Romantic Attraction: A Checklist
Way too often I see people wondering if they’re feeling romantic attraction or something else. So I decided to make a checklist based off my own experiences.
For the average person, aesthetic, sensual, and/or sexual attraction are intertwined with romantic, but I left out all the parts that could fall under other forms of attraction. (Example: many people feel urges to cuddle their crush. But cuddling falls under sensual attraction, so you can want to cuddle someone without being romantically attracted to them.) Hopefully leaving stuff like that out will help distinguish romantic from something else. But I don’t think I’ve ever experienced platonic attraction so there’s a slight possibility some of these could fall under that too and I just don’t know it.
Like I said, this is based off my own experiences as a heteroromantic, ace woman. Others may experience differently. This is only a guide.
You might be romantically attracted to that person if…
- You think about them often. (If it’s major, you may even lose sleep.)
- Whenever you hear a love song, your mind jumps straight to them.
- When consuming romantic media, you imagine the couple as you and that person without meaning to.
- You “yearn” for them. Imagine something you’ve always wanted, but weren’t able to get. Maybe it was a video game, or a trip to Hawaii, or a dog or whatever. You really really really wanted it, but couldn’t have it for whatever reason. Or maybe someone was eating your favorite food while you’re starving, but there wasn’t any for you so you had to sit there and watch. Multiply that “want” feeling by 3. That’s how you feel about them.
- You feel nervous interacting with them. The same sort of nervousness you’d feel at a job interview, except you don’t need to feign enthusiasm when talking to them. (If anything, you need to stifle that enthusiasm.)
- You get self conscious of everything from your appearance to the way you say “hello.” If you’re more anxiety-prone like I am, you’ll spend a good amount of time worrying that you said something weird and now they probably think you’re a weirdo which is just, BAD!
- You lose your breath when you see them unexpectedly. You may even have to fight back an excitable gasp. Imagine someone surprises you with something you’ve always wanted. It’s like that, though you may also notice your pupils dilating like when you leave a movie theater. This will improve your mood. Doubly so if they acknowledge your existence.
- Your knees get weak. You feel a pull in your chest (again, yearning). You have to force back a goofy smile around them to not appear “obvious.” (If this is happening during COVID times, you will be very grateful for mask mandates, let me tell you.)
- You feel this strange… tension in the air when you interact with them. It’s not a bad kind of tension, but it’s there. You wonder if they feel it too.
- You know how in Disney Channel sitcoms or whatever, where the girl has a crush on a boy, and she and her friends get all jumpy and screamy whenever the boy so much as smiles at her? That’s a big Mood whenever I have a major crush.
- That dopey look cartoon characters get whenever they see the object of their affection? Also a big Mood for me.
- You’re willing to do almost anything (within reason) for them. You’ll go out of your way to help them. If they ask you for a favor, you’ll do it, even if it’s something you normally wouldn’t do for someone.
- Hell, you’ll go out of your way just to look at them!
- You think about a future with them, mainly as a married couple. You might even wonder what kind of parent they would be. What your children will look like. Even if you don’t want to get married or have kids irl, the thoughts may plague your mind anyway. You wonder what your family will think of them. You wonder what their family is like as well.
- If you’re blessed enough to find their social media profile(s), you’ll find yourself scrolling through posts from 3 years ago. Accidentally clicking “like” on one of them is the stuff of nightmares.
- You have fantasies where they rescue you from perilous situations and/or vice versa. This can range from giving them a ride home after their car breaks down to the full blown “princess locked in a tower guarded by dragons” trope.
- Speaking of tropes, I want you to think about every romance trope you can. If it’s romantic attraction, you will find some of those to be good fantasy material. You will naturally imagine you two in many of the scenarios, no forcing required.
- If you have to force any ~romantic~ fantasies, it’s probably not romantic attraction. The fantasies will come to you whether you want them or not. But you don’t mind all that much because, free dopamine. (Might be different if you’re romance-repulsed/averse.)
Hopefully this helps someone out there!
