Looking for you

CW: This post contains adult material

I was just wandering around everywhere, looking for you

- Jim Halpert

Quite candidly, I didn't want to write this post, especially so early into the launch of this blog. It feels weirdly intimet for me to be so open with details about my relationships regardless of what kind of relationships I'm disucssing.

To address the elephant in the room, I'm autistic and so that means that I do struggle with some of those nuiansses of a relationships. If you want to learn more about why direct communication is important and impactful to the friendships, partnerships, and just all sorts of ships between autistic individuals, I highly recommend this article.

I'm an all or nothing sort of person. I'm either completely in or I'm pretty much checked out. The only reason I can fain the exists of an area in the middle is because I'm a people pleaser who doesn't want to disappoint.

What this has meant for anyone who has had the grand misfurtune of being sucked into my life is:

1. Good luck getting rid of me
2. It’s a ride or die situation, I’ll do pretty much whatever to support you and make sure your happy
3. I will build such a strong emotional bond with you that everyone around us will be confused if we are dating or not; boy, girl, whatever, people around us will be confused

This incredibly strong bond has resulted in me having relationships with people that, form my perspective, are more akin to what people consider to be romantic relationships. (Especially in the honeymoon phase)

Originally, I thought that romantic relationships were all that closeness but with a physical component. As I’ve gotten older and learned more about how people consider romantic relationships so much more than the physical component it created this broken dichotomy that has drastically change and “broken” how I approach romantic relationships and physical relationships.

On to the adult stuff, for the most part, I don’t tie sex to romantic relationships. For me, sex is a mechanical thing. Don’t get me wrong, there are so many reasons why it’s better with someone you are close with, but as they say bad pizza is still pizza. This has resulted in me approaching my overall deviation of relationships into a few buckets:

• Friends - The people who I’m emotionally bound to. I can be myself, enjoy life, and live experiences together with.
• Dating - People I’m physically engaged with. They might be flings, they may be stable. The are almost never random people, but they definitely are not people I’m close with.
• Partners - Someone who is like a friend, but I’m physically engaged with.

Why the distinction? I mentioned in my last post that I can’t be too relaxed but I need it to not be too much effort. If I’m in a partnership, I’m always worried that I’m going to stay with the person, end up married with kids, and my life is going to change. While that isn’t a bad thing, it’s not what I want or invision. Instead, I want to continue to operate in my own way. I don’t want to be responsible for others explicitly, instead I want to support people implicitly. It’s weird to explain but if I feel too comfortable in a relationship, I’m going to do something dumb to sabotage it. I’ll start throwing myself into work to stop being available, or go on trips on my own, or stop being supportive in the ways that I would want to be as a partner.

This has resulted in me focusing more on finding people to date then proper partners.

So why my earlier quote of “looking for you?” Because I’m not opposing starting partnerships. I want to find the person out that that makes me forget this feeling, the worry, this pit in my stomach and instead allows me to just live in the enjoyment of the partnership and commitment.

• Tags:
• Relationship