#aplatonics

cogitari, cogitariromantic, cogitarisexual, cogitarisensual, cogitariaesthetic, cogitariplatonic, cogitariqplatonic, and cogitarialterous !

Anyone can reblog this post regardless of my dni.

but I think it's so interesting that "love" is the thing that is supposed to be the most important thing or whatever, and that's what most people are looking for or feel they need in order to be happy/fulfilled/whatever, when to me at least, love is a very flimsy self focused emotion.

and by that I mean someone could love me, but that has nothing to do with me. their love is for how they perceive me, which more often than not, is wildly inaccurate, in which case I'm not actually loved, just an imaginary me that lives only inside the other persons perception of me, which ends up harming me and the other person more than benefiting either.

or they love what I can do or provide for them, which again has nothing to do with me, just the services I provide, so if I stop providing those services for whatever reason, I'm no longer loved, because it was never actually about me in the first place

and even if were talking about the definition of love that is wanting the best for someone and wanting them to thrive and be happy, that's still the other persons idea of what is best for me and what will make me happy, which may very well not be anywhere near what i actually need or what will make me happy, or even overlapping with the first example, it can end up being "i love who you could be if you took care of yourself/healed/made healthy choices/whatever, but if you never ever changed i would realize i don't love you as you are now"

there is no version of love that doesn't prioritize the person feeling it or impact them more, and sure it can be nice to feel needed or important, but if that need and importance is based on love and nothing else then it doesn't have a sturdy foundation and as soon as that feeling is gone so will the importance and need

but back to my point

I find it so fascinating that people value that over respect

if I love someone, that's about me and how I feel about them and how my perception of them makes me feel, and it's all about me and my feelings ... but if I respect someone, that is entirely about them and who they are as a person and that they deserve to be treated right, and honoured, and made space for.

and maybe that's just a technicality, and respect is supposed to be lumped in with love or that is really what people are talking about when they say love, but to me it is a huge difference

but love without respect seems, in my experience at least, to be the common occurance, rather than love with respect

and this might be too controversial or whatever but I'm gonna say it anyway

abusive people that say they love the person they're abusing ... do love that person, they just don't respect them. they experience the feeling of love towards that person, that self centered "I feel a certain way around you" feeling, and because it's self centered and actually has nothing to do with the other person, they abuse them. and there seems to be the mentality that someone who really genuinely loves you wouldn't hurt or abuse you, but that's not the case in my opinion. someone could love you and still hurt you, but it's because there's no respect. because love is about how a person is in regards to yourself, how they make you feel, how you want them to live, but respect is just about who that person is and that you think they deserve to live their life as they choose and you honour their choices and decisions

and yeah respect can still fall into the "i want you to be treated right, so i'm going to treat you how i think is right regardless of what you think", but real genuine respect inherently includes trust and valuing the other person's opinions, which includes how they want or need to be treated.

and obviously there are still ways you can be mistreated or whatever when you're respected, but there's a much lower likelyhood of that than with just being loved

but anyway i just think it's interesting that love gets all the hype when respect is so much better and is a much better foundation for a healthy satisfying relationship of any kind whether it's platonic, romantic, sexual, queerplatonic, alterous, professional, whatever

and maybe that's just my opinion and other people don't really care about that as long as someone feels something about them, and that's why respect is so hard to come by, but respect just never seems to be talked about and I wanted to change that.

because I'm sure there are plenty of people like myself that are aro or apl or loveless or whatever, that value respect and trust over love, and are maybe even open to some type of relationship that's built around that rather than romance or platonic attraction or any type of love.

but even it seems queerplatonic or alterous relationships are "supposed" to be based off some type of love, or at least the conversations I've seen or been a part of still focus on or include that, rather than just respect and commitment which, to me at least, is much more appealing than any type of love.

and there does seem to be a misconception that loveless people hate everyone and don't want any type of relationship ever, and while that is true for some people there should also be room in the conversation for people who are still interested in some type of relationship or support system with other people as long as it's about mutual respect and trust and support rather than fragile changeable feelings

And the romance/sexual side of that pisses me off too, but at least there is some bit of representation and conversation for not valuing that or not valuing it as much as other people

but even then the solution is often "yeah I don't need that because I have my friends"

???

why is the message that the only time our life can be good is when other people are involved

like other people's support and willingness to be around me does not determine whether or not my life is good and satisfies me omfg

and yes obviously I know some people do want friends and that does improve their life, this post is not about those people. some of us do not want that, it has absolutely no benefits, and actually makes life worse

love is not the greatest thing, its not the goal for everyone, relationships are not everything, friends are not everything, dying alone with no one who loves you or remembers you is not the worst thing ever, some of us actually prefer that idea

and why is that so damned hard for people to understand

especially when those same people that are trying to push the need for relationships on you will literally just use you and then dump you when they're done, even if you tried to be a good friend/partner/whatever to them

like ok maybe if you think its so important actually be good at it??? actually show me the supposed value in relationships??? or just shut up and let me live my life the way that i see is best and actually trust that i might know what's best for me and you don't

being aromantic or asexual is hard enough for people to understand, but there's even less people who are even willing to entertain the concept that aplatonic people might exist and it's just so dumb. why can't people just let loners be loners without calling them depressed or broken or probably a violent person with criminal tendencies,

especially in a world where for traumatized, neurodivergent, or mentally ill people, a lot of people just don't care enough to put the effort into that relationship, because we're too much work, we're too different, we're just too much, why are people then pissing on us for accepting that no one wants us and just living our lives without that

just let aplatonic people live our lives, we're not even doing anything like omfg stop trying to force us to be social, stop telling us our life will only matter if someone else loves us, stop saying we're just depressed and going out with people will fix us, stop trying to make us "normal" and just accept that just because we're different doesnt mean we're a threat to your way of life and need to be altered to preserve your closed minded idea of what humanity should look like, especially when the social world is filled with obligation and things you should be doing and shouldn't be doing that maybe isn't actually beneficial for anyone

we're living our lives the way that works for us, we're not hurting anyone

all my damn life people have been throwing around that word and i have no fucking clue what it means

like wtf is it? what it do? how it be?

cuz high key i realized what i always thought friendship was and what i always looked for in a platonic relationship is literally just a qpr and i'm pretty sure not at all what friendship actually is?

but also i've seen plenty of people have much deeper levels of friendship than i ever did, so i'm wondering if it's just that i never managed to get to the level that i was looking for?

but also ... kinda feel like given the amount of people i've been around and the amount of time i've pent and the shit tons of effort I put into relationships that if that was possible I probably would have found it by now?

I AM SIMPLY SO CONFUSED