7 types of attraction most people don’t know exist

So, I'm asexual, and I've been kind of reflecting on what attraction means to me and to my partner and in general to the world. And I realized that it's very different. I think most people see the world in two types of attractions, sexual attraction and romantic attraction. And some people don't even see that difference.

You either want to date someone or you want to sleep with them. Again, for most people, it's even combined. And I think everything goes into one of those boxes that is not friendship. And for most of my life, I didn't realize why my feelings are not fitting into each of these boxes.

Or generally, there's so many complex relationships that I have that I couldn't just justify putting in one of those boxes. I would meet someone and feel this intense pull towards them and I wanted to be near them. I wanted to understand their brain and stuff like that. And I don't know if that was romantic.

It definitely wasn't sexual. So, what was it? So, then I started reading on attraction and the type of attraction that we can have to other people. And they are a lot.

There are a lot of types of attraction that you can have towards a person and it can even be towards a friend. So, let's go over it. The first one and probably the most common when you think about attraction is sexual attraction. It's desire for sexual contact or like sexual intimacy with another person.

And I think our culture is treating it as the main type, but it is just one type of attraction that we can feel. And I think when you realize that, everything gets simpler and you start understanding why you start having different emotions, different butterflies, different desires towards different kind of people. The type two is romantic attraction. This is again something that a lot of people know about, but a lot of people also mix it up with sexual attraction, especially straight people.

This is the desire to be in a romantic relationship with someone. So, dates, hand-holding, the butterflies, everything like that. It's kind of the I want to build a life with this person feeling. And I feel like some people have it more than others.

And some people have it at younger ages. Some people have it at older ages. It's probably less common than sexual attraction for most people. It's probably the most common for asexual people, though.

The third type of attraction that I think is less talked about, but we have this in our biology, and it actually blew my mind when I thought about it and learned about it first, aesthetic attraction. Aesthetic attraction is appreciating someone's appearance or the way they carry themselves or style, the way you would appreciate a sunset or a beautiful tree, a beautiful flower. You look at them and you think they are beautiful. They are so stylish.

They are so I really love the way their beauty is showing up in their life. But, it doesn't come with a desire to do anything about it. No for a relationship, no desire for sexual contact. Just that person is gorgeous and I enjoy looking at them.

I think everyone experiences this and a lot of people do not distinguish this from the other types of attraction that I was talking about first. It's like liking a celebrity, but you don't necessarily want to be in a relationship with a celebrity. For me, it's Natalie Portman. I think she's absolutely gorgeous.

Would I want to be in a relationship with her? I have no idea because I don't know her. But, can I look at her in a lot of movies and not get bored? Yes, she's pretty.

And the way she thinks is also very pretty. For me, as an asexual person, honestly, aesthetic attraction is the one that I mostly experience the most in my life. I usually look at someone or look at someone's entire personality or someone's being that is visual and I say, "Oh my god, it's such a pleasure to look at this person." It's like literally like looking at a sunset.

I can think someone is the most beautiful person I've ever seen. It's just that I don't feel the need or the motivation to do anything and act on it. I don't think that's weird. I think that's just aesthetic attraction.

And the moment you realize that they're different and it's different from romantic attraction or sexual attraction, that moment you will I think a lot of your life will become easier because you realize that you do not need to act on those feelings necessarily. And I think once you actually start realizing it in your life, the experience will make so much more sense. It It's Yeah, it's cool. The fourth type is the sensual or sensory attraction.

And this is different from sexual attraction because it's about physical closeness that is not sexual. Wanting to hug someone. You can feel this towards a friend, too. Wanting to hold their hand.

And again, you can feel some of this with friends, too. You want to hug someone. You wanting to play with their hair. Wanting to I don't know, help them out when they're in struggling and you want to comfort them.

Wanting to hold someone's hand, even if it's not necessarily a romantic thing. You just want that like closeness and comfortableness without wanting something sexual. Wanting to be physically close to them not necessarily in a sexual way. I think this one confuses people the most in relationships.

And I feel like this is a big reasons why a lot of fights are happening when it comes to closeness. And I can tell you from when I sexual perspective that I can really understand this type of attraction, but a lot of people cannot. And but it's real. It's been researched as something that is real.

And everyone experiences it, no matter if you're a sexual or not. I think a lot of people think that physical closeness is either romantic or sexual, but it can just be you wanting them hug someone without you wanting to get in bed with them or you wanting to spend your life with them, right? And in most relationships, I think this kind of attraction, it's huge. In my relationship, it's one of the biggest.

I love physical closeness, but I do not think it's sexual at all. Having the word sensory attraction just makes everything better and puts it into perspective. Okay, the fifth type, and I think this one, intellectual attraction. The desire to engage with someone's mind.

When you meet someone and you're fascinated, completely fascinated by the way they speak, the way they think, the way they rationalize things, the way they solve problems, you want to talk with them for hours. You want to pick apart their ideas. You want to share ideas with them. Like this kind of curiosity about someone's mind.

