Exploring Sexual Attraction

Ask someone who they are sexually attracted to (or not), and you are likely to get a simple answer. For me, it has always been a giant question mark. I didn’t seriously start dating until I was fourteen years old. Even then, I had girlfriends and boyfriends. Romantically I knew who I was interested in (panromantic, meaning in frank terms I didn’t care what my romantic partner identified as). But sexually? I felt the concept was completely out of my grasp. I still do in a way today.

One definition (according to AVEN, a big resource for the asexual community online) is: “Sexual attraction is an emotional response that sexual people often feel that results in a desire for sexual contact with the person that the attraction is felt towards.” Another definition is: “attraction on the basis of sexual desire or the quality of arousing such interest” (thank you Wikipedia for this definition). Most other definitions from high regard websites have similarly (and annoyingly vague) definitions.

I went through trauma during my teenage years. I blame that as the “core” problem for why I can’t figure out my sexual orientation. I am not saying I am “stuck” on trauma, rather, it rewired my brain chemistry to make it feel like trying to understand “sexual attraction” is just out of my grasp. It is extra annoying because I want to study human sexuality (sexology) for a living. Sex is fun in retrospect but in the moment? I dissociate nine times out of ten so I basically feel “numb” during any sexual activitiy.

I have cycled through countless labels trying to find “me”. I have read countless testimonies of different people who identify as different LGBTQIA labels, trying to find “me”. Right now, the most I relate to is the asexual spectrum. I see a lot of myself in the overall community with their experiences and perspectives on things.

No, I don’t like the term “questioning” because it sounds so damn artificial to me. I know there’s many people in my shoes or have experienced similar, where they have constantly cycled through terms and detest the identity “questioning”.

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