How Romantic Attraction without Sexual Attraction Feels
They are two different things with one coming much later
Back before I realised I am demisexual, a good friend posted a thread on Twitter about the difference between romantic attraction and sexual attraction. This friend is asexual and biromantic which means they don’t experience sexual attraction, but do experience romantic attraction.
Most of the replies were from curious onlookers who hadn’t realised the true meaning of asexuality. At the time, it felt that I was the only person who understood the concept of a separation between sexual and romantic attraction and the only one to reply who experienced them as clearly defined separate entities.
I’ve said before that this conversation should have been the first clue to being aspec for myself, though it would take another few years for all those pennies to fall into place.
So how does romantic attraction in absence of sexual attraction feel?
Let me put it this way…
When I am romantically attracted to you, I want to hug you and kiss you and wrap my arms around you from behind. I want to feel you physically close.
I want to shout your name from the highest mountain because of how much you fill my head and heart with joy.
I want to get lost in your scent and feel your hair as you lay your head on my chest.
I want to hear your laugh and laugh with you.
I want to fall asleep under the stars having stayed up late to watch a meteor shower.
I want you to talk nerdy at me as I fall deeper in love with you.
I want to feel a weakness in my legs as our bond strengthens. I want to feel that everything is right with my life because you’re in it, and all the problems of the world fade away because we’ve met.
How am I so lucky to have found someone so beautiful on the inside and outside?
Where have you been all my life?
Wait, what… sorry… SEX?! You want to get nekkid? Um, sorry, I’m not sure I’m up for that, really. I haven’t felt those things for you just yet. Can we take a bit more time over this? Ask again in a few months. How about we just fall asleep in each other’s arms tonight instead? I hear there’s another meteor shower. I’ll bring the hot chocolate if you bring the snacks.
Is that ok?
I know some (maybe most?) allosexual people understand this and maybe experience it. But from speaking to both straight and queer allosexual people, it seems to me that even when these are separate entities, they follow quite quickly if they don’t manifest at the same time.
While you may feel sexual desire for the other person with this growing romantic bond, you may choose to hold off having sex with that person. For me, I’m just not feeling it yet. I need a much stronger romantic bond that goes far deeper than that early giddy phase.
That’s why so many think they are intrinsically the same thing, or that the differences between them are so subtle that they’ve never really given it much thought.
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More musing about the complexities of attraction:
