The Science Behind Symbiosexuality, a Lesser-Known Form of Attraction
· Vice
Most people, when they find someone attractive, are drawn to a person. A face, a body, a laugh, a brain. Symbiosexuality operates on a completely different frequency—an attraction not to individuals, but to the energy two people create together.
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The concept received formal academic attention in a 2024 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, led by researcher Sally W. Johnston, then a faculty member at Seattle University. Johnston defines symbiosexuality as “an attraction to the energy, multidimensionality, and power shared between people in relationships.” The study pulled data from 373 participants about their sexual and gender identities. Of those, 145 reported having experienced attraction to the relational dynamic of an established couple—not either person individually, but what they produce as a unit.
That distinction is important here. Bisexuality and pansexuality involve attraction to people of various genders. Symbiosexuality has nothing to do with gender at all. What draws symbiosexual people in is the synergy, the history, the specific texture of how two people interact with each other. One study participant described it this way: “The combination of them is just—it’s a transcendent thing…it is definitely not about the sum of the parts but something greater than that. There’s something synergistic.”
Symbiosexuality May Explain Why Some People Are Drawn to the Energy Between Couples
Johnston’s research found symbiosexual attraction across a wide range of ages, racial backgrounds, and gender identities. About 90% of the participants who experienced it identified as queer. Many also identified as polyamorous, though the polyamorous community has its own complicated relationship with this attraction.
Johnston’s research found that symbiosexuals often face stigma within polyamorous spaces, where pursuing established couples is frequently discouraged and labeled ethically suspect. The polyamory community has been known to discourage, criticize, and treat as an “out-group” those who come with curiosity or seek advice about sex and relationships with established couples, leaving symbiosexual people without community in the places they’d most expect to find it.
A follow-up study published in 2025 dug further into the lived experience, with participants describing some symbiosexual encounters in almost spiritual terms. The title alone—”My First Threesome with Them Was a Religious Experience”—signals how charged this attraction can be for the people who experience it.
Johnston has said she hopes her research reduces stigma in both monogamous and non-monogamous communities. The broader argument is that human attraction has always been more complicated than the one-to-one model most people are handed as a default. Symbiosexuality is one of the more compelling pieces of evidence for that.
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