If you could read my mind, love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
‘Bout a ghost from a wishing well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
But stories always end
And if you read between the lines
You’ll know that I’m just trying to understand
The feelings that you lack

content warning ⚠️ brief mention of s*icidal inclination

Something reminded me of this experience of mine recently, but I can’t remember what. But it inspired me to share. I don’t regret it as I don’t believe it was really my fault. But I do admit it was wrong or at least that my actions brought an innocent person deep pain & confusion. Or I guess it was my fault to an extent, but I truly did not get it or know any better back then.

One thing it seems no one ever talks about is how hearing

“I’m in love with you”

Can be just as painful as

“I want to be just friends.”

This is because “I’m in love with you” often entails the end of or end as we know it of a truly cherished platonic friendship. Or it can seem to imply that friendship or platonic love is not good enough. This can be particularly painful to those who cannot experience romantic love.

When romantic feelings get involved and only one feels that way, it often complicates the friendship. It doesn’t necessarily have to. But in many cases it does. It seems this is particularly true when it’s a woman and man. It’s different when it’s just attraction. But when it’s real romantic feels, it can be challenging for someone who feels them to remain friends with a person who doesn’t return them. I did not understand that. I knew it because of what I have always heard but could never grasp it. I thought it was selfish and always entitled and invalidating. Sometimes I still struggle with this but am more understanding than I was before.

I remember hearing those words and feeling my heart sink so deeply into my abdomen. It was like a punch in the gut then a sinking feeling.

“I’m in love with you.”

The words I never wanted to hear.

When I was around 21 years old, I met a young man around my age. It was one of those cases where we instantly clicked as if we have known each other forever. The moment we met was like a feeling of home or familiarity. It was a “soulmate” connection. I thought of him as my platonic soulmate. It was a beautiful blossoming friendship that just kept getting stronger. One of our first experiences together was deep bellylaughing in a line at a cafe waiting for coffee. And still laughing as we were walking out almost spitting out our coffee. He was telling me something about his roommate “falling on her butt” when there was a fire in their apartment (no one was hurt, thankfully). He had a way of making everything funny. I still remember that conversation today and remember how that was the beginning of our friendship when I realized I found a keeper and thought for sure we would be lifelong friends. It still can make me laugh.

I still remember him holding his gut keeling over in that cafe, through fits of laughter “and” (hysterical laughter) “she, she” (laughing uncontrollably) “fell” (trying to talk but laughing too much) “right on her butt!” I thought he was going to fall to the floor laughing. I was laughing so much I couldn’t talk. This made him laugh even harder as we walked out the door with our iced coffees. His poor roommate. Lol

He was truly hilarious, and my sense of humor was so compatible with his. He would make me laugh so hard then my bellylaughing would make him laugh even more, and we would both be in the throes of hysterical uncontrollable laughter everywhere we went together. We got each other’s jokes and just had so much fun together.

We would give each other hugs & laugh together hysterically. One of the main things we connected through was our sense of humor. When I think back to the people I have connected most with in life and have felt the closest to, sense of humor is usually one of the things we have had in common. I love lighthearted people and those I can bellylaugh with over the most trivial things.

He was HILARIOUS, silly, playful, kind, no red flags of any kind. Definitely one of the good ones. We began hanging out together frequently. We attended the same university and would meet up during class breaks. Sometimes he would sit in lectures with me when he had a break just to be in my company. He would come to my workplace after work to hang out. We became inseparable. We would have lunch together and walk around campus talking and checking out different events together. He made it a point to support and become interested in the things I loved. I was a big advocate for LGBTQ community. He would attend the events with me to show his support. One day he showed up to meet me wearing a T-shirt with a big rainbow flag! I was so heartwarmed. Even today that warms my heart. He wasn’t one of those heterosexual men who cared if people mistook him for gay. He became involved with our LGBTQ group where I was the representative on the allocations committee and began volunteering at our events. He wasn’t just pretending to like the things I did. He was truly making an effort to show he cared and develop similar interests so we could relate. I understand that now.

He was like the brother I never had. I loved him.

The only problem is, unbeknownst to me, he certainly did not think of me as a sister. He liked me in that other kind of way. I had no clue. I thought we had this beautiful platonic friendship that was getting stronger. His feelings were definitely getting stronger. But they weren’t the feelings I had.

