Bi Demi Me: Or, an Exploration in Sexual Identity

Hi there. It’s me. The blogger. For those of you who might be new here, here are some things to know about me: I’m a Hufflepuff. I’m starting a new job. I have watched Good Omens about five times in the last three months and I’m not about to stop rewatching it so help me God. I’m a trauma survivor who’s spent the last year completely reorganizing my mind and my heart and my life, which means I’m returning back to myself in a way and rediscovering/uncovering things about myself. One of these things is demisexuality.

I’ve known for a long time that I have a complicated relationship with sexuality. I didn’t really experience anything that looked like sexual attraction until my late teens/early twenties and then it was built a lot on just wanting someone to be attracted to me and/or someone who wanted to kiss me. Growing up as a young woman in a certain social context (Catholic school up through half of fifth grade, a grandmother who asked me every Christmas starting around age 10 or so if I had a boyfriend, a society focused on wanting women’s bodies to look slim and fit and fun like Jennifer Aniston from Friends or one of the Spice Girls) I felt a certain pressure to meet certain socially constructed goals or expectations – have a partner to take to Homecoming and eventually Prom. Get married in my twenties. Have a family? (Okay, I could never see myself having kids, but I did entertain it for a very short time.) I struggled a lot with loneliness in the last twenty years (as an anxious, shy, only child who didn’t make friends easily, there were a lot of reasons for this) and, as the dominate narrative I saw in stories involved romance, I began to yearn for a significant other by the middle of high school. Up until then, I couldn’t understand a boyfriend. I genuinely thought boys my age were gross and didn’t really feel any sort of interest in anyone other than Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings and Ewan McGregor. I had a few awkward crushes on people in my life, generally because I cared about them a lot and, as I wasn’t good at sorting my feeling but I was good at ruminating on them, I dwelled on them and thought they might be crushes (they weren’t – not really. It was a platonic kind of love we don’t discuss enough in the world. But that’s another post).

By college, I began to to panic. I had never been kissed. I had never had a boyfriend. I decided college is when this would happen. College was, instead, a landslide – moving aside the rubble of who I thought I was and trying to uncover the true person underneath, the person I’d buried under graphic t-shirts and sarcasm in high school because I was afraid of being seen as week or vulnerable. During this time, my crushes on actors continued (notably, John Barrowman, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tom Hiddleston) and I explored the world of Tumblr. Around this time, I first heard the word asexuality. Thanks to Tumblr and Sherlock Holmes (and the BBC show Sherlock), this identity became present in my life – the absence of sexual attraction, not due to physical issues or trauma, but because one simply did not experience it. I found this incredibly relieving – as someone who had a sort of a sex drive but didn’t feel compelled to act on it, who didn’t feel attracted to anyone, unless I knew something deep or significant about someone. I became very good at getting weird crushes-that-weren’t-actually-crushes on people I wanted to like admire or like me. Meanwhile, the only romantic thoughts I actually had were towards fictional characters, usually played by notable British actors, because I learned a great deal about the characters in the course of whatever media I was consuming. As people began to act weird about the “never being kissed thing” (one friend’s boyfriend notably remarked, “How? It’s not like it’s hard”) I began to think that maybe I didn’t approach physical interaction and attraction the same way as everyone else.

I struggled with a great deal of body image issues (that’s not actually past tense – I still struggle) that made it hard for me to think that anyone would be attracted to me. I believed men (because yes, right now, I thought I was only attracted to men) were attracted to certain types (tall, blonde, generally looking like Rachel McAdams – which I understood, or Taylor Swift – which I didn’t understand). I had been led to believe I was not attractive – or at least was not the ideal attractive type, and never would be – and thus I would be alone forever. This on top of simply not experiencing attraction beyond deep connections with fictional characters was… a lot. I cried about it. I panicked about it. My (then) undiagnosed anxiety went mad about it. I thought there might be something actually wrong with me. I tried to read about asexuality, greysexuality, and demisexuality (which I related to most and told a few people I might identify as) as much as possible, but I still felt like I was doing something wrong.

I began to worry about time – if I didn’t get kissed/ get a boyfriend/ have sex by a certain time, it’d be weird. I’d already become an old maid in the eyes of my grandmother, I’d already spent the entire semester of my Human Sexuality course panicking about being the only virgin in the room, and I was also trying to figure out how the hell scientists could research sex without feeling super weird about it (note: I’m still trying to figure that out. Looking at you, Bill Masters). The entire idea of porn revolted me and made me scared. Seeing someone naked also scared me. My own body scared me. There was a lot of fear.

