Romantic Love, Attraction, and Asexuality

Can you fall deeply in love with someone without any sexual attraction? Philosophy says yes — and the answer changes everything we think we know about desire.

Most of us were taught, implicitly or explicitly, that romantic love and sexual attraction are inseparable. This episode gently, rigorously dismantles that assumption, and in doing so, opens up a richer, more honest account of what love actually is.

In this episode of Good Is In The Details, Gwendolyn Dolske sits down with two of the world's leading philosophers of love and intimacy: Luke Brunning, author of Romantic Agency (Polity Press, 2024) and co-director of the Centre for Love, Sex, and Relationships at the University of Leeds, and Natasha McKeever, his co-author and fellow philosopher at Leeds, with whom he also co-wrote the new textbook The Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Relationships: An Introduction (Polity, 2025). Together they co-authored the landmark peer-reviewed article "Asexuality" in the Journal of Applied Philosophy — and that article is the springboard for one of the most nuanced conversations this show has ever had.

What we explore in this episode:

• What asexuality actually is — and what it definitively is not (it is clearly different from celibacy or disorders of desire, and the philosophy makes that case rigorously)
• Why sexual attraction and sexual desire are not the same thing and why that distinction matters enormously for how we understand ourselves and our relationships
• Asexuality as a spectrum: what gray-sexuality and demisexuality tell us about the full range of human attraction
• How asexual experiences are diverse; some asexual people have sex; some have romantic relationships in the complete absence of sex and what that reveals about what romantic love actually requires
• The myths and social erasures that harm asexual people and why overlooking asexuality in philosophy and wider society produces incomplete and inaccurate accounts of romantic life for everyone, not just asexual people
• What asexuality teaches us about the nature of attraction, desire, and intimacy more broadly — including for people who don't identify as asexual at all.
• Whether romantic relationships require sexual attraction and the philosophical arguments for why they don't.

This is an episode for anyone who has ever questioned the standard scripts around love and desire, anyone who identifies anywhere on the asexual spectrum, anyone who loves someone who does, or anyone who simply wants to think more carefully and compassionately about what it means to be in relationship with another person.

Guests:

• Luke Brunning — Philosopher, University of Leeds. Author of Romantic Agency (Polity, 2024). Co-director, Centre for Love, Sex, and Relationships. lukebrunning.com
• Natasha McKeever — Philosopher, University of Leeds. Co-author, The Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Relationships (Polity, 2025). Co-director, Centre for Love, Sex, and Relationships.

Learn more about Dr. Brunning's and Dr. Mckeever's work: https://www.ethicaldatingonline.com/team

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