r/comics • u/Practical_Hope_7718 • 18h ago
OC [OC] Romance blues
Forever in a toxic relationship with my imagination….
((Please be kind in the comments))
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u/GloryBax 13h ago
Some gentle advice I find myself giving to one of my best friends regarding romance is to "not be actively looking for it."
Granted, I'm autistic, and stumbled into my long term relationship by accident. I wasn't looking for a relationship, I wasn't even looking for a new friend, but it was by chance that I started talking to him. We live on the same island, but at the time we were 350ish miles apart and under lock down restrictions, so we had to stick with the long distance thing for a while. And it was difficult! But we continued to choose each other. Meeting in person, finally, was exactly what I expected to be, not that I had many massive expectations. The thing with both of us was that we were exactly the same face to face as we were online with texts and voice/video calls. Everything slotted into place for us. We've been together for a total of 6 years and have a 2 year old together.
All that to say is that what people seem to forget with these dating apps, is that the best relationships start with friendship first. If you don't enjoy another person's presence on a platonic basis, then how can you be expected to build a romance with them? It's not that you shouldn't have wants in your head, or that you shouldn't have any expectations at all, but rather the connotations of meeting through a dating app automatically put extra pressure on words exchanged through text to be similar in person and that often isn't the case.
Fantasy is nice, but I found that leaving my fantasy at the door and instead letting what was in front of me unfold yielded the best results.
Also there is something to be said about societal pressure to find a partner, but that's not for this particular long comment.