I don’t know if this is romantic or platonic

[Anonymous]

I don’t know if I like this boy romantically or platonically since I’ve never felt that way before. Whenever I’m near him I feel happy. I smile around him a lot. Sometimes I get nervous to be around him. He lets me borrow his jacket when I ask I’m not sure if this is related. I’m not sure if I’m gay or not. I really need help on this.

[hemogoblin]

This is gonna be a really frustrating answer, but what answer feels better to you? Do you have a gut instinct for which it feels to you or which you'd prefer it to be?

I was just reading this great response by life-of-an-asexual on the difference between romantic relationships and friendships on tumblr that succinctly says something I've been trying to summarize for years, such as my post where I talk about how romantic attraction has manifested for me in the past. The difference is you. The difference is the intent that you prescribe to it.

The truth is that there is no one, objective way that attraction specifically feels. People might individually try to describe how platonic, alterous, queerplatonic, and romantic attraction feels to them or ways they want to act on this attraction and end up describing the same exact physical manifestations. The only difference would be how we categorized them (likely off of what we wanted to do with them: be good friends, not really sure and maybe just see where it goes, become zucchinis, or date). For example, kissing can be platonic, queerplatonic, romantic, or sexual just depending on the intent of the people performing this action.

There's no objective correct answer here as to what these feelings actually are or what you want to do with them. So, how do you want to label these feelings, if at all? It's okay to let that be your answer. It's also okay if you pick something now and realize later that you actually want something else/want to label the feelings differently. There's no right and wrong here. Just getting to know yourself and respecting your own feelings.

I'm sorry; I know oftentimes we wish that feelings and identity were more like a quiz that someone could give us the correct answers, but that's just not how it works!