I still maintain that people are the root of all evil

[yvannairie]

Like, tbh, maybe it's just that I've always been very bad at maintaining a consistent image in the eyes of others (which makes me feel like I'm some kind of an. Inherently deceptive person) but I'm always more comfortable engaging social dynamics of... any kind in a fictional setting. I'd rather have a million ships that explore the intensity of various emotions rather than have those experiences in person -- and not just the bad ones.

I go back and forth whether I'm "traumatised enough" to call myself aplatonic (there was some minor pushback on that word being casually thrown around by people without heavy interpersonal trauma, but then again I tend to also yell about how acting like "trigger" == "traumatic panic attack" instead of covering a wide variety of symptomatic responses was a bad direction to take the conversation after shitheads started using that word to mean "offended") but I definitely just don't like emotional intimacy that much. I'll engage in it as a favour to the other person, but for my part I'm perfectly comfortable not being "fully" understood as long as that's a conscious stance both of us are taking.

My dislike of "false intimacy" is so intense I'd rather not engage in any intimacy at all, tbh.

Yet I like living those experiences vicariously! I spend nearly as much time exploring the depths of positive emotions as I see other people (and myself) exploring the depths of negative emotions. And I feel like that might give people the wrong idea about me as a person.

IDK.

Lots of things I'm realising I either don't know or have convinced myself I totally knew.

Comments

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

I go back and forth whether I'm "traumatised enough" to call myself aplatonic but I definitely just don't like emotional intimacy that much. I'll engage in it as a favour to the other person, but for my part I'm perfectly comfortable not being "fully" understood as long as that's a conscious stance both of us are taking.

To be fair, the discourse around the identity of "aplatonic" included "aromantic people are also allowed to call themselves this, not just neurodivergent people" (I think this was said by the coiner?). But even aside from that, there are... plenty of reasons why it's really nonsensical to assume that aplotinicism/aplatonic experiences can be gatekept in ways that aromanticism/asexuality cannot--especially given the socially constructed boundaries between those types of attractions/experiences, not to mention the tenuousness of neurodivergence (as opposed to non-neurodivergence) and the spectrum nature of aspec identities (which partially includes the frequency/intensity sliding scale between "none at all" up to the boundary right before "the normatively expected amount").

I relate to the mutual "not fully understood" bit and I actually wish more people jived along those lines because like. Being friendly and being friends aren't the same and it's not a bad thing that they aren't, and it's truly not me spiting people when I don't want to be friends but can and do nonetheless jive with them in a comfortable way.

[yvannairie]

I've been for years trying to shake the idea that just because I don't particularly gear myself up for openness and intimacy with people, my relationship with them (and what intimacy happens in that relationship) isn't "fake". That being restrained and feeling things incrementally and at a low intensity doesn't make them not-important, because for other people the experience of not being able to be close to people is distressing, and I have a lot of other stuff I've thought of as perfectly normal but that have actually been Not Normal, and an example of me pushing myself to ignore my discomfort until I forget it exists.

It's... a balancing act, in my head -- I don't want to validate stuff that's Clearly Wrong but that I might not recognise as wrong because truly, I don't know WTF being "comfortable" is for the most part, but I also don't want to demand "normative" behaviour from myself just because I technically don't have any traumatic barrier to it.

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

Trauma is a complex thing and there aren't clear points where trauma becomes differentiated from generic discomfort or ambiguity or negative experiences or being wronged but not scarred. Plus the nature of being traumatized is that it can be hard to realize (both internally and externally) that somebody has trauma. But furthermore, brains code things strangely and it doesn't take trauma (in the typical sense of Events Which Are Deemed Scarring) or traumatic experiences (which can be scarring without being "objectively" awful) to create pathways or symptoms or associations associated with trauma. You don't need to be traumatized in any sense to feel a resonance with narratives of trauma.

Many people are pretty comfortable having a sort of inner circle of close companions and then keeping others within the outer sphere at varying levels of proximity, and if it suits you to only appear in the outer shells of other peoples' social spheres, then that seems like a perfectly functional solution which doesn't harm anybody (so long as you see no harm in it for yourself), since it's natural for others to have a place to slot others who aren't strictly intimate friends.

[yvannairie]

Yeah, and for transparency, I do have my own people who I'm comfortable being intimate with. People I've known for years, people who I trust. But tbh being around people because of my job has really thrown into relief just how little I really "need" social interaction, how much just having people to casually chat with meets that need, how little I really crave any sort of private, individualised socialisation. Like, my needs are pretty much met, and I feel like every time I try to expand that, I either end up overattached or fucking myself over some other way. I apparently only have two modes -- incredibly distant or incredibly intimate -- and I don't really perceive the difference myself.