how to tell if you like someone or just want to be their friend

Guys, I used to have a mic and I just lost it and I cannot find it anywhere. So, now I have to talk like this, but I guess it's fine. So, a lot of people usually ask me if I'm asexual and I'm in a relationship, what is usually the difference between a close friendship and an actual relationship? And if there is a difference, how do you even tell that there's a difference and that you're not just close friends?

And I really do understand why they ask because I was also questioning this for most of my life. Because for most people, sexual attraction is usually the bright line, the thing that would tell you if you want to be together or not. It's usually the thing that separates between I love this person as a friend and I am in love with this person. But for me, of course, it isn't and I feel like it shouldn't be for most people, too.

So, that's why I kind of wanted to make this video and tell you the things that I've learned as an asexual person how to define my relationships that I think actually moves beyond being asexual and actually applies to every other sexuality. So, if you ask someone who's not ace, what would be their definition between friendship and relationship? It usually has to do something with passion or pull, like you having a pull towards the person or you having this intense passion towards the person about wanting someone, desiring someone, that physical magnetic like pull that brings you together that every single song and movies are talking about. And that pull is usually the signal that they use to communicate that and they differentiate in their own mind.

And without it, it's friendship. But the thing is usually that pull is just sexual attraction and sexual attraction is not love. Sexual attraction is a neurochemical event. Of course, it has more to do than just chemicals in your body because most of the things in your life are chemicals in your body, but it's literally how your body reacts to a person's presence in terms of their body, physical appearance, pheromones, which is like their scent.

It can happen for a lot of people even if they only met that person for like 5 seconds. And if that is the thing that differentiates between loving someone romantically and loving someone as a friend, then it's basically like saying this body is making me feel so much chemically, like the chemical reaction is so strong, and then this body does not. And I think that's a pretty shallow understanding of love, in my opinion. And I do think sexual attraction has been kind of masquerading as romantic love for so long, and a lot of people are do not see the difference between them anymore, but I do think the difference is difference is so important, because that allows you to understand your relationship way better, and understand why you want each other way better.

So, if the line is not sexual attraction, then where is the line? How do I, as a person who doesn't experience sexual attraction, know the difference? And the thing is, right now, after years and years, it's extremely clear to me the difference between love and any kind of romantic attraction, and then just the friendship attraction. And I think it might be clearer than for an allosexual person, for someone who's not asexual, because I kind of built a system around it, and I don't think I have any doubt in how I name those signals that I get from other people, or in reaction to other people.

So, I'm going to explain how romantic attraction actually feels to me. And I want to be very specific, because I do feel like this is such a important topic, and something that literally applies to everyone. I think, for me, it's the desire to be chosen, not necessarily desired. Like, for me, it doesn't really matter if I'm desired, but it matters if I'm chosen.

Desired means that someone wants you. Chosen means that someone knows everything about you, and they still choose to be there. From all of the weirdness and messed-upness and I don't know, whatever's happening in your brain, and there's so many other fish in the sea, right? They chose you.

They picked you. Not because my body is telling me to, not because my body is telling me to, but because I know you, and I want you in my life in a way that I don't want anyone else in my life. It's an exclusivity that it's emotional, not physical. I have close friends that I love deeply, but with my partner, there's a layer that doesn't really exist in friendship.

It's this feeling that this person can occupy something in my life that no one else occupies. >> >> And no one else can ever replace. Not necessarily because they're providing something that I need, but it's the specific combination between who they are and who I am creates something that can only exist between the two of us. And we're building that thing together.

We both want to protect that and make it ours. It's the desire to build a life together, to build this future together, to build something together. Not just share moments, share time, share interests, create a beautiful relationship, yes, but not necessarily move in with each other and set up values and set up different things in our relationship that only exist in our relationship. To make plans that assume the future, to think in words like we instead of I.

To feel like your trajectory is merged with someone else's trajectory and they're moving in the same direction. I think it's a different type of vulnerability than friends and desires from the relationship. I'm very vulnerable with friends. I care about my friends very deeply, especially my very close friends.

I tell my friends very hard things and they tell me very hard things. I don't really have filters with them and I can spend basically unlimited amount of time with some of my closest friends, but I wouldn't change the course of my life based on the course of their lives. I know I wouldn't feel like, for example, if I'm moving to Japan, I wouldn't necessarily invite them to move with me to Japan. I would just kind of hold the relationship at a distance and then we meet again and then we're so close again.

