What Sexual Attraction Really Feels Like

1. For me it’s a desire to be as close to someone as humanly possible.

2. You look at someone and your brain wants that. Like when you see good looking food and want to taste it, but different, coming from your crotch instead of your stomach. You can imagine yourself doing things, get fantasies. You want to touch it, put your things in it, or you want it to put its things in you, you want to feel its warmth, touch, sensation, you want to smell it, feel it, be inside of it, or you want it inside you.

3. It’s kinda like a switch in my brain that goes from off to on. It starts as a little spark. Sometimes the spark dies, sometimes the spark flickers for a bit and burns for a short time, and sometimes it leads to a raging fire. Blood flow increases in general (not just the crotch area but that is included). My face gets hot. My arms and palms get super sensitive like I want to hug them and more. Suddenly I want to be physically close to the person that started it. It feels animal-like.

4. Honestly sexual attraction to someone you have real feelings for (not just generally having a sexual attraction to them, but when you’re really feeling it and you want someone sexually in that moment or in many moments) is like you just want to be allll up in that person’s face. All up in and on their face. All over it.

It feels like a primal force, like a physical magnetic pull on your eyes and thoughts and hands toward that person. Stronger and different, but not totally dissimilar to when you just have the urge to just grab and SQUISH a little baby, or like a dog that hasn’t seen its owner in weeks and is just like I’m going to lick and stomp on you and jump and wiggle all over you and just GET ALL UP ON YOU however is physically possible.

5. A compulsion to touch them and be touched by them everywhere in every way, sometimes even temporarily overriding normal yuck factors.

6. Intense warmth with shivers and butterflies. That feeling of anticipation, the desire for the bass to drop, the drive to be closer like it’s freezing out and they are a thick fuzzy blanket.

7. It’s like an itch but the satisfaction from scratching it is 20x more satisfying.

8. The first thought that entered my head when I saw my partner’s photos was: “Wow…imagine kissing those lips.” That was not the kind of reaction I usually have and I worried myself I was being crass or something. But it was just an instantaneous reaction.

9. It’s a whole-body request, not just parts. Everyone is different though.

10. It’s definitely different for everyone. I was extremely sheltered as a kid and didn’t know anything about sex, desires, my body, etc. when I was in middle school I remember reading a book and having a weird, strong, kind of burning sensation in my vagina and I had no idea what it was. Looking back I know I was turned on. Now when I get turned on/experience sexual attraction I still get that feeling but I also get butterflies/a tingling sensation in my whole body, especially my stomach. Also whatever is making me feel the sexual attraction tends to also make me feel happier.

11. For me it feels like amazement/awe at someone else’s beauty and persona followed by an intense desire to talk to them, touch them, create intimacy with them and form a relationship. This will be accompanied by pleasurable, feverish fantasies about what you might do with them, sexual or otherwise.

12. Have you ever seen something very soft or fluffy looking and wondered what it would feel like if you touched it?

Or your favorite smell that makes you want to take a deeper breath. Or you look at your favorite meal and already think about how it tastes and that you desire it.

Something like that. I want to be closer to the other person. Touch them, breathe them in. But this desire doesn’t get satisfied by that but grows more intense when you do it.

13. Your brain goes “fuck that’s hot” and then you can’t help but think about it.

14. A desire to want to see that person naked. Thinking about a person’s body long after you’ve seen them. Thinking about what you’d want to do with them.

15. You feel as if you have one goal in life, fuck that one person. You can’t stop thinking about bending over that one person and going to town. You see them at work and imagine going into a closet and banging them relentlessly. You just want to touch them, eat them, and toy with them.

16. I’m very sexually attracted to my partner. I just want to be next to him and on him, preferably naked, all the time.

17. I think it’s different for everyone. For some, it’s an innate curiosity to explore the other person’s body, or just to look at it.

