What does Sexual Attraction feel like?

[Ceebs]

Off topic, but I've been curious what your sexuality label means under your avatar, @James121. What's 'trisexual'?

[James121]

Just now, Ceebs. said:

Off topic, but I've been curious what your sexuality label means under your avatar, @James121. What's 'trisexual'?

Ceebs! Honestly I do love your innocence. As much as we don’t always see eye to eye on every topic, you are one of my fave’s.

 

 

[Ceebs]

2 minutes ago, James121 said:

innocence

Now there's a word I don't hear in conjunction with myself too often.

 

I mean, I've heard it used jokingly by people who will 'try anything'. A google search tells me it's also used by people who think there are precisely three genders, but I imagine that's not you. I wondered if it had a personal made-up meaning.

[NickyTannock]

1 minute ago, Ceebs. said:

Now there's a word I don't hear in conjunction with myself too often.

 

I mean, I've heard it used jokingly by people who will 'try anything'. A google search tells me it's also used by people who think there are precisely three genders, but I imagine that's not you. I wondered if it had a personal made-up meaning.

Personally, I like the Urban Dictionary definition.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trisexual

Quote

Due to contrary belief, trisexuals are not attracted to any living or nonliving thing. Instead, they are only sexually attracted to the tricerotops dinosaur.

[James121]

Just now, Ceebs. said:

Now there's a word I don't hear in conjunction with myself too often.

 

I mean, I've heard it used jokingly by people who will 'try anything'. A google search tells me it's also used by people who think there are precisely three genders, but I imagine that's not you. I wondered if it had a personal made-up meaning.

No it was a reference to the ‘try anything’ albeit it’s a bit of a white lie as wouldn’t try anything in truth. 
 

Maybe you aren’t so innocent, I don’t know. Either way, a good person.

[Ceebs]

2 minutes ago, NickyTannock said:

Personally, I like the Urban Dictionary definition.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trisexual

That's brilliant. 😂

 

2 minutes ago, James121 said:

No it was a reference to the ‘try anything’ albeit it’s a bit of a white lie as wouldn’t try anything in truth. 

Yeah you don't seem like a 'try anything' guy, so that's why I wondered if it had another meaning to you.

 

3 minutes ago, James121 said:

Maybe you aren’t so innocent, I don’t know. Either way, a good person.

You know... I'll take that. 😂

[MarRister]

Sexual attraction is a fairly personal thing, and how people feel that, relate to it and describe it is going to be a little different for everyone. I'll also say I think the people who frequent this website probably spend a little (a lot) more time than the average person thinking about what sexual attraction is and how to describe that feeling. Media will often give it a very sort of one-dimensional appearance. And this base appearance is what people understand and like to talk about because it is simple. A lot of young people likely aren't going to go around saying how much they want to 'connect on another level' with some hot person rather than just be like, "damn they are hot, I could bang them."

 

I think a lot of the nuance that is missed is that it is often quite an emotional thing not some weird animalistic urge of pure lust, even when things are casual and people aren't in love. I've never been in a serious relationship, and have never been in love or infatuated with any of the people I've had sex with, but I would say there was always still some level of emotional/romantic connection. That feeling of wanting to deeply connect with someone I like is still there even if I have no desire for a true relationship with them in the romantic sense. For many people, sex and romance go hand in hand and can be difficult to distinguish. While the split attraction model can help with understanding in the concepts of attraction, it isn't a science, and for many people there are no clear cut lines between attraction, they blur. Sex is intertwined with a lot of different feelings for people, so that attraction is just as intertwined with those feelings. 

