i don't actually know what to call my sexuality but it's really confusing and frustrating: the way i would platonically love people as friends and the way i would romantically love people are actually the exact same, the only thing that changes for me is how i would express it, and i think that pretty much only has to do with the influence of societal expectations unless i have decided i love someone in a familial sense, i literally cannot tell if they are someone i love platonically or romantically. and if this wasn't awful enough for me, for seemingly everyone else, capacity for platonic friend love is much weaker than capacity for romantic love so with the platonic familial exception, no one loves me platonically as much as i do them, and i can't love anyone romantically any more strongly than i would anyone platonically, which no paramour would likely be particularly happy with, so basically everything is terrible i just end up calling myself bi bc i love people of more than one gender and it hurts my head too much to think of a more suitable label that still only needs to be explained briefly this is frustrating me enough tonight that i'm just posting this here and hoping it prompts some sort of discussion that makes things less confusing
In my (unqualified) opinion that's normal. There's a reason people say to "marry your best friend" I'm pansexual, pan-romantic. I've only been what i call "in love" once. I knew this girl, talked to her quite a bit, loved her platonically etc, then she disappeared for two weeks. i panicked because she was very depressed. the first time i saw her after that i grabbed her and hugged her and told her how i was so glad she was ok and afterward i had the romantic "aha" moment. with my experience love could be interpreted as "you are my favorite person" mixed with "i kinda want to get in your pants" (of course love doesn't need to involve sex or sexual attraction to begin with but i digress) romantic vs platonic vs familial love is tricky familial is the easiest and you don't seem to have any issues /w that one so i'll skip it. romantic vs platonic is hard Every single person experiences love differently. there's no wrong way to experience it. you might get "aha" moments and you might not, and thats fine. You do you. "and if this wasn't awful enough for me, for seemingly everyone else, capacity for platonic friend love is much weaker than capacity for romantic love" Again in my (unqualified) opinion neither platonic love and romantic love are superior to the other! In most cultures romantic gets the spotlight and is viewed as the end all be all but i think thats Bullhockey. both are worth as much as you put into them. And i know theirs a huge number of people that would agree with me. ok there was a lot more stuff i wanted to say but i'm running low on spoons and i can't right now i'm sorry. Did this help? is it understandable? Am i spouting nonsense? I'm sorry if it is, but i hope it helps.
@Derpyfishnoms my best friend and i actually see each other as sisters :/ and i feel i should stress that the "aha moment" is impossible for me, bc my brain literally makes no meaningful distinction between those two kinds of love. the difference for me is completely arbitrary, i may be young, yes, but trust me, i'm not wrong about this i also actually have a great deal of close friends who i love, and sex is something that i rate as rather low on the affection scale, and not really having much to do with love with the "awful enough" quote i was actually referring to strength. people i know consistently have stronger romantic feelings than they have platonic feelings your experiences are interesting and good for discussion! but they don't apply to me much at all i'm afraid
Witnessing, because I'm much the same way, and I don't really have any advice on it since I've just always had to kind of... roll with it. I do suspect that the intensity division between romantic and platonic love is kinda bullshit, though, or at least a far cry from universal. We've been told that platonic love that isn't familial isn't/can't be as strong as romantic, but it seems awfully convenient that that also serves to keep people into tidy, rather disconnected, generally very heterosexual-looking nuclear family groups that weren't even the norm until relatively recently, historywise.
I'm not young (well, I'm still a child, but I've lived a lot longer than most people would consider a child at 30+) and I still have the "I love X ... um, is it romantic? Is it platonic? Is it lust?" issue. I don't have any clue until the other person does whatever they think is right and I react. (we won't discuss how I react, that's a topic for a different thread :) ). But I don't know of any different thing. Love is love, for me. I can be very nit picky about all sorts of things, requiring many details and explanations of nuances. But that one thing - "id iz" as Baby says.
idk if this will help, but apparently my experience is considered weird by a lot of people, so. I don't get crushes much. In fact, I didn't ever until I was 18. Maybe it was compounded by me being ace, idk. there was a girl I knew only over the internet and all that dumb shit that happens in stories that I thought was stupid suddenly happened: the giddiness, the pining. Of course she wasn't interested, I was much younger than her and she was in a relationship already, so she politely turned me down. I haven't felt that since. (I'm 26.) However, a few years after that I realized, after dating a friend for a month b/c she asked me out, that most of my time I spent thinking about how I wanted to be hanging out with (current partner) instead. So I broke up w/ my date (thankfully we are still friends) and asked my partner out. We're still together almost 8 years later. And neither of us would describe our relationship as particularly romantic? We don't do big gestures like flowers or whatever. We hang out a lot, talk about our shared interests, cuddle, sometimes go to the movies or dinner. But I prefer it to the weirdness that was my teenager crush. We're comfortable with each other. In my experience, I'm fairly sure I'm naturally monogamous, despite being open-minded to the idea of polyamory. I just don't think i could manage more than one partner. But other people aren't. Maybe that's the case for you? I guess I would define love as wanting to be around someone a lot and liking the things that make that person them.
@Enzel i'm pretty much the exact opposite. the crushes i develop also happen to face the same problem; there is no way for me to distinguish between platonic friendcrushes and romantic crushes, bc they are exactly the same. they are always characterized by a strong desire to be closer to a person, and the crush will be satisfied should this occur, and it doesn't matter if this happens bc i become close platonically or romantically to someone. i just need to become closer.
basically, i'm comfortable being very romantic if that's the kind of direction someone wants their relationship with me to go in. but i'm equally comfortable if they decide they want us to be very close platonically. i don't ever prefer one direction or the either, i am equally fine with both happening as long as closeness is achieved. once the direction is decided, i'll start expressing my feelings in a way that is typical of that kind of relationship, but there is no difference in my feelings themselves. let's say i am equally close to both a partner and a friend. my feelings towards both of them would be pretty much identical, it's just that the way i would express those feelings would change
I guess then which part of it is bothering you? Do other people react badly to you trying to explain it?
@Enzel that very few people seem to comprehend me is quite annoying in itself, yes, but it especially frustrates me that no one seems to understand why i have such strong feelings toward all my friends, and that very few seem to feel as strongly toward me as i do toward them; for whomever this is the case for, i see that they are capable of having feelings toward people as strong as mine are, but would only do so in a romantic relationship, and do not want a romantic relationship with me
Oh, I see. That sounds rough. :( I'm sorry I can't give more advice on the matter. For what it's worth, I do know at least two people that feel similarly to the way you've described, so you aren't alone in it.
at the very least, the discussion so far has gotten me to think that this probably means i'm poly, which helps a little with my understanding of myself
For what it's worth, I can't figure out the difference between romantic and platonic love either? The only two categories I could divide them up into is 'lusts after' and 'do not lust after' and even then it's murky unless I actually try sexual things with them. The most, I guess, important feeling to me is an intense sense of closeness, or an intense want to be closer to the person? Also I'm sorry in advance but I had to:
@mizushimo yup, the closeness is definitely the most important thing for me too the lust part is a lot easier, i can tell i'm bisexual, that is a correct label for me, but i have no idea what the label for my romantic orientation would be
@mizushimo well, i experience lust, yes? but not very strongly, and not really toward anyone in particular
@Ipuntya idk, maybe platonic love and romantic love are the exact same without the sexual/familial element? I don't usually feel an intense emotional connection to all my friends, the lasting kind is pretty rare. I find that I definitely look for it in all my friendships though.