Typically it elicits a physiological response like wetness in a woman’s vagina, or an erection. It could manifest itself in other ways though, like goosebumps or butterflies, or sweaty palms.

18. For me, it’s when you see someone and you just really want to see more of their bare skin. Then as you see more of it you just want to touch it. And once you can touch you just want to get closer and closer until you’re just the same body.

Sometimes the need is activated by just the sight of an attractive person. Other times it’s something they do or the way they smell. Once the attraction is triggered though, there’s no longer any logic to it, just want.

19. Imagine something amazing that you would do almost anything to acquire, and every time you see it dopamine rushes through your entire being. A simple and animalistic desire that impairs your cognitive function until you get release, or you gradually stop thinking about it.

20. A tingly feeling not only in the bits and pieces but the thought that I would like to make their bits and pieces feel what I’m feeling.

21. It is a feeling of exciting arousal. Not only sexual arousal but like that growing anticipation feeling of excitement when you eat your favorite lollipop or learn about Taylor Swift’s new music.

22. You ever been really thirsty? Like hot summer day, working out in the sun for several hours, just in the zone, and then you stop to take a break and realize it’s been four hours since you last had a drink? It can be sort of like that.

23. I guess, the best way I could describe it is like when you see a really tasty looking burger and you have this uncontrollable urge to want to eat that burger.

24. Well, some say it depends on gender and age. If you’re a guy people say that shallow things like physical features and appearance make us want to have sex. For gals people say that it is partly physical features but more so the quality of the person.

I have gotten to the point where physical attraction is not enough for me to have a sexual attraction. In my teens and twenties I felt that it was. But over the past 15 years of failed relationships I have learned that I need more from a person than sex.

Anyways, beauty fades but friendship lasts forever.

25. Sudden strong heartbeat. Heat in your face, limbs or genitals and tunnel vision on theirs. Tingling, newfound energy, drive, all that stuff. The NEED to reach out and touch every part of them. Things that seem disgusting most days sound fun like butts or feet. You’ll put your face anywhere to give that person some pleasure. The desire to see them experience pleasure more than you. I don’t even need to orgasm after a long intense session with my GF. Just makes me happy her world got turned upside down and inside out. That look like they just woke up from the best dream.

26. I feel it in my chest, a heavy feeling. My breathing changes a little, it slows and becomes deeper. It’s hard to describe because it’s so automatic and visceral. It’s like a switch is flipped.

27. I don’t know if this is helpful but on top of what everyone else is saying about the more obvious ways it manifests, sometimes I don’t realize I’m feeling it. I just feel interested, I want to talk to them, I’m really interested in their opinions and thoughts and also being around them feels good. Sometimes it’s not until I start touching someone that I realize how much I want them. Like you just go in for a hug and realize it feels realllly good and you want more and just escalates from there.

28. You get a strong burning sensation. You also feel butterflies tingling in your stomach.

29. It’s like wanting something so bad it hurts but you love it. You feel like you’re on laughing gas when you see them, they’re like a magnet and you feel so drawn to them like it takes so much strength to keep yourself from touching them or being close to them. You feel your heart beating like you were just startled or like when you almost slip and fall whenever you see them. It feels like you’re climbing a mountain and you can’t quite reach the top but you’re almost there. You feel like you’re riding a wave, or sky diving. It’s literally like an addiction. Every single voice in your head is saying “do it” over and over again.

30. For me, it’s a want, almost feels like a need. A desire to be closer, to feel them. Their breath, their warmth, their body. A want to please them, and feel it in return. It feels almost like a sort of high. Everything else but them feels like it fades away. Eyes dilate, and their details become sharper. It feels warm and exhilarating. If you’re close and both feel it there’s a sort of phantom scent. It’s barely there, and hard to describe, but it’s irresistible. It’s the pheromones in the air. As I said before though, everyone is different. This is my experience, and specifically with the love of my life. Some people don’t feel sexual attraction, some feel it only with one they love.