I'm not really sure how to title this.

I joined a PRIDE group at my job to help my students advocate for themselves and fellow LGBTQ students. One of them asked me if I knew what it meant to be demisexual.

I didn't, so I went home and read.

And read more.

And more.

And the more I read, I started thinking.

You ever see or read something and go "That's me?"

That's what happened to me.

Pretty much my entire life I was turned off by "hook up culture". I couldn't see the point in bouncing from partner to partner. I thought it was stupid. I could look at a guy and go "Yeah, he's good looking" but if he made a move I'd run for the hills. Crushes were a rare thing. I thought maybe something was wrong with me.

I dated plenty of times before I met Blade, but each relationship ended for the exact same reason: they wanted sexual contact before I felt it was comfortable. I didn't feel like I had really made that connection with them. They were attractive, sure, but I wasn't emotionally attracted. I didn't feel like I knew them well enough.

A demisexual person needs those strong bonds in a relationship to feel any sort of attraction. When I met Blade, we were really good friends first for almost a year before I worked up the guts to ask him out on a date.

I also love my friends dearly, but this doesn't mean I wanna bang them all the time. It means that the friendships I've formed are that strong. It also explains why when certain friends left, it absolutely broke me. It was almost like breaking up with them. I love the friends I have now and would fight for them if I had to.

I guess TL;DR I did research to help a kid and ended up helping myself figure out my own identity.