Am I romantically attracted to my friend?
Essay • 430 Words • Love/Romance • 12/23/2024
I think that if you are confused about whether you have romantic or platonic feelings toward your friend that you’re not confused about the existence of the attraction/connection, but rather that you haven’t committed to either option. While attraction is mostly automatic, I believe that you do have a mostly conscious decision on how to channel those feelings. You are probably scared. You might not be sure about your compatibility if you were to date, or you are worried that the other person doesn’t feel the same way so you want to suppress it before you get rejected.
The hardest thing about something like this is that it is an ambiguous space. I don’t think that there is a cut and dry difference between romantic and platonic relationships. There are a lot of relationship social norms, but I think that at the end of the day Romance is Personally Constructed and Necessarily Exclusive. For example, going grocery shopping, cuddling, going on fancy dinners: these are all acts that many people would associate with doing it with romantic/life partners, however there is nothing inherently romantic to these acts. There is nothing stopping you from doing this with any of your friends, but if you reserve those actions for only certain people, you are imbuing certain meaning.
I think the most common mistake that people make is that in noticing a particularly strong connection with someone they think that it must be romantic. Romance is the type of love/attraction/connection, but that has no effect on the depth of feelings. It is not a law of the universe that romantic love must be the deepest kind of love in your life. I think that it is fine to question the nature of your connection with a person, but I do think that you have to commit to continuing the relationship as either platonic or romantic.
I don’t think that there is a magic trick to accurately evaluate whether or not you should try a romantic relationship with a friend. I think the only way to do it is to take a leap of faith. This doesn’t mean that you should confess or ask them out right away, I think that skips a lot of steps. I think that the most open and vulnerable way to try to figure out something with someone is to open a dialogue. It doesn’t have to be about dating each other to start out with, but first about what their other platonic relationships are like, what romance is to them, and what they want out of their relationships.