I find it interesting my internal classifications of "crush" and "other assorted romantic-sexual-moirailic feelings towards someone". Because you would think that I would apply most recipients of the latter category to the former word --If I feel more than platonic towards you, I have a crush, right? Well...not exactly.
Because part of having a crush involves that fluttery teenaged feeling of "ooo, do they really like me?!" All the traditional teeny-bopper bullshit, and that's part of what makes crushes great! It's fun to feel jittery and curious and interested and spend time over-interpreting every little word and gesture and touch.
But there are some people who I don't have to do that for. There are people who I can know, without doubt, that they like me --maybe just platonically, but they are decidedly interested in hanging out with me and talking to me and touching me. And when I become more-than-platonic interested in those people, I don't get the fluttery "do-they-don't-they?" feeling in the base of my spine. I get a strong dose of just plain joy from being with them. I like hanging out with them, I like talking to them and hugging them and entering gleeful philosophical arguments or getting advice or whatever comes my way. Sure, sometimes I can get that flutter, but if my brain enters "oo, I LIKE like them!" mode, my first instinct is not to overanalyze, but to straight up say "yo, you're a babe, let's shag."
(Or more accurately, to analyze them and their current situation, and whether or not they are poly or polyfriendly, and whether or not they are associated with someone(s), and if I could or could not deal with those associates1, and where they live, and how often they dance and how well we communicate, and a few other factors that would be a bit too revealing to actually post here. If they meet my Rigorous Testing3, then I toss out a "so, I'm interested, you interested? Let's talk about it lots and lots!", and things go from there. Shagging usually takes much longer to get around to4.)
I think a lot of the difference falls into friendship, and how close I am with the person initially, but some of the difference is certainly the difference between relationships that I am playing for endgame, and relationships that I am playing transiently. When I say "playing for endgame", I don't mean Twoo Wuv Everlasting and six kids and a picket fence, necessarily. I just mean that I am fully intending for this brilliant person to be in my life for the rest of time, in some capacity or another. Maybe they will be just a (varying5) close friend, maybe they will be a reoccurring sexual partner, maybe they will be a romantic partner, maybe they really will be the coparent of my eventual children.
My transient (more often referred to as "casual") relationships do not carry that weight within them. I would like to know these people for a long time --I am usually pretty good about not being attracted (in the sense of friendship as well as moreship) to jerkasses, and I like keeping nifty people in my life. But they feel more like the secondary characters of my play, something to look back fondly at and say "oh yes, we had that glorious BDSM dynamic our last semester of school" or "he's the only uncut cock I've ever had the pleasure of playing with" or even just "we talked so much in person that our chatlogs were able to be nothing more than pages of entertaining links from Tumblr"7.
So when I am interested in a person who I know or suspect will drift away somehow (grad school, awesome new job on the other coast, other relationship turning into The Serious One...in a few more years, I suspect "babies" and "wedding planning" will be pretty thoroughly on this list), my feelings tend to be more ephemeral. And ephemeral, not-so-serious thoughts are just great for crushing on someone, because it gives me a chance to be giddy and get out my newness fetish on them without worrying significantly about how I am going to restructure my life (even subtly) to make sure that person is always in it.
(Plus, my newness fetish -which is totally kinda a thing? Like, I pretty much always and forever have *someone* I've got NewToyEnergy or NewDesire for- works really well with time-limited relationships. Oh, you're mono and just waiting to find the one? Happy to play in the meantime!)
Anyways, I don't have anything else to say really. This is a pretty clear example of writing to suss out my own thoughts. Thanks for joining me.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: It is to my moderate shock that I realize I won't date someone if I find their other partners difficult to deal with. This is a bit depressing --I tend to compartmentalize my relationships-- but I've seen enough variety in the last five years of being some sort of polybeast to note the differences between "you make my partner happy and that makes me happy keep making my partner happy YAY!" and "I hate your stupid face you homewrecking slutcookie"2. The latter kinda sucks, and the mutual partner has to work damn hard to make up for that sort of bullshit. I would prefer to save everyone the work by just not getting involved.
2: I thought briefly about putting in some actual (paraphrased) quotes/actions from various metamours in the past, but that would probably turn out mean, and I try not to be bitter or spiteful on livejournal. So these are extremes, neither of which I have actually explicitly heard or reached.
3: Not actually rigorous, certainly not a formal test.
4: Things that entertain me: One of my earlier partners and I were curled up platonic in a bed when they mentioned that they were into me, and I revealed that I was pretty into them. Something on the order of two hours later we actually got around to kissing. Sigh!
5: It pains me to note that, since exiting high school, I have very few people with whom I have enjoyed the same degree of closeness for more than a few years. I have had several very close friends6 (some of whom I termed best friend but none of whom quite matched up with Veronica), but I often tend to go for accidental months without communication towards the people I care about. This is a pretty major failing on my part and I don't know how to fix it. It frustrates me that I can have a year where I spend thousands of words on IM with someone, followed by a year where there is...nothing.
6: Since college, jere7my is probably the person who I have had the most consistent friendship with. He is absolutely one of my best friends in the world (because *someone* has to yell at me for not knowing songs that came out before I was born, and MrBelm is busy doing that for He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Ignored, I'm sure) and that's been pretty consistently true since I met him in early aught-eight.
7: Match the relationship to the person! No, do not really. Anyways, all three of these are people who I *love* getting to see again, and truly hope to stay in some touch with for the rest of time. But I'm not always as good as I should be about keeping in touch with them outside of those sporadic meetings, due to distance or time constraints or just plain ol' drift.
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