It’s not easy, it takes work, but I feel good in my romantic relationships.

I don’t think I have ever been as interested in dating as other people my age were. I remember being a pre teen with all my friends fixing their hair, and putting on make up, and going to all the school dances- and I just didn’t care what I looked like, and still wanted to play games and run around outside. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in cute people, I just didn’t want to spend so much of my time actively having a crush, I certainly didn’t want to spend the time it would take to date someone. But as I got older, there started to be all this pressure to date: all my friends were dating constantly, and it was just treated as if it was REALLY weird that I wasn’t. And I had crushes so I tried to date people I thought were cute. And I hated it. I hated how much time they expected to have in my life (I had friends, theater, homework, photography, and music lessons, I didn’t have hours at a time to talk to my boyfriend on the phone everyday), I hated having to be with them all the time (sitting next to them at lunch, in class, invited them along whenever I went out), and I hated having to be affectionate with them in front of people (holding hands at school made me SO uncomfortable). But that’s what dating was, I wasn’t offered alternatives, I wasn’t given the language that would allow me to express my desires. So I kept dating guys for a few days (or maybe a few weeks), feeling claustrophobic the entire time, and then freaking out and breaking up with them. I dated every guy in my friend group and beyond, and then promptly dumped them. I never went beyond making out with any of them, but my quickly dating so many people earned me the title of slut. And it was very hard. There was even an attempt to organize a day where nobody would talk to me, I found out about it before hand, so they cancelled it; but it still hurt very much that I was hated for my non-malicious actions. I didn’t particularly like my behavior more then any of my peers, but I kept trying to relieve the pressure I felt to perform relationships in very specific ways, and didn’t have any idea of how I could handle my romantic life differently. It honestly wasn’t until late college that I started hanging out with radical feminists and queers that I learned that I can define relationships however I want. There’s not one way to date somebody, that I can create relationship style to fit me and my affections. That I have the agency to inform my romantic partners of my desires, and that it’s reasonable to do that. It’s not easy, it takes work, but I feel good in my romantic relationships. And that is amazing.