One day we discovered my closest friend back then was an acquaintance of his. My close friend and me were walking together and ran into my newer friend. He yelled to me “You know my friend M?!?!” We all knew each other and shared a group hug. It’s a sweet memory even though my friendship with both of them eventually ended not on good terms (and their friendship with each other ended too), one after about a year and the other after around fifteen years. I still grieve because at one point the love & friendship we all shared was real, and we were all genuinely good people. It wasn’t a case of fake friends or fake people or backstabbers or anything like that. Sometimes, unfortunately, true love or true friendship can end, fizzle out, people can change or outgrow each other and just go their separate ways. But that doesn’t have to taint the sweet memories of what was.

I don’t remember how long exactly my new friend and me were friends for before it ended painfully. But I think it was around a year.

One day our mutual friend walked up to me, and he handed me a handful of something and said “Here are some condoms so you and C can f*ck.” (C is his first initial as I don’t want to say his whole name!) I dropped them back into his hand.

“What the…WHAT?!” Was my reaction. He said “Yeah, C wants to f you, and he’s going to tell you tonight.”

News to me.

I was confused and then shocked and then this other emotion that is less than devastated but beyond disappointed. He wants to WHAT?!

It isn’t like that. Or….is it? Surely it’s not like that. He’s a good friend. I thought he loved me like I love him. We have this special bond, this beautiful friendship. We connect and laugh together and have true love for each other. It can’t be like THAT.

But it was true. It was like that.

C walked up to me that evening and broke the news.

But it was way worse than just wanting to f me. He had actual feels. You know the ones.

He was trembly and extremely anxious like I have never seen him before. He was typically a very laid back, calm person like me. He was a clown, not very serious. So it was unusual to see him like this. He kept rubbing his hands over the back of his head and down his face, looking at the ground, shifting his weight to each foot. He looked clammy and pale. Then he looked right at me. He had something to tell me.

“I’m in love with you.”

Oh, gross!

He wasn’t joking. I could tell. He often “joked” that he had a crush on me. I guess it wasn’t a joke. I have had man friends (and boy ones when I was a girl) all life long who “caught feels,” which eventually ended our friendship (it doesn’t necessarily have to, but in my experience it always has). So I knew where this was going. He was good at covering it up for so long, but it was finally coming out.

Now the devastation sank in. I shook my head no, what seemed like over and over and took a step back. I was grossed out. The thought of it being like that. I told him I had to leave. It was gutwrenching. I felt like our beautiful friendship and his love for me was all one big lie.

It was only romantic.

I thought we were soulmates. But it’s only romantic. I felt like it was a big downgrade.

I felt like he was using me for romance. He did not ever try to get in my pants. He wasn’t sleezy or entitled like many men. He wasn’t trying to get a quick lay. He did not want me only for my body.. But I still felt used.

For context. I am an aromantic woman. I have never been in love, never been on a date. I am single & celibate since birth. I have never had a kiss. I have no desire. I was born this way.

I realized that I have a little bit of post traumatic stress about growing up this way. It was difficult, so difficult. It was constant pretending to be normal but not even understanding what that normal is. Trying to go with the flow and mold myself into something I never understood, just caught glimpses of here & there, heard references and understood vaguely, enough to latch onto and appear normal to a point. But people always sensed something was off about me. I think like me, they just couldn’t quite put their finger on it. But they knew something. Sometimes I was called a prude, innocent, spinster material. Lesbian?

I’m no longer anxious and mortified. In fact I’m very ready to tell people about my asexuality. But whenever a conversation in person or on tv begins to turn to the topic of dating and sexuality (been watching the old TV show “ER” again and recently felt this when they were sitting around asking each other what age they lost their virginity, I felt my body reliving old trauma & pain), I have a physical feeling. The same old physical feeling I always got when that happened. Body tenses, heart races, mouth dries. I feel threatened. Fearful. Back then I knew I would either have to make up a lie and lose part of myself and feel empty inside or tell the truth and be mortified, maybe even face ridicule and being the laughingstock, which has happened. In most cases I told a lie. The lies were getting out of hand. It was hard to keep track of what I was telling who. Once in college I made the mistake of telling one friend I had sexual experience, that I gave a boy a handjob & a blowjob in a school closet. Then another day a while later I told a mutual friend I had no experience but wanted to. Both were lies. I had no experience and wanted none, but I wanted to be seen as normal. I realized my mistake and lived with the anxiety that they would talk to each other about me and realize, probably figuring out I had no experience and wondering why at 20 something years old I never even been kissed. I had no idea myself. I never wanted to kiss anyone. Never felt that pull. But I had no idea how to articulate that or what it meant. And the thought was just too mortifying to entertain. I couldn’t keep track of my lies anymore. The lies weren’t for thrill but to protect me. I had neighbors who picked up on it and told my mom and sister and me that I was on my way to being an old spinster, I always heard people ridiculing and pitying friends or family members of theirs who haven’t been getting any or worse never have in the first place and judging & ridiculing religious abstinent or celibate people, calling them pathetic, boring, unfulfilled. I have even heard people who said they were done with dating and sexuality but still glad for the experience they did have, ridiculing and feeling sorry for those who never have. It was my deepest darkest secret. My asexuality that has been with me & haunted me since birth. My body relives the trauma of the threat of ridicule.

