The more dismal dating experiences I have, the more I think it’s worth waiting
November 22, 2024 5:26 pm
Do you fancy someone immediately, or does it take a little more time? Perhaps you need to feel emotionally connected to them first, to build trust and attraction? If that sounds like you, well, you’re like me. And apparently that makes us “demisexual”.
It might not be a word you’re familiar with – I wasn’t – but thanks to Tulisa Contostavlos, the musician and former X Factor judge, it’s something a lot of us are talking about.
“I feel like I’m a bit demisexual, I need to have a really close emotional bond built with someone,” the 36-year-old said to her fellow campmates in the Australian jungle on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!
“I need meaning and I need real depth. I’m a slow, slow burner. I’ve been celibate for over three years. The thought of literally shagging someone… makes me feel physically sick. I don’t know you – this is my temple, you cannot enter.”
Coined in 2006, the word “demisexual” refers to those who only feel a sexual connection after an emotional one has been built first. That can mean demisexuals make fewer sexual connections than most. As Tulisa said, it just takes a little more time.
The idea is that this is somewhat rare; most people can – and do – feel sexually attracted to strangers they might not have spent much time with. But to be honest, having been on the dating scene for the last two years, going by this definition I think me and almost every other single woman I know is demisexual.
Maybe things were different when I was younger: a little more naive, a little less wounded. The last time I was single, I was 24. Back then, I could feel sexually attracted to someone quite easily. If they were good-looking and made me laugh, well, that was sort of enough.
But now I’m 30, things aren’t quite so simple. Like Tulisa, I feel compelled to be a little more protective of myself. Thanks to a few years of therapy and lots of self-reflection, there are firmer boundaries in place that mean it takes more time for me to feel comfortable enough around someone to be sexually attracted to them. The emotional connection has to come first.
But that does make dating a little more difficult. When it comes to relationships we’re all so impatient, and even though I suspect most of us could benefit from prioritising our emotional needs over our sexual ones, a lot of us don’t. As much as I hate to resort to gender stereotypes, in my experience, it winds up being the straight women who operate in a more demisexual manner, while straight men are more inclined to behave like, well, straight men.
Don’t get me wrong, I know women for whom sex can be at its best without any emotional connection. One friend recently told me she started chatting to a guy on the dating app Feeld the other night, went to meet him at a hotel and ended up having the best sex of her life. She didn’t even know his last name.
Generally speaking, though, this isn’t the case. And as fun as it may be to have these sorts of footloose and fancy-free sexual experiences, inevitably they wind up making us feel empty, used and discarded. At least, that’s always been the case for me whenever I’ve tried to channel my inner Samantha from Sex and the City, and have casual sex with people I don’t particularly care for who don’t particularly care for me either.
As I get older, I find that pleasure is only possible if there’s a feeling of safety. And increasingly, that safety is harder to obtain with the people I date, particularly if I’ve met them on an app. It’s the emotional connection that helps to cultivate that feeling of safety.
That’s not something you can just snap up by looking at someone. It takes a while. But that’s no bad thing. If anything, the more dismal dating experiences I have, the more I think it’s worth the wait.