What Does Adult Love Feel Like????

Heeeeyyy what up it's yo boy; young adult who can't tell if their emotions are deadened by depression or not.

Anyways.

Soo through the years I've flirted with the term gray-romantic to describe myself on and off, generally don't find it's a very useful distinction in common life but it's a decent descriptor in some contexts. Basically, I get romantic feels really rarely compared to most people, as far as I can tell. As a teen it was mostly a not many fish in the sea thing, I didn't get a crush until I was 15 and met other queers on the internet, and discovered that I'm definitely lesbian, and what I thought previously were crushes were more accurately just me being scared of some boys in a weird way.

But I did have a few high school crushes and those were... very teen hormonal. I got obsessive, really butterfly-ish around them and just had a really high thrill whenever chatting with them, like it was noticeably more fun and intense in emotion to talk with them compared to anyone else.
Aaaaand.. I haven't really had that feeling since junior year of high school. I initially blamed it on depression, my worst episodes were in my last year of high school through senior year of college, and was also a time I almost completely failed to make close friendships so socializing just wasn't a thing.

Buuut now it's been two and a half years since I started antidepressants (and 6 months since i stopped, lol) and though I've casually dated in this time I just haven't been convinced that I'm not just having casual dating with a normal friend w/benefits like in the past out of convenience of labels? It doesn't feel much if any different from friends with benefits, tho the poly aspect definitely helps with that cause I don't feel any.. personal responsibility of commitment as much when we've all got separate partners too?? Heck when I moved countries there was no official break up with my ex girlfriend, I just sorta revealed that I had to move countries and we hung out until I had to leave and now just text every once in a while. (which was possibly shitty of me and i'm gonna apologize for them for sorta.. announced ghosting without much emotional labor put into it cause i have issues and i'm bad at this in other ways)

So just sorta... I'm curious how other people have experiences crushes/love after teenagerdom leaves, and how it usually differs from friendship other than the physical aspect, cause I'm just.. trying to figure out whether I'm just being unlucky or if something's still breaking in my mental health here. I definitely want a closer date-y relationship in my life right now I just.. haven't felt it with anyone around me in a long time

i mean it probably doesn't help that i've been moving every like 1-2 years tbh but idk

 

Romantic love for me is very distinct yet seemingly impossible to word. There is a degree to it. It is deep and all encompassing. However, the excitement levels of that romantic love vary. In the case of my boyfriend who is capable of reciprocating the feeling in a romantic sense the feelings have simmered down. They're still intense and I still count him above all others for the most part. But it's not like constant dokidoki shiteru. Despite not being that constantly though I do need him around. Life is incomplete without him. Lesser. Inferior. Unlivable. It's like having a person who is part of myself.

And then there is the case where the love is not reciprocated romantically but where I am still loved greatly and the sex aspects of things are still involved and the person in question is fine with my romantically loving them. This is a very different case. It's kind of like being stuck in a constant state of endless pining. It's very intensely passionate and often far more dramatically so than with my boyfriend. Similar to when we were first starting to date, perhaps, my boyfriend and I. It's something I can write poems about. Hundreds of poems. My heart races, I'm on cloud nine, there is nothing solid about the world, it is all light and fluffy and fuwafuwa. And, again, I feel as though I need this person around. As though life is only half of what it is without them. I am a complete person, yes, but it doesn't feel like it. This person is vital. Friends are optional. This person is not.

Friendship and this are very tightly linked but there are two big distinctions for me. One, I will not kiss friends. Friends are not for kissing. I might want to fuck a friend and might be willing to do it, but I am deeply unwilling to kiss a friend. That is an act exclusive to those I am romantically in love with. It's a barrier I need to keep up to keep boundaries in place that I am comfortable with. Second, there is always an inherent imbalance in my trust levels. If I've fallen in love then chances are you've reached the current highest tier of my trusting you. Friends are never permitted into this tier. My relationships in general tend to be heavily tiered by trust levels. I can't date without already being friends though. Not because I'm demisexual by any means or something like it, but because I simply can't trust someone to be near me in that capacity unless they're already a friend. So things like hook ups and the like hold no appeal for me. Not because of a fact of my sexuality, but because I simply don't trust easily. I'm also in general one of those sorts that very much realizes that they've fallen in love or have been in a relationship by accident a few months into something, too. There's a naturalness to the slide into the romantic. It's not easily noticeable. It simply occurs and a while later I have an 'Oh, so that is what it is,' moment.

 

I strongly distinguish between having a crush and being in love. A crush is chemistry. It’s very immediate and sometimes desperate and is probably the leading cause of stupid grinning.

Crushes can be treated with propranolol. No really. Propranolol is a beta blocker, and the beta receptors it’s blocking are adrenaline receptors. It treats physical symptoms of anxiety, which prevents my body from convincing my brain to panic if I’m especially stressed. (It also prevents melatonin secretion, which is a useful thing to have when you’re an insomniac who needs circadian assistance.) If I have a reason to take propranolol before meeting up with someone I have a crush on, they’ll suddenly look like a normal human being instead of improbably perfect? No elevated pulse, no butterflies, no stupid grinning. I guess maybe crushes require an adrenaline response.