Growing up asexual in a s*x/romance crazed society has brought me nothing but pain, embarrassment, fear… I would never change my asexuality even if I could. But there has been nothing easy about it except not getting sti’s and pregnancy scares. And I guess not getting into trouble/making d*mb decisions based on attraction. It has always brought me such deep pain knowing I can never be truly loved because romantic love is considered the best love, and I cannot love someone back that way so they will move onto someone who can. I can only experience “second best” love and have “second best” relationships.

When I got to be over thirty years old and still did not understand what a crush is and what horny is even when I looked it up online, my s*icidal thoughts and urges began to become stronger. It got to the point where I knew I was going to have to end it because I thought I was the only one like this, and I couldn’t keep up with the facade any longer. I just couldn’t. It was too empty feeling and too fake. I was afraid people would eventually catch on, probe too deeply and find out, put it all together once & for all and realize I’m this. But what this is, I couldn’t quite say. But I was still afraid they would know and that I would be the freak of the world. Until one day I got up the courage to explore my own identity and understand me and that there is a word for what I am, and there are more like me. Asexuality is a spectrum, and I am hardcore thoroughly ace. Some do have those feelings just rarely. I have them never, no sexual attraction, no sexual desire, no sexual interest. No trauma or illness. Born like this. I can remember hints of it even in elementary school. I remember my little friends at five years old asking me when I want to get married and me thinking “Ugh! Never!” One day my 5th grade teacher explained sexual activity to us (we had parental consent), and she told us one day we would all want to do that with someone. I remember thinking “Ugh! Never!” Other girls and boys were giggling and saying they couldn’t wait. I refused the hpv vaccine at twenty years old (I wouldn’t now because it wouldn’t hurt to have, I totally don’t recommend refusing it, I actually regret it because while I won’t ever be sexual, I do have a body that technically can get hpv, and hpv can result in cancer, it’s rare this way, but even sharing a towel can transmit it) because I knew I would never be sexual so wouldn’t get hpv. I remember the doctor asking if I want it in case I become sexually active (she knew I wasn’t yet, but I never told her I don’t have those feelings, I was too mortified to tell anyone and did not even know how to put it into words), and I remember thinking “Ugh! Never!” Just like at ten years old. At thirty years old, I was still thinking “Ugh! Never!” And now at 37 years old, still the same.

I do not know what romantic feelings feel like. Let’s just say for simplicity’s sake that I only experience one kind of love or love everyone the same way, just some more than others (I have homoromantic leanings, I can be especially close to other women, emotionally in a way that is akin to romantic but isn’t). I have never experienced a crush and only understand it as a concept. I don’t get butterflies or feel that rollercoaster feel or chemical surge that the romantics speak of. I don’t pace floors waiting for my love to call (though I can certainly light up upon seeing the name of someone I adore on my notifications and can’t wait to see them again, I can get giddy) or go insane if I love someone and don’t see them for a while. I don’t experience new relationship energy/infatuation and have never wanted to “build a life” with anyone or live with anyone as a couple. I never wanted to date anyone I ever knew or looked at. I went to high school Prom alone and danced with friends. No interest in having a date. When I was a little girl, my Barbie & Ken dolls were sister & brother. I loved playing baby dolls. I played with boys & girls. The girls would always pair off with a little boy to be Mommy & Daddy, wife & husband. I would think of the boys as my brothers and my baby dolls’ uncles. I was a single mom to my baby dolls. I always imagined growing up and living with a girl bff or a gay man as my roommate. I imagined us having separate bedrooms and sometimes having sleepovers in each other’s rooms, watching movies, eating snacks, painting each other’s nails and doing each other’s hair and makeup, them bringing their romantic interest over sometimes and all hanging out together. It never occurred to me to grow up and live with a life partner. When I tried to imagine it, I would always imagine it with a man, and that felt so unnatural. Now that I understand my identity, I can imagine having a woman as a life partner but without any sexual aspect and no romantic feels on my part. I’m very loving and can return affection.

