#prioritizing relationships that are not reciprocal bc... what? i feel like if i don't help them no one will? well that's factually untrue

[hungerpunch]

ehimeora:

I don’t want friendships where I’m always the mother, the nurturer, the healer, the teacher, the processor. I deserve to be held too.

I forgive myself for positioning myself in these roles. I forgive myself for believing that constantly holding space for others at the expense of myself would make them see how worthy I am of love.

My therapist once told me, “You are used to seeking out those who need support. So when you find someone who’s actually like you, it may be hard to recognize them.” And I think about it a lot. I am no longer contributing to my own emptiness.

I pray I find the friendships that are reciprocal attractive. I pray I take the initiative in responding back to their messages and connecting with them. I pray that I will no longer ignore people who are like me.

[roobylavender]

your favourite things about skybloom? also if you're interested in their relationship, @peek-a-bloom on tumblr has some wonderful metas on them and other characters and is also of my favourite tumblrs!

honestly the funny thing is while i am newly obsessed with abbey and danny's relationship i don't know that i have much to say about sky and bloom's. i feel like it's very one-sided in depth in the sense that most of the development pretty much happens on sky's end. which i am content with for the time being, to be clear, given he's become my meow meow of choice from the show. but i do hope we get more development on bloom's end bc i don't really get the impression that the depth there goes beyond sky being nice and caring about her and supporting her in her every endeavor, and her reciprocating in kind, bc i mean, who wouldn't! i want to really know what draws her to him and why the position he maintains in her life is special and different from the one that everyone else has. for sky, bloom is akin to something like a lighthouse. he spends so much of his time rooted in the necessity of being a fixer and helping other people with their problems, but bloom is someone who refuses to be fixed and does as she pleases. with bloom, sky can just be. he still worries himself to death over her, but he knows that he can't do anything about it, and that's something he has to come to terms with, esp now that she's left for the shadow realm. i'm really excited by that prospect in the following season. it would be easy to have sky simply wallow in the despair of losing her, but i want to know that he can come to his senses and get back up on his feet knowing that's what she would want him to do. bloom sees kindness and courage abound in sky and knows he's capable of embracing it to the degree that he can finally prioritize himself and his needs. he can't rely on the necessity of being useful to other people forever. so when they reunite, i want her to see that he's finally come into that role, and maybe then, that's when sky will be most useful to her. that's when he'll really be able help her, bc he wouldn't be relying on her as a crutch any longer, he'd be a partner and a support

[formashimataichi]

I feel like I've been made a fool by the author of chihayafuru or I'm incredibly stupid

What's the point of going through rejection arc of tchi when in all honesty the girl didn't reply yes or no she's shocked tht she couldn't see this coming which is the way the author wants to write chy as not knowing feelings. Then tch expecting her to reciprocate or quit the club cuz he has feelings and it's been harder for him, to have strength in love and sumire parallels of growth as love is not a one way ticket to confession or no point in it?? Then just ending with tchy which the ship fandom expected me to say foreshadowing all along then why can't I say the same abt arata or even let's miss the fact the author doesn't care abt Lgbt coding as much but why not even say shinobu lmao. For so much feminist attitude she doesn't even give chy to explore her feelings when it began for Taichi, which brings to seperation from him was unbearable but was empowering so she has ownership to those feelings and you might say that's when she felt lot more affection to tch but seperation was a trigger to chihaya growth. It happens twice when arata leaves and when tch leaves. So really where is the feelings realisation? and i came to accept most of this thanks to your analysis than the way tchy fans with RIGHT interpretations are bashing you as anons. Also i do think you overcredit suetsugu sometimes and it's all someone more open like you to interpret than think it's so deep because I'm totally lost otherwise 💀

Anyways i hope you ignore hate messages. And ships lowkey make anyone biased you weren't wrong with tht.

i mean i think taichi's rejection arc was important with respect to addressing his own attitude and the unhealthy codependency that existed between him and chihaya. regardless of whether they were going to end up together or not that was a period of reflection that he needed to undergo in order to be able to prioritize himself and not hold others guilty for insecurities and jealousies that were ultimately products of his own conscience. that's why i was ultimately okay with the way suetsugu executed him and chihaya becoming canon bc i don't really think it was about him being rewarded with her reciprocation solely bc of the fact that he got better. she confessed to him a couple of months after the finals when he wasn't even expecting it and by a point in time where their relationship and communication with each other had significantly improved

ig as to the whole absence makes the heart grow fonder concept it's a matter of personal preference. i don't think it's an inherently bad conduit through which to explore romance, bc sometimes we truly do dwell more on people we care about when they're not quite within reach, and that can make us realize things about our feelings for them that we weren't necessarily hyperaware of before. i don't think suetsugu is going quite so far as to say that chihaya has no agency in how she feels simply bc either boy leaving has to provide an impetus for those feelings to manifest. with arata leaving, for example, it was less about chihaya taking his presence in her life for granted and more about him introducing her to a dream that she valued so much, and her being desperate to continue sharing it with him. even with taichi, i don't think it was so much about her taking him for granted as her having to parse how exactly she felt about him, bc she'd never quite dwelled on the specific nature of her feelings for him before. she just knew he was someone incredibly special in her life that she didn't want to lose. so yeah there's some part to play on account of distance, but i think there were still distinct foundations present within each relationship that distance only helped facilitate the growth or exploration of, rather than it acting as the bedrock of chihaya's feelings entirely. i don't think you were stupid to have assumed one exploration was romantic over the other. i know i'm being redundant bc i've already said it enough times but i think it just speaks to the fact that suetsugu developed both relationships so thoroughly and wholeheartedly, so it was possible to believe it could go either way dependent on preference, or dependent on what you wanted out of the story on a thematic level

[autism-asks]

I'm really struggling to know if the sort of relationship I want in the future is a romantic relationship or a queer platonic relationship. I already know I'm ace & and that I don't care what gender I end up with but with a preference for girls (I'm a girl), and that I never want to have sex. I know sex doesn't = romance, and I want to get married and share a life and adopt kids with someone, but I'm not sure if I want romance bc I don't exactly know what romance is. Any help?

This question is very interesting to me because it’s made me try to define romance, which I’m finding I’m unable to do. So, I’ve been trying to research this question and I’m drawing a blank. Google, which is normally my friend, is not proving useful to this question. Everything I’ve found about romantic attraction doesn’t actually define it. So I’ll do my best to try to define things. 

Romantic attraction is something separate from sexual attraction. It can involve a wide variety of things, but some common aspects of romantic attraction include the person taking on special meaning in your life, frequent thoughts of the person, a tendency to see the person’s positive qualities more than their negatives, exhilaration/euphoria/increased energy/etc. as a result of seeing the person, an almost spiritual connection with the person, strong desire for emotional reciprocity and emotional union, emotional dependency upon the person, a willingness to sacrifice for them, prioritizing this person in your life, and these feelings often seem involuntary. [source]

Not everyone will feel all of these things when romantically attracted to someone but will likely experience at least a few. Some of these things, like thinking about someone frequently, can also be the result of strong friendships, a special interest in a person, or due to sexual feelings. 

I’m sorry if this doesn’t really clarify anything for you. Romance is a tricky subject. 

-Sabrina