And then I fell for someone, a real in the flesh person, in 2014. I got my heart broken, and I acted like an idiot, but it was real. I had my first sexual experience, which threw me into a literal and figurative tizzy. And then my brain did something very, very stupid – in threw out all the things I thought I might new about how I felt about sex and decided that I was up for anything. I had two one night stands (which I felt humiliated about and still do, despite arguing that I have no reason to). With my ex, I wanted to experiment – I’d recently come out as bisexual, realizing that I was actually attracted to all genders, now that I was feeling attraction (albeit in a still pretty limited sense). I’d already had certain negative experiences with it – there seemed to be a sense that bisexuals were into free love, multiple partners, and rough sex – which simply wasn’t the case. I’m embarrassed now that I felt such a pressure to have sex and a yearning to explore it (and try to convince myself that it could be good) that I wouldn’t say no. Of course, there was the added caveat of this being a toxic relationship and that when I did try to place limits, I was cajoled into other actions. It was like a bit of overcorrection – I went from not wanting sex to thinking I wanted sex all the time. And it caused me a lot of stress.

I regret that I didn’t see what I see now – that I wasn’t comfortable doing what I was doing and that I didn’t communicate that. On one hand, I wanted to explore my sexuality, and I thought I would get that. But I got exploring it only on my ex’s terms. I kept expecting things to change and they didn’t. There’s a whole lot more going on here than not really allowing myself to be honest with my ex and myself (bad communication all around and lots of other stuff as discussed in previous post), but there was probably an underlying layer of this tension throughout. True, my body was keen on exploring sexuality and it felt good thinking about it, but the actual experience was… well, simply put, it was not great.

Post-break up, I was back to being disgusted by sex. I thought it was an inability to be attracted to anyone else due to heartbreak, then later shame and regret when I realized how upsetting what I’d done and what I’d been through was. Months later, that lack of interest in sex is still there. And, thanks to the reemergence of asexual narratives in my life (can I hear a wahoo for Good Omens?) I started thinking about the asexuality spectrum again. Because, like other sexualities, it is a spectrum. I know that bisexuality is a spectrum – though I struggled through not feeling bi enough, there is no one way to experience it. Likewise, asexuality is a spectrum. Being attracted to someone threw me off and, while I do have some sex drive and interest in physical behavior, by and large I am far more interested in emotional connection. I prefer cuddling and talking and establishing intimate bonds more than anything else. As I’ve learned from my weird British actors crushes (again, thanks, Good Omens, for another realization), it’s easier to establish feelings when I know something about someone (or a character) – and the more I know, the easier it is (fictional characters or people you don’t actually know have the added benefit of allowing you to write scripts about them in your head and, as you don’t actually know them, they won’t disappoint your or throw off your scripts). Though I thought my sexual experiences and behavior meant I couldn’t be demisexual, I was wrong – again, it’s a spectrum, and what I might do is not indicative of my entire sexual preferences (this was discussed in a film I saw recently – You, Me, and Him – I have mixed feelings about it overall but this part was a nice touch). Also, it’s an ongoing process – I’ve learned things about myself I didn’t know before. And, thanks to articles like this wonderful piece from The Guardian, there’s a lot more discussion and representation out there about the asexual spectrum, and a lot more for people like me to read and help them understand themselves (side note: Dan Savage is mentioned in this article and I used to fervently listen to his podcast. While he’s on the money about some things, trans and asexual identity are not it. But more about that another time).

I also want to focus on being single – something I hated when I was younger and love being now. Being single is nothing to be ashamed of. There’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, I’m a far healthier and happier person being single than I ever was in when in a relationship (that was indicative of the relationship of course, but point being – don’t be in a relationship if it’s shitty simply to avoid being single). Some people never want to be in a relationship. That’s fine. Some people never want to be in a romantic relationship. That’s fine. Some people only have sexual relationships. That’s fine. Some people only have romantic relationships. That’s fine. There’s a lot of ways to be in this world. And we need to start accepting them all far more.

The new piece for me to grapple with is bisexuality and demisexuality – because I am both. Or at least, I am a demisexual who is attracted to all genders – at least in the sense that I could have relationships with all genders. I suppose technically I am a demisexual – biromantic (which is represented in the first of the images at the start of this piece). Or can I simply say I’m a bisexual-demisexual? Can’t I be both? Can’t I show that bisexual people are not all focused on sex? At the end of the day, words fall a bit short. But I know more of who I am than I did just a year ago. It’s another coming out – but coming out is a never-ending process, really, especially when you have identities that are misunderstood or thought to not real. I always felt drawn to bisexuality being represented by mermaids, but I really feel keen on making narwhals be representative for my specific identity. I’m not a myth but people think I am and no one really understand the things I do. But I know and I’m happy. And that’s what matters.

I hope to keep writing about my experiences with this intersection of identities and I hope to further represent the ace spectrum. But I’ll start here. I’m the blogger. I’m demisexual, bi, and I’m done being what people think I should be. I’m me and I’m perfect as I am.