I’m not attracted to anyone

My personal journey and all my best tips on how to solve the problem

I hear you. I have the same problem, sometimes it goes years without me being attracted to someone. Frustrating, right? Needless to say, I’m still single and I don’t get laid very often. I’m not attracted to anyone, but I am still attractive to other people. Since I can put on the charm (I work in a service profession) most of my dates want to see me again. Despite the fact that I want a relationship, I have to let them down with the phrase “I didn’t feel the spark.”

(Feel free to use that once, because no one can argue with sexual chemistry.)

I’m a sexual person

Before you write me off as asexual let me tell you that I actually love sex. In both my long-term (4 years each) relationships we had plenty of sex. Honestly, it was one of my favorite things about being in a relationship.

If you are asexual, that’s totally OK. Some people are and there are many different reasons. But since you are asking the question “I’m not attracted to anyone” to a stranger, let’s be honest with each other. You do want to be attracted to people, right?

Attraction and its cousin “falling in love,” is some of the sweetest experiences on this earth.  

Sex without attraction sucks

The problem is that without attraction sex is not all that much fun.

I’ve tried many times, as I’m sure you have as well. Only to draw the conclusion that sex without feelings is a bit like eating when you have no taste.

You are left feeling unsatisfied and if possible, even more annoyed with yourself and your problem.

Attraction is such a strong and wonderful pull

I know what attraction feels like. I have experienced deep attraction. Not always reprecipitated, mind you.

I would say that I become deeply attracted to someone every fifth year. If you could tell me your number, I would be curious to know.

But the frequency of you feeling that magic sensual excitement doesn’t matter when it comes to the solutions.

If you want to feel attracted more often, implement all my solutions and see which ride they will take you on. (No pun intended.)

Emotional intimacy

Not feeling attracted to anyone is, as you probably guessed already, a defense mechanism.

You keep yourself safe by keeping other people at an arm-length distance. Being attracted to someone means that you risk getting hurt. This is the root cause of why you are not attracted to anyone. You are avoiding pain.

Don’t be too hard on yourself

Our subconscious runs a lot of our actions. We think we make the decisions, but our subconscious runs the show from below.

Our subconscious main concern is to keep us safe. Our subconscious doesn’t care too much about our happiness.

All your previous programming from interaction with other humans strives to keep you away from emotional pain. At some point, you learned to fear love.

Love hurts

It doesn’t have to be a major trauma. It can also be many small instances. Our reaction to the outer world is unique to us as individuals. Avoiding attraction just happened to become your defense mechanism.

1. Work on making yourself feel safe

You might tell me that you feel safe. That’s fine.

Sometimes we are not even aware of the deeper feelings that run our actions.

Whatever your starting point, you will benefit from creating more safety for yourself. If you are not attracted to anyone, this technic will almost certainly help you.

Working towards feeling safer is not going to hurt you, so you can aswell give it a go.

What takes away your safety?

Ask yourself in what ways you don’t feel safe with your life? Health? Career? Your living situation? Create a hands-on list of tasks you can perform to increase your sense of safety.

You don’t have to move a mountain in one day. Just chip away at your list a little every week.

Small things that make you feel safe

Maybe create a saving account for yourself? Schedule a doctor’s appointment? Or do something as simple as cleaning your home and buying some fresh flowers.

A sense of safety can come in many forms. But the first step is always something tangible. Minimizing the time you spend on toxic relationships is another good way to make yourself feel safer.

Safety is at its core you trusting your ability to take care of yourself, in all areas of life.

Reprograming the subconscious mind

The truth is, you might very well have a safe life.

You can live in a safe city, have wonderful friends and plenty of money in your bank account. You can be healthy, own a beautiful home and still not feel safe. Because our feelings are not always a reflection of reality. We can be preoccupied with worries that are not even real. Maybe your inner monologue is how you take away your safety?

Write down all the ways you are safe

At the end of every day, sit down for around 20 minutes and make a list of 10-15 ways that you are safe.

