Okay, so... I've been having problems in finding out my sexual orientation and I came here to ask a few things to help me figure it out. 1. Can you explain to me what's sexual attraction? If you've felt it before, could you describe how it feels like? 2. Can you explain to me what's aesthetic attraction? If you've felt it before, could you describe how it feels like? 3. Sexual people feel attracted to both sexes constantly through the day or it depends on each person? 4. Is it possible for asexual people think that they had sexual attraction towards someone and found out latter that they were expeciencing something else? 5. What's the difference between sexual and aesthetic attraction? Can sexual people feel the latter without the sexual attraction? That's all I'd like to know, for now.
1. Sexual attraction is the desire to have sex with a specific person. It doesn't have to be automatic; conservative sexuals feel 'turned on' and interested at the thought of having sex with someone in the future; but they don't act on it because of moral beliefs. 2. It's basically thinking someone is good looking. 3. If you mean monosexuals with sexual attraction in general, we sometimes think of sex, sometimes we don't. 4. Yes, it happens. 5. Sexual = desire to have sex, aesthetic = think someone is good-looking. Yes, you can feel one without the other. If you see a person who is ugly to look at, but they give you a reaction that you would be turned on and want to have sex with them; that is sexual attraction without aesthetic attraction. Sexuals feel aesthetic attraction without sexual all the time as well. Here's a good comparision: If you go shopping for wallpaper and you turn aside the funky green paint for the lively blue; you showed a bias for aesthetic attraction; even though you have no interest in having sex with wallpaper. As a lesbian I also comment that men are good-looking or cute, but I have no interest in having sex with them.
My thoughts/opinions: Aesthetic attraction is simply recognizing the beauty in something without feeling a sense of desire for it. One can be drawn to someone and appreciate their beauty without feeling sexual desire for them. Sexual attraction may or may not include aesthetic attraction, but has a strong draw that's more arousing/erotic; one can see/imagine him or herself being connected to the person sexually. Sexual people (which, by the way are about 95% of the population) don't feel attraction every day/all the time, don't feel it about both sexes, and some may only feel it very occasionally to people they are particularly drawn to. The majority of people that use the label "asexual" are probably not clinically asexual for the simple reason that asexuality is rare. Someone can have low or decreased sex drive for any of a bazillion reasons including, anxiety, depression, medication, a history of sexual abuse, other family-of-origin issues, and many other reasons. These people aren't asexual; they simply have a diminished sex drive that can, with therapy/treatment/medication changes/etc, experience the same sexual attraction everyone else does. So while it's possible for someone asexual to feel something they think is sexual attraction that isn't, it's much more likely that the person who thinks they are asexual is instead experiencing some issues that's getting in the way of feeling sexual attraction.
Ohmigosh, I wrote a book on this stuff last semester in high school! I got this! *pride* 1. Sexual attraction has to do with who you want to scoodilypoop with! Or, in normal terms, it's about who you want to have sex with. This isn't directly tied to romance, so it may not be a crush, per se, but it might be something like looking at Scarlett Johansson and thinking "Oh, man, can you please maybe climb in my bed and take off your clothes?" It's like that. (PS: Yes, that was a direct example from my head.) 2. Aesthetic attraction, as noted above, is an attraction to that which is beautiful or perceived as beautiful. I think aesthetic attraction can be warped a little bit, i.e. what society feeds us as a standard for beauty, but again, it's all about who or what one finds to be beautiful. For example, while I think many men are beautiful or handsome, I don't always want to have sex with them. There's a difference. 3. It definitely depends on the person. There's a scale, of course, from heterosexual (opposite sex attraction) and homosexual (same sex attraction), but there's also one for intensity, sexual to asexual. In between those is what is called grey-a, or greyasexual. That means that if somebody is grey-heterosexual, they might find sexual attraction in the opposite sex on a rarer basis than somebody who is fully heterosexual. Of course, that's a gross simplification, but I hope that makes sense. 4. Yes, it is totally possible! Because sexuality is such a broad topic and so manipulated and twisted by our culture (at least here in the states), many of us are hardwired into heterosexual views. Due to this along with other influences like friends, family, and religion, it becomes really easy to be confused. Is it sexual attraction? Is it aesthetic attraction? Romantic? Sensual? Because our society teaches us so little about the differences and often censors those differences as well, it can be incredibly confusing. Anyways, that's just a long version of my answer, but my short answer is this: yes, it is possible to confuse another type of attraction for sexual attraction. It's a normal thing; you have time to figure it out, so don't worry. 5. Sexual = I'd screw that against a wall, aesthetic = I'd screw it into the wall . . . so I can hang up this beautiful thing like a tapestry! Okay, so that might be a little gruesome if you think of people as tapestries, but yes, there is a difference. Easiest way for me to explain it is on a person lever, for example, the two most beautiful women I can think of are Scarlett Johanson and Anna Kendrick (I hope I got that right). I think Anna is beautiful, but I don't really have the urge to have sex with her. Scarlett, though . . . I also want to cover something quickly about what Chip said too: I want to add onto this phrase and say that while all of the above can cause a diminished sex drive, that's not always the whole story. It's important to keep in mind that while those are possible, many of them can be misconstrued and turned into myths, such as "ALL asexual people are this way" or "Asexuality can be fixed" or other nonsense. Point being: while this is possible, and you are perfectly free to consider these things while contemplating, don't forget that it's totally possible that you really are asexual with none of the baggage. One more thing: since a lot of what you're asking seems to be in the area of asexuality, I'm going to go ahead and link you to the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network, also known as AVEN. I haven't traversed the site very much, but I came across it a few times during my research, and I really think you'll be able to find some more resources and information to help you on your journey. Above all, though, don't forget that no matter what your sexuality is, you're still normal. Never doubt that.