 

I know you'd probably like a clear cut definition of what sexual attraction is and what it feels like, but that is really hard to do, especially as it isn't one feeling. It changes with people, time, place, situation, personal circumstance, and so on and so on. Like if you think of how you describe the feeling of happy. Well, you are elated, joyful, content maybe, but what do those feel like? Does happiness always feel the same? Contented happiness is likely to feel a bit different than joyful happiness. Can you sometimes be more happy or less happy, but still happy? Can your feeling of happiness be also intertwined with feelings like comfort, gratitude, amusement, fulfillment, etc.?  You can sometimes feel happiness with sadness, like sometimes that weird feeling nostalgia can bring. While people think of happy as being a simple thing, it really isn't, because it is dynamic and has many different feelings associated with it. But generally most everyone feels happiness, so when we say we are happy, people tend to just have a broad understanding of what we mean without the particular nuances of exactly what we are feeling in that moment. Though people generally understand what is meant by happiness, there is no way of truly knowing what someone else feels when they say they are happy is the same thing that you feel when you are happy, but we all understand our own feeling of happiness and apply that. This is kind of similar to how hard it is to put sexual attraction into one nice succinct definition, because there really isn't one. It is emotional at its core and is therefore difficult to describe as one feeling as there can be many feelings involved there. 

[Bozi]

I love how this thread started out as a simple question in then turned into a war

[Ceebs]

Did it? Where's the war? I see people explaining their individual perceptions of sexual attraction in different ways.

[Bozi]

On 3/26/2022 at 8:30 PM, Ceebs. said:

Did it? Where's the war? I see people explaining their individual perceptions of sexual attraction in different ways.

Between you and James121

[Ceebs]

Just now, Bozi said:

Between you and James121

I figured, but to me it reads like people with different perceptions, not 'war' lol.

[sirenian]

You know, here's a piece that helped me come to understand that I was ace when I was younger, without really needing to understand what sexual attraction feels like, because, of course, I never will.

 

I remember that when I was in college, one of my friends told a story about her younger high-school-aged brother. The story doesn't matter here, but anyhow, one of the things her brother said is, "Man, I want to have sex."  Not as in, with anyone in particular.  It was just a thing that he wanted to do, in his life.  

That was more than a decade before I learned what asexuality was, and it was in fact even a couple years before this online community formed.  But the story stuck with me because I remember thinking that was such a weird thing for someone to want to do.  I knew that sometimes people were in relationships and wanted to have sex with each other (and I naively just figured that at some point in the future, I, too, would be in a relationship with someone and then, given that set of circumstances, I would find myself wanting to have sex with that person) so I figured eventually there would be someone I'd want to have sex with, but I couldn't imagine just wanting to have sex, the way you might want to go for a jog or want to eat a snack or want to do anything else.

 

So years and years later, when I began to try to puzzle out whether I was ace or not, this story was one of the things I thought back to.  

Now, what this young man was expressing wasn't sexual attraction. It was more along the lines of sexual desire.  And I know that there is something of a debate about which one of those defines the difference between being sexual vs. being asexual.  However, for me it was easier to understand that this was something I didn't experience.  It meant I didn't have to recognize my asexuality as being attracted to or not being attracted to particular people. It was just about, in general, was having sexual intimacy with a person a thing I particularly wanted to do?  And the answer was no.
 

[Ceebs]

1 hour ago, sirenian said:

I remember that when I was in college, one of my friends told a story about her younger high-school-aged brother. The story doesn't matter here, but anyhow, one of the things her brother said is, "Man, I want to have sex."  Not as in, with anyone in particular.  It was just a thing that he wanted to do, in his life.  

I'm almost certainly an outlier here and I'm not sure why I'm this way, but as a young person I honestly had no idea whether I wanted sex or would like sex. I had no general sense of 'Man, I want/need to get laid'. I didn't really spend much time at all thinking about sex in a general sort of way, tbh... almost like it was too abstract or theoretical a concept to even be able to contemplate at that point in my life and was kind of irrelevant until I found myself in a real-life situation. I really needed to experience that unmistakable desire for someone to realise I wanted it, and I needed to try it to know whether I'd like it. 
 

