‘Like Tulisa, I’m demisexual — here’s how I realised’
On last night’s ep of I’m A Celeb, Tulisa revealed that she identifies as demisexual — a sexual orientation that means you only feel sexually attracted to people you have a strong emotional bond with. Talking about her experience (or lack thereof) on dating apps, she told her campmates: “I’m proper guarded. I feel like I’m demisexual, I need to have a really close emotional bond with someone... I need actual depth. I’m a slow, slow burner. I’ve been celibate for over three years.”
Hearing this conversation play out on a mainstream reality TV show will likely have made demisexuals across the UK take pause — including me.
When I was a teenager, I didn’t think I’d ever be in a ‘real’ relationship. I was the only one in my friendship group who didn’t get excited about flirting with boys at parties; but I did it, because it was what everyone did. I hooked up with people because I didn’t want to get left behind in the race that was centred around which ‘base’ we’d each managed to get to, rather than because I was actually attracted to anyone.
After lights out at my all-girls boarding school, my peers would whisper on the phone to guys they’d met at the weekend, their half-smothered laughs flitting their way around the dormitory — while I lay there, fixating on how to get a decent role in the school play. It wasn’t just that I had no interest in covert digital flirting or that I was too scared to break the rules — I never fancied anyone.
Studying for my GCSEs at the peak of the Gossip Girl hype, I tried hard to hide my lack of attraction to the male sex symbols my classmates were obsessed with. To fit in with the all-pervasive, school-wide infatuation, I randomly picked Chace Crawford as my ‘Gossip-Girl-guy-I-was-obsessed-with’. I pinned a photo of him to my wall as tangible ‘evidence’ of my celebrity crush, and tried to inject my voice with some sort of plausible lust and longing whenever someone brought him up. But inside? I felt nothing.
This was all a decade ago, and I know something now that I didn’t know then: I’m demisexual. If I’d been aware of demisexuality at school, I might not have felt the need to cosplay as Chace Crawford’s number one fan. I might not have lain awake at night while my peers furiously texted their crushes, wondering why I’d never had a crush on anyone myself.
Conversations about non-traditional sexual orientations and relationship types have thankfully become more prevalent since then — and now that even includes on prime-time TV! But if you were watching and you’re confused about what being demisexual actually means, here’s everything you need to know.
What does demisexual mean?
“Demisexuality describes a sexual orientation where sexual attraction only occurs after a close emotional bond has been formed,” says BACP member Karen Pollock, a counsellor and psychotherapist in private practice, working with gender, sex, and relationship diversity. “As with all sexual orientations, it describes feelings, not behaviours. Some demisexuals can, and do, have sex and can be in relationships with and/or sexually attracted to people of all genders. Demisexuals can also be sex repulsed, sex neutral, or sex favourable, just like anyone else.”
Tulisa, for example, told campmates that she’s “not an overly sexualised person”. “For me, it’s all about the connection and the emotions that I feel with someone, and then wanting to express them in that way,” she explained, adding that it makes her feel “physically sick” to imagine sleeping with or dating someone she doesn’t have an emotional connection with. “This is my temple, you cannot enter!”
As Pollock explains, demisexuality falls under the asexual umbrella, and refers someone’s internal world. “Allosexual (not asexual people) [can] experience sexual attraction as a flush of desire, which is beyond our control,” they explain. “Demisexuals only feel that desire after there is an emotional bond.” Pollock describes this flush of desire as arriving “just from looking, smelling, or hearing… which demisexuals generally do not experience”.
Pollock also points out that there are many reasons why someone may not realise they’re not allosexual. “Lack of good, inclusive sex education in schools, lack of spaces where people can talk, and shaming of young people who express themselves differently to the majority can all lead to people not realising their identity,” they explain. “The confusion of behaviour and feelings can also mean that people are unaware that their internal experience is different to others. Just like anyone else, demisexual people can and do have sex without sexual attraction, but many may not realise their experience is different, because demisexual voices are still uncommon in conversations about sex and identity.”
I can relate to this. Now, I know I’ve always identified as demisexual, really; I just hadn’t found the words to describe it. Until the pandemic set in, that is, when all the time spent indoors gave me a chance to reflect on my identity in a new way — no longer pushing aside my suspicions.
