Pride Month is in June and that means you are likely to see a lot of rainbow flags around, Bustle reported. You may spot one you are not that familiar with as the LGBT+ community comes together to celebrate and to recognize how far the community has come, along with reflection on how far the community still has to go.

You may see the purple, gray and black colors fluttering as you attend a specific event, get some new Pride-inspired gear; or, for some, choose to use the month as a springboard for coming out.

The flag you may spot is one aspect of LGBT+ choices and lifestyle's is not all that common.

It is termed demisexuality. To help bring some awareness to it, I will explain through personal experience on the asexual spectrum, what it is and how so few demisexuals differ from other pride categories.

Pride and demisexuality: What is it?

YourTango explains that there is nothing wrong with people who are demisexual. But the chances are high that you never met a demisexual person as they make up around one percent of the asexual population. Unlike the main four letters in the LGBT+ acronym, demisexuality is not very widely known. In basic terms, it's a point on the asexual spectrum wherein a person does not experience sexual attraction until and unless they develop a strong emotional bond with someone.

This does not, of course, identify exactly who that person may become attracted to after an emotional bond is developed; as such. For demisexuals, we may choose to break it down a little further. A person can be demisexual and be attracted to the opposite gender, the same gender, two genders, any gender, or a myriad of other combinations.

Now, does developing an emotional bond mean that a demisexual person will definitely become attracted to another? No, in the same way that allosexuals (those who do experience primary sexual attraction) are not attracted to everyone that they run into. Each person, regardless of anything, experiences attraction in their own way.

This also doesn't mean that a demisexual person absolutely will not engage in sexual acts without the emotional bond; it just means that, if they do, they will be doing so despite lacking that sexual attraction to their partner. Reasons for this vary depending on the person. There are many resources for people to explore it more through the Demisexuality Resource Center.

Personal experience, the early part

Before I say anything, I will state that my experience is not that of every demisexual person. It is simply my own journey into understanding myself better. I'm sharing it in order to perhaps explain what it's like for those who may not be familiar with it.

I think I was eleven or so when I noticed the first person I ever said out loud that I had some sort of crush on.

It was Jonathan Taylor Thomas of "Home Improvement," and I even had a poster of him in my bedroom. I was still quite a naive eleven-year-old, though, so this 'crush' mainly consisted of the poster and me reading random teenage magazines he was featured in, nothing more. Looking back on it, I can see that the things that made me like him were mainly the fact that his birthday was the day before mine, and that he was only a year or so older than I was. He was also funny on the show, so that helped, but it was definitely very innocent.

You wouldn't think that my mention of JTT mattered much, but it does. You see, even when I grew into my later teenage years and grew out of that naivete, I still never had that attraction to anyone, at all.

While others in my school were dating and having their first experiences between the sheets, I wasn't. I simply did not feel that attraction that would make me want to do such things.

It wasn't because I didn't find people aesthetically pleasing, it was just never that supposedly instinctual, want-to-get-down kind of feeling. To be honest, it was alienating, though I never said so. I couldn't relate when friends would look at someone they didn't know and make a raunchy comment, or when they would talk about things they'd read about or seen that interested them. To not seem any stranger than I already was, I would fake it. I mimicked things they said, and feigned attraction to people I knew would never be into me so that I appeared "normal."

Even in my earliest twenties, I was not your typical "I gotta find someone to date" person, and was pretty alright with being alone.

That changed just before my twenty-first birthday when I went on my first date with the man I would marry.

My experience and the revelation

I won't go into the sordid details, but I will say that I had never felt before what I felt for him. We had been friends for two and a half years, and he had expressed interest previous to that date, but it hadn't worked out. After spending that small amount of time with him, though, I knew something was different about him compared to anyone else I'd ever met. We would eventually go on to be married, exactly four and a half years after that date. I only had eyes for him, and still had never been attracted to anyone else in that way. I thought it was just me.

I didn't know there was a word for it.

In approximately 2015 or 2016, I was scrolling through YouTube and landed on a video by a content maker who has since become a favorite of mine. In it, he explained his own experience, which was eerily similar to my own. For the first time, I saw someone I could relate to; someone who hadn't felt that supposed spark and felt like there was something a bit off about themselves because of it. He used a word I had never heard of: demisexual. His explanation of what it meant made so much sense to me that I immediately turned to my husband and told him to watch the video. I almost cried with relief when I asked, "Does that sound like me?" and he immediately replied, "Yes." I've identified as demi ever since.

The downside

Because it is a fairly new term, and because it does not apply to an exceptionally large percentage of people, demisexuality usually requires explanation. Even after that, there are some who choose to say that it isn't a legitimate sexual orientation identifier, or, in some cases, that it's just a person's way of trying to make themselves feel 'special.'

This process, known as erasure or invalidation, can be heartbreaking. It can also be difficult for demis to date, owing to the fact that many will not want to do so until after an emotional bond is formed. (In contrast, it can be said that allosexuals use dating as a means to create that emotional bond in the first place.)

This Pride Month, whether in the LGBT+ community or simply an ally, millions will come together in celebration. Among them, it can be assumed, will be some demisexual individuals, with many other stories to tell.
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