It's not that I'm demisexual, because from my understanding that's where sexual desire develops only after establishing a really strong emotional bond that was initially just platonic, and that's not quite how desire works for me (though I'm really not super interested in sex without emotional connection, because it's just a million times better with it). And experience also taught me that something feels like it's really missing from my life if I don't have a sexual connection with someone, whereas I believe demis generally feel almost asexual when they don't have that strong romantic/emotional bond and they really aren't distressed without sex in their life in that case. I seem to have a very strong emotional need for sexual connection I guess, but that truly didn't develop or become clear to me or whatever until I'd had experiences where I was like, 'Ohhhh ok, now I get what this is all about and I really enjoy it'.

 

Anyway. The diversity of how human sexuality manifests in different people is quite interesting to me. 

[Libellule]

7 hours ago, Ceebs. said:

I'm almost certainly an outlier here and I'm not sure why I'm this way, but as a young person I honestly had no idea whether I wanted sex or would like sex. I had no general sense of 'Man, I want/need to get laid'. I didn't really spend much time at all thinking about sex in a general sort of way, tbh... almost like it was too abstract or theoretical a concept to even be able to contemplate at that point in my life and was kind of irrelevant until I found myself in a real-life situation. I really needed to experience that unmistakable desire for someone to realise I wanted it, and I needed to try it to know whether I'd like it.

I was in a kinda similar place when I was younger. I thought about sex, but more in the sense that I probably should have sex so that I could feel the same way as my friends who were already doing it and going on about it 24/7, but at the same time the idea of me possibly having sex with anyone felt so unreal and abstract to me and I didn't feel like I could ever want it.

 

I think in my case it was probably a combination of mental health stuff, contradicting messages about sex from my surroundings and genuinely not being ready yet. Even when I first did it, I do think I felt ready at that time but tbh it was more a case of curiosity than really desiring the other person and therefore not the eye-opening experience I had expected it to be. It took me a while and lots of detours, including a period in which I questioned whether I was ace, to understand how sexual desire works for me, but it wasn't something I could have figured out without experiencing it.

 

But yes, it is really interesting to think about all the different ways in which sexuality manifests in people. It is nowhere as straightforward as it might seem.

[Ceebs]

5 hours ago, Libellule said:

I think in my case it was probably a combination of mental health stuff, contradicting messages about sex from my surroundings and genuinely not being ready yet. Even when I first did it, I do think I felt ready at that time but tbh it was more a case of curiosity than really desiring the other person and therefore not the eye-opening experience I had expected it to be. It took me a while and lots of detours, including a period in which I questioned whether I was ace, to understand how sexual desire works for me, but it wasn't something I could have figured out without experiencing it.

I understand all that, yeah. My first experiences were not unbridled passion and being madly in love and immediately being like, 'Wow, this is wonderful!' I had feelings but it wasn't the right match and the experience was awkward, but I did realise that I knew what it felt like to feel desire and I had a sense that once I got more used to sex, it would be something I'd want in a relationship. I grew up an interesting mix of very guarded and reserved but also craving connection and emotional intimacy, and sex still seems to be largely about the emotional component for me (don't get me wrong lol, orgasms are great! 😂). Mental health was a factor for me too... and being a 'late bloomer' in general, not having a huge biological-only sex drive (as in, not masturbating a whole lot... and that's probably why I didn't feel a non-specific urge to just get laid with basically anyone really), sexual shame stuff, and then my marriage to an asexual messed me up further for a while, in terms of how I was supposed to feel about my own sexuality and sex in general.

 

So it took a while. Better connections with people that counteracted the shame and hesitation, being in a better place with my mental health, general maturity, a whole lot of things. And so now I'm in a place where life without sex in it seems kind of empty and just sad, like a really important part of myself would be missing. And it's because of the emotional stuff, I guess because I'm a pretty emotionally intense person... of being strongly driven to feel close to someone else in all the possible ways. With someone who's 'safe', I love the vulnerability and intimacy of it all. It's almost healing in some way I think, as someone who spent a good portion of life afraid and with a lot of walls up. During sex is one of the times I feel the most... free?

