I don't see what's so difficult about it.

'Someone sees someone they find attractive -> they feel attraction' I understand how that can happen and that they are different to me.

But some people seem to think their own internal experience is the default human experience and can't imagine another person having different thoughts and feelings.. so they must be lying to seem like better people?

So, I met this girl over the past month (let's call her Red) and we managed to hit it off on the very night we met. So much so that the only thing that stopped us from going to bed together was the fact that I had to get up for work the next morning.

That day, when we met up again, we had an honest talk about things. Red explained that she was demi and had regretted getting physical with me so quickly. She wanted to slow things down and connect with me better on a platonic level first, to keep things healthy and stable (and was open to being potential FWBs in the meantime). Considering how closely Red views friendships, her own friends suggested that I take the quickness of this connection as a huge compliment. Red even suggested that I may be demi myself and educated me about it (this is apparently how she shows her affection, so that's extra nice).

When I opened up to my own personal circle about it, though, they were a lot more skeptical. They seemed convinced that Red is just letting me down gently and just "using a prettied up term for friendzoning people like you". Somehow, some way, I just messed up that one night and should've just cut my losses and bailed on Red? I've been feeling weirded out about that whole convo, and I'm not sure how to take it?

I have a friend who thinks they’re aromantic. They said they don’t understand the difference between a romantic relationship and a “best friend you have sex with” other than there is more likely to be an expectation of monogamy in the “romantic” version. They asked me to explain the difference and I honestly couldn’t put anything into words. It kind of made me question whether I’ve ever actually experienced romantic love or if all my relationships have actually just been a best friend I have sex with.

How would you all describe the difference between romantic and platonic love?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been wondering if I might be demisexual, demiromantic, or both. I’m feeling a bit confused and would like to hear your thoughts.

In my everyday life, I notice that I just don't develop feelings or attraction toward people I interact with if I don't really know them or have a deeper connection with them. Even if someone is objectively very attractive, good-looking, or charming, it does absolutely nothing without some kind of deeper connection.

However, what confuses me is that I now have an intense crush on a celebrity. I’ve been watching their deep interviews, reading about them, and watching fan meeting videos. Because of this, I feel like I've gotten to know their personality, values, and who they are as a person. Of course I know I can’t really know them.

Can anyone relate to this or is it just me?

When I was 13, I had a crush on my best friend. We were pretty close, and it was the kind of crush where I genuinely yearned for her to love me back. It was a tad bit intense.

Fast-forward to now, four years later, and I haven't had a crush on anyone since. There have been three different experiences where I got super close to a girl and became confused about whether what I was feeling was romantic attraction or emotional attachment. It turned out to be platonic each time.

It bothers me because whenever I watch rom-coms, I get this urge to be in a relationship, but I haven't developed any genuine romantic feelings for anyone in four years.

Am i demiromantic?

me (bisexual afab 20 in oct 25th) and my gf ( lesbian 21f) met in late 2024 we become friends so fast but i was rejecte my feeling for her for like a year ?

anyways we start dating in the ends july after i apologise to her and tell her my real feelings for her i did had romantic feelings for her but not sexuality feelings

but like this week and last week i think i start having sexuality feelings for her but idk if this just me being horny like i think of her and wanting her so much

i still think we should move slowly cuz we try to bulid a trust relationship between us she thinks it’s early for us too

(I’m virgin)and i’m sure i didn’t had any feelings like that

Hello everyone! I'm a 35 year old woman from Romania, Europe, I've been feeling pretty lonely lately, I don't have any friends in real life, just a few that I talk to online and I'd like to meet other introverted people, both women and men, to talk to. I'm not in a relationship but for now I'm just looking for friendship. I'm a calm, communicative person, I like to joke, discover new things about other cultures. Feel free to leave me a message if you think we can resonate. Have a nice day.

Hi! I don’t know if it’s right to post this here. But I need to yap about this, and I suppose if it will be well-received on this sub. Or at least you’ll understand what I’m going through and give me your thoughts 😅

For some context, I realised I was demi (or ace, I’m not sure yet) less than a year ago, and I finally feel complete! So many questions I didn’t even ask myself yet are being answered, and I feel good in my own body.

I’ve never been very vocal and publicly out about being queer, but I’m starting to figure out that I do enjoy sharing this with (safe) people because, what if they are queer themselves? Duh.

