JUST something to consider, I had a lot of the same problems as you and that one little change helped me out SO much.... like this is definitely an Advance Tier Trick, not a beginner’s strat -- if you’re still just starting taking comms yeah please get at least half up front-- but u feel me

because check it: even if you're in a unicorn of a theoretical no-rules open poly relationship (and again, absolutely that is a unicorn, as most poly or open relationships still have SOME boundaries), there is going to come a time in which you're going to be in a situation in which pursuing Feelings you have is a Super Bad Idea. maybe they're in a closed relationship/there's a pretty dramatic age difference or other power-dynamic-affecting factor/you're not in a place to be a good partner/whatever, there is absolutely going to come a time in which you're going to be presented with The Ultimate Self-Esteem Affirming Ambrosia of Someone Wanting To Be In A Relationship with You and the option in everyone involved's best interest is for u to be like "thanks but no thanks". and I know it can be hella hard to willingly choose to deny it! But idk i promise, i really do, that it will be better for you, so much, in the long run to, like, Not, relent to every instance of affirmation available to you and have a more self-focused locus of esteem, lord i swear it ok

and it’s like -- that view of Spike is why I think I cannot stomach spare-ity one bit? well, among other reasons. But this idea (that is 100% purely headcanon, I know, I own that) that Spike is just barely outside of what his community understands and wants is so important to me, that he is, generally, “queer”. And I don’t necessarily mean gay or trans or anything like that, I just mean -- the way that Spike relates to pony society is analogous to the way a queer person relates to mainstream American/Euro/Etc society. In as much that he just doesn’t quite fit, that the mold they have for the little guy is just not quite right. And he tries to follow the provided societal choreography (we can all interpret anything however we want, but the whole mustache thing has ALWAYS read to me as “a dragon mimicking the actions he thinks A Boy is SUPPOSED to do”) only to be met with frustration, and so, he ultimately abandons it. He doesn’t have relationships like they have, he doesn’t get treated like they do, he doesn’t be a “boy” the same way they do, so he... quits trying.  i know this is me projecting like a M O T H E R F U C K E R  onto a cartoon dragon. But that experience -- livin in that liminal state -- is so important to me, and for whatever reason, my brain has decided to make Spike my totem for that. i know, weird right? but that’s why my brain like VIOLENTLY REJECTS really cis het masc Spikes, they’re just jarring and wrong to me... the idea that he’s this suave horny lady killer just makes me!! mentally lash out!! aaahh!! and like 98% of all of The badship is EXACTLY that, just this very... very het masculine spike wooing her...... and the remaining 2% hits other bad buttons for me... there;s like 800 other reasons I canNOt with spare-ity but that’s well-worn ground. spike is a lil queer hoodlum. i am unstoppable

My antis are making me too, uhh, tweaked tbh to stuudy effectively fore midterms so here, have some Twispike Feelings Dumping the concepts of different types of love is one that has always enamored me.... while I’m romo, I’m friends with an aro (but allosexual, she’s not aroace) girl and her thoughts regarding the emotions she goes through being friends with people who want to push her into a relationship/want “more” from her always fascinate me... (if ur reading this, Friend, hop it’s not weird to refer to you in the third person like this i don’t even think u look here). asymmetric relationships tend to be portrayed as always bad, unfair, to be avoided. but it’s like, if two people want something different from one another, and they bother understand and respect that -- well, i think that’s very beautiful. i don’t know. if they can understand that their partner’s needs are different than their own, and meet those specific needs? what a lovely endeavor! (incidentally this is why I love fictional depictions of healthy polyamory, even though i’m mono) Twi is needy, neurotic, impulsed and driven. she does her best but her anxiety tends to rule the roost and direct her actions without a second thought. that big brains spins its wheels and she follows it wordlessly, often to her own dismay. She needs a wrench thrown in her gears -- Spike. she needs grounding. For the auspicious life she’s led he has been on of the few constants and there is no denying she will continue to need his attention and calming. Spike is always there. Spike needs her too. In her worst moments Twi is clingy and possessive of Spike out of fear, terrified of her security blanket ever leaving. this is temporary, this is a demon of anxiety driving her. as they mature, and as Spike continues to prove himself a constant, the possession acquiesces. She is assured and exalted in his consistency.After they become open about their feelings Spike could straight fuck off and out of town for a year and Twi wouldn’t flinch. he could fuck someone else. Twi wouldn’t care, she Has Him and Spike Is Always Going To Be In Her Life, The One Constant She Has Always Had Absolutely Will Not Change. she needs this. her love is eager, driven, necessary. Contrast Spike. Spike will probably never leave the liminal state he currently occupies. His entire existence is one of a search for identity in the face of a society that has none to give him.  he has no dragon role models, very little sense of family or relation; but he is chipper and calm in spite of it! Being an outsider -- Spike does NOT understand, truly, the intricacies of most of the sociological and/or anthropological (equestrilogical?) implications of where he lives. He is poorly enculturated. He does not wholly understand, well, much of any of these customs of his society, not relationships or gender or family or community. He speaks Friendship with a very funny accent. There were spats in his adolescence where his obvious outsider status frustrated him, but now, he is content. Spike is content to drift as a permanent tourist in this alien land and has accepted this. And Spike Knows he loves Twi. he doesn’t quite understand the implications of this -- why does that mean he can’t love anyone else? why COULDN’t he love Twi? Why is that wrong? -- but he knows it as truly as any other fact in his life. From an early age he accepted that he was going to be with Twi forever, not really getting that, to others, that was not quite such a given. Why were they asking his when he was gonna move out as a teenager?? Why did Scootaloo make it weird when we kissed that one time, asking things like “so what are we”?? Auugh, don’T ASK Spike these things!! He is frustrated by a society he does not understand intimately telling he is wrong for stepping over invisible boundaries constantly. But Twi never does that. Twi accepts Spike as the weird little gremlin he is. She’d never ask why he was digging a nest for no reason, or hiding in the fireplace because It Seemed Cool. He’s Spike, he just sort of does his own thing, and it seems like Twi is truly the only one to not tut-tut him back into place if he seems to violate norms. His love is warm, big, but in all honestly, simple. Breaking it down to brass tacks, he probably has a single frequency of “love” -- he does not love Twi especially more than he loves anyone or thing else (contrast Twi, who ABSOLUTELY has gradients of affection, where he sits squarely at the top). Spike seems to at least superficially understand that the emotions Twi feels for him are not symmetric to his experience. He gets that Twi loves him “harder”, in a much more intense, needy way. He’s okay with that. He understands that sometimes Twi will need him and he won’t quite understand why and that’s okay. Twi understands that this big lug that likes to cuddle and fuck is never going to be some suave Casanova. He’s never gonna wax poetic. Twi understands that his love is more, for want of a better term, “basic” -- but it is just as real. She knows she can’t demand some sort of relationship model he would never fit in; he would absolutely never really “get” it, and that’s okay. Twi knows Spike is always just gonna be this big affectionate puppy and not some insightful lover.He’s always gonna be Spike, and that’s all she could ever want. relationships don’t have to be 1:1 to be lovely and functional. everyone just has to understand everyone else, and their needs. that sort of stammering to speak the others’ language is even, in a way, all the more beautiful