 

Dunno if that makes any sense haha.

[ChipmunksBeCute]

I gave up trying to understand sexual attraction a while back.  I am baffled by the topic and it just leads to a lot of anxiety and confusion on my part.  The idea of sex seems so awkward, weird, and messy.  I just can't imagine myself with anyone.  But I do know that I am perfectly happy even if I never have sex.

[Windmills of My Mind]

On 3/29/2022 at 1:20 AM, ChipmunksBeCute said:

The idea of sex seems so awkward, weird, and messy.  I just can't imagine myself with anyone.  But I do know that I am perfectly happy even if I never have sex.

That is perfectly fine, nothing wrong with you. It just might be useful to be aware that some other people feel different about sex. I won't judge you for your take on this (and hope you will return the favour).

 

On 3/29/2022 at 1:20 AM, ChipmunksBeCute said:

I gave up trying to understand sexual attraction a while back.  I am baffled by the topic and it just leads to a lot of anxiety and confusion on my part. 

If it helps, I feel just about as confused but from the other side of the spectrum. If talking in a box analogy: things seem confusing from the outside looking in. They look equally confusing from the inside looking out. For the sake of this box analogy it is completely irrelevant which side we would associate with sexual and with asexual.

 

As for anxiety, I feel it only where it directly concerns me. That would be in the context of my relationship with my partner (I believe her to be ace).

[Dominus Temporis]

I still don't get it! But after having read what must be hundreds of descriptions of what sexual attraction feels like, I still don't think it's something I've ever experienced. 

 

Nor do I want to have sex - it sounds disgusting. 

 

I might appreciate what a naked body looks like aesthetically, but the thought of actually doing IT with someone is a big NO. 

 

I concluded I was probably ace around two years ago. I still have days where I question, but that's ok! In the end, asexual always seems the best word to describe me.

 

I don't think an asexual person will ever understand what sexual attraction is, which is what makes figuring out whether or not you're asexual so difficult. 

 

In the end, if you can't relate/understand the descriptions you're reading of what sexual attraction feels like, and you don't really want to have sex, I think it's a pretty good sign that you're probably asexual. 

[œddy]

Its probably easier for a hetrosexual person to understand what the opposite gender or a homosexual person experiences, than it is for someone with a lack of sexual attraction to understand it. It would be fascinating to experience a different sexual attraction though.

[WZZ]

I wouldnt say it's an on/off switch. More a matter of degrees.

 

If you find people aesthetically attractive, it's a similar gradation for me.

 

Some people you might find moderately attractive. Some you might really really like their hair or shape of their face. And some people you might just be floored for a second going 'man that person is attractive.' Exactly your 'type'.

 

Sexual attraction is similar, in my experience. With some people it's so-so/lukewarm attraction. Some people might have a certain body type that I really enjoy. And some just tick all the attraction boxes both aesthetically and sexually.

 

I see the 'messy' sentiment around a lot in regards to sex. And yeah, I guess it can be, depending on how you're approaching it. But for me, sexual attraction doesnt mean I'm standing there picturing in my minds eye all those types of things. It's a more nebulous feeling than that.

 

If, for example, you're someone who desires touch, or touch is your love language, then it's a very similar feeling, internally, to the want to cuddle our just be physically close with someone, there's just an additional element, rather than it being something completely divorced from it.

 

There's a reason a lot of those imprecise internal feelings like love and passion and lust are often explained through some artistic medium. Our language and understanding of our internal life just isnt quite up to the task of describing it in perfect detail.

 

One thing I try to use as an understanding tool is my complete lack of a desire to have kids. My biological clock quit workin and I didnt bother winding it up. I know people want them. I know for some people it's their purpose in life to build that family. I know all that, but I'm just the 'okay' meme whenever someone's trying to tell me how good having kids is.

 

I imagine it could be a similar ambivalence towards sex. (For some)