A question for you.

[sophia_sol]

So there is a fic I am making vague stabs at trying to write. It is not going very well. This is in part because I lack some crucial information! Namely, what is it like to experience sexual attraction?

And so I turn to you for help! Are you a person who experiences sexual attraction? I would like to hear from you! What does sexual attraction feel like for you (physically? mentally? emotionally?)? When do you experience it? How often do you experience it? Do you experience it every time you see a person you would categorize as "hot" or just people you are interested in, or some third option? Do you enjoy the experience? Do you ever wish it would just go away? Is there anything else that I'm not thinking to ask because I don't know enough to ask it?

Basically I just would love anything you could tell me about what sexual attraction is like for you. And it would be wonderful to get responses from multiple people, so I can try to extrapolate outwards from multiple data points to get a fuller picture of what it is like! I am happy with long or short answers, with or without TMI, and you can of course comment anonymously if you wish.

(Also, while I'm at it, just for my own interest, would you be able to explain what it is that is enjoyable/appealing about kissing? I'm just so curious!)

Comments

[tei]

Um...

For me what I classify/have classified in the past as sexual attraction was me thinking to myself, "So, self, would you like to have sex with this person?" and whatever other part of myself habitually takes Part B in internal dialogues goes something like, "Uh, maybe?" and then Part A goes "CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON SOMEONE!" Unsurprisingly, this has never led to actual sex. Um, and the only time I have engaged in kissing and related activities I did not find it enjoyable or appealing at all. So...um... sorry I am not very helpful on either count! But I am interested to read what other people have to say on the subject!

[kaz]

I can be of no help but am following this post with interest. Especially the kissing thing - it is weird because I'm repulsed but I can sort of imagine sexual attraction, but I just do not get kissing. It's not "keep it far away from me but I can see how some people could really enjoy it" like sex is, it's "? I do not understand? Why do people do this? It just seems as if it would be ridiculously boring?" /o\

[melannen]

I don't know, but I can tell you that I have been writing so much more fic since I decided not to worry about that stuff and just write the world I experience. (Oddly nobody has yet said my 'ship fic is unrealistic or OOC as a result.)

[sineala]

Hi! Here from your LJ, because, uh... hooray Dreamwidth! :)

Um. I have been thinking about this since you posted, because me and Sexual Attraction had a giant epic first-time run-in slightly later than most people experience it, and I can remember it fairly vividly. The problem is that I still don't really know how to describe it.

Because, see, I spent my entire teenage years firmly convinced I was asexual, after I had a boyfriend at 14 and was in love with him and thought he was pretty but I was aware that Something Was Wrong With Me and I was fairly sure I was supposed to be Feeling Things that I just wasn't and I knew I didn't want to sleep with him or really any other guy and it was all very upsetting. I really really really do not mean to slight asexuality here and I really hope I am not giving that impression, for I am certain it is a totally valid thing, but it turns out that, uh, I wasn't asexual, I was a very very repressed (and sexual) lesbian. Which kind of spectacularly un-repressed on me at 21, when I met the right girl, I guess. (Yes, eight years later, we are still together.)

And I still don't know how to describe the feeling. It was really, completely overwhelming. OH GOD NOW I KNOW WHAT PEOPLE MEAN WHEN THEY SAY THEY WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH SOMEONE, BECAUSE OH MAN DO I WANT THAT RIGHT NOW. WITH THIS PARTICULAR PERSON. NOW NOW NOW RIGHT NOW PLEASE. That kind of thing, only way more intense than capslock can possibly describe. And it just kind of hit me all at once. Hard. And really, okay, I'm just kind of glad I was done going through puberty, and it was still deeply, deeply weird, though it is generally less intense than it used to be, for me. It feels... I dunno... like a biological need does. You know how you'll see it described as some variation of "need" or "want" or "hunger?" I mean, sure, it's not quite the same thing as wanting a sandwich but it's definitely *wanting* something. Like, I can look at my girlfriend and be like, "oh, hey, I want to kiss the back of her neck." Or whatever. Substitute other desires as appropriate.

