The Greenhouse in Life Is A Circle, Or A Torus

After a few weeks of heat and thunderstorms, the weather today was very pleasant. Finally, I was able to continue my daily walking routine after being more intermittent for a few weeks. Apparently more storms are on the way, so trying to enjoy a nice few days break as much as I can.

As luck would have it, I ended up picking up Crush on my way to pick up Spouse and all of us head to the plant nursery. With the weather nice and spring fully in swing, we all wanted to work on our gardens, so Spouse invited Crush out with us. So it was my first time talking with her since I sent the crush confession text. I never got a response from her about it so I felt a little apprehensive about how she might act.

On my way to pick her up, I felt a bit of anxiety but took a deep breath and told myself: I already put my feelings out there, so it’s up to her if she wants to act on anything or talk about it. In my confession text, I did, to be fair, ask her on a date but also say I was happy to stay friends if not. So, maybe she felt like there wasn’t even really anything to respond to; not interested in a date, so we’ll stay friends. So, let’s go with that. No reason for me to try to put her on the spot. She’ll bring it up if she wants, or we’ll just be friends.

As she gets in the car, we exchange small talk greetings. Hi, how are you? Good, anything new with you? Eh, you know how it is. I personally felt a little awkward trying to feel her out, but realized pretty quick that she seemed a little subdued compared to usual too. Was she also trying to feel me out? That’s what it seemed.

So I broke the tension with some jokes. I told her about my antidepressant energy pushing me to clean the house more and even start painting! I could feel myself easing up, just talking like usual and not letting my crush get to me. And similarly, I could feel Crush easing up too, and she started to respond and joke and laugh too. And suddenly felt a bit like “old” times (not that it was that long ago!). So we ended up having fun chatting on the way to Spouse. After picking up Spouse we went out and had a nice time together all at a local small farm together - supporting local and learning more about native plantlife! It was really great and we all agreed to go back more in the future. We stopped and got sandwiches and then dropped Crush off at home. Spouse and I were exhausted and passed out early, so I slept in today but I guess needed the rest.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts and emotions run through me this past week or so since confessing to Crush via text. On the one hand, I really wish I got a direct response from her. Obviously I would have really preferred a positive response accepting my date proposal, but I feel like a simple “Sorry, I’m not interested” – with or without an explanation, but just saying it’d be easy to throw in “I’m not interested in a poly relationship” or “I’m dating someone right now” or whatever would have really helped make it clear where we stand.

On the other hand, I also recognize that we’ve been long time friends, and I initiated this. While I think we had a few little casual dates that were cute and fun, we didn’t do anything physical or even more flirting along those lines, more just casual getting to know each other stuff. So she wasn’t necessarily trying to send signals to me, and I very likely was reading into it far more than she meant. I think we did connect a little, but maybe just as friends, and that’s okay too. So it’s also a bit fair to say she doesn’t necessarily owe me any particular feelings or response, especially with it being harder to navigate in a potentially poly situation where I’m married to a good friend of her’s too. I can see where that’s a bit of social pressure, even when my intent wasn’t to pressure at all. Her pulling back a little when I first picked her up felt a bit like she was worried that she hurt my feelings or that I’d be weird about it, and I totally get it.

So I think overall, I’m glad we “talked”. I wish a little bit that it was more directly addressing the situation, but I am pretty sure I get the message. We’re just good friends, and will stay friends, and that’s okay. I must have been reading too much into it; either that or she was unintentionally more flirtly than she meant to be and wanted to try to pull back now before there were more misunderstandings. Either way, I do feel like we’ve kind of settled it and it will be fine. I’m fine just leaving it there unless she wants to bring up anything anyway. I put my heart out there, so it’s her turn to ask me out if anything changes, haha. But it probably won’t. No one is required to like me or want to go on a date.

I think I started building up a bit of a story in my head of dating her and it was really me pushing it too much when I didn’t mean to be. I don’t think I did anything wrong per se, just really misread the signals. The experience has reinforced to me that I just need more direct communication. Call it neurodivergence or whatever, but I don’t do well picking up on social cues, and because I know I’ve missed social cues in the past I get a little paranoid that I’m missing some again now.

I think we also built a friendly emotional connection, and when I asked her on a date, I remember thinking to myself that I wasn’t even entirely sure what that meant. Reflecting on it some more, I think what I really wanted was to escalate to something a little more physical. This isn’t to say