It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that I experience heterosexuality very differently than my peers. I’ll describe in broad terms to keep things SFW.

Bodies are not “hot” to me. I’m drawn to feminine features because I find them pretty, but bodies do not physically excite me in the way that they excite others.

My sexuality is focused on receiving loving and romantic physical affection, and to a lesser extent, giving it. To my brain, affectionate physical contact is sex ITSELF, not a prelude. In practice, this means that I’m very attracted to kisses and don’t care about real sex unless I had a partner who wanted it.

If I approach a woman, it’s because she seems nice and I want to get to know her, not because I find her physically attractive. I never pursue romance from the get-go; I develop friendships for their own sake and romantic feelings may develop later.

I have some concerns about this.

I’ve long suspected that there are certain signals that I don’t give off. Female friends have called me things like “innocent,” “adorable,” or “Christian” (lol). While that may be due to my gentle demeanor, I wonder if my unique attraction profile eliminates behaviors that signal sexual availability, such as flirting. Perhaps the absence of these signals creates an impression of purity and sexual abstinence.

If that’s the case, I feel like that might prevent most people from finding me attractive, simply because I lack the hardware to speak their language. My actions might just come across as friendly, and I don’t want to lie about feeling attraction that I don’t have.

Another concern of mine is submissiveness: my physical attraction is centered around receiving. Although I want a relationship that’s reciprocal—giving and receiving in equal measure—I absolutely need moments of receiving affection to be sexually fulfilled. From what I’ve seen, submissiveness is stereotypically a turn-off, and I don’t know how widespread that is.

But I’m not BDSM-submissive; I don’t want a dominatrix. I just want someone gentle, kind, and willing to kiss me a bunch lol. I want to create a space of warmth and safety where we meet each other’s needs and I love the idea of being an affectionate and caring partner. The receptiveness I describe is episodic, not all-consuming.

These worries may sound silly, but being different is a catalyst for insecurity. It’s very easy to speculate because I can’t measure how much heterosexuality varies. I would expect that I’m a rule-breaking outlier and most heterosexuals have similar attraction models.

But I lack perspective, especially because I’ve never been in a relationship.

What do you think?

  • dumples@midwest.socialEnglish
    4·
    4 hours ago

    As others have mentioned you may be asexual, grey-ace or demi-sexual. However, I would like to mention a few things about masculine gender roles and their effect on Men. So you may be an allosexual but just not conform to the gendered expectations about masculinity and sex. I am allosexual and I find that a portion of the gendered expectations about sex don’t fit me as well.

    See below quote from “The Will to Change” by bell hooks which I think does a good job of laying out the dominant cultural narrative around the expectations men have around sex:

    In actuality, men come to sex hoping that it will provide them with all the emotional satisfaction that would come from love. Most men think that sex will provide them with a sense of being alive, connected, that sex will offer closeness, intimacy, pleasure. And more often than not sex simply does not deliver the goods. This fact does not lead men to cease obsessing about sex; it intensifies their lust and their longing.

    As mentioned above the dominant cultural narrative shows the Sex should provide all emotional, affection and closeness from sex and sex alone. This is not true for most men and if you feel the same way it might make you feel wrong about either your sexuality or masculinity. I would recommend reading The Will to Change to better understand the expectations about masculinity and its role in sex.

    I also always recommend Hot and Unbothered to better understand what you may want to have from sex and what sexual acts are you comfortable with and what you are not. Its a wonderful book.

    I also recommend The New Bottoming Book and The New Topping Book by Dossie Eaton and Janet Hardy. These are BDSM book which I know you said you were not interested in but I recommend people take a look. They are less how to guides but give good overviews about what to expect and what emotions people can enjoy and invoke from this kind of play. It is helpful to understand what emotions, sensations and needs people can derive from sex to better understand what you might want and how to ask for it. The asking for what you want is scary and difficult even if its for something simple like more kissing and kinksters are the communication and consent experts. You may never ask to be tied down and spanked silly, it makes asking other asks seem easier. Also to note that there are a large number of asexuals interested in kink so don’t feel like it is not for you if you do identify on the ace spectrum.