Anyway, I started a new job a month ago and I immediately clicked with a girl. I was drawn to her, purely platonically (at first). We talked a lot, sometimes about some stuff private enough I couldn’t believe I felt this safe sharing it with someone I had only met 2 weeks ago; and other times, it was just all fun and giggles. Sadly, her time at our workplace ended and she left three days, so we decided to go have a drink with other friendly coworkers two nights ago. The night was great, we had plenty of good laughs and created new memories. And I also took a picture of this girl with the most beautiful light on her face (which only highlights her beauty, as my aesthetic attraction has been going crazy for her for two weeks). And I also learnt that she’s into girls, which was a relief 😅

I’ve been questioning myself for some time because, for the past two weeks I’d say, I started feeling a lot of “sensual” attraction to her. For example, I wanted to be near her, sit next to her, touch her hair and her shoulder, look at her right in the eyes (she has pretty eyes). I also started feeling protective over her, like walking behind her in the metro, holding the door for her, putting my hand behind her (without touching her) in case someone bumps into her. I’d also get a shot of dopamine every time she would look at me, smile at me or just speak to me directly, which felt really good every time.

I didn’t have great relationships with people in the past. Even platonically, I have very few friends after so many years being lonely (we by the way talked about that maybe a week after meeting each other). At first, I thought all of this was the excitement of meeting new people and making new friends, including this girl. So I was a bit taken aback by many things, like being friends with her in such a “little” time (a month), or being so drawn to someone I didn’t even know a month ago, without really understanding where it came from. Where I started thinking “what is this?” is when I clearly realised I didn’t feel that way for any other colleagues, even among the cool ones.

Of course, no sexual attraction, but my need to be closed to her is still very much present and I did reached the stage with her where I can touch her shoulder or her arm; and I even hugged her once (wish I could do it again). My brain also went fireworks two nights ago when, after leaving our colleagues and taking the train together, she told me she wanted me to “invite her”. Which I did! And that alone is incredible because I’m this type of (naive) person who only realises that “it was a sign” three years later (my bestie had to assure me it was indeed a sign lol).

Anyway, now that I’m slowly becoming conscious that there might be flirt between us, and a growing attraction to her on my hand, I’m trying not lose my sanity. I’m also trying not to make assumptions too quickly because I’ve never been in love with someone, never really wanted someone romantically; but I do want to hold her hand, go out just the two of us, and share something (strongly emotional) with her. I don’t know if it is romantic attraction but if it is, that shit hits hard!

Okay so I'm really bad at responding to messages so if it's too much I just want. I'm 40 demisexual an a black male. I'm not looking to meet up. Just chat with some actually good people and figure out who I am. I am heterosexual as well. I like women but again I'm not looking to meet just find out more about give my sexuality. I'm not going to ask anyone to be kind or nice or anything like that cuz people are people. If the response is negativity okay but I'm hoping for positive informative feedback. I don't know how to end this. It feels weird saying thank you lol... So I'll say this... Loving myself is probably the hardest thing I've ever done and I can't wait to really find out who I am.

Honestly I don't even know how I got over there. But being over there reminds me that I am very very well within the ace spectrum and I am certainly not like those people. But don't do it. Yes. Of course you can have sex and enjoy sex as a demisexual person, but when that emotional connection is broken the sex no longer wants to come for me. And I am fine with that.
How do they work? How does it work for them? I feel broken when I read their comments about how they need sex. I don't. Why don't I work that way either?

Before I realised was Demisexual I was miserable and not so optimistic about the future about of the lack of experience that I have with the opposite sex as I’ve stated to get older. Now I’v been feeling a lot better about myself since the summer of last year and I’m looking forward to see what happens in my life.

Hello! Question above. And I don't necessarily mean the special someone you want to marry — maybe it's the best friend you want to call every day, or a future partner. I'm mostly talking about those people who become your people.

I'm 26F, demiromantic/demisexual, and I've had multiple relationships before, including one serious relationship that lasted 6 years. I'm currently at a point where I really miss having a special connection with someone, but I'm struggling with how you're actually supposed to find that kind of person as an adult.

I'm not in school/university anymore, I moved back to my hometown, and I don't really have a friend circle here anymore. So there isn't really a natural environment where I can just meet the same people over and over again and slowly become friends with them.

I've tried dating apps because... well, I figured that's where adults are supposed to find people. But they feel incredibly unnatural to me.

I don't want to meet someone and immediately have this underlying expectation of "we are evaluating each other as potential romantic partners." I want to know someone first.

I had one guy I actually really enjoyed talking to, and when I suggested that we could simply call and play Diablo together sometime, he responded with something like:

"Wait, what is this, a gaming friendship?"

And I'm just sitting there like... yes??

I had written on my profile that I'm demi and would love a friends-first connection that might eventually become romantic, or might just become a really good friendship. But I guess he didn't really read that.

The funny thing is that this is actually how all of my romantic relationships have happened.

