I should clarify before I start that I'm not anti-Christian, I do believe that Christians can be lovely people, I just grew up in a religious environment that left me with quite a bit of trauma lol. I grew up in a very conservative Baptist Christian church and what I have seen is: the church is not God, because the church (mine at least), is not love, and God is love, love is God. I'm not sure whether I believe in God anymore, but I believe in Love, as a transcendental sort of thing (not necessarily romantically in my own life). In my church, marriage is life goals. If you're not married, you get gossiped about, set up on dates, prayed for vigilantly, and told that "He's got a plan for you! Someday you'll meet the right one!" I do believe in Fate, and in people you're meant to meet, but this belief that I was taught as a child was quite damaging for me. "Lord willing, you'll find a husband!" My mom would say, whenever I'd talk about not wanting to date anyone in particular at the moment (I'm transmasc and AFAB btw). It's ironic and funny to mention at this point that she wouldn't allow me to date until I was 18 anyways, as a sort of purity-culture virtue thing. Very double-standards, no? You're supposed to desire someone, but in a pure, virginy, sexless kind of way, but you're supposed to want to marry them and have kinds and life a white-picket fence sort of life. Two become as One, transcending human states through love, but (plot twist!) it's not just two (and not in a fun poly way) because God is the third party in your marriage and is always watching you to make sure you're virtuous and romantic and desiring in a chaste kind of way, but never really wanting or being sexual outside of procreation purposes. The funny thing is, this church I went to that was absolutely horrid to LGBTQ+ people like myself was the most positive about aroace-ness of any of the things. They said, "Oh, perhaps it's just God's will for you to remain celibate and dedicate your life to Him instead of to a spouse", which has it's own silly ick things to unpack, but anyways. They might even, on a rare occasion, bring up the Apostle Paul, who wrote explicitly about not wanting to marry/have a romantic partner, deciding that well, if a renowned writer in the Bible could do it, other people could perhaps do it too. So they were fine about it, in a way, but not in the ways that mattered, at least that I saw. Just in the ways that would allow them to smush this beautiful diverse spectrum of people and experiences and identities into the little box of their worldview.
aro spectrum, very ADHD (+ possible 'tism) and very highly sensitive/sensory issues :) it's. it's just such a wild combo because it mucks with my perception of crushes and squishes so much. for a while I thought I was neurotypical and had no idea that what I thought were these big crushes were actually just hyperfixations, 2 of which became a bit unhealthy. most of the time it's really just squishes but then i go to chase the dopamine and everything gets a bit blurry lol. I feel dude like it's not at all a crush it's just they're very lovely in a platonic way and I'd like to cuddle them lol sensual + platonic attraction ftw :) like that's what makes a QPR sound so appealing to me
