Ideal Partner
"So...if Mr. Romantic wasn't the right person for you, what's your ideal partner like?"
Talking with a few of my friends about the ending of my relationship to Mr. Romantic eventually turned to what sort of person I am looking for. Apparently my reasons for rejecting the guy are things a few of my friends look for in a partner--persistence, romantic gestures, etc. At first I thought I was the broken one because I was the only person that felt uncomfortable with things like a hand-written love-novella (complete with hand-drawn illustrations) being mailed to me for Valentine's Day. I was the only one put off by the fact that Mr. Romantic drove for 40+ minutes a few times a week just to spend up to 2 hours sitting beside me in a class he was not enrolled in or a club activity he had no interest in.
1) They don't drain my social meter.
I don't know if I'm the only one that feels this way, but whenever I'm alone with someone (e.g. car-ride, eating a meal together, sitting beside each other etc.) I feel this overwhelming pressure to talk, to keep conversation going. Silence is sorta awkward for me and so I start running my mouth...and I hate that. My ideal partner is someone I don't feel that overwhelming compulsion to fill the silence with. Someone who isn't sitting there, staring at me, as though waiting for me to entertain them. Unfortunately, that's what Mr. Romantic did whenever we were together. He'd look at me like I was the most interesting thing in the room. He'd always ask "why" or "and then" questions just to get me to talk and it was exhausting for me. There were times when his prompting for more conversation, or to hear me talk was absurd. We'd be rehashing the same topics of conversation we had already exhausted. He'd constantly ask "how do you feel about [insert topic]" as if the rant on that topic I had just finished didn't already answer his question. It was exhausting being alone with him because he'd always try to get me to talk when all I wanted was to sit and enjoy being in close proximity to someone I was supposed to be in love with.
2) No pressure to do anything grand/expensive etc.
Mr. Romantic would go to great lengths to spend time with me, going out of his way to walk to and from somewhere with me etc. I always felt bad for him to burn all that gas money and time to do something mundane like watch me do chores or run errands. In the end, he was put out by the fact that it was always mundane things that we ended up doing together. He wanted the whole 9 yards: dates to amusement parks, dancing, going to the movies together, sit-down restaurants etc. He wanted dates to be an event. Being put-out by that made me realize that the type of person I'd be happy with is someone I can feel comfortable doing mundane things with. He's not going super out of the way for me and I'm not doing it for him either but we choose to be together just because. Someone I'd be happy with would be someone who would come over, play on his hand-held gaming device while I did laundry and who would respond if I asked what sort of drink he'd like or snacks or if he wanted to watch a DVD etc. I'd want someone that would be perfectly happy just lounging around at home together. No pressure to find a funny video on Youtube to show them. They could game at home, but the fact that they'll come over and game if I asked if they wanted to spend time together--that's what I think I'd like.
3) They don't make a fuss about me
I don't like being the center of attention. Mr. Romantic always had his eyes on me. He was always following me around and looking at me even when we were doing things like watching a movie. Dude, movie is the other way. I don't like being watched or scrutinized.
My parents picked up on it when I was growing up. Growing up in an Asian context meant that there would be group-dinners where there were a bunch of dishes set out, family-style, and everyone would just reach over to take from the same plates, put them into their own plates/bowls, and eat from there. As a child I was horribly shy and my mother was fairly attentive so she'd grab food from the center of the table for me. When I got older and after my mother passed I had to start reaching toward the center of the table for food on my own. I went through a phase where I was super self-conscious about it, worrying about whether I'd fumble the utensils or whether or not someone would look at me reaching for the food and comment on it or think I was eating too much or whatnot or whether it was my place to reach for the food--e.g. what if somebody else wanted it and I got there before them etc. I became so self-conscious about it I'd barely eat a thing whenever we were eating with other people. Even I'd notice that my bowl was always cleaner than everyone else's at the end of the meal. It didn't help that the adults we'd eat with would notice my lack of reaching for food and put pressure on me to eat more. They'd fuss over me, asking if perhaps they had ordered food I didn't like and that's why I wasn't eating etc. They'd always insist that I should be the first to take food when it came around (but I had learned from my father to defer to my elders and thus I made it a point to never be the first to reach for the food/get served). It put me in anxiety-ridden situations and I dreaded eating with people at all. I nearly cried when a few months ago my father told off some of the adults we were eating with for fussing over me. The aunts and uncles (not biological) were fussing over me, asking what I liked to eat so that they'd order it etc. They didn't know me at all so they were suggesting faux-Chinese dishes like sweet-and-sour-pork or ginger beef. I don't like those things but all the adults just assumed I did because I was born and raised in the West. I like the same Chinese food that they do, the stuff they'd order if they didn't consider what the children would want to eat. I liked things like Braised Beef Stew, or Eggplant stuffed with ground meat fried in black bean sauce. My dad came to my rescue and told the adults to stop fussing over me. He actually phrased it as, "she'll eat if you all stop fussing over her. The more attention you pay her, the less comfortable she'll be" or something like that. My dad had picked up on something I was still trying to put into words. I'm not sure if it can be called social anxiety, but I feel like that's what it was back when I was younger and wouldn't eat (much) when the adults were fussing over me. Nowadays I tend to eat more when we're out...but only because the people that we eat with know not to make a big deal out of me joining them. They don't really ask what I'd like to eat or try to order something because they think I will like it. They just order what they want to eat. My rule was always "order what you want. If I don't like it I won't go for it. It's fine". What I meant was that I wanted them to be free to order what they wanted rather than order something nobody wanted to eat because they thought all Western-born children liked something. I wanted them to just ignore me and let me eat what I felt comfortable eating.
