Discovering my Demisexuality

Elle Rose
15 min readApr 7, 2021

I hope that telling my story here — a story that is not straightforward, full of strange twists and turns and shame and pride alike — will speak to you today. When I put out a poll recently on twitter asking if I should write my journey of discovering my orientation for International Asexuality Day, I thought I had told it enough times, or that it wasn’t interesting enough, to get a majority rule of “yes”. The social media page for the day itself said they were interested, so, here I am — restarting these thoughts at 8pm eastern time for the tenth time today, wringing my hands and wondering if these words will fall onto open minds or if they will be dismissed in the cacophony of personal stories the internet has to offer. The only story I can offer from my own perspective, truly, is my own; I hope that it is enough.

I am demisexual. I also use the word graysexual. I am panromantic. I am agender. I exist within the asexuality spectrum — somewhere in the gray between allosexual and asexual, somewhere that isn’t supposed to exist and that many still don’t believe is real. But I am here; I am, against all odds, real, as is my sexual orientation.

And this is my story.

This post will include discussion of sexual abuse, eating disorders, trauma, purity culture, and self injury. Reader discretion is advised. Thank you.

I remember my first kiss.

I was about four years old. My sister and my neighbor’s sister dared us to kiss and touch tongues. Naturally we proceeded with a small peck, and then stuck our tongues out and touched them gently together, and looked at our older sisters for approval. They howled with laughter and told us “No, that’s not how you do that.” I didn’t understand.

I didn’t know what my classmates meant, either, when they started talking about boys in second grade. I liked boys — but it felt different. Like I was doing it wrong, or too excitable, or maybe not excitable enough — like something was dulled, and I didn’t know how to sharpen it properly without hurting myself and others. I liked girls, too. I liked looking at them and talking to them, and the boys I liked, if I did, I didn’t feel any physical stirrings for beyond curiosity.

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Elle Rose

queer. demisexual. ADHD. disabled. writer. YouTuber. shy but chaotic. they/she. contact: secretladyspider@gmail.com