Love isn’t a crush. It isn’t treated with propranolol. It’s having another person at the center of your life with you. It doesn’t just happen and stay happening by itself, it requires ongoing upkeep from both sides. It’s a feeling like you can share anything and trust them, like there’s not even a question about that. You don’t necessarily go ahead and share literally everything and you don’t have to, but it feels like you could. You want to experience life with them. Things that seemed silly may now seem full of promise, like you’re in on some secret about how dumb couples activities can be meaningful. It’s because you’re doing it with them. It’s magical, and the brand of magic is the most beautifully mundane thing in the world. Everything seems full of depth and potential as long as you do it together. Even the pain of being apart feels good and right in a way, because you have the best reason in the world to feel that way.

General you, of course. My personal experience.

 

I say just avoid it in general. You don’t need it, you’re better off without it.

 

I can't speak to whether any particular person is better off without it, but I'm ace and some undefined level of aro. My life is not more or less worthwhile or fulfilling depending upon whether I'm currently in love. It's just different.

 

It sounds like you may be wanting something steadier, if I'm reading this right. Seek ye out the person who listens when you speak and even remembers what you said, who spends not their money on frivolous bullshit on payday, and who argues not with you doing your own stuff on your free time.

Kidding. But thinking about it, that's kind of how I determined the difference, eventually, between what was friendship, what was a fun casual relationship, and what was love. I looked into the future are saw I didn't want to be living with my friends in 10 years; we weren't close enough, it wasn't fulfilling enough. I couldn't imagine myself being happy still sitting in various stages of disarray on our own computers in a perpetual crash like everyone did as casual friends. I couldn't imagine keeping up the guarded, not-too-personal speech as my daily living forever.

When I imagined keeping my more casual relationships longer, I saw, again, a future I didn't want to maintain. With my wife I saw a changing future, always growing closer together, the ability to be totally myself, someone to improve off of. I could imagine maintaining my relationship with her forever and I imagined that with our relative good temperaments we would set up a good household and I wouldn't be stuck being the only person who cleans, ever, and the only person who cares that much.

The most significant difference between a crush and love for me was the focus on helping. I wanted to have a crush, to be near them and soak up their presence. Love was and is a focused desire to do better, and be better, and help more. Lesser degrees of this were always in my other relationships; I really wanted to help anyone I was in a long term relationship with and I always wanted to do something for the people I had crushes on, but there was usually an element of impressing them, preforming, of showing off how great and desirable I am and why they should pick me. Love is about her. I would pummel the bitch who said that diminishing, self-sacrificing shit to me five years ago but here I am I guess I thought I understood the self-sacrificing aspect of love before but holy shit do I now. It's not even a big deal in the middle of it. There's next to nothing I could give up that wouldn't be worse having a safe, solid, supportive home base. Food, shelter.

If you need a lot of help and don't have the stable basis/enough resources to give from, yeah, that would be hard. You can't give from a reservoir you don't have. Which is not to say you have nothing to give. You absolutely do, a lot. But holy shit if you need to keep what you have because you're struggling don't give it away, out on your own mask before assisting others. And yes the person who you want to help needs to be capable of helping too instead of an energy sucker. If you suspect being in love, be on alert for intense focus on a person's needs, self-searching, feeling tired of all the bullshit, comfortable understanding, a strange, new desire to stop making so much fuss, and difficulty remembering whether you did the thing or they did.

 

And if it doesn't appeal to you then sparkling Bridghid it doesn't appeal to you. To each their own. Powerful and mighty warriors throughout the ages were uninterested in long-term relationships or not good at keeping them and it was fine.

 

I was trying to find a pinkie pie shrug for that reply that wasn't just massive but I didn't. I wasn't going to say anything but tbh I'm weirdly dissapointed now. Would it be too 4chan of us to have the pinkie pie shrug reaction

 

I have more thoughts on this, but for now, I will preface it by saying that the first time I was in love I didn't know it until after she broke up with me. I'd suspected that I might be, but I wasn't sure. Afterwards, it came into focus. I'm no longer in love with her, but I definitely was, so I'm going to come back to this thread with a more complete answer.

Oh, side note, the origin of the confusion for me is part "nobody really understands it anyway, we just pretend to" and part "straight-up autism".

 

^ legit. I definitely don’t understand it, which I should have stated clearly. I was trying to describe how I felt, with consideration to the fact that I should focus on describing feelings that Wife had talked about feeling too.

 

I don't know... for me friendship and love are very closely intertwined, but I'm also grey-romantic and easily embarrassed when it comes to all intimacy.

For me love is consistency, wanting to have someone as a part of your life forever. The confidence in them. The need for them. The 'partnership' aspect - the team up, willingness to work alongside each other. The willingness to cooperate and meet in the middle on issues so you can always stay in one another's lives. The trust. They are my favourite person, and no one else compares.

It's difficult, because when it comes to friendship vs love there's a lot of things that can be true about both, especially with close friends. For me, I have certain friends who I would never consider dating because 1) I don't have the overwhelming desire to talk to them as much as a relationship requires from me and 2) I do not feel I can trust them with my insecurities to the same extent. Now, those are my personal separations, but other people have friends they trust just as much as their partner, or who they love talking too just as much.

It's so individualistic, but that's how it is for me.