I don't experience attraction all the time -- though I do, certainly, find my girlfriend very attractive, it's not something I have to consciously notice or check all the time when I'm with her. It is to an extent controllable. Of course, when it isn't it can get a little annoying, because here I am trying to have a conversation about something, or whatever, and my brain is all HEY SEX HEY SEX HEY IT IS A SEXY PERSON. (Apparently other people entertain specific fantasies even about random strangers who they see for ten seconds? I don't, really; the attraction just kind of hangs around fuzzily in my brain.)

And there are certainly people I would call pretty or attractive but that I absolutely do not want in the same kind of driving-instinct MUST HAVE SEX NOW way. (This would be, generally, how I feel about men. There are men I think are pretty. There are, say, hot actors. I absolutely don't want to entertain thoughts of me anywhere near them. The hot actresses, OTOH...)

As for kissing? Huh. I don't know really how to explain that, assuming you mean, like, with tongue. I don't think I like it as much as some people do, so I'm not really the best person to ask. Um. Mouths are intimate? They feel nice?

[kiki_eng]

Here via calvinahobbes.

I feel like the kissing thing is a learned behaviour. When Friend A was in high school and doing the sexual exploration thing Friend A said something like "This kissing thing! It is boring! No, seriously, why this kissing thing, I would like to focus on the removal of pants thing instead. He says that the kissing thing will get better; I am unconvinced." Possibly some people take right to it, and are like, "This is awesome! I would like more of this!" but neither Friend A nor I did. When I first started kissing I think my mind responded with something like, "Well, this is boring. I'll just make my own fun then, shall I? *veers off wildly*" I think of kissing as a communications thing. It's a "there you are", an exercise in cooperative movement, an interaction, there are different tones with the amount of pressure and tongue and teeth that's used.* Every once in a while there's some combination of factors that flicks a switch in my mind, but kissing very rarely does anything for me sexually.

*On a more biological than sociological note - there's also information in their smell and the taste of their saliva.

I tend to think of a lot of sexual attraction as a kind of hind brain override. There are people that my brain decides are interesting, and so it tunes into them pretty intensely, so it's "B IS IN THE KITCHEN. YOU CAN NOT SEE THEM BUT THAT IS WHERE THEY ARE." and "B IS SPEAKING. *LISTENS*". There's a heightened awareness of them, even as I'm doing other tasks; they're something that my brain has decided is a priority. My brain is also more aware of people or things that it sees as threats, so, I also have a very keen perception of space and so on with someone who's twigged that radar - different alert system, if you will, but similar result in that respect.

Sometimes there are interesting little moments where my brain kind of skips a beat. It's jolting in kind of the same way almost falling asleep in class is, that moment where you snap out of it and your head snaps up and you are completely awake. My brain kind of trips over something - a physical sensation or someone's posture or something. (...normal, normal, normal, normal, THING, normal, normal - what just happened?!?, normal, normal, normal...) I don't have these moments very often. They last for about a second. They really throw me, because they are kind of a very blatant hind brain override; they're like a temporary hijacking or a glitch.

Hopefully some of that is useful and comprehensible and so on.

[china_shop]

Well, I'm in a long-term relationship, so I don't really get a lot of the kind of sparkage they talk about in first-time fics, and I don't tend to get random crushes on people either (I use fandom as a vent for my romantic energy, so I won't fall for someone else IRL and mess up my monogamous relationship; this works remarkably well for me). But, with those qualifiers:

And with an awareness that my similes might not work very well for you either, because presumably there's a whole different bunch of wiring going on:

*goes to do dishes and think about it*

Okay. Hai, I haven't written a poem in years, and this is not the kind of poem I used to write (too abstract), but here's what I've got:

Give us this day

I am letting you into the intimate
space near my mouth, my mouth,
my lips welcome your lips,
our breath merges and we are one.

You hold me and
we are one
with your lips on mine.