I knew I am different even then but couldn’t say how. In romantic movies, I thought it was a downgrade when two friends fell in love. I never dreamed of my wedding day, and romantic love songs always made me think of people I love platonically. “My Endless Love” makes me think of my pets 😆

While I have always thought romantic love looks beautiful, I still saw it as inferior to platonic and found it offensive when men friends liked me that way. I wondered why people cry over romantic breakups. It’s just romantic. That’s all. I did not understand even at 30+ years old. No one explains it because everyone thinks we all feel it and know. I knew something, just not what.

Because I never experienced romantic love, I never fully understood how beautiful it is to those who do and how very painful it is to lose or be rejected that way. I always wondered what all the fuss was about. I knew I don’t experience it, but I did not consciously know or know how to articulate it.

I have never had low self esteem. But even as a little girl I knew I could never be fully or truly loved. Because I cannot experience the love that everyone else can and that society says is the best kind of love. I have struggled hard with feelings of inadequacy as a human and as a woman knowing I cannot feel what everyone says is the best feeling in the world. It is a painful struggle sometimes to know that I lack these feelings that society places so so much emphasis and importance on. The lack itself does not hurt me. While I’m curious what it must feel like, I don’t particularly wish to experience it. But society’s invalidation and sometimes just being so different in that way, does bring pain. It also brings pain knowing I likely cannot have my special person as I lack sexual inclination, which is important to most.

I can love deeply, and I have longed to be someone’s everything and someone to be mine. But it cannot be romantic/sexual. I have been pained to know that I likely will never have the importance to anyone that a romantic partner holds. It’s something I generally have learned to live with. But it flares up and crushes me on occasion. Some aromantic people are ok with this. I admit though I am not quite there yet. I do want to be someone’s everything. I want to be someone’s person, the first one someone calls when they have happy or sad news, someone to do life with, though not as a couple, someone to hug in a way we only hug each other, I want good morning beautiful, and good night love, texts sent to each other (I can only have this with another woman though, I only have that inclination for women). But I am aromantic and asexual (they are not the same thing, I’m both though), and most people will never value me the way they value a romantic partner/s. It’s possible, just not likely. That brings me pain.

When C told me he was in love with me, I knew what that meant. It was over. Our friendship was over. A friendship I cherished.

He sent me a long e-mail that night telling me everything he loved about me, my smile, my laugh, my sense of humor, my compassion and playfulness, the way my eyes light up when I speak of my passions. He called me beautiful inside and out and told me what an amazing woman I am who anyone would be lucky to know. And many more things on his list of amazing things about Kim. The truth is, it grossed me out so much. It repulsed me. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t see him that way. I saw him as brother, friend, platonic soulmate. I couldn’t imagine that kind of emotional intimacy with or investment in a man (I can experience some kind of emotional and non sexual but sensual attraction to some women/women aligned people that I can’t to men, but not romantic) or his hands on me the way I imagined he wanted. It grossed me out. I ignored his e-mail.

The next day I was having lunch alone at our favorite place on campus when he walked in and saw me. He walked over to me looking emotionally hurt. I felt disgust. I shook my head to express that. He sat at the table with me, and I saw that doughy romantic look in his eyes, and it disgusted me even more. I was angry. I felt betrayed and used. He asked me if I hated him. I just scoffed and got up and walked away.

He yelled after me “You hate me, don’t you?” I heard the desperation and pain in his voice. I did not care. I saw him as a traitor. Just like every other heterosexual man I have had a friendship with.

We never spoke again.

I would see him around campus, our eyes would meet, I would see the hurt and confusion in his. And I would look away and go about my day.

I was grieving too. I told all my friends and coworkers that he was a terrible friend who was using me for romantic purposes and was pretending to be my friend all along. I wasn’t lying, this is how my inexperienced and young brain interpreted it. My friends basically thought he was one of those a-holes just trying to get in my pants and was trying to manipulate me. They loathed his guts on my behalf. One day when one of my friends saw him on campus, she flipped him off. She told me later. Another day I got to work and one of the girls I worked with said “That pr!ck came by looking for you yesterday, I sure told him off, the creep.” My other friend wanted to punch him. My neighbor’s boyfriend and her ex boyfriend threatened to kick his @$$ when they saw him near my house. The fact that he was coming to my work and house and trying to contact me seems stalkerish when viewed through the lens of the picture I painted of him. But we were good friends, and I never gave him closure or verbally told him to stay away. Though my actions clearly did. But he probably thought our friendship was strong enough that it was ok, it wasn’t like he was just some creep I was dating or whatever. We had a solid relationship for a while, just weren’t on the same page.