When you are thinking about these things your thoughts elicit an emotional response in your body and your subconscious will feel safer. You will slowly realize how safe you are and as a result, you will feel safer.

In the end of this process, you will feel safe enough to be attracted to somebody.

But what if I’m not safe?

You might argue that considering global warming and other serious problems you have ground for not feeling safe.

But this is not about creating a perfect existence for yourself, it’s about you trusting that you can deal with the problems that naturally arise in every life. For example, if you get unemployed, you can find a new job. Safety is about trust.

It might feel weird at first, but from my own experience, this is the solution when you ask “I don’t feel attracted to anyone.”

2. Create a deep relationship with yourself

The relationships you have with others are a reflection of the relationship you have with yourself.

It all starts with you. Liberating right?

Are you a great friend to yourself? Do you spend time with yourself and do you really listen to yourself?

Whatever your starting point is, you can always improve the relationship you have with yourself. As you probably already intuitively realize, when you don’t feel attracted to anyone, the solution lies within yourself. You are the key.

End negative self-talk

A negative inner monologue is a way you actively take away your safety. It might even be the very exact thing that keeps you from experiencing attraction.

Think about it, if someone followed you around all day and told you about bad things that could possibly happen or what mistakes you’ve done, or just what a shitty person you are, you wouldn’t feel safe.

Maybe you wouldn’t feel safe enough to become attracted to someone.

Yet, many of us do this destructive behavior to ourselves. I’m myself is guilty of this. I’m my own harshest critic.

Make a shame journal

This will take some introspection but it’s important that you become aware of all the ways you take away your self-esteem. Think about the five main ways you shame yourself in your inner monologue. Try to stop this behavior. Become kinder and more empathic towards yourself.

Treat the relationship with yourself as a real relationship

Spend quality time with yourself. And no, I don’t mean scrolling through social media or catching up on your favorite TV show. (That’s not sexy.)  

Instead, be present with yourself. Journal. Meditate. Go for long walks in the forest. Do all the things you wish your dream lover would do with you.

If you did manage to become attracted to someone. How would you want that relationship to look?

Now, go ahead and create that relationship with yourself. Yes, it takes a bit of work. But the effort will be fruitful, I promise you. Within you, you have a longing for a deep relationship with yourself.

3. Have a sex life with yourself

In this interesting article, many readers stupidly asked how the girl can know she enjoys sex if she is a virgin.

Yeah, people are that narrow-minded. As if you can’t have a sex life with yourself. Reading people’s answers made me realize that there is still a lot of shame surrounding having sex with yourself and exploring sex on your own. It’s like people assume that sex is something that only happens once you have another person around.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

This realization is especially important if you struggle to feel sexual attraction to other people. Once again, it all starts with you.

Your sexuality is something you foremost have with yourself

You can become a sensual being in your own right, without ever involving another person.

First of all, there are fantasies. I strongly encourage you to take your time to daydream about sex and sensual experiences. Come up with different exciting scenarios that you would like. You can also rely on past experiences. Use a character from a movie or even someone you know, let your imagination run wild.

Don’t limit yourself and don’t feel shame. We all have sexuality. It is as natural as breathing.

If you don’t know how to dream, you don’t get to know what you like when it comes to sex. It all starts in your fantasies.

4. Don’t judge yourself

If you are constantly trying to feel something for someone, you might accidentally create the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.

All that pressure can have the reverse effect. Your longing has you locked in a loop. When we desperately want something, our desire acts as a brake.

Take attraction out of the picture

Consider reverse psychology. Tell yourself that you are absolutely not allowed to become attracted to anyone over the next year. This year is only about you focusing on yourself and on the relationship you have with yourself.

This tactic worked great for me. It was great going out in the world and not dreaming about attraction. I did it for 3 months to begin with, but I liked it so much that I extended it to a year.

Not wanting to become attracted to someone helped me relax.

