No Love, No Sex

Demisexuals don’t experience sexual attraction until they’ve made an emotional connection. Kimberley D’Mello explores the world of this overthinking tribe

- Kimberley D’Mello

Thirty-year-old Payal* feels like a misfit in her social group. “My friends feel it’s normal to be sexually attracted to a person they haven’t known that well. But, for me, it is different,” she says, adding, “I feel it’s important to know the person very well. I have to form an emotional connect with him before I can even think of getting intimate.”

To many people, someone like Payal would come across as picky or even prudish, but sexologists might see her as yet another member of a growing new tribe that overthinks romance and sex.

Demisexuals can keep sex on hold indefinitely till they know the person in and out. “Earlier, it was believed that sex could be the climax of love.in a relationship, but love need not be the climax of sex. Clearly today, this pattern has metamorphosed,” says Dr Prakash Kothari, a practising sexologist, consultant in sexual medicine, and author of Orgasm: New Dimension.