(Author's Note: I'm demisexual, so this is almost certain to be the longest of these. I'm sorry or you're welcome in advance.)
So let's say you meet someone. They seem nice, you want to hang out with them, they share your interests, but they're a friend, not anything else. And then one day you look at them and realize you feel . . . something else. Like, were they always this hot? When did this feeling happen? But you can't deny it, you feel an attraction to them that you've never felt for them before. You got to know them to just a certain degree and then BAM!, they got sexy.
Welcome to the generalized experience of a demisexual. The way it's commonly stated is that demisexuals don't feel "primary" sexual attraction; that is, the surface level things and even minor conversations with people don't do anything for a demisexual in terms of seeing someone as sexy. It's rather when you get to know someone, to form a specific, special bond with them, that all of a sudden, out of nowhere, here comes the sexual attraction. Now that special bond doesn't need to take years, or months, or even weeks. Sometimes it could be days, in fact. But still, there is no initial sexual attraction. To anyone. It takes time. And every demisexual's special bond is specific to them.
Since I'm demisexual (and demiromantic), I'll give a little bit of a me story: the first date my now-wife and I went on was to X-Men, the original movie way back in 2000. And at one point, they show Jubilee in the classroom, in a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo. The wife recognized and quietly said "oh, it's Jubilee!" and I knew at that point that she was awesome. I felt that I loved her truly in a romantic sense after she kissed me for the first time (Oh, hello demiromanticism). And I felt that she was actually sexy . . . like 5 months after that. Took me about half a year to think she was sexy, as in "my bits have an interest in interacting with your bits" type sexy. Before that, she was just awesome. Like, yes, we were "dating", but it felt more like hanging out with a friend. Until it didn't. Platonic, then romantic, and finally sexual attraction was the path I took. And she's the only person I've ever felt that romantic feeling or that sexual attraction for. And I knew she was a friend and super awesome on "date" one. I thought it was fairy tale love (and we will get back to this in a second).
Some demisexuals have the bond happen with one person, some with more than one. The foundation stays mostly the same for each though, regardless of time you know the person and what the bond for you is. Also, because it can feel like meeting "the one" for some demis (either demiromantic or demisexual), we can tend to just pass it off as "normal". Because we assume that the fairy tale "the one" feeling is normal, that it's the way this all works. Find a person, get to know them, eventually feel certain feelings for them, and there we go, end of the story, happy endings for all. But that's not what it really is, and the myth of "the one" doesn't exist, we just found someone that eventually sets of the right trigger, and it's just as likely that we'd never find that than that we do.
Demisexuals commonly get told that "that's what normal people do", so I want to be clear: there is no initial sexual attraction. It's not like when someone thinks "they're sexy, I should date them, get to know them, then sleep with them". It's starts with thinking a person is nice, or having a crush on them but not feeling the "sexy" feelings, just the idealizing feelings. And then it's "I got to know them, I dated them, all of a sudden I see them as sexy where I didn't feel that before, maybe sleep with them is an option?". If that sounds at all like you, if any of these blogs have felt like they speak to who you are, then look into these terms.
