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Demiromantic or heteroromantic?


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Hey, I'm pretty new to all of this but I know 1 thing for sure I'm asexual. 

 

Now my question is if you're demiromantic is it only to 1 gender/sex or is it both genders?

 

I know that if you're demiromantic that you aren't romantically attracted to someone until there's a bond between you 2. But does that count for both genders or not?

 

That why I'm questioning if I might be demiromantic, cause right now I think I'm heteroromantic.

 

Thanks for everyone that answers! ❤

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everywhere and nowhere

But of course it's possible to be both.

I have just been reading a text on demisexuality, linked at this forum, so let me quote something:

Quote

Unlike pansexuality, which is defined as "sexual, romantic or emotional attraction towards people regardless of their sex or gender identity," demisexuality is more about how you experience attraction, than it is about who you’re attracted to.
In fact, it's possible to be both demisexual and pansexual. That would mean you’re attracted to people regardless of their gender identity, but only after you’ve created an emotional bond with someone in particular.

The way I understand demiromanticism, it's too about the way a person experiences romantic attraction, not who they can be attracted to. A demiromantic person typically doesn't experience spontaneous crushes on people they don't know well, doesn't fall in love quickly. They need another kind of bond before romantic attraction happens - for example, they may be more likely to fall in love with their friends. But it doesn't in any way exclude gender preferences. A demiromantic person may fall in love in a way described above, but be only able to fall in love with people of a certain gender. So a person can be demi-homoromantic, demi-heteroromantic, demi-biromantic and so on. (Or demi-gyneromantic, demi-androromantic and so on - because particularly non-binary, androgynous, agender people don't fit well into the most accepted "same sex / different sex" framework.)

I'm somewhere close to this. I can't develop feelings for a person quickly. But I tend to be homoromantic because I develop bonds of trust only with women, the very idea of being in a relationship with a man feels very uncomfortable to me (even if it was an entirely non-sexual relationship - and in fact it's the only option I could accept, I'm too sex-averse for "sexual compromise"). Still, I have never been able to establish a mutual romantic bond...

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letusdeleteouraccounts
1 minute ago, CBC said:

Personally I question the need for the term 'demiromantic' (or 'demisexual')

I second this as of recently. I don’t find the point for labels like this if we already have grayromantic/graysexual

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Demi describes a particular kind of greyness that happens to be common enough for people to think it deserves its own name.

 

As someone for whom that part of their identity is very important... well, I suppose it's harder for people who experience attraction "normally" to understand.

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17 minutes ago, Star Lion said:

I second this as of recently. I don’t find the point for labels like this if we already have grayromantic/graysexual

I found the number of labels useful when working myself out, but ultimately just settled for “asexual” as this neatly sums up my experience. The existence of the many labels and sub labels definitely helped me and I don’t think I would have carried on exploring asexuality if they didn’t exist.

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letusdeleteouraccounts
1 minute ago, Iam9man said:

I found the number of labels useful when working myself out, but ultimately just settled for “asexual” as this neatly sums up my experience. The existence of the many labels and sub labels definitely helped me and I don’t think I would have carried on exploring asexuality if they didn’t exist.

This makes no sense to me, like what was the reason

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23 minutes ago, Star Lion said:

This makes no sense to me, like what was the reason

I thought I experienced sexual attraction. Exploring labels and sublabels made me realise it wasn’t sexual attraction, but other forms of attraction (some of which I feel in a way that could be prefixed with demi- or grey-).

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letusdeleteouraccounts
2 minutes ago, Iam9man said:

I thought I experienced sexual attraction. Exploring labels and sublabels made me realise it wasn’t sexual attraction, but other forms of attraction (some of which I feel in a way that could be prefixed with demi- or grey-).

Wouldn’t that have just came from realizing other attractions exist?

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On 4/18/2019 at 12:58 PM, Star Lion said:

Wouldn’t that have just came from realizing other attractions exist?

Possibly. Realising other people felt exactly the same thing as me (which seems a bit different to most asexuals) and use a complicated string of adjectives/labels/prefixes helped me translate that into understanding how I experienced other forms of attraction.

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everywhere and nowhere
14 minutes ago, Star Lion said:

Wouldn’t that have just came from realizing other attractions exist?

Haven't you noticed that other forms of attraction are mostly explained in the asexual community? Allosexual people usually treat it as all the same, even if also in them these attractions don't always align (typical example: monoromantic and bisexual or the other way around). They lack a language to explain different forms of attraction, they rather tend to perceive them as aspects of sexual (or rather romantic-sexual) attraction.

Another reason to believe that there may be more asexual people than it is commonly assumed: just like @Iam9man wrote, some people may mistake other forms of attraction (particularly esthetic or romantic attraction) for sexual attraction. Because of the way sexual attraction is perceived as universal, they may think that they just have a rather low libido without realising that what they experience isn't sexual attraction.

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