Hi there. A side note about asexual people: asexuality is simply defined as not having sexual attraction. Sexual attraction, to put it simply, is wanting to have sex with someone. I'm sure there are more elaborate definitions, but that's pretty much the basics. Having that said, it's entirely possible for an asexual to have sex and still be asexual. They can even enjoy it. As long as they don't experience sexual attraction, then they fit under the asexual label. You do not have to be sex repulsed to be an asexual, and you do not have to have a low libido to be asexual. I'm pretty sex-repulsed sometimes, but I do have a functioning libido. And, I'm quite sure I'm asexual. I simply don't experience sexual attraction. Okay, on to the OP's question: what is aesthetic attraction? I read this pretty cool article. Maybe you should try it? If it's too long and you don't like reading, I'll give a tl;dr summary. Hopefully. To put it in simplest terms: Aesthetic recognition = Thinking someone looks good. Aesthetic attraction = Feeling a need or strong want to look at someone. Take Steve and Dave. I looked at Steve. He's pretty cute. I look at Dave. Damn, he's really cute. I start to sneak looks at Dave. I don't try to approach him, I just like to look at him. Disregard the fact that that may have sounded creepy. And, while I'm feeling no need or want to socialize or get to know Dave, I want to look at him because he's aesthetically attractive. And Steve? Steve is cute too, but I don't feel the need to look at him like I look at Dave. So I recognized his looks, but I wasn't attracted. Of course, this is completely debatable. Some people just prefer to stick with the aesthetic attraction = thinking someone looks good definition, and for the sake of clarification, so do I. But I figured this perspective on aesthetic attraction makes more sense and it's pretty interesting!
Thanks for the help, can I ask you guys just one more thing? In sexual attraction, does the person that feel that they really need to have sex with somebody they're attracted to or they can just fantasise about this person doing something they consider "sexy"(I think that's the word)?
That's a really odd word you got there. I didn't quite get what it means. to MyID: That, I'm not quite sure about. I can say I've fantasized about random people (who probably don't exist), but never someone I know or have seen. This isn't sexual attraction, it's just... fantasizing. If you want my two cents, I'd think that, if you're sexually attracted to someone, you'll want to have sex with them, but you won't need to. So if you're fantasizing about someone doing "sexy" things, chances are, you're probably sexually attracted to someone. However, I don't experience sexual attraction. So better off listening to someone else. Just thought I'd throw that in.
Honestly, it depends on the situation. There are some people that I know I feel sexually attracted to, but I never think about having sex with them as much as I think about them masturbating or being with others. I know I'm still sexually attracted since I would -want- to do those things, but I guess my demisexual and sexually reserved side makes self-fantasies a bit weird for me. On the other hand, I like gay porn despite not being sexually attracted to men, and more so attracted to the scenery, so I don't think that counts. So yeah, depends.
Probably not going to add anything useful to the conversation, but I was just using quotes around "sexy" because I'm unfamiliar with the term as well. Don't worry, I think you used it right. We all understand what you mean, heheh.
Most certainly sexual attraction can just be fantasizing about anything that could be considered "sexy." People get way too caught up in exotic and obscure labels when nearly all the time the solution is much, much simpler. Also to clarify: for the tiny minority of people that are genuinely asexual, that is who they are, and their sexual attraction/arousal cannot be changed or "fixed", any more than a gay person can be made straight. But it is a tiny minority (1% or less, according to most of the [not-terribly-rigorous-or-credible] research in the area), and the overwhelming number of people that self-identify may not actually be genuinely asexual. Here's why: As I stated earlier, the best research (which is pretty crappy from a methodological perspective) clearly identifies that a large portion of (near as I can tell, self-identified) asexual people also have co-occurring diagnoses of anxiety, depression, anger, and other psychological conditions. Unless we can identify whether the asexuality caused the anxiety and depression (which is quite possible, but certainly not the case for all such people), or whether the anxiety and depression may be causing symptoms consistent with asexuality (which we know for certain happens in many cases), we can't accurately gauge how many people genuinely have no sexual attraction, and how many have the same symptoms caused by the co-occurring anxiety or depression. That, along with the small percentages reported by the best research that's out there, pretty much has to lead to a conclusion that it's unwise to simply adopt that label, at least for people with anxiety or depression, without further evaluation of what's causing what.