We mark each entrance and exit with kisses, some
casual, some which linger or
make us laugh, or need repeating over
and over. If you hesitate as you leave, I

have to say goodbye
again. There are many exits
and entrances in our lives; over
and over, we greet each other

into ourselves
and share love with our lips.

Um. Yeah. So there's that. (Whereas I think kissing someone for the first time is more like getting on a rollercoaster blindfolded, where the rollercoaster is another person, and your head is going OMG! And your heart is going OMG! And your body's going OMGOMGOMG!)

*resolutely does not get embarrassed about the poem* ;-)

ETA: And oh, doh, that was all about kissing. I didn't even start to address the attraction thing. I'm heading out soon, but I'll think about that later tonight. :-)

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Oh hooray, TMI and trying to overanalyze things that probably can't be analyzed very well! My favorite activities! XD

Okay, so I am a queer woman in my mid-20s; nearly all of my sexual experience has been with men ( :-( ); I'm in a long-term relationship that is polyamorous, and am currently dating two other guys in addition to my primary partner.

I think there's a huge amount of variation in how sexual people experience sexual attraction (just as I am sure there is a huge amount of variation among asexual people!). For me there's a lot of fuzzy boundaries between sexual and non-sexual attraction, and a huge mental component to both (smart people are hot; not so smart people, no matter how physically pretty...not so much).

Sexual attraction

I experience different types of sexual attraction.

1) There's the visual--oooh, that person is really nice to look at--which I experience fairly often and generally in passing. For me, attractiveness is very closely linked to personality, so my opinion of someone's visible attractiveness may go up or down once I get to know them. I know a handful of people I originally thought were pretty who I now find mildly repellant because I dislike them so much. I experience casual "oh, pretty!" fairly often, as my physical preferences are broad and I generally find a lot of humans at least a little attractive. It's brief and doesn't take much brainspace or distract me from stuff I need to do.

This is the kind of attraction I have for actors (or rather, the characters they play--I am usually not interested in the actors themselves, because actors are usually boring and as I mentioned, attraction and personality are closely tied for me).

2) There's the OMG BRAIN SHUTTING DOWN NOW overwhelming lust, which is mostly physical but sometimes has some mental component. I've only experienced this a few times, with people I don't know terribly well. That mostly involves trying really hard not to stare at their cheekbones/ass/hair/whatever and struggling to form coherent sentences. It's some kind of weird hindbrain thing that absolutely eats my brain and interferes with talking and doing things, but I have experienced this with…less than half a dozen people in my life. With those people, it occurred every time I saw them, although over time I got better at holding up my end of a conversation. These people are not necessarily people I should actually sleep with (I've never had the chance) or people I want to date (often they aren't), which makes me think it might be some sort of basic pheremonally-driven mating drive or something (FWIW, I have only had this type of attraction to men, although that may also be because I am more comfortable with women socially and generally don't get awkward/tongue-tied around women and not because my body wants to make babies even though my brain emphatically does not...IDK, though).

3) Then there's what I consider sexual attraction with intent--the kind of attraction I have to people I know well enough to know I actually want to date/have sex with them. There's a continuum here depending on social context from "I really really enjoy talking to this person and learning about their sexy brains also I would like to touch their haaaaaair" to "making out is awesome and I am turned on."

I would not say I experience it every single time I see the person--I've been with my partner for 7+ years now and I do not think about sex every time I see or touch him--but in new relationships the frequency of sexual attraction/thoughts is much higher. There's a common polyamory term "New Relationship Energy" to describe the giddy, nervous high of a new relationship, which often has a lot of sexual attraction rolled into it. When I'm in NRE, especially the first few dates, I'm nervous and my stomach flips a lot; I feel more socially awkward than usual. I think about the person a lot and want to talk to them ALL THE TIME (sexy brains!). I blush and squeak a lot, especially if there's flirting. I may get physically turned on by normally innocuous touches, and if things go into the bedroom, I usually get aroused much more quickly and intensely than usual.