Thank you so much for the kind words aah ;w;!You don’t need to apologize, you couldn’t have POSSIBLY worded that more gently/appropriately/couched-in-genuine-curiosity...ily. And yeah!Breaking it down, I’m a genderqueer/genderfluid girl, where sometimes I go from girl to androgyne. The affect it has on my life is so minimal I personally don’t feel comfortable placing myself visibly under the trans umbrella, but I really want to emphasize here that that is a personal choice I have made and in no way an endorsement of either a specific course of action, or a moral statement that the choice I have made is “correct”. If you’re out there reading this, and “genderqueer/genderfluid girl” describes you too -- your gender is different than the one assigned to you at birth, if calling yourself trans feels right, then go for it. By most accepted definitions, you totally are.This is probably more words than you bargained for, but HERE WE ARE. It’s a good opportunity to explain how the identity came about and what it means to me.It was a bit of a difficult path for me to finally get here; I was a visibly androgynous teenager with poor self-image and did the archetypical course of action, wore lots of frumpy clothes to hide my body, vocally and outwardly rejected all things Mainstream Feminine, and ALSO complicating things -- I was very, very certain I was regular-queer, too. (I just say I’m queer, but bi/pansexual are equally accurate. I say I’m bi outside of circles where “queer” would be a cogent communicator of identity). I dated another girl for quite some time. This extra-complicated my gender issues, because lord help us both, she was also bi and the relevant bit of our relationship here was her pining that I had a penis. I, too, pined for a penis.But then I got out of my awkward gangly teenage years. My waist slimmed and my hips flared. I Got Actual Boobs (I was always flat-chested, this contributed, I had AA-As [a double-A is smaller than a single-A for you non-bra-shoppers] until I was 17-18, when birth control gave me a growth spurt). I lost a bit of babyfat in my face and it slendered out and I still had a strong chin and jaw and brow but now I actually had cheekbones too. My friends and partners gently supported my self-esteem and encouraged me to embrace my femininity, to wear flattering clothes and let myself be seen. After hating my body for so long, actively being encouraged to love it was such a welcome respite!However, time has seemed to have indicated that... both of those time periods were me rubber-banding too far in the opposite direction.  After finally loving myself and allowing myself to be femme and really honestly loving it -- little things would bubble up. I wouldn’t shave my legs out of laziness and get huffy at the expectation that I SHOULD -- I uh, kind of liked my legs hairy. A guy at a convention vocally and exasperatedly disagreed with my notion that I was androgynous -- “what? no, you’re not androgynous at ALL, haha, what?” -- and I was angry about it for days for reasons I couldn’t place. And I’m in a “hetero” relationship now (neither of us are straight, but, you know, hetero-presenting) and even now, outside of the earlier context in my life of partner wishing I didn’t HAVE to use a strap-on, a lack of a penis does still palpably bother me some days. some days I pack with, like, some socks and I Feel Better. I’ve been eyeing things like this binder or this one. looks like some part of me actively wants to be androgynous sometimes, huh.It was sort of a hard place to get to; my feminine identity was hard-fought to win! I really had to try so hard to love myself as a girl, and to abdicate that feels, odd. But hey, I think I’m finally where I’m supposed to be, that I’m usually a girl, but also sometimes, I’m an androgyne, and That’s Okay!!WITH REGARDS TO SECONDLIFE: I’m very aware of it! I never really played it, due to a combination and a lack of interest c: It’s nothing personal, but the genre of  “chat clients with more involved avatars” never clicked with young-Me, is all!WITH REGARDS TO ME BEING VERY PRETTY: THANK U