Fun fact: when I first experienced qp attraction to someone, it was confusing! I said I had a crush on them because there was no quantifiable way to explain it otherwise.
I had it all: butterflies, nervousness, fulfilment in time spent, I wanted to get them gifts all the time and be in an established relationship with them- something I don’t feel for my regular friendships! (Noting of course that friends is not and never will be “lesser” than other types of relationships, they’re just different!) Of course it was a crush, right? Just a crush that my asexuality was making feel weird?
It felt completely different from all the romantic crushes I’d had, and different from the romantic relationship I’m currently in. Identifying it as a “crush” was uncomfortable and not correct, but I didn’t have the language to express how different it felt. This is why casual rep is so important: I learned about the term “queerplatonic” in a My Hero Academia fanfiction.
When I figured it out I was incredibly excited, but explaining it to others proved to be difficult. The only ones who get it right away are homestucks and that’s the tea.
One friend I was struggling to explain it to responded to “I don’t know, I can’t explain how it’s different from romance any more than I can explain how romance is different from friendship” with “Maybe it’s like trying to explain color to a blind person” and I felt that.
tl;dr if you experience it, it’s not just a fucked up romantic crush and you’re not broken! Media representation is incredibly important to give people the language they need to express themselves and ask for relationships, and just because you can’t see pink, that doesn’t mean that others can’t!
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