Accept yourself for who you are

It’s the easiest thing to say, but the hardest thing to do. Ironically, the less judgmental you are about your condition, the more likely you will indeed become attracted to someone.

Another thing you can try is to be more vulnerable with the people around you, when you are vulnerable with someone you actually end up feeling closer to them. Read my article How to Appear Vulnerable to a Man, for the full story.

5. Spend time doing nothing

In today’s society life moves very fast. Computers and phones force us to always be accessible. There are constantly new invitations to fun outings, new things to try and new career goals to achieve.

It’s easy to get caught up in the rat race. I think this faced paste society keeps us from experiencing attraction. We are always busy doing. We are always improving ourselves without ever feeling that we are enough just the way we are.

Attraction is about relaxing and experiencing deep feelings and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.

That’s hard for a high-achieving control freak as myself.

We don’t know how to allow this process of attraction to happen, instead we are always looking for distractions.

Try to not be active

To allow yourself to become attracted to anyone you have to learn how to relax on a deeper level. You have to become comfortable with silence and stillness. Take a couple of hours every week and do absolutely nothing. Just doing this simple exercise alone might move mountains.  

6. Find a new passion

Passion is not only about people, to immerse yourself in a new interest is another way to experience that feeling of lust and passion. Attraction is what pulls us in a new direction in all areas of life.

Often, we limit ourselves to this very narrow frame of meeting someone and falling in love. But life can be filled with attraction if you live in accordance with your passions. You can thoroughly enjoy a new city or an art exhibition or a piece of music.

Switch things up

Finding something new you like is also a good way to expand your knowledge about yourself. Maybe you have put yourself in a box?

When you are immersed in doing something new and something you love, you are more open to connecting with other people. Since you are there enjoying a common passion there is none of that stiff dating dynamics.

Stay away from the dating scene

If you have problems with feeling attracted, it can be that dating in itself doesn’t suit you. Maybe you need months to develop feelings for someone?

I’m all too familiar with this need. I think is common among people who don’t feel attracted to anyone. Dating means too much pressure.

So instead, immerse yourself in a new passion.

7. Develop deep friendships

It might suck to not be attracted to anyone when you infect wish that you were. But being single does come with upsides. Maybe you are too focused on judging yourself and not open enough to all the different nuances of human relationships.

New people bring new perspectives

There are people who would greatly appreciate your friendship. Think outside the box and

make friends with someone younger than you, a mentor relationship is often very fulfilling. You can also make friends with someone older than you. Many older people are alone. This life of ours is not always about your needs, considering freely giving of all your time to someone completely new.

Be a nice friend to the friends you have. Work actively towards deepening those relationships. Check out my article The Secrets to Strong friendships.

8. Have sex without the attraction

Yeah, I’m going to go there. Just because it happened to me many times that I was not especially attracted to someone from the beginning, but after having sex with them, my attraction increased.

Ask yourself if this has happened to you?

Maybe you don’t know yet since you have never tried. Time to give it a go. When it comes to not feeling attracted to anyone, all solutions are welcomed.

Sometimes sex is its own form of aphrodisiac.

If sex itself is scary to you, sometimes just getting on the horse will make you realize it’s not as serious as you made it up in your mind to be.

Date without attraction

The same goes for dating. After one or two dates you might want to end it. But if the guy is someone you could see yourself together with, continue seeing him. Just dive head-first into challenging your fears.

Sometimes the tactic works, sometimes it backfires. To increase your chances, check out my article How to fall in love.

But since you are aware of your problem, don’t expect too much from the first couple of dates.

Instead, remind yourself of all the times in your life when your attraction has slowly increased when you have been forced to spend time with someone.

A Final Note

I’m not attracted to anyone is not an easy problem to fix, if it was you would have already fixed it.

I don’t know you, but I can already tell that you are both smart and self-aware. You are the kind of person who wants to grow and evolve. One day you will experience powerful attraction and I hope my tips will help you on your way to getting there.