For a long time, I struggled to see where I fit in the spectrum of attraction, even though I knew that I don’t fancy people in quite the same way that most of my friends do. When I first read about it, I always knew that asexual wasn’t the right term for me — I have a textbook high sex drive when I’m in relationships. And I knew that I wasn’t aromantic because I’ve been in relatively traditional relationships with men I was previously friends with; relationships bursting with the kind of romantic love that made me happier than I ever imagined I’d be, like I was perpetually living the scene right before the credits in a Richard Curtis film.
But I now know I’m demisexual, and this knowledge has helped me recontextualise every sexual encounter I’ve ever had. Whenever I’ve kissed men in clubs or had one night stands, these experiences made me feel alive in a celebratory sort of way; after so many school years spent wondering endlessly if I’d ever have sex at all, it took me a long time to shake the feeling of wonder that I was actually tumbling into bed with someone who wanted to have sex with me. But I’ve never felt any sexual attraction for any of the random men I’ve kissed on dance floors or the strangers whose hips I’ve wrapped my legs around in bed.
Now I know that the thrill of connecting with someone you’ve just met — that heady rush that comes from pressing your lips to someone else’s in a club just because you’re both there, you’re both alive, and you’re both caught up in a moment of inexplicable, fleeting connection that doesn’t (for me, at least) last more than a few seconds — isn’t the same as feeling the searing sexual attraction that I’ve felt in my relationships.
When I first stumbled across an article about demisexuality, I felt my shoulders come down from my ears as a wave of peace washed over me. Finally, I could stop scrambling for the words to describe why I never feel any sort of flicker — either in my libido or my emotional register — when I’m dating people I don’t really know.
Dating while demisexual
Because struggling to establish a place for myself in the dating world has long been the norm for me. In my experience, there are facets of modern dating culture — facets that particularly affect those who identify as women — that are incompatible with demisexuality. Carrie Bradshaw did wonders for female sexual liberation, but she didn’t do as many favours to those of us for whom sex holds little (or no) attraction unless it’s with someone who already sets our soul on fire.
Prior to the pandemic, I went through a period of time when I hadn’t had sex for over two years. I was happier this way, and the lack of sex didn’t bother me in the slightest (though even my kneejerk description of this period as something I ‘went through’ automatically makes it sound like a hardship), but many of my friends were outraged on my behalf. I was met with various manifestations of incredulity —“How do you do it?”; “Do you want me to wingwoman you?” — and I couldn’t seem to convince anyone that I was truly happier not having sex than when I was having sex with people I barely knew and wasn’t attracted to.
Our dating culture has often pushed the idea that all women want to be having casual sex, when feminism is really about choice. If a woman wants to be able to explore her sexuality with one-night stands and casual partners, she should be able to choose to embrace and experience that. But if she doesn’t, that’s just as exciting; because both scenarios see a woman exercising her right to choose what works for her. It’s been great to see this become more accepted in recent years, as candid conversations about voluntary celibacy have skyrocketed, with interest growing in the viral ‘boy sober’ movement, which sees women prioritise themselves and platonic relationships over romantic ones, and South Korea’s 4B movement, a political movement that sees women reject heterosexual marriage, childbirth, romance, and sexual relationships. (The latter gained renewed interest in the US recently, in light of Donald Trump’s re-election to presidential office.)
Identifying as demisexual doesn’t mean I’m categorically stating that I won’t ever feel sexual attraction for someone I’ve just met. We’re all constantly evolving, and I have no idea what the future holds. What it does mean is that I can finally make sense of my experience and the way I feel about sex and dating, together with knowing that I’m part of a community.
After so many years of trying to find the words to convey my feelings about sex and romance, I’m so grateful to be able to say: I’m demisexual. I wouldn’t last long on Love Island — like many aspects of our dating culture, it wasn’t created with demisexuality in mind — but I’m hopeful that our society will continue to develop its elasticity when it comes to celebrating all approaches to dating, sex, and romance, and that conversations like Tulisa’s on I’m A Celeb will happen more and more in the mainstream.
I’ve often had it gently inferred to me that I’m losing out by not having casual sex, but since realising I’m demisexual, I truly couldn’t be happier.
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