#Fair warning I do discuss my feelings on a recentish breakup relatively briefly

[ante--meridiem]

Personal shit under cut, not too explicit or tmi or anything though possibly mildly so, just more navel gazey rumination (and probably not in a very interesting way either) than most of you probably want to read, mostly on orientation and romance and such shit. And also, you know, the kind of ruminating on personal experiences and feelings that is always going to fall a bit outside of what I "should" feel.

After a long period of "I might be grey aro/grey ace but it's not significant enough to be worth trying to pin down the extent of it since I definitely do feel some attraction" I am once again wondering if I don't want to identify more actively as that.

Part of this has just been spurred by seeing another round of "we should combat exclusionism and biphobia among lesbians by focusing on the positive part of our attraction and not the negative" discourse and feeling intensely alienated even though I understand where it's coming from because the attraction I don't feel has had at least as much if not more impact on my life as the attraction I do feel and I can imagine a life where I'm happy never dating or fucking anyone (two things which already feel completely separate to me in a very "split attraction model"-esque way even though my attraction isn't even split, genderwise), and the kind of affinity and solidarity and "we're basically the same except for some extra details" that this discourse wants me to feel towards bi women is much closer to what I feel towards aroace people (not that I don't feel solidarity to bi people, women or otherwise - just that with aroace people there's an extra feeling of. Like. Oh you get it get it. Not universally, there's some aspects of aroace experience that are alienating to me as well, but much more strongly, and there's a lot of things that get described as primarily aroace experiences but which I relate intensely to).

There's also the alexythemia and bad interoception component muddying everything because even when my attraction is there, it's filtered through that.

And right now, for the past year or so, I've been kind of unable to imagine myself in a serious romantic relationship ever again, while intensely yearning for close platonic relationships I used to have, even though I have been doing some casual dating. But I don't know if that's shifting orientation/attraction or just the after effects of a break-up making me feel burnt out on romance - even though the break up happened over a year ago at this point and I have casually dated since. Like this doesn't feel like a "oh, my relationship didn't work out so now I believe I can never fall in love again" kind of thing, it's not a conscious assessment where I'm being cynical, it feels more like the part of me that was capable of holding and desiring those kinds of feelings is just. Gone. Maybe only temporarily. Maybe it's not gone just I've just lost my metaphorical keys or something. Who knows. But I do know I used to actively yearn for romantic relationships even if there's wasn't someone in particular I wanted them with and now all that yearning has transferred to wanting purely platonic ones.

Which is also complicated by the fact that I'm not sure I'm completely over my last ex. Not in the sense that I would want to get back together now, but that I might still be a little in love with the person they were when we were dating. Which shouldn't preclude me liking other people - I mean I'm poly for fuck's sake, and I was capable of seeing other people romantically back when I was still deeply in love with R - but might perhaps lead back to the "burnt out on romance" thing? In terms of, I tried this and poured a lot of attention and intensity and deliberateness into it, and it just left me with distance and confusing feelings.

I'd say I was burnt out on social interaction overall if not for the fact that again, I have been regularly yearning for intense and close platonic friendship, just not feeling up to any of the steps to get there - I'm in a position where keeping to myself and only really exerting social energy online and in one off irl encounters is a stable local maxima for me but definitely not a global one.

Regarding the casual dating I've been doing... my confession is that the motivation for it was that I didn't want the Landlord Situation to completely ruin my association with sexual intimacy and so made a conscious decision to look for it in circumstances I actually wanted it in, and before you judge me for that, it worked - I maintain feelings of agency that I think I might have lost if I hadn't gone for it. But it could never have led to a serious relationship, and I knew that the whole time (and made it very clear in my profile I was looking to date casually so I don't think I led anyone on), and it wasn't exactly motivated out of me thinking this is something I generally need in my life either, and now landlord isn't in the country and I'm no longer sure he's ever coming back, and I have affirmed my ability to seek out what I actually want to myself, I'm no longer sure I have any interest in continuing to seek out casual dating either even though my experiences doing it were mostly really good.