Casual hookups left me feeling empty – I realised I’m demisexual

At 26, I had my last ever hookup.

I was out drinking with a friend, and we’d just stumbled into the last pub of the night.

I immediately locked eyes with a man at the bar.

He looked like a blonde Harry Styles and was charming enough that I decided to take him back to my place.

We stumbled back, and, when we got into my bed, with him expecting the obvious, I was struck sober with the thought: ‘I do not want to do this’.

I explained, he understood, and we called it night, rolling over to fall asleep.

But I was wide awake.

With this stranger lying next to me, I took a mental microscope to my sex life and realised that every one-night stand I’d ever had had been terrible.

Not in a ‘He couldn’t get it up’ or a ‘You want to do what?’ way.

And sometimes it was good, physically.

But emotionally, I felt nothing.

I was always bored, indifferent, and counting the minutes until it was over.

I constantly felt like a fraud for calling myself pansexual, when I rarely felt real attraction to women or men.

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It was demoralising.

Suddenly I was overwhelmed with feelings of doubt, rejection and alienation.

In a world where fast-tracked intimacy seems to be the norm, I wasn’t sure where to fit in.

I’ve always been a relationship person.

From the ages of 16 to 21, I was in two long-term partnerships, one after the other.

As a result, I romanticised the freedom of single life.

There were things I liked about being in a relationship, like the comfort of having a person to hold you when life got hard, but it felt like I’d denied myself the chance to play on the green grass of the other side.

So, with those two failed relationships under my belt, I started having casual sex.

I’d heard a lot about hookups from friends – the sweaty passion, the liberation, the euphoria of the all-powerful orgasm.

None of that happened for me.

I noticed it during my first hookup.

The woman I was with was beautiful, but I realised that I appreciated her looks only in an abstract, detached way – in the same way you might acknowledge a beautiful book.

The binding may be gorgeous, but there were no feelings there; no jolt, no thunderbolt.

I didn’t have a lot of casual sex, but whenever I did, I expected a different outcome, some overwhelming chemical response.

It never happened.

When blonde Harry Styles finally left after our brief non-encounter, blissfully unaware of my night of soul searching, I realised I’d been ignoring one pivotal thing: I wasn’t attracted to any of these people because I had no emotional connection to them.

That any interaction that didn’t have a personal foundation would always leave me cold.

In that moment, I felt completely alone.

I knew this wasn’t how it was for everyone, and couldn’t understand why I felt this way.

I needed to do some sleuthing to find an explanation.

Like most melodramatic teens in the 2010s with a wifi connection, I’d been on Tumblr, so I knew about asexuality.

But it didn’t feel like the right fit: when in relationships, I’d always felt sexual attraction and liked, wanted, and initiated sex.

I kept digging and finally stumbled upon demisexuality.

My immediate response was confusion.

I tried to disregard the feelings at first.

But the idea of demisexuality continued to play on my mind, so I dug deeper.

When I read the definition – people who need an emotional bond with another person to experience sexual attraction – I finally recognised myself for the first time.

I wasn’t broken or incomplete.

I was demisexual.

But with this revelation came the shattering realisation that I might never be in a relationship again because of it.

These days, it feels like sex is the route to a relationship for many people.

And more power to them – whether it’s on the first or the seventh date, I encourage all consenting adults to get freaky before getting to know someone, if that’s what they want to do.

But once I knew I was demisexual, I knew that path wasn’t for me.

I’d have to take things slow.

After implementing a new ‘clear and firm’ dating approach, and still getting the runaround from timewasters, I gave up trying and focused on myself instead.

That included walking 500 miles on a trek across southern Europe.

As I sought respite from the merciless Spanish sun under a tree, I met a man also hiding from the heat.

And over the next six weeks, I got to know him.

He was five years younger than me, and he was from Brussels.

We walked with others during the day, finding time to talk alone, and in the evenings, we’d get drinks and talk some more.

We spoke about our lives, our world beliefs, our dreams, and our fears.

He was – and still is – the most curious man I have ever met.

He treated everyone with care and intrigue; it was beautiful.

He showed me that he was a man who knew the value of people and he took the time to truly know someone.

After a few weeks of talking, we finally went on a date.

It was casual, completely natural, and for the first time in a very long time, I felt genuine attraction.

I finally had a crush.

We’ve been together for three years now.

Looking back, I’m so glad I took that time to get to know myself, because it’s only through knowing myself that I was able to find him.