Everything you need to know about demisexuality.

What is demisexuality?

Not everyone is into casual sex: some people prefer to have an emotional connection with someone before a physical one. Those who identify as demisexual, however, explain that they need to feel a strong emotional connection with someone in order to feel sexual attraction to them at all. It's part of their sexual orientations.

What is it like to be demisexual?

"Demisexuality is about desire and arousal, not just sex and who you do it with," writer Olivia Davis put it in an article for The Good Men Project. "It’s not merely that I’m only interested in having sex with people that I love, it’s also that I feel a complete absence of desire or sexual feelings toward everyone else ... What makes me demisexual is that absence."

According to the Demisexuality Resource Center, while most people begin to feel sexual attraction to others at around puberty, demisexuals don't — and they can feel left out as their friends start having crushes and fantasizing about celebrities: "They wonder if they will eventually feel [these things] too, and some even end up feeling 'broken,'" the website states. It doesn't help that asexuality and demisexuality are all but invisible in entertainment and pop culture. (For a while, Big Bang Theory fans believed that the show's character Sheldon was asexual, but then he and girlfriend Amy banged and that theory was debunked.)

What do critics of the label say?

Some claim that "demisexual" is used by people who are simply choosy about whom they sleep with. Others say demisexuality a lifestyle choice rather than a sexual orientation, and then there are those who believe that self-described demisexuals simply have low sex drives. The common message: demisexuality isn't "real," so people shouldn't identify with it.

But demisexuals describe sexual feeling outside these frameworks — they're not picky, they say, they literally don't get turned on unless they are deeply emotionally connected to someone. Meanwhile, people who have a low sexual desire — which can be the result of depression, hormonal imbalances, certain medications, and more — tend to notice and be bothered by it. They feel that something is missing or out of whack, and that causes personal distress. Not for demisexuals: they feel that how they experience attraction is part of who they are.