He’s everything you want

He’s everything you need

He’s everything inside of you that you wish you could be

He says all the right things at exactly the right time

But he means nothing to you

And you don’t know why

He was probably so confused. Because he did nothing wrong. But I did not realize that. I made him out to be a creep. I thought he was. I thought that romantic/sexual love is inferior and that he liked me in some shallow way that would benefit only him when I loved him in the real way. The platonic way. The genuine way. My love was real. His was only romantic. And there was something carnal about it that grossed me out, something I did not understand then but understand now as sexual attraction, which usually accompanies romantic love.

https://youtu.be/_VHlcRFW9W0

I was a 21 year old aromantic asexual girl who did not yet understand my own identity or sexuality as a whole.

Was I wrong for how I acted?

Yes, it was a big @$$hole move for sure. It was. It was immature and whatever else. But my youth along with my genuine lack of understanding of how sexuality works as someone who was born without one, I truly felt used, lied to. I likened him to those men who truly do try tricking a woman just to get in her pants. But I understand now he wasn’t. He was just a boy who fell for a confused girl who couldn’t love him back that way. We both did not understand. I did not understand my fullblown asexuality, which in my case includes aromanticism. I have no sexual feelings at all or romantic ones. I can only imagine what they must feel like. I always felt the lack but could never explain and was too mortified at being different to try.

At the risk of this sounding like a humblebrag, men have always fallen for me, and it has brought me pain. Even in a group of girl friends/coworkers where some liked a man friend, the man would always go for me. I saw this as them loving the other girls more. Platonically. While they only liked me romantically. Why was I only worthy of romantic feelings while the other girls were seen as sisters? Sometimes it was hard not to feel so low. Like why I’m only good enough for romance but other girls are valued as cherished friends. Even now as I remember that pain, my body recoils. It tenses. It feels physical pain. But I understand better now, intellectually, that romantic isn’t necessarily less, just different. Sometimes I have to remind myself.

It wasn’t until somewhat recently at 30 something years old that I began to understand some things better after a couple conversations with my mom and sister and an online friend who explained to me when I was complaining that when a person becomes very emotionally close to someone they can be attracted to, they will very likely catch feels and that it’s not their fault and explained some other things that it all just clicked, and I felt like a total @$$ for not understanding all along. I was embarrassed to not have understood something so basic and nearly universal. But I was born this way with no firsthand experience to reference to understand all the things I hear/witness around me. And sexual education is a joke. When we don’t grow up heterosexual, we can be totally lost and even if we do grow up heterosexual we can be lost as sexual education often is inadequate even for heterosexual youth.

Society values romantic/sexual relationships and love way more than platonic.

But platonic love is love too. And we (anyone, not just aromantic people) can grieve hard over the loss of a friendship. To many strictly aromantic people, platonic love/relationships is all we have, all we are capable of, so where all our attention goes, so it may hit especially hard to lose a close friendship. It’s not overshadowed by romantic feelings or longing for a typical romantic relationship (many want a close relationship, often a platonic best friend).

Even today I am thankful for our friendship even though it ended. I still cherish the memories, especially the bellylaughs. I love knowing a connection like that exists. I just love having that experience.

I can totally be friends with a man who likes me like that as long as he knows how to act and now that I understand sexuality better and my own identity. I understand now that romantic love isn’t less than or shallow, I just don’t experience it.

This title is not completely accurate as I totally can love. But in terms of romantic it’s true. This is the title of a story about another aromantic girl that someone else wrote. I stole the title. Lol

In case anyone doesn’t know, aromanticism and asexuality are identities, not disorders. Those of us who are this way are born this way usually. We grow up not understanding what is driving everyone else to want to date, kiss, do sexual things, get married, everything associated with sexuality. When everyone around us develops serious romantic & sexual feelings, we just never do. Some of us wait and wait and it just never happens. Others of us don’t know what to think and don’t know what is going or not going on with us. Some of us confuse other feelings for sexual/romantic then years later realize all along it wasn’t romantic/sexual. I always felt like I could be a gay girl but that something crucial to being gay was missing so knew I’m not fully gay. I could very much identify with gay women but not enough to feel that the term “lesbian” is applicable. I identified as hetero since society gave me that label. But it always felt off and wrong. At 30 something years old, I discovered the truth. It was liberating but also made the unpleasant feelings more defined, knowing it’s a real thing and has a name and basically set in stone.

random pic of me recently! ❤️

This experience is just one of quite a few that I’m thankful to have experienced even though it’s not all pleasant.

I hope you are having a beautiful day & night wherever you are! ♥️

Xoxo Kim 😍