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What is a crush?


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3 hours ago, SwankyPants said:

While it is true that I enjoy the more romantically coded things and such. when i have a squish for a person, i don't have any extra desire for such things towards them or anything. mostly with a squish i just want to admire their personality I guess, to be near them as a friend essentially.

I suppose that's how you would separate a squish from a crush! Hopefully I'll have more luck telling the two apart in the future.

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I think it is one way to tell, yes.

 

but I don't trust that it is always going to be accurate, I am sure that desire for romantic gestures is not always present in romantic crushes, that there are other attributes that might be present. 

 

I guess it is like a "you might be having a squish if there is no desire for romantic gestures"

 

or maybe "you might be aromantic if even though you do enjoy romantic gestures or sometimes act romantically, it just feels platonic really and not like it's something for people to get all uncomfortable over, i mean we ARE friends, aren't we? and this is what friends do when they get close right?"

hehe. 

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I developed an old squish recently and they tend to be far and few between, so when it happens the feelings tend to hit me like a truck. It always leaves me a bit stunned cause I didn't remember it being this bad. That's probably why it took me so long to figure out I was aro.

 

This got me to googling a bunch of things like "friend crushes" and "girl crushes" which was probably a mistake. It felt like a case of the straight agenda vs the gay agenda with every Google result. Each time the author would explain my feelings perfectly and I read on, the straight author would go on about friend crushes and the gay author would go on about being gay and in denial. This was incredibly frustrating because I knew regardless of what others perceive my feelings as, it could never naturally lead to a relationship.

 

When I'd had enough of mainstream interpretations I googled something like "sensual vs romantic attraction" and I was shocked by what I read. I'd eagerly clicked all the AVEN links only to find alloromantics insisting that sensual attraction couldn't exist without romantic feelings. These got more and more infuriating before I decided to stop.

 

Basically: don't google your feelings (this should be obvious but I'm a moron who likes Google)

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sensual attraction without romantic attraction is definitely a thing. 

 

it isn't really talked about much though. IDK why... i guess with the attraction debate, there is a strong dislike of using the word attraction to talk about anything not related to a relationship. for me, my sensual attraction is felt towards friends, I want to hold their hand or lean against them... and I usually don't because I am afraid they'll think I'm trying to be romantic... that fear is mostly because I've had it actually happen to me too often, where I lost a friend because they or their friends put pressure on us into being romantic when neither of us wanted romance :(

 

I once looked up the definition of "romance" and it said that romance is excitement or mystery associated with love (or attraction/affection) and I am really a fan of that. because that kind of changes what it means when someone says "they make me happy" or "I like everything about them" because for me. when someone makes me happy, that is all that I mean, I get excited if we do exciting things but otherwise I am just having a general lift in my mood. but IDK how to really explain my thought, but imagining someone say "they make me happy" with the "excitement" in mind is different, something that I have felt towards my high school crush actually, and something I felt towards my one girlfriend but not the others. and when I think about "mystery" and think about "I like everything about them" that statement changes in interpretation a little. when I like everything about a friend or squish, mostly it is just that feeling close to them makes me appreciate them a lot. but I don't really feel especially curious, like if they talk about something I'm naturally curious about yeah, and i feel a need to know them some amount and that is curiosity I guess. but in a natural conversation with them, it isn't really any different from a conversation of the same topic with anyone else. 

 

and also thinking about "excitement and mystery" in regards to other things kind of "clicks" to explain it for me, when thinking about romantic scenes, like idk like the notebook heh. 

 

I think with nonromantic feelings like a squish or sensual attraction, it is very natural to talk about feelings of comfort and appreciation associated with them. but for me, I can't really feel like it fits to say that I feel excitement or mystery associated with them. I've only felt that towards two people.

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On 7/23/2016 at 5:51 AM, SwankyPants said:
  • You think about this person somewhat obsessively, in a much higher proportion than the amount of actual interaction you have with them, even when they aren't around
  • Imagining them finding a significant other (that isn't you) makes you feel a bit remorseful or jealous
  • You can imagine forming a long lasting relationship with them that puts them before anybody else in your life

RE1 - what does this thinking about them obsessively really entail though? i have obsessive thoughts because of an anxiety disorder, so left that plainly it isn't helpful. i have obsessive thoughts about any new person in m life who is showing to be a friend, because it frightens me.

 

RE2 - if when a person does find a SO, and i feel relieved because of the above, does that mean i am aro or does that mean I have anxiety lol. I get jealous when my frineds have friends, and i do feel kind of jealous when my squishes get a partner. but if aromantic people can desire a partner, then that only makes sense right? or do aromantic people just don't get jealous if they want a partner for some reason?

 

RE3 - I thought aromantic people can want this too, a long lasting relationship with the partner before any other. 

 

RE RE1 - In your case, you may think obsessively about every new person you meet. A crush would be even more obsessive. You think about a particular person comparatively much more than you do for others.

 

RE RE2 - It's possible that the relief is simply because you no longer have to feel anxious around a person. But that would be mixed with a heavy dose of sadness or jealousy if it was a crush.

 

RE RE3 - The key is "put them before anybody else in your life". Romantic couples tend to do this, though there can be exceptions.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I get squishes often. Since I have experienced a crush, I would say that they feel very similar emotionally. The main difference was I wanted a relationship in the crush, where with the squish I just wanted to be a very very close friend. When I have a squish, I often do think about them nearly obsessively, or at least get really excited when they're around.

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  • 6 months later...

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