Sexuality

[paintedbutterfly676]

I have identified as pansexual since middle school. I always thought that because I saw men and women as the same in my eyes, that means I was attracted to either. This has guided my dating life.

But today, after the third date with this newest boy, I have realized I'm not attracted to him. And after further thought, I don't know if I'm attracted to anyone. I always say I develop crushes on my friends, but they aren't crushes, are they? They are my broken brain seeing a positive relationship and deciding it has to be a crush. I have never had a crush. I have never felt attraction. I know about the idea of ace/aro, and I'm happy for people who find comfort in that identity, but I don't. I want to be attracted, I want crushes, I want to be romanced. But whenever I am, I feel nothing. My one experience with sex felt like nothing, I can deal with that better by myself.

Am I really just that broken that I can't even date anyone? I want a romantic experience, but when I get it I don't feel any better.

 

[steppenwolf]

What do you mean by a romantic experience? Travelling the world together? Eating fish and chips on a park bench together? Call me naïve, but I don't know what that means.

 

[paintedbutterfly676]

I want it to be like the movies, swept off my feet in the rain, gotten flowers that they think match my eyes, going on a picnic in the park and cloud watching. Simple things, things that are supposed to elicit warm and fuzzy feelings, but I've done them with past partners, and I don't get those feelings. Some of it is fun, but I find most of it slightly embarrassing or boring. I should like my partners being romantic for me, but I don't. I feel cold towards them. I want to love romance, but I don't. I love the idea of romance, but each time I try it in real life it breaks down.

 

[steppenwolf]

I want it to be like the movies, swept off my feet in the rain, gotten flowers that they think match my eyes, going on a picnic in the park and cloud watching. Simple things, things that are supposed to elicit warm and fuzzy feelings, but I've done them with past partners, and I don't get those feelings. Some of it is fun, but I find most of it slightly embarrassing or boring. I should like my partners being romantic for me, but I don't. I feel cold towards them. I want to love romance, but I don't. I love the idea of romance, but each time I try it in real life it breaks down.

Call me cynical, but you look to me like a victim of advertising who is waking up to themselves.

As you know, those people in the romantic movies and the advertising are just actors and models selling experiences and products; they don't really have the experiences or the products themselves, at least not whilst they're acting. And it's in the interest of their employers' profits for the characters to appear glamorous and enviable, and for their enacted experiences and placed products to appear desirable. And it's also in their interests for consumers like yourself to feel anxious that if you don't conform to the images that the actors present to you, by buying the narratives and buying the products, you will become unlovable. But the love was never really there, and the anxiety is just the projected anxiety of movie makers and manufacturers, that no one will want to watch their movies or buy their products that they expensively invested in. That no one... will... 'love'... them.

If you seek to live out such imagery for yourself, at best you will become an actor yourself, acting out scenes of romantic happiness perhaps. And the best actors get paid the most money, don't they. And according to the media publicity narratives, the power to spend money is what makes people lovable and important, isn't it. At worst, you will become a product yourself, to be advertised, enjoyed and cast aside in disappointment by someone else taken in by the advertising. It's only natural that you should find that embarrassing, boring, and leaving you cold. Personally I find it excruciating, which is why I never have anything to do with it.

Sure flowers are beautiful, the more so when they are not cut down in their prime and bunched. It's in their nature. Most likely your eyes are beautiful too; most people's eyes are. Natural advertising. And sure the sky is an endless source of fascination; I should know, I'm an amateur astronomer. But there isn't really a consensus on what 'romance' actually means. Literally it means 'derived from Rome', just like the Romance languages of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian are derived from Latin, the language of Rome. It all depends on what Rome means to you. The eternal city. The centre of the civilized world. People in togas making the decisions that affect the destiny of the world. And wine. And orgies. And an Empire where a slave can become Emperor. The idea being that whilst Rome and Latin are for the educated Roman élite, 'Romance' and French, Italian, etc. are for ordinary provincial people, and that thereby ordinary provincial people can all be 'Roman' citizens who shape the destiny of the world simply by the way they live their lives and by the ways in which they relate to one another. But only by association with Rome. Whose alphabet we have become dependent on it seems.

Hope that helps.

 

[Humble]

I want it to be like the movies, swept off my feet in the rain, gotten flowers that they think match my eyes, going on a picnic in the park and cloud watching. Simple things, things that are supposed to elicit warm and fuzzy feelings, but I've done them with past partners, and I don't get those feelings. Some of it is fun, but I find most of it slightly embarrassing or boring. I should like my partners being romantic for me, but I don't. I feel cold towards them. I want to love romance, but I don't. I love the idea of romance, but each time I try it in real life it breaks down.

It's really hard to find genuine people like this, I say keep trying and keep improving yourself. Set boundaries and find what you're attracted to, and love will hopefully find you with time.