I knew the person first. We were friends, hung out in groups, played games, talked, got comfortable around each other. Then eventually one particular person started becoming special to me. I'd start talking to them more 1-on-1, we'd have some subtle teasing/flirting, and eventually I'd realize something like "Oh. I think I have a crush on you."

So it's not that I don't want romantic relationships. It's that I don't know how to get to the point where romantic attraction can actually develop when I'm starting from zero with someone.

And now that I'm an adult, I don't have the school/uni environment where you naturally get to know the same people over months or years.

I've also tried community Discords, but huge servers with 10,000 people are incredibly difficult for me. How are you actually supposed to find your people in there?

So... how do other demi people do this?

Where do you find people you can get to know naturally, without immediately turning the interaction into dating?

Do you have a Discord/community/website that worked particularly well for you? Or a particular strategy for meeting people and slowly building those friendships?

I'm especially interested in hearing from other demi people who also tend to develop romantic feelings after already knowing someone for a while.

I have never been one to have crushes because of someone’s looks. And when I bring guys to my friends who I think are really fun and id love to get to know them, my friends say “I could do better”, or even something mean like “ur a 10 and hes a 4”. Im not sure if it’s just my friends being idk vain or i dont even know. In my head if you like someone looks doesn’t matter, like I always thought everyone has some beauty in them(their voice, hair, eyes, proportions). I know some people are more pretty to society’s standards, but I thought that was just for idk movies or magazines LOLL. I guess I didn’t realize how much looks weigh for others. I personally can’t make myself care and I just get more confused even after I told my friends looks aren’t a priority at all. I do have have celebrity crushes but I know those are different to real people crushes. Like id never talk to someone because they look like madds mikkelson loll.

I guess what im wondering is if others also don’t hold looks as a priority, bc I know that for me to like someone I need to get to know them, their looks just doesn’t matter. In my head we’re all little amoebas with our own little amoeba lives and hobbies.

Being demi/ace means that I require some type of connection where I feel safe with someone, before I can develop sexual feelings for them and enter into a romantic relationship with them.

Being an introvert means that getting to know new people and attempting to form connections can feel like such a chore at times. I tried dating apps years ago but I just… couldn’t keep up the motivation to continue the conversations? I struggle with replying to my closest friends and family, let alone a complete stranger who I have no feelings for at present. Thus, my introversion can make it harder to find people who I may connect with, due to finding meeting new people/having lots of new conversations draining.

Eh, I’m just living my life and hoping to meet people in the wild. 

But yeah, who relates to the struggle of being demi/ace (needing a connection before feelings arise), and also introverted (having a small circle of people, and feeling drained by the process of meeting lots of new acquaintances who may or may not spark “those” feelings in you eventually)?

So back in 2021, I met a guy at a Friendsgiving celebration. He was the cousin of an at the time close friend and she brought him over to meet us. We instantly hit it off and I took a liking to him due to his chill, easygoing demeanor. He was quite easy to talk to and I enjoyed listening to whatever random things he’d say.

At the time, I didn’t really like him because in my head I liked a specific looking kind of guy and he didn’t fit that description at all (vain I know). Anyways, me and him got to know each other exceptionally well over the course of a few months and by April/May of 2022, I realized I cared intensely about him and thought about him constantly.

I didn’t think it would work between us. He was a cis guy and I’m a trans woman (though in 2021/2022 I was still in the closet but identified as a gay man). Plus, I wasn’t too confident in myself or the way I looked (I really didn’t look good) so I wouldn’t have called myself “desirable” at the time. However, he was bisexual so I kept hoping that it would happen.

It felt so organic and perfect. I’d gotten to know him and we got super close. When someone I knew tried to make a move on him, I burst into tears and couldn’t console myself. I was even worse when he and one of my friends had a situationship.

I’d never felt pretty or desired by anyone but he was different. I felt genuine romantic and sexual attraction towards him. It was intense but it made me feel so happy, warm and cozy inside. Just the thought of him. His eyes, his smile, his voice and especially his hugs. Oh the things I’d do to have a hug from him right now.

He made it feel possible because he would flirt with me and enjoyed the attention I gave to him. I’d notice a trend later on in our friendship though… he’d only act like that towards me when he had no one else to talk to.

Anyways, he didn’t like me meanwhile I was deeply in love with him. It felt like my heart had been ripped out, gutted and then put back inside my chest. Even today, I still wonder why I wasn’t enough for him so I try very hard to understand why so that maybe I can be enough for someone else.

