Our latest Can I Vent For a Sec? advice column answers your burning questions about love.
answers two questions from readers about romance and dating. They bring up some relatable issues: Is it worth telling a friend you have a crush?
And if you haven't had a relationship yet, are you doing something wrong? Ultimately, we're all just struggling through our feelings and hoping for the best. Below, Malavika answers your major questions about love. I’m a single lesbian with a big crush on my lesbian friend.
Many moments feel very tender, affectionate, and flirty—more so than in any other friendship I’ve had, but I know that they can be affectionate and flirty with their other friends too. It’s been fun, albeit also torturous, to analyze our every interaction and their behavior, but at the end of the day, it’s still not obvious how they feel towards me after months of data collection—we both have plausible deniability.
I’ve come to seek advice on how to proceed: reveal crush, internally de-escalate crush to accept what is, or some secret third thing/keep flirting to get data without a full confession. If I don’t reveal, I’ll have to grieve the loss of romantic potential, which feels really tough because it’s rare for me to have a serious crush.
But if I reveal and they don’t feel the same, I sense they might pull away for a bit, and I risk losing or reducing the closeness of a meaningful, intimate friendship. Homoerotic friendships are a rite of passage, and—to me—hands-down the most beautiful, exquisitely painful part of being queer.
“Tortuous” and “fun” are accurate! I joke that I am a retired homie hopper because I used to pathologically crush on and date my friends . While it sometimes worked out, at some point I realized the turnover was so messy that I needed to recalibrate my attachment patterns.
Dating friends is a high-risk, high-reward kind of gamble.be de-escalated in certain situations, but friends are a crush category of their own, because you aren’t projecting hypothetically onto a semi-stranger; this is a person you know intimately, without delusions. You can’t get the ick if your heart knows who you want.
And if you’re reading your friend’s flirtation correctly—which I think you are , and it makes me feel alive. Ultimately, the torture of not knowing is an unsustainable place to be. Your heart will be held hostage until you get clarity. I know you mentioned that your friend tends to be flirty with many people.
Admittedly, as someone who gets unintentional flirt allegations, I’ve come to feel that it isn’t considerate or safe to flirt unless you mean it, and a lack of boundaries or intention can hurt friendships in the long run. If your friend isn’t romantically interested in you, this might encourage them to be more careful about how they interact with you, in order to protect your heart.
The one thing that has eluded me through my teenage years is the absence of romantic relationships—not platonic ones, but the nonplatonic kind. I’ve always had friends, fun, and a full social life, but in the midst of all of that, I’ve tried to find a boyfriend and haven’t had much luck. Don’t get me wrong—I know having a boyfriend in high school isn’t everything. But after so many attempts, it can start tolike it’s everything.
Watching my friends experience relationships, breakups, get-togethers, and everything in between has made me extra aware of what I haven’t experienced. The closest I’ve gotten is a talking stage gone wrong . I’ve realized that my understanding of dating is heavily shaped by how my parents’ generation did it: Girls don’t make the first move and wait for guys to initiate everything to avoid embarrassment.
I’ve internalized the idea that doing nothing is safer than putting myself out there, even though that approach doesn’t really make sense in today’s dating culture. The confusing part is that I like who I am, and I don’t feel lonely in other areas of my life. Still, the longer this continues, the more I start to wonder if it’s me—or if I’m just following rules that no longer apply.
So I guess my real question—without all the melodrama—is: How do you stop interpreting the absence of romantic experience as a personal failure? How do you unlearn outdated dating expectations without feeling like you’re doing something wrong? And how do you put yourself out there without being afraid?romantic motion. The most action I got was—tragically—random sexual harassment from weird boys.
I hated it! Like you, I was deeply satisfied by my friendships, extracurriculars, and social life, and I’m so grateful, in the long run, for each year I spent pouring into myself, becoming someone whose company I love, who can hold myself down, whether or not I am partnered. I smiled when you wrote, “I like who I am,” and I suspect you’re well aware there’s nothing wrong with you—it’s just comparison, external pressure.
I see a lot of fearmongering from older generations about how young people are experiencing less dating and sex, and while it’s probably true that many of us are held back by anxiety, trauma, or shifting generational expectations, as you so aptly noted, I also wish we’d view less sex as a neutral fact, not a moral failure. What would happen if we made aThere’s a quote by the feminist writer Rebecca Solnit that I turn to often: “I set out to write books, to be surrounded by generous, brilliant people, and to have great adventures.
Men—romances, flings, and long-term relationships—have been some of those adventures, and so have remote deserts, arctic seas, mountain tops, uprisings and disasters, and the exploration of ideas, archives, records, and lives. ” Wow! I long for deserts and mountains for us both. Having a boyfriend is an adventure, certainly, but your life will be rich and beautiful even if you stay single your whole life.
That being said, it’s totally normal to be curious about, and even long for, romantic experience. I’m not woke enough to deny that Ilove, crushes, dating, and that my life, personally, might not feel full without those adventures. When I was your age, I wanted nothing more than to have sex.
As soon as I graduated high school and moved out for college, I started accumulating experience at an unprecedented rate.
I love what you said about "following rules that no longer apply,” because I feel that in my gut: We are writing our own scripts in real time, adapting to modern dating technologies, heightened political tensions between genders, attacks on reproductive rights, and more. It’s worth taking time to discover and write your own rules.whatever that means to you. Sex never has to be part of it.
My own hoe phase—which I’ve dipped in and out of between periods of partnership and dating and celibacy—has allowed me to unpack my queerness and learn what I am attracted to and the traits I value in partners and myself. I’ve made use of modern technologies my ancestors could not dream of, including dating apps and the social media DM slide, which are super helpful for putting yourself out there. Dating is just practice.
As you get older, you’ll get your reps in, and you’ll stop feeling afraid. Butterflies, excitement, and adventure, though—I hope that will never stop. I’m excited for you! VCHA Talk Debut Journey, Touring With TWICE, and Making the Most of Every MomentBetween our disillusionment with dating and exciting new stories in media, we're now taking our virtual boyfriends on dates IRL.262 Questions to Ask Your Girlfriend to Get to Know Her BetterGen Z Was Told We Could Save the World.
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