For most people, romantic attraction and sexual attraction are the same thing.
You meet someone you’re highly attracted to, and you want to be close to them emotionally as well as physically. You want all of them: their mind, their heart, their body.
This all-encompassing attraction is what most allo singles are looking for. Someone who ticks all their boxes.
But not everyone experiences attraction like that.
That’s why the ace community developed the split attraction model.
There are many different types of attraction, and they’re not necessarily linked.
You might feel romantic towards someone, but not want to be sexually involved with them.
You might want to be sexually involved with someone, but not feel romantic towards them.
You might be attracted to someone’s mind, to their aesthetic, or to them as a person, but not necessarily feel romantic or sexual towards them.
The split attraction model helps us tease out the ways in which we find other people attractive, without making assumptions about what we might want to do with them.
But that’s not all it’s good for. It can also help us clarify why we might feel attracted to different genders in different ways.
Someone might be homoromantic and asexual, which means they have romantic feelings towards the same sex but not sexual feelings.
Someone might be aromantic and heterosexual, which means they don’t have romantic feelings for any gender but feel sexual attraction towards the opposite gender.
The split attraction model isn’t just for a-spec or LGBTQ folks. Heteros find it useful, too.
Learn more about the different types of attraction.
Subscribe
Login
0 Comments
Oldest
