It came down to demisexualism. The diagnosis allowed a few things to settle into place and it allowed me to see it. Maybe I can explain it now. I know a few things now that people know much earlier than me, it is like they know it and I had to figure it out. I am not going back to Big Smoke to date any particular woman, but I am hoping to date people. I met a wonderful woman last year and she told me that I lived too far away and therefore it would not work out, but we could be friends. From that I know that me moving directly to her city means nothing. I figured out that when you meet someone there is a critical time that you can date for it to go somewhere but after that time expires it ends. It might have to do with learning to be with them or it might have to do with getting to know each other personally and not apart. Once the period of time is done you can't get it back. So me and her will be friends at best.
My friend was worried I would be heading to the city to be with some particular person, and I am not. But I discovered that I do like dating. I discovered even though I did not, using the tired baseball analogy, get to first base it is a lot of fun. And then there is my demisexualness and demiromanticness which changes the dynamic completely. It changes it because it effectively changes the rules of the game for me, but not everyone else. Come again you might say? Typically people meet, they talk, they feel chemistry and they go off on their own and give everything a try and then they date and then cohabitate and maybe break up or have children or a pet together. The meeting and the sex is usually over with within a week and the dating goes from there. Not me.
I look at people and I can say that person is considered attractive, but usually I just see people. I can't tell people that I find them attractive or not because for me, attractiveness is not based on appearance only, it is strongly based on what I know about them and how I feel about them. I like to think about it like this: most people have been together for weeks, been having sex for weeks before they truly know the person they are with and that is the time that I become attracted to them. The problem is that most people are through waiting and are no longer sexually receptive at that point. I accept that. I can change that and so I must accept it.
I could go in two directions now and talk about how I got here or what I am going to do. How. I always figured it was Autism. It is also my experiences with girls and women. And how I thought relationships worked. I thought about it a lot and it is likely a mixture of three things, being obsessed with one person, how I thought women liked things—much of that coming from the mass media and the Disneyesk puritan values of the religious morality that ran the media, and the reaction of the said women to me.
I thought women wanted a long courtship, TV told me so. I thought that women wanted polite and proper gentlemen. I thought women wanted men who were respectful of them and sensitive to their desires. That comes from the media and it comes from their lips, but their actions spoke otherwise, I just could not read that.
Of course, obsessions never work out well for either party, Captain Ahab and the Whale. Given the former and the later, when I finally approached women I was interested in I never ended out on top. After a while one begins to think every encounter is going to go badly and once that happens there is somewhat of a spiral. The last time it happened it was eighteen months ago and I am determined that it never happen again.
As I was telling my friend, I am not moving to BigSmoke to find a relationship, a lie and the truth. I don't want to be alone, but I am not going there to hook up with someone; when I go I want that as far away from my mind as possible.
I am controlling my thoughts to accomplish that goal. Before I met a girl and asked myself if she was single. Now when I meet a woman I am going to be assuming that she is happy with a life partner. I am going to get a space that is good for my needs and not with the thought that anyone else will see it. I am going to get a single bed, because it is good enough for my needs, more than good enough actually, because I don't move at night a lo. My friend piped up then, what if you meet someone, it won't be enough for two people. To which I stated, but I am not going there to meet someone. If I do meet someone, then I will cross that bridge when I get to it, buy a bigger bed, spend nights at her place or something like that, besides it hasn't happened yet, why would I expect that to change now?
The conversation went back and forth for a while, until I stopped and looked at her in the eyes and asked her to remember SuperGirl. About how when I met her I was infactuated and probing her with words to see if she was compatible with me, trying to determine if she was a good match and then becoming besot with her. My friend stopped and said you smothered her and she ran away as fast as she could. Yes, and I don't want to do that again. I am demiromantic, it takes me time to get to know people and discover that I like them enough to ask them out. By the time I am secure enough to ask them out, they have determined that I am not interested and have moved on, so it is better for me to just take a breath and pretend that from the start with every woman I meet.
She stopped and dropped the subject. I am going to BigSmoke to meet people and make friends. If I go back to LittleSmoke, I will be working with no time to do that, if I stay in Smallville I will have time to socialize but without anyone to socialize with. I am not going to meet someone, I am going to meet a bunch of people.
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