Scarleteen

Trigger/content warning: crushes, concerns about me possibly pressuring a person (while very much trying not to), and anxiety. Also briefly mentions AI/LLMs.



Hi everyone!

For context, I’ve known this person for a few years, and over that time they’ve become one of my best friends, and currently our friendship is the most intimate one in my life. They are trans masc, and they are the only boy I have been attracted to (I’ve been attracted to many girls and nonbinary people before). For privacy, in the rest of this post, I’m going to use they/them pronouns and call them H. I’ve had a crush (romantic and somewhat sexual) on H for around a year, and it’s gotten progressively more intense over time.

Today, I told H that I have a crush on them. I then emphasized that we didn’t have to talk about it and at the time, and that I would be happy to wait to talk about it if that felt better. H said that they wanted to wait, but I unfortunately brought it up again (because I was really excited to talk about it, but I don’t think I should have) later in the call. However after talking about it a bit more after I brought it up again, they again decided to wait. Notably, I forgot to say that not only do they not need to talk about it soon, but they don’t have to talk about it at any point.
At my usual level of anxiety, I’m already quite anxious about consent, pressure, and coercion*, but my anxiety both in general and about those topics has been even worse recently, so I’m finding it even harder to tell when a worry is anxiety versus something I actually should be afraid of or not do. I’m concerned that they’ve picked up on my level of excitement, and might feel pressured to talk sooner/at all, or express feelings that they don’t have.
*(side note: I often like using three different words in a row, and I’m really annoyed that some AIs/LLMs do that as a signature thing)

My questions are: Does anyone have ideas on how to communicate that I’m both really excited and very much want to respect their level of comfort and interest in talking about it? And also, perhaps ways to approach worrying about these sorts of things that are less anxiety inducing but still careful enough?

- AQ

Correction: I meant for the title of this post to be “Worried that I might pressure someone to talk about my crush on them”

Hey AQ,

Firstly I updated the thread title for you, yay!

Looping back to your question, I'm not sure what you meant by 'three different words in a row' but I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that this all sounds very human! Disclosing that we have a crush on someone is already a difficult thing and many of us would experience a degree of elation and and excitement after having done that, and the blabby among us (eying myself in the mirror) might very well find ourselves talking more about a thing that we're excited about than we had earnestly intended.

If your friend does feel any pressure to talk about it, or at all annoyed that you've brought it up since they said "not yet", those feelings are legitimate, I've been in that situation. But I can also see that none of your enthusiasm or words come from a place of coercion.

Some conversations are particularly difficult to hold off, especially if you haven't set a time when you can talk about it. If your friend has a lot on their mind that this might be overwhelming, but I also think there is a common courtesy to not leaving someone hanging too long if they've just been vulnerable with you and told you they have a crush on you. So you can have asks and needs here too!

Even if you did initially say you could wait, it's perfectly O.K. to realize later on that that willingness to wait perhaps required some caveats you didn't think to ask.

A gentle apology for having already brought it up, might be helpful. But I also wonder if in doing that you could also ask them when you can talk about it. After all it's easier to wait for 'plans on Saturday' than it is to wait for "later" or "not now".

Hi Jacob,

Thanks!

About the “three words in a row” — it’s a thing that some AIs/LLMs do, where they use more words (I think they’re usually adverbs) then a human typically would, and for some reason they often use three. I hope that makes sense.
I was definitely both excited and nervous about disclosing the crush, and my usual response to both of those emotions is to talk, a lot. Earnestly is a good word, it feels like I kinda chose to bring it up again, but also kinda didn’t — I’m trying to find the balance of how it’s appropriate to say what happened, because it doesn’t feel like it was either entirely voluntary or involuntary.

To expand in what I said above, I think that part of my struggle with this is that my response to worrying about interpersonal things usually consists of really wanting to talk to the person who the thing happened with — this is a recurring struggle (it happens probably weekly) and gets quite uncomfortable when the other person can’t or doesn’t want to talk about it. So, after I told them about crush, I really wanted to talk about it to clarify, and (problematically, or at least it feels like it was) let that override their not wanting to talk about it at the time.

