I am terrified of people falling in love with me.
I just saw a post that kinda gave an example of how easily some people fall in love. More specifically it said: āStop playing with my hair. Please. Do you want me to fall in love with you?ā And my first thought was about how I would react to that, about how I would stop mid-move because I donāt want that. I donāt want someone to fall in love with me. And this brings me to a point I feel should be made if it hasnāt already. The point I want to make is not about aromanticism, no itās not. The thing is, I donāt want someone to fall in love with me, yet I really want people to love me, I want to be liked by at least a few people. I mean liked in the general way, as in āappreciated as a humanā, not the having-a-crush-on-someone way. The reason I donāt want people to fall in love with me is simple: I donāt want to have to feel guilty about not returning those feelings or not being capable of having these feelings at all. And to be honest I think that is really, really wrong. The feelings of another person are something I honestly cannot control and it should not make me feel guilty if I donāt reciprocate these feelings, I am not guilty for not reciprocating feelings. But why do I feeling like I would have to feel guilty about friendzoning someone? That question also has a kinda obvious answer: society. Our society gave it a name, made the āfriend zoneā a thing and even worse made the word āfriendzoningā a thing. This word is, in my understanding, a passive word, because it is not the person āfriendzoningā doing something, it is more that the person doing that isnāt doing a thing, the person āwho is being friendzonedā wants them to. Ā The way we use that word, the way we use that concept, immediately makes the person who doesnāt have these romantic or sexual or whatever feelings the bad person, the person with the problem when, in fact, that exact person is the person who doesnāt have the problem. I mean, Iām aromantic so I donāt understand that exact concept but I do know that wanting something from a person and not getting it sucks. And (at least I hope that) this simplified, it becomes obvious how wrong this behaviour is, especially if you take in consideration that the person can do nothing to change it, to give the other person what they want. And Iām tired of this. Iām tired of people blaming their miserableness on someone else and Iām tired of constantly worrying about if Iām too nice to someone or if someone is developing romantic feelings for me and will be angry at me or upset with me because I canāt reciprocate these feelings. Canāt we just grow up and live with it when we donāt get what we want?
Tl;dr: I am furious about our friendzone-culture and I donāt want to and more importantly donāt have to be guilty about not returning the exact same feelings that someone has for me.
