It's Pride Month, y'all, and I'm going to focus on topics related to sex and sexuality this month.

I get lots of questions from folks about their sexuality at my practice and from listeners just like you.

One of the more common areas relates to asexuality and pansexuality. So that's what we're going to talk about today.

Welcome back to Savvy Psychologist. I'm your host Dr. Monica Johnson. Every week on

this show I'll help you face life challenges with evidence-based approaches

a sympathetic ear and zero judgment. Let's start by giving a working definition

for both asexuality and pansexuality.

Asexuality exists on a broad spectrum.

Some asexual individuals might experience little to no sexual attraction throughout their lives. While others might feel sexual attraction under specific circumstances, which is often referred to as being gray asexual or gray a.

Another term within the spectrum is demissexual, where individuals only experience sexual attraction

after forming a strong emotional connection.

Romantic orientation is a crucial aspect of many asexual individuals identities.

While they may not experience sexual attraction,

many aces do experience romantic attraction.

Romantic orientations can be as diverse as sexual orientations

and include heteromantic, so attraction to a different gender, homomantic,

attraction to the same gender,

by romantic attraction to two or more genders,

and pan-romantic, attraction to people regardless of gender.

And there's also a romantic where you experience little or no romantic attraction.

For example, an asexual person might identify

as bi-romantic, meaning they could be romantically attracted to people of more than one gender, but not feel sexually attracted towards them.

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