Primary and Secondary Attraction

In an attempt to explain the asexual experience, quite a few words and terms have been coined.  I've only given a cursory look over many of them- just enough to see that they didn't deeply resonate with me.  As several of those terms have been thrown around by others, I've become increasingly familiar with them, and have given them some more thought.

Primary and secondary attraction are a couple of those terms.  Primary attraction, as I understand it, is sexual attraction that's rooted in that which is immediately apparent about a person- the way they carry themselves, their smell, the clever things they say, all that kind of stuff.  Secondary attraction- again, as I understand it- is attraction that develops over time, and is rooted in a relationship.

These terms are usually used to help explain demisexuality.  Demisexual folks only develop secondary attraction.

So as these terms have been bouncing around in my mind as of late, I realized that I'm kind of... the opposite.. of demisexual.

Primary attraction isn't actually that rare for me to come by.  Lots of people can seem at least moderately shiny to me upon first meeting.  Where things fall apart for me is when that novel shininess fades away, and I'm left without any secondary attraction to keep that interest going.

The way that this has manifested in my life has been that my sexual interest in people- people who I really, really love!- consistently drops off within a couple of months.  So far as I've found, there's no nice way for that to happen.  There aren't cute greeting cards that say, "Yeah, I mean, you smelled really nice!  But you're just not sexually interesting to me any more.  I still care about you though!  Let's still hold hands!"

So I'm pretty well left with two options.

I can have a series of sexual relationships that we both know are going to last a couple of weeks, or if we're lucky, a couple of months.  Adding sexual partners is a pretty big emotional investment for me, so on the whole, that's not going to be a very fun option.  I can get the occasional kick by making out with folks who, for any number of reasons, aren't on the table as long-term partners, but that's about as far as I'm inclined to go down that road.

Or I can opt to move really slowly into new sexual relationships, until I have a solid feeling that I'm experiencing more than just primary attraction.  That also gives me a chance to decide if I feel good about making that emotional investment in them.  If I'm still feeling it after the shiny-newness has worn off, game on!

I'm not quite sure what it is that keeps things sustainable.  This is where the primary/secondary attraction model seems to break down for me.  When I have a sustainable sexual attraction to somebody, I don't think that the root of that attraction is the non-sexual parts of the relationship.  I care about my sexual partners, and enjoy spending time with them, but it's not like they're The One(s), by any means.

It's an imperfect model in my case, but an interesting one nonetheless.  It's certainly given me a different lens to look through.

Identity, as Assumed by Others

Okay, you know how in that most recent post about orientation and whatnot I was all, "Hmm, I don't know why I consider myself sexually active and apart from the LGBT community"?  It's true that I didn't when it first came to my attention, but by the time that I got around to clicking the publish post button, I had an inclination.  I just couldn't find a way to work it into the post without disrupting the flow.  Call it stylistic dishonesty.

But hey, now is my chance to come clean!

I think the default assumption of women in my general age range in my culture is that we are not an active part of the LGBT community, and we are sexually active.  For whatever reason, I just haven't gotten around to doing the internal fact-checking on those points.  Society says that I'm straight and sexually active, so I am!  Woohoo!

Of course, there's more nuance to it than that.  I don't think that I can reason my way into feeling like part of a community, and I'm pretty sure that there are some emotional hang-ups (along with maybe just a little bit of holding out for impractical crushes), that are keeping me from declaring that I'm sexually inactive and taking myself off of birth control.

So where next?  Well, I'm still not sure.  But I do have a better feel for where I'm at, and why I'm here.

Orientation

I've filled out a couple of surveys about sexuality as of late.  One was for the Westword, Denver's weekly newspaper.  The other was for the upcoming Asexual Awareness Week.  The two surveys brought some really interesting realizations to my attention.

Although I've had sex with boys and girls, I regularly play with boys, girls, and people elsewhere on the gender spectrum, and am romantically attracted to people all over the gender spectrum, I don't consider myself part of the LGBT community.  Left entirely to my own devices, I identify my sexual orientation as "ambivalent" or as I'm fond of saying these days, "I'm mostly disinterested in everybody."  Of course, neither of those options are ever available on dropdown menus.  The closest that I can ever get is something like bisexual or pansexual.  Or asexual.

In any event, in spite of having an abundance of reasons to identify myself as part of the LGBT community, I just don't feel it.  I'm on the periphery, with frequent overlap of social circles and events.  But I don't feel that it's my community.

Another unexpected revelation: In spite of having only had sex a dozen or so times- and that's being generous- in the past year, with absolutely zilch for the past five months, I still consider myself sexually active.  And not just in the sense that I'm sexually active with myself.  For whatever reason, I still think of myself as having one foot in the sexy pool.

I don't know why either of these things are as they are.  Using even a very, very small amount of logic makes it obvious that I fit neatly under the LGBT umbrella, and that I am not sexually active.  So why the discrepancy?  It'll be something that I mull over, that's for sure.