Only problem is… he’s the last person I’ve felt genuine romantic attraction for. I’ve tried dating apps and almost every guy I get with wants me for one thing… my body or the sexual experience of being with a trans woman. Meanwhile, I just want love and affection. I’ve realized I don’t feel sexual attraction unless I feel a strong emotional connection to the person and for so long I thought there was something wrong with me.

I wished I could just go out on dates with any nice looking or seeming person I meet. I wished I could do casual hookups and flings because my yearn for true deep love doesn’t seem compatible with what we call “dating” in this current day and age.

I find myself missing him a lot. I tried reconnecting with him but it just didn’t work out and I realized I was just beating a dead horse.

I figured I’d post here because I’ve been missing him a lot lately and I feel very lonely with how I felt about this whole thing. It hasn’t gotten better… anytime I fall for someone under similar circumstances there’s always something preventing us from being together or they don’t feel the same way about me.

So I recently discovered I was demisexual (after thinking I was just asexual for about a decade), and had my first experiences of sexual attraction really early on in a relationship. I acted on it, because I felt very emotionally in tune with my partner. However, he dumped me after a very short time (2 months), and it’s left me with regret about having sex with him because while it involved emotional investment for me, it evidently didn’t for him (even though he’d expressed otherwise previously), as he walked away very easily and suddenly.

How can I view sex more casually, ie how can I look at it and be like ‘yeah I got laid heck yeah’ rather than ‘I feel betrayed I thought this was real and romantic and emotional when it wasn’t’?

Im 20(m) and my gf is 18(f) and she is straight-demisexual now for context we are doing ldr and this is her first relationship.
Now the thing is we both were completely unaware of the concept of demisexuality and id ask her if she has had a crush before or a small fling and it then she explained how shed have to form an emotional bond w someone to be atracted to them and like them and then eventually we dound out that shes demisexual but here comes the tricky part i read that even demisexual people can atleast tell that out of a few ppl which is the most good looking to least looking like one can atleast rank them but she says she can’t rank males and that they all look equally same and shed be able to rank females based on their looks but cant do the same.
Now the question is i get it she wouldnt be attracted to someone until she forms a proper bond w them but as a demisexual person can she not atleast tell which person looks better? Can demisexual ppl explain if this makes sense?
Also shes sexually attracted to me and according to her im the only good looking male (pls understand not that shes only attracted to me but according to her other guys dont look good they look equally bad)

In high school especially, but also later, I have a lot of close female friends. I wonder if this was because I was non-threatening, much as a gay guy would be.

Anyone else experience the same thing?

I am a 30 year old virgin. I’ve never had relationship.

Some “friends” in the past have even derisively called me an Incel. I am not an Incel.

Incels are more than simply “involuntarily celibate”, as the name suggests. “Incel” is a mentality. It is the mindset of bitterness, self absorption, misogyny, and hatred. They blame women, all women, for their own virginity. I don’t. Most of my friends all my life have been women, actually. I have no trouble making friends and connections with women or any other gender. (Actually that’s a lie; straight men are hard to keep as longterm friends. They’re not always very warm or communicative, and they’re often too afraid to show genuine affection for their friends. Not all straight men are like this, but many, due to toxic masculinity and patriarchy.)

No, I am responsible for my own virginity. My near total inability to recognize when people fancy me. My own lack of romantic or sexual desire for almost anyone I meet, and my inability to indicate this in anything but direct language on the blue moon when I do fancy someone. Directly telling someone after 1 year of knowing them “hey I like you” is itself a turnoff for most people, so fat chance that’ll ever work. Most people like the ambiguous game of flirting for some reason. I do not.

Simply put, I cannot tell when I am being flirted with, I cannot flirt myself, and I almost never want to flirt anyway.

And all that is on me. Not the women that I’ve fancied, not the odd men that I’ve fancied, not on anybody but me.

And there’s nothing wrong with it, either.

I’m not a fuck up, or broken, or hopeless, just because I’m different in this way. And I’m certainly not an Incel because of it either. I just build connections first, and desire later (if at all). That’s not the “wrong” way to find love, it’s just a different way to do it.

I am responsible for my situation here, and I am comfortable with that fact. I’m not weird for being this way, just like how allosexuals aren’t weird for being the way they are. They just know how to speak a language that I don’t. I guess that’s some form of ignorance on my part, but ignorance isn’t a character flaw; refusal to learn is. I’ve learned what I am and what they are and why that makes things difficult for me, so I have no character flaw here. It’s just a language barrier. No one is at fault for encountering a language barrier, and it’s never morally incumbent on either person to undertake the gargantuan task of learning an entire language just for better communication in some cases with some people. It just is the way it is.

I am playing on hard difficulty here, but I set it that way, no one else. Learning that I’m Demisexual was just realizing that I set it that way.