It’s time for me to ponder the question of Romantic vs. Platonic once again now that I have discovered the concept of limerence. To explain what limerence is, I will link to this blog post and proceed without any further explanation of the term.
I belonged in the camp that thought this is how romantic love, or at least the early stages of it, feels like. I was not aware that there are a whole bunch of people out there who do not experience romantic love in this way. Thus, my understanding of what is romantic was a little narrow.
In Part 2, I had tried to distinguish between a crush and a squish. Now I’m wondering if the distinction would be more accurate if I called them limerent crushes and non-limerent crushes.
A “squish” is essentially defined as a platonic crush by the asexual community, but this gets hard to pin down, because as I explained in Part 1, the distinction between romantic and platonic is very fuzzy and varies wildly from individual to individual. You can’t firmly place activities like sex, kissing, hand-holding, cuddling, etc. into one category over the other because you will always find people who will say “It’s romantic when I do it with Person X but not when I do it with Person Y.” You can’t firmly place feelings (like obsession, infatuation, or even limerence) into one camp or the other. (Angela Chen gave examples of “platonic” infatuations in her book to illustrate how difficult it is to separate these two terms.)
The reason I am introducing limerence into this discussion is because it is now shedding some light on my confusion regarding my not-quite-romantic and not-quite-platonic crushes. I couldn’t place them. Now I understand that at least some of them were non-limerent romantic crushes.
To put it another way, while all of these crushes have involved giddy excitement, some of these crushes have been accompanied by a longing and an aching and others haven’t. It’s those limerent crushes that have had me worried about my sanity and the non-limerent ones were ones where I could just enjoy the ride. I enjoyed my feelings for them when I was around them without obsessing over them when I wasn’t and not caring too much about whether they returned my feelings.
In some ways, it seems like if I could be interested in someone in a non-limerent way, that would be the way to go: maybe it would set the groundwork for an actual healthy relationship. Here is the problem though: I’ve never found myself motivated to desire a relationship unless limerence was involved.
The way I see it, there is no difference between a romantic relationship and a partnership. I know a lot of people have relationships without commitment, but without that commitment a relationship would mean nothing to me. Heck, even in my close friendships there is a kind of tacit commitment, which, if breached, would change the close nature of the friendship. To make the kind of a commitment to someone for a partnership, I have to be ready to upend my life for that person. Until I’m ready to upend my life for you, I can’t be in a partnership with you.
I love my family and friends dearly, but I am not about to upend my life for any of them (except, I suppose, for extreme circumstances). So even if I could come to love someone romantically in a non-limerent way, I cannot foresee myself being ready to upend my life for them. It would be a huge bother for me to have that constraint when it comes time for me to find an academic job (for which flexibility is key). It seems too big an ask to have to get to know their entire family and (if they are from a different culture) their entire culture. I also don’t believe my recently-discovered demisexual nature will be turned on without the presence of limerence. In short, I see no reason to have a relationship without limerence making me want it and making me want to fight for it.
I wish to continue to have close friendships, which do not involve the level of commitment I just described; but without that level of commitment, it cannot be a partnership.
It’s not that I have 0% wish for romance. It’s just that… I’d want to be with someone who makes me feel loved, protected, and cared for. Someone who feels lucky to be with me. Someone who feels pain at the idea of not being able to spend their lives with me. Someone whose heart warms and soars when I express how happy I am to be with them. Someone to whom I am incredibly important; important enough that they are ready to fight the obstacles getting in the way of being together. In other words, I’d want to be with someone who is limerent for me. I don’t want to have a romantic relationship if that is not how I feel about the other person and that is not how the other person feels about me. (And when I talk about limerence here, I am not saying it has to be the extreme version where you are so lovesick whence you can’t function anymore.)
I understand this isn’t exactly a feasible thing to want. At the end of the day, I’m chasing a fantasy. When I strip away the fantasy, there’s not much desire left for romance.
I also can’t, like, try to make it happen. I don’t want to be intimate with anyone who doesn’t already feel this way about me. I am actively repulsed by the idea of someone wanting to be intimate with me because they feel lust or desire for me. Fortunately, I don’t have much reason to fear this. But what I do actively try to avoid is someone who might come to a rational conclusion that I am an appropriate partner and try to cultivate intimacy with me. I am also repulsed by this idea, although not as much. I also don’t like the idea of being the conduit for someone to relive their carnal urges, although I am willing to do this for someone who does feel about me the way I described. I am willing to do SO MUCH for that person. But I think it is highly unlikely that this person exists.
There are parallels between this situation and the situation with my job. I went through an existential crisis when I had to think about a career. I had paid a little too much heed to the “find your passion” dialogue and envisioned a fantasy world in which I would love my job, feel a sense of euphoria doing it, and it would bring me purpose, fulfillment, and ultimate happiness. But I could only achieve this if I chose right and the fear of choosing wrong was paralyzing. I managed to end up with a job that I enjoyed well enough for a while; I certainly enjoyed the pay and the benefits; and when my learning curve plateaued, I knew it was time to move on. Then began my long graduate school journey and while my time in graduate school has been difficult, I am glad to say I have never looked back. I came to realize, I didn’t need to find “passion” as college students are constantly told to do, I just needed to find something I liked well enough that I wanted to keep doing it despite the challenges.
When it comes to finding a life partner, I did somewhat fall into the same trap of envisioning a fantasy world in which my partner and I would feel a unbreakable emotional connection, we would understand each other completely, and we would prioritize each other fully. I have been aware that this is largely a fantasy. I know there are some people who find wonderful partners such as this, just as there are some people who discover their vocational calling and go on to have happy fulfilling lives. But most of us are not that lucky. I have understood this for a while now. The difference was that I have not been able to adopt the same mindset as I did about work when it comes to relationships. I can’t just go with a relationship, enjoy it for what it is for however long it lasts, and then move on. I had a stepping stone job before I found the right career path. I can’t stand the idea of having stepping stone relationships until I find my life partner. I also went into academia not knowing if this was going to be my future, and I did not fully commit to it until many years down the line. I do not want to go into a relationship with this mindset.
I had been desiring something akin to limerence with respect to my career. I was able to overcome that. Similarly, I feel like I can’t have a romantic relationship or a marriage without limerence, and I don’t know that I will be able to overcome this one.
To be continued … ?
Tushmit's Stream of Consciousness 