But with my partner, I was planning for double room apartment. I was planning for when are you coming and when are we leaving? Are we flying together? Everything like that.

You're also sharing a vulnerability that doesn't really exist with your friend because although your friends know everything about you, they don't know everything everything about you. And I don't think they will ever know everything everything about you. There's still things that only a person who lives with you for a long extended period of time can know. And not necessarily as roommates, but more as an intimate way of living.

And that vulnerability and a lot of fears that come with that vulnerability of "Oh, now I'm alone, but I'm with someone when I'm alone." Those things show up and there's another layer of deepness to them than like a normal friendship relationship. I don't think that fear exists in friendships. And I do think that's specific to romantic relationships.

And it's whether or not you want to feel that and you want to develop that with that person. And there's also the physical part. Just because for me, I don't feel sexual attraction, that doesn't mean I don't feel physical affection. And I don't want physical affection in my relationship.

For my partner, I want to hold his hand specifically. Not anyone else's hand, but his hand. I want to lean into him specifically. I want to hug him.

I want his arm around my shoulder. The physical closeness that I want with my partner is something that most of my friendships don't have. And all of my friendships don't have it to the extent that I have it with my partner. Although I'm a very affectionate person in both friendships and relationships, I wouldn't hug a friend for like an hour.

But I would hug them for like 5 minutes. It just depends how much I actually feel how important physical affection is in our relationship and how intense it is and how long it is and how much of it we need. I see a lot of people that are not asexual staying in relationships, although it feels strong, but because the sexual chemistry is there. And they feel like this intense pull towards each other.

Having some sexual interactions with some people and then feeling like they're in love with them, although maybe they're not. Some of my friends only build relationships because they want to have sex and they just feel like everything else would just follow through later. And I wouldn't say that most people think that love fades away when sexual attractions fade away, but I do think that's a thought that people have sometimes. I think if you can separate sexual attraction from romantic attraction, if you can learn to identify them as unique experience in your life, your relationship will get way clear because you stop mistaking desire for love.

You stop staying with someone because your chemistry is good because chemistry is not the most important thing in a relationship. I would for me say it's somewhere in the middle. A lot of things that are more important than just chemistry. And I think you start asking, "Do I want to build a life with this person?

Do I see myself compatible on so many different ways and so many different levels with this person?" Asking the questions changes a lot from your relationship and your expectations of relationships and how you build relationships and how you define being in love and liking someone compared to being friends with them. I'm really not saying that sexual attraction doesn't matter because I feel like that kind of is the assumption that a lot of comments are having in some of my videos. I do think it does and I see it that it does really matter.

That's why I'm having this conversation because I feel like it does matter a lot, but it's not the only thing that matters. And treating it like not an ingredient, but the entire meal is probably why so many relationships fail in this specific moment because there's so many many things >> that historically have been keeping relationships together. And now more than ever because we're spending so much time with our partners and we have so much independence on our own that we don't really need a partner. It's so important to actually find someone that matches you compatibly and you can see a future together even if that relationship doesn't grow into a future together, but the fact that you can plan ahead, the fact that you can spend a lot of time together, the fact that you grow something that it's only yours, those kind of things, I think those are more important than sexual attraction.

So, one of the reasons why I wanted to make this video is because I saw a comment saying, "So, if you don't feel sexual attraction, then what makes your relationship different from a friendship?" And I can say that my best friend and I don't want to build a life together. Although, I don't think we would mind living together. Don't see our future as a joint project.

We don't do everything together. But even if we do everything together, it's not necessarily very intentional. We don't have the specific vulnerabilities that the romantic commitment has. You don't lie in bed at night and wish that the person would be with you, right?

Like there's so many so many aspects of a relationship that doesn't tie itself to sexual attraction and I feel like coming from an asexual person, you can have all of those without having sexual attraction, which is probably a proof that sexual attraction does not cause all of those and that they're two different forces various different forces that are causing >> those things. And it's probably very helpful to know those specific differences. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you learned something from it.

I hope this kind of clarified your question and if it didn't, then comment down below. I'll try to reply to as many things as possible and also make videos on the things that are a bit too complicated to explain in a comment. I would love to hear your opinions. I would love to hear knowledge and insights and experiences because I feel like that's how we learn and grow, especially when it comes to relationships and how we build our own script, not necessarily follow the script that romantic movies, songs, everything society has given to us.

If you enjoyed this video, I'm sure you're going to like this playlist, too. I made a lot of videos about love and asexuality and everything. I love you guys. Have the best day of your life.

Kisses. Bye-bye.