I am here with personal experience that is as follows: I experience three kinds of love. the kind that I feel for friends, the kind I feel where it's a deep emotional attachment that isn't romantic or just friend feelings, and the romantic kind where I get butterflies and shit seeing the person. the second one seems to be the one people have the hardest time wrapping their head around.
hey can I complain here about some stuff a friend of mine said today edit: it relates to the thread, I promise
okay so I was trying to explain alterous attraction to a friend which for me is basically 'a strong emotional attraction that isn't romantic but isn't friendshippy and I want to kiss the person and I would totally be in a relationship with them and it would be on par with a romantic relationship but it's not romantic but it's not friendship' and her response was 'kissing is always either romantic or sexual' and I've been trying for an hour to explain that no it's not and she won't listen and she doesn't understand the type of attraction I'm talking about and insists it's just friendship and I'm so frustrated
i feel your pain friend, i've been really struggling to explain what i said in the original post to people for a while now i really think people need to expand their minds and realize that affection isn't always experienced in the stereotypical ways
yes! they do! thank you! and I'm just rrrrrrrrrrgh I don't know what other way I can possibly say this thing to make her understandddddd and I am frustrated
so! I was talking to a friend of mine, my ex-partner actually. he said his feelings for me were alterous (read: mix of friend-feelings and romantic attraction), but that he'd never experienced feelings in that vein before, which I find interesting, and brings me to a few questions: - can alterous attraction be created by being in a relationship first and having those feelings evolve over time? - if the above is a yes, can romantic attraction work in the same way? - can alterous attraction evolve into romantic attraction over time, or will it always be alterous? - what would cause a person who'd only ever experienced romantic attraction and friend-feelings to experience alterous attraction all of a sudden? - would this make actions in the relationship like kissing a romantic thing, or a friend-feeling thing, or....?
....I can take my blabbering about types of attractions and questions I have to another thread if you would like, but I am going to blabber here until someone tells me to go elsewhere.
See for me the reason things like queerplatonic don't work for my brain is the bridge between friendship and romance is a complete spectrum that shifts in shades too close together to see. I can feel the difference but I don't know how to explain it and I reached the point where I don't really care to. I just say 'i'm a weird person and sometimes I kiss and cuddle my friends'. Honestly I think the only real difference for me is that it's romantic feelings without commitment attached to them. Like, for a while I thought, okay, I have regular friends, friends with romantic benefits, and friends with benefits in the traditional sense, the reason I haven't wanted to date anyone in forever is because I haven't had someone I feel romantically and sexually to coincide for a while (and for a full, dating relationship, I would require it be sexual. nothing against aces it's just really important to me and to my comfort level). But then I got a friend who I am sorta romantic with and also now have sex with and I still don't really want to date her so i'm like ???????????? maybe I just have hells of commitment issues mumble why wouldn't i though i don't even know where i'm going to live in a year and everyone expects me to give up all my social life to get a good job anyways mumble
hi hello you are literally me!! this is me this is Exactly how i feel about things oh my god I've just sorted myself in as poly, too, and am mainly pretty comfortable with just letting all my relationships exist in this weird sorta gray area in between friendship and romance (it helps that my current girlfriend is much the same) I have so many thoughts/tiny insignificant things to say abt this but I'm so tired I can barely read rn so I'm just gonna postpone it til tomorrow but hi!!!!!!!! i always get so happy when I find others who feel this way bc it's so complicated to explain to my friends without feeling like I'm creeping them out lmao
so now I wonder, what causes me to develop alterous attraction towards one person, but romantic attraction towards another? I only ever experienced romantic attraction twice, but I've felt alterous attraction multiple times, and I'm confused about why those weren't all romantic feelings... hmmm.
chiming in to say I agree with the people who make a distinction between friendship-love and romantic-love entirely through sexual attraction! or like fantasies of kissing, etc., I guess. it's weird but I also have a third distinct state which is like "I would not be adverse to sexual activity with you but you are mainly my friend and that would kinda make it weird" if that's something anyone else experiences. also gotta say that I disagree with lpuntya in regard to the differences in intensity between friend-love and romantic-love—at least for me, they can be equally intense. I have been informed that I get really attached to people, though, so maybe I'm an outlier. also I would be interested in hearing people's definitions of what they think being in love constitutes, if that's relevant to this thread? if not don't bother but I would like to hear about it from people more experienced than I. I'm currently in a state which I'm provisionally calling "in love," but I don't have much of a basis for comparison and would appreciate others' perspectives.
I feel like being in love implies more commitment than anything I've ever experienced, so idk what it feels like. But to me it implies the like, feeling of wanting to date someone, but also you're actually dating them, and you've reached a level of 'i probably always want to date this person'
well, I'm in unrequited love, unfortunately, so I'm afraid your definition doesn't apply. do you think that love without dating doesn't count, then? I do quite want to date the person in question, and as far as I'm concerned for the duration of forever—it's just that they don't want to date me, particularly, and of course I'm going to respect that.
Ah, well, it's more the phrase itself, not the concept of love.. For me the phrase 'in love' implies more than one person, or something established and ongoing. Love itself.... -wavy arms- i have no clue how to define. it's that intense yes i want this feeling, i guess. As I sorta mentioned, I sorta categorize feelings into the actions I want out of them. The friend feel, the romantic friend feel, the sexual friend feel, and the want to date feel. they're all love, just with different hopeful outcomes
"yes I want this" fits pretty well with what I feel, I guess. and I also categorize feelings like that, more or less—it's just that my affection also varies in intensity, and I guess I'm wondering how intense something has to be before it counts as being "in love" as opposed to like being in "puppy love" or just having a crush.
for me I don't categorize it as intensity. a crush is like "I want to date this person and I like them a lot, and feel butterflies and nerves around them because I want them to like me." love is like "I want to be with this person forever and I know they like me and I feel I can be myself around them, they make me comfortable, home is where they are."
hmm, that's interesting! so you categorize based on security of affection, pretty much. that's definitely valid, although I am so incredibly insecure I very much doubt it'd be a viable method for me to differentiate. :/
yeah, that's a good way of putting it, because when I get close enough to love someone deeply, I'm usually very comfortable and secure around them, on top of the 'I want to be around you forever' feeling. it probably wouldn't work for everyone, for the reason you just mentioned, but it works for me pretty well. once I start feeling comfortable enough to be myself around someone while still liking them a lot and wanting to be with them forever and kiss and snuggle and date them, that's romantic love. friend love is 'I feel comfortable enough to be myself around you and I like you a lot but do not want to kiss you'. and then there's that confusing in between feeling I get where I'm like 'I love you and I want to kiss you but if you want to be friends I'm cool with that too'.
