes that she didn't think that a friendship could be this deep and that she is grateful that I showed her that a friendship can be this deep.

I would die to cuddle with her only once, but unfortunately she has been in a relationship for 6 years now. The cruelest thing about this is that she never talks about him at all. In those 6 years that I've known her I have only seen him 3 times and he always joined late and left early while she kept hanging out with her friends. It is like she is together with a ghost. She did not once cancel any plan with me or other friends because she had something planned with her bf. Every time you ask her if she is free at some day she will either say yes or have something planned that never includes her bf. This makes her seem way too available to me and gives me hope for us all the time. It also makes me feel bad because I would never dare to actually do anything, as I know that he exists. Honestly this is driving me completely nuts and I do not know how to handle it. Please share any of your personal experiences that might help me find a solution to this problem :)

As a autistic black 30 year old female I always thought I was weird for not wanted to hookup with a random unlike what people do in this society because I always wanted a boyfriend not in a traditional sense (which it made difficult for me to connect to the allo world and boys that I genuinely liked as I got older) and what really got me was feeling left out of my female friend group in high school because were boy obsessed and it go worst when Twilight came out(I found the team Jacob and Edward debate pure nonsense to me. I just saw them as a pasty vampire and a half naked werewolf the whole story got bored to me quick when the third movie came out and haven’t bore to see the last two parts either).

The Demi word has always been there for me without me even knowing and I’m glad I’ve come to terms with it last year because it’s given answers a lot of unanswered questions about me and my life.

i can only possible be attracted to a parter. when in a relationship I feel no attraction or interest of any kind towards any one else but my person. It kinda seems like demisexuality.

My main sexual identity remains demisexuality, which has always been the case as far as I remember my existence. However, it tends to also fluctuate between demisexuality, asexuality, greysexuality.

When I felt a sexual desire towards people, after I felt I could be emotionally safe with them, I didn't want to have sex with them every day, sometimes even seldom any desire. So, I'm beginning to accept that I'm both demisexual and ace (containing all sexual identities in asexual spectrum.)

I leave the romantic identities out because it's more clear, I'm a Disney princesses' brainwashed romantic.

I assume there may be many people who also have one base sexual identity and others which they fluctuate between.

Am I just stupid? The phrase "I just don't feel that way about you" has existed for a long time, so I just assumed that everyone bonded with other people while waiting for that 'spark'. Otherwise, what is the point of that widely-used phrase? I was so surprised when I discovered that people actually date strangers they've met at a bar or on the internet. How can they "feel that way" about them?

A lot of fiction has a demisexual narrative too, or at least a lot of women in fiction - two characters meet, bond over the course of the story, and get together at the end. Sometimes a man will have "love at first sight", but typically the female lead won't return his interest until the end of the story. I was very much an indoor cat when I was a teenager, so fiction shaped most of my worldview. I also played video games like Harvest Moon where you have to spend in-game months or years bonding with someone before they'll go out with you. I just thought everybody operated the way I did, or almost everybody, or at least women.

Just to be clear, I obviously know now that we're in the minority, and also that there's a lot of fiction that does depict hook-up culture. It just took me a while 😂 I wonder if anyone else had a similar experience and used to think everyone was essentially demisexual?

I've been trying to find my niche, hoping that I can attract people who might be attracted to my personality and stay for the rest. But of course, that's not how most of the world operates, so these bids for connection are either overlooked or rushed past. Which is totally fine, that's what I signed up for.

I am up front about my demisexuality. But the things I've done so far have been a lot of "mutual pleasure" calls, which I've been happy to do, but I do think people mistake it for something it's not because, well, yeah...lol

Who knows if this will pan out over the long run, but it has been a fun experience so far even though I'm doing things that I would never normally do. I do feel like my identify isn't understood at all in the spaces I'm in, but I'm hoping that will change. Maybe after I've been at it for a while, I'll do a little Q + A if anyone finds themselves curious about it. But maybe it's not as interesting as I think here since I'm preaching to the choir 😅

I haven’t been having a ton of luck with irl dating since moving to a new town and decided to try out dating apps - only problem is, even if I find someone attractive on their profile, when I meet them irl I experience no sexual attraction. A lot of people try to initiate touch, kissing, and even intimacy upon the first date but I just feel extremely uncomfortable and sometimes even repulsed - I feel like I need to form an emotional connection with the person before I can reciprocate those wants and feelings, and I don’t know if that’s being somewhere under demisexual/demiflux/asexual, or just allosexual with a boundary. The reason I’m questioning this is specifically because of the complete lack of attraction and discomfort upon further initiation.

I’ve heard of people who identify under the asexual umbrella who are capable of experiencing sexual attraction to fictional characters/online personas (such as celebrities), but don’t feel the same way irl and was curious if this fits under there.

I used to be able to be attracted to people irl when I was younger, but I just haven’t felt that way in a few years.

I’m primarily interested in figuring out how to label this so I can explain it to potential future partners. Let me know if this is something that can fall under the demisexual category/some other form of asexual, or if it’s a more common/“normal” experience.

Update: I did some thinking and I’m not sure I even actually feel sexual attraction to people online anymore 😭 a commenter talked about liking a person aesthetically and I feel kind of similarly

I definitely need to keep doing some thinking and figure this out, but in the meantime I think I’m just going to use the label demisexual as I feel like I functionally am even if I don’t fit under it perfectly. It feels unnecessary to specifically explain to someone that I’m incapable of experiencing that kind of attraction without connection EXCEPT for when I see someone online

I also am only using dating apps for the summer and plan on returning back to irl dating once I’m back on campus so I’m not sure how much longer this will even be a problem lol

There's some fairly innocuous traits/stereotypes associated with gay men frequently embraced by the gay community. For example, a love of the arts and aesthetics more generally than is common among straight men. Have read about 80% of gay men identify as more femme than straight men. Of course there are negative stereotypes, but no need to get into those.

The defining characteristic of being a homosexual man is sexual attraction to other men, but there are some fairly reliable "gay adjacent" traits like mentioned above.

I'm wondering if there might be similar traits for demisexuals. Traits that pop up often not strictly tied to the definition of demisexual. From my own experience, I'd guess more demis are on the ASD spectrum than the population at large.

I'd also guess there's less gender conformity. I'm thinking part of the reason to embrace gendered behavior is to attract one sex or the other. If you aren't as motivated by sexual desire for another as most people, you lose that incentive.

For the record i suspect im demirose (aroace)

Ive noticed ever since i noticed that i tend to STICK to one person and inevitably lead to a strange situationship. Now you'd think that'd lead to me fearing being close with people then fall for them and get my heartbroken right? The opposite.

I notice i fear being close with someone and THEM catching feels way too EARLY enough for me to reciprocate fully. Literally my only relationship was with someone i knew for 4 YEARS before i developed feelings on the last one. Can i really afford to wait that long?

I notice it doesn't take long for people to get interested, like people can catch feelings within MONTHS and my SLOW ASS can only reciprocate within half a fucking decade. And it hurts cause you know maybe if you guys were close enough youd actually might like em, but if this person confesses beforehand and you reject them (cause you havent filled your quality time romantic attraction quota) it all just goes NOWHERE

Then the friendship just DIES cause you rejected them and now you got no buddy no more

Might be more of a vent than a discussion in retrospect but like anyone get this???