To give some context on why I was nervous aside from the general nerves of talking about a crush, my previous romantic relationship didn’t go great (ie, it ended very painfully), so I was also nervous about what would happen if they were interested as well. And I was nervous about our friendship negatively changing or ending.
I should say though, that despite all of that nervousness, I feel generally very safe in my relationship with H, which is why I felt comfortable even doing this.

We’ve agreed to talk again on our usual Tuesday time, and I’ll keep all of this in mind when we do. Thanks for all of the thoughts, I haven’t responded to all of them but I’ve read all of them.

Romance is hard (but also ),
- AQ

No problem, and I'm glad you have that baseline feeling of safety with your friend!

Fingers-crossed that your chat with them goes well on Tuesday. Will you get a chance to talk about "the crush"?

With the anxiety in these things, I think it can be helpful to have some reminders to return to when reflecting/worrying about our interactions with friends, etc.

A couple of self-reminders which help me, which feel like they might be relevant:

1. Remembering to reorient myself from "Did I do wrong? If so, am I the worst?" to "Was that person hurt? What might they need? What do I need?" - making it about what they need can calm the self-interrogating stuff about intention and severity, but also is a pretty good way to approach things like apologies and resolving any arising conflict.
2. Remembering that there are things between "harmful/coercive/abusive" and "unimpeachably perfect", and most of us spend most of our time in that in between area, where we stumble into each-other, knocking over metaphorical drinks, apologizing and making good. I like the idea of "Emotional First Aid" for situations that don't require "Emotional Traumatic Surgery and 3 months in Hospital and 6 years of rehab" but still matter enough to clean the scrape and apply a band-aid until healed.
3. Remembering it's OK to be uncertain, and not know a thing. We don't need to self-litigate, our understanding of a situation will eventually emerge unprompted, and that too will evolve over time... this is sometimes even more the case for things that we might tell ourselves are "worth worrying about".

I have many more where that came from, but I'll stop there!

Hi Jacob,

I think that we agreed to talk about it on Tuesday, I’ll check again when that time comes.
I really like/appreciate all of these reminders, and I especially like your idea of things that need emotional first aid versus emotional trauma surgery, 3 months in hospital, and 6 years of rehab (I state the second in full because it’s a very effective way to communicate the lasting severity). This feels to me more like the second.
On another note of something unfortunate, during the call, I wasn’t able to tell them that I’m bisexual, specifically about them — I had previously only said that I was lesbian, so that they didn’t know I had a crush in them. So, they now presumably think that I, a lesbian, am attracted to them, a trans enby boy, which I imagine could have some very unpleasant gender feelings/be dysphoric. I’ll definitely try to clarify that when we talk. It probably doesn’t help that every second sentence (this is an overstatement) that I say is decidedly lesbian — that’s quite true of me, but there’s also the bi part.

Public libraries are cool, support them if you can!
- AQ

Hi there, AQ!

I can see that you're worried that you've really harmed H. For what it's worth, I also think this is an emotional first aid situation, rather than one that needs trauma surgery. This really sounds like the sort of common misunderstanding that happens in many relationships due to conflicting needs. It is true that H might feel a bit pressured, or they might feel hurt if they think you don't really see them as a boy. But these are small hurts. They do matter, and they shouldn't be left untreated, but they can be repaired. Your chat on Tuesday should help with that.

P.S. When I need to have a difficult conversation, I like to plan for some self-care afterwards. Maybe this will be useful for you.

Hi Latha!

I appreciate this, and I also think self care afterwards makes sense, at least as much is as possible.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to talk today, but we should be able to later this week. I’m feeling excited and nervous, but I think more excited then nervous.

- AQ

Hi AQ!

I’m sorry to hear you weren’t able to talk yesterday and hope it works out next time.
And I absolutely get the mixed feeling of excitement and nervousness, that’s a common one for me as well. Let us know if we can offer you any more help or support before or after the conversation!