It's not because you want to date them, it's because you are genuinely curious about their mind. And I personally experienced this constantly. And I also think this is definitely not called cheating, in my opinion. Of course, a lot of people have different opinions, but I think this is just curiosity.

And it's the intellectual curiosity showing up in attraction because now it's towards another person. And I think this is one of the most intense attraction sometimes because a person's mind is so complex. And again, it does not need to be a romantic relationship. And for me, this was hard to understand.

Like usually, for example, I had this kind of insane intellectual attraction to a guy. He was in a very weird situation. He was kind of in prison. I'm not going to go into the context of that, but his brain was absolutely insane.

And the experiences that he's been through are in that moment were insane. And I just I was so curious. I was always talking to that person. I was always sending letters to that person.

And I thought I needed to be in a relationship with that person. So we started being in a relationship, but then we realized, wait, this is not what we want. What we want is to be mentally connected. We want to just always have each other and be able to push off ideas of each other.

And after I had that realization, everything changed in my life because now I have so many thought partners that I genuinely love. Like I love their mind. >> >> But it's not like I want to be in a relationship with them, in a romantic relationship with them. It feels like attraction.

It is attraction, but it's not romantic or sexual attraction. I think it it's cool. It's cool. And I think a lot of people experience this, but very little people name this as it is.

First of all, a lot of crushes come from your brain. You're kind of in love with your own brain, but in many ways, you're usually in love with someone else's way of thinking or feeling or carrying themselves. And although that might be fully imaginary, it's not actual attraction. It's kind of like mental attraction, right?

Um or at least for women. I feel like women would relate to this a lot. The sixth type is platonic attraction. And I think a lot of people have friend crushes.

Like I had so many friend crushes in my life. You meet someone and you desperately want to be their friend. This is not romantic. It doesn't have to be romantic.

You don't need to be their partner. You just want to be their friend. But you do feel this intense push to be their friend. You think about them, you think of how to talk to them.

It's not necessarily like butterflies, but you're feeling some sort of little bit of anxiety when you're going to talk to them, especially if you're not close, or like if you actually really admire that person. Everyone has this, but very little people actually talk about this type of attraction. And again, it's not romantic or sexual. And then I came across this attraction called alterous attraction, and I think this is kind of at the age of platonic and romantic.

It's the desire for emotional closeness that doesn't fit into platonic and romantic. It's kind of the feeling of I want to be close with this person, not in a way that is friendship-like. I want to be closer than that, but I don't want to date them or be in a relationship with them. I think this kind of feeling kind of makes you question your identity.

I feel like a lot of people end up having this with their best friends, and in that case, you don't question your identity. Like, a lot of people find their soulmates through this, and it's not necessarily a romantic soulmate. It's a friendship soulmate or like something else, but if it's doesn't if the person doesn't become your best friend, it can be confusing, very confusing. It's like, do I have a crush on this person?

No. Then what do I have? What do I want? What do you want?

If you ever felt this, then you probably experienced alterous attraction. It doesn't have to be romantic, it doesn't have to be that deep, but I think it's one of the most beautiful types of attraction because you actually met your person when you're doing that. And it doesn't have to be a romantic partner. Your person does not need to be your romantic partner.

Your person can be in your life forever, and you don't need to get married to them to make that happen. It can just exist in the space in between, and that's still valid, and that's still beautiful. I know most of my viewers are not asexual, but I feel like looking at life through these types of attraction, different types of attraction, makes you way more self-aware of how you feel towards other people. And I think this is one of the most underexplored areas when you're trying to become more self-aware and to understand your human experience.

Human experience comes with a lot of different ways to interact with people, a lot of different emotions >> towards people. And if we just classify them into friendship, relationship, or sexual attraction, then and not even that, maybe just friendship and romantic/sexual, then you are taking away from a lot of life's meaning and a lot of relationships meaning. It changes basically everything. It It literally explains why you're confused in a lot of different situations because we just haven't defined a concept or not generally popularized the concept of having different types of attraction towards different people.

Why are you drawn to people that you don't date? Why some relationships feel more intense than others, but you're still friends? We are humans. We are complex and multi-layered, and a lot of relationships will be that because you're taking two humans that are complex and multi-layered and trying to chemically put them together because even a friendship is a chemical reaction.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you learned something from it. I hope actually that you're going to start to notice these attractions in your life and seeing kind of defining which one of them you are in. And if you don't find yourself in any of the categories, great.

Make another word for it. Like it doesn't have to be that deep. Anything that you call a relationship can be in a relationship, just not putting this crazy label on it of romantic, sexual, or friendship will be actually very beneficial for your relationship. If you enjoyed this video, then I'm sure you're going to like this one, too.

Love you guys. Have the best day of your life. Kisses. Bye-bye.