Identifying as demisexual means that I don’t feel sexually attracted to people unless I have a strong emotional connection with them

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This January, I decided to make a concerted effort to give dating a real go – but in the past week or so, I’ve started to feel completely overwhelmed by the whole process, and my head feels more scrambled than a Love Islander caught in a love triangle.

My resolve was such that I swiped on dating apps until my thumbs were raw from sliding over my cracked phone screen, and I’m now talking to five men simultaneously. Consequently, my brain feels like it’s caught in a Groundhog Day conveyor belt of “where are you based?” and “how’s your week going?”

Matching with people on dating apps is obviously a good thing – at the risk of stating the obvious, that’s the whole point – and I’m glad to be chatting with multiple men who seem kind and interesting. The thing is, I identify as demisexual, which means that I don’t feel sexually attracted to people unless I have a strong emotional connection with them. I’ve previously enjoyed wonderful relationships, but it takes me a long time to feel attracted to someone. I’ve only felt truly sexually attracted to two people in my whole life.

Needless to say, then, I’ve always struggled with dating apps. Not because I have an issue with the apps themselves, but because building emotional connections doesn’t tend to be at the forefront of the dating app agenda. By their nature, they operate mostly on near-instant reactions to aesthetic appearances.

When we swipe through people in a matter of seconds, there’s no room for the unique fizz of electricity that physical proximity (and, for me, a close emotional bond) can engender; and despite the prompts that many dating apps offer, I often struggle to get a true sense of anyone’s personality just from skimming through their profile. Читать далее →