Mr. Romantic didn't seem to care or notice that his attention was making me extremely uncomfortable. My friends thought it was incredible how he'd just stare at me with a smile on his face for an hour-long class (a class he was not enrolled in but showed up to because I was enrolled in it...all before we ever started dating). My friends said they wanted their partners to give them that sort of attention. I didn't like it one bit. It made me self-conscious. I went through the class thinking my hair was out of place or I had a stain on my face or something. It was super uncomfortable. He paid me too much attention. My friends all thought it was romantic and I felt bad about the attention and even worse when I felt like I was the only one that was uncomfortable with all of it. I started being uncomfortable with the fact that I was uncomfortable. I thought I was broken because I didn't appreciate the guy paying me so much attention.
I am not broken. I am aromantic and potentially somewhere on the asexual spectrum. Just because all my friends thought Mr. Romantic was amazing and that I was throwing away a good thing, doesn't mean that I was the anomalty here. My feelings were valid. When I explained them to Mr. Romantic during the break up even he admited that my feelings and desires were practical. Through negotiations he confessed that he wanted me to be more impractical and romantic with him. I decided I wasn't ready to break out of my comfort zone for him, especially because even during our break-up he still did all these things that made me uncomfortable--and he dragged my friends and family into it. He promised me that he would cut ties with them while we tried to figure stuff out but I later found out he went behind my back to talk to my friends and family about the break-up. Some of my friends said it was totally out of line for him while others said it was sweet how he cared enough to work on ties with my family...that he believed we'd work out so he never got rid of my dad's number etc. They said it was proof he loved me, that he was being so persistent about it and that's why I should take him back. I decided I didn't even want him in my friend-group anymore and told him off for it all. I told him to cut ties with my father and back off from the friends I had introduced him to. I can see how some people would see his persistence as romantic and desirable; but I saw it as terrifying and beyond uncomfortable for myself. I knew then and there that I did not want Mr. Romantic in my life at all, complicating my life and making me feel uncomfortable with his presence and the lengths he'd go to get involved in my life (talking to my dad of all people). He knew very well that continuing to talk to my father put me in an awkward position because I still had to go back to my father and live with him and whatnot and thus it should have been my right to tell my father I was no longer seeing Mr. Romantic. He took that away from me. On the one hand some people claimed that he saw that he had put me in an awkward situation and bit the bullet by telling my father not to worry, that we were just arguing for now and that things would be okay later. We weren't "just arguing" and it wasn't his place to talk to my father. I never even hinted at him that it would be hard for me to talk to my dad about it and I don't believe in the sit-com-y ploy where someone is supposed to "read between the lines" and "do the opposite of what your angry spouse is saying". When I said I was fine and I could handle it, I meant it. It wasn't an invitation for him to stumble in and do whatever he wanted with the situation. I wasn't being coy. I wasn't being a tsundere. I wasn't "asking him without asking him" to do something. So...yeah, thanks to him fussing over me I couldn't even be comfortable with him in my friend-group. I saw how he was trying to handle my friends and my family despite me telling him to leave it all alone and I decided that what was needed was a full on booting of him from my life. I didn't want to give him the opportunity to "handle the situation" with anyone that I wished to continue to have in my friend-group. So I ousted him completely, sending him some strongly worded messages that hopefully made it clear to him that it was his willful ignoring of me telling him to back the fuck off that cause me to then say "get the fuck out of my life. Do not pass go, do not talk to my friends and family. Get the fuck out of my life. We are strangers from now on. I will not acknowledge you if we so happen to pass each other on the street. We're not friends. We're not acquaintances. We are not people that used to date that are waiting for a chance to go from 'off' to 'on again'. We're done. From the sound of it, he finally listened. He cried about it but he seems to have stopped being nosey about my life.
So...yeah. After breaking up with Mr. Romantic, the guy that all my friends wanted, I've learned a lot about myself. I don't want Mr. Romantic. I don't want someone that fusses over me. I don't want the roses and dinners by candle-light. I want someone I can live with. Someone who acknowledges my presence in the room and then goes off to do their own thing and gives me attention when I ask for it and not when I don't. I'm not royalty--I don't want someone to wait on me hand-and-foot. I want someone who can live their own life and do their own thing and looks up from their hand-held when I ask which cup they want to drink out of or what kind of drink I should fill it with. I want someone who will maybe run their fingers through my hair if I decide to initiate affection via using their shoulder as a pillow or hugging them when I feel ready. I want someone who won't make a big deal out of getting to sit next to me or one seat away so that we can use the one between us to put our bags.
