What if we’re not right for each other? Because at this point in our lives we have the exact same needs. Hence there’s no yang to the yin. It’s all yin.
I’m not reciprocating enough. I can see you and what you need (or want) and I know that I don’t have that to give. Makes it hard to sit back and receive all this care from you. I cannot energetically match up to you right now.
How you want me is at 90, when how I want anyone at all is maybe at 15. A part of me feels obligated to lean in and receive. Like I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth by even entertaining the thought of saying no to you.
The intensity of how I feel your love makes me wary of getting too close. I’d be making promises I wouldn’t be able to keep consistently over time. Promises of a specific type of presence, promises of affection and touch and sex, a promise to be available in a consistent, maybe predetermined (or expected) way.
Whether or not you are expecting it from me, this is what I feel you truly desire – a partner who can make you those promises and live to live up to them consistently, until the end of your forever.
Maybe this is why I feel all that pressure. The nurturer, intuit and people pleaser in me has in the past been conditioned to set myself aside and cater to the next person’s needs. I am deconditioning, and now able to feel the push and pull of it. The push to work overtime and give you what you want versus the pull to turn you down and choose myself.
I am stuck at feeling like speaking out my truest truth will cause you hurt. Here, the default settings check back in. I choose my own long-suffering as a better alternative to potentially causing you to hurt. I don’t want you to feel rejected. The result is me in a place where I’m not presenting authentically with you..
I feel most safe and most at ease when we are in a friend space, talking and laughing and just existing. I get tense when sex comes up. Our first time sex sprint was great and easy, because at that point it was just sex. I cannot tune into my sexual self with you today because I’m not living in my truth at surface level.
If I am in a long-suffering state, then no one in the equation is experiencing joy. I am not free in this configuration of being (us as lovers). It rings heavy for me when you say I love you and I don’t say it back. I don’t say it back because a romantic “I love you” feels laden with obligations. I need time to see and feel and understand. I do care for you.
Lovers who can be friends. For there to be longevity in my connections I need to go light on being lovers and heavier on the friends. None of my love connections are the same but what I want right now (more friends, less lovers) is consistent across the board.
I don’t believe in the premise that I started out with. What if this, because that, hence do or die. I can care for you and freely get to know you as a friend without any caveats about whether my reciprocity is actually reciprocal and without a fear of getting unhealthily attached.
I intentionally keep romantic relationships casual and I celebrate geographical separation. I’m realizing as I write this that I don’t have to explain every last thing in detail.
(Might be that long-suffering persona working overtime to make sure everyone understands that it’s not them. Ultimately another person’s self worth is not my responsibility and it is actually egomaniacal to think that I could irreparably harm a person’s feeling of being enough)
It’s ok that I don’t want to give of myself romantically. It just is what it is right now. Especially romantically in the worldly sense where this becomes the person you build your life around (over and over as each person/relationship comes and goes).
Lovers who can be friends popped up as a phrase in my mind years ago, as a way to define what I want out of romantic relationships long term. Then I came across it during astrology deep dives when I was reading about my venus sign. This is literally what it says-
“venus is in aquarius
Venus in Aquarius people try to impress you with their open-minded, future-thinking spirit. They want you to see them as unique, rebellious, and a little provocative. They are attractive when they are acting a little aloof. They want you to acknowledge and appreciate that they don’t follow the beaten track in matters of the heart. Venus in aquarius people are attracted to unusual or unconventional relationships. They don’t want to follow all the rules, although they may make quite a few of their own. They can appear quite standoffish at times, and are threatened by restrictions of any kind. Emotional types may be put off by their detached manner in love. Venus in Aquarius wants you to love them for their intellect, and to admire their visions. They value lovers who are also good friends, and they avoid emotional displays or confrontations like the plague. Venus in Aquarius will delight in shocking you with their unusual ways and their forward-looking thinking.
pleasing venus in aquarius involves letting them know just how interesting they are. put up with their occasional need to act superior on an intellectual level — they are very proud of their unique ideas and visions. dream along with them, and don’t fence them in. they need space and will happily return the favor, giving you lots of room to breathe and to be yourself.”
~cafe astrology
I have no end goal when it comes to romantic relationships. I am content to sit in a friendship space. I’m experiencing a side of me that deprioritizes sex once a certain level of closeness is achieved. It feels important to separate romantic love and sex to see what’s left standing. My theory is that what’s left standing is friendship.
If you can love me the same way within a friendship space (for however long it will last) then my theory is proven!
It is also a way to switch up from the tragedy of endings. When there’s friendship, then the love doesn’t have to end when the sex/romance stops. The connection evolves.
Anyway, we’ve talked about all of this. It feels like I’ve said it a bunch of ways. I know that you hear me and you say that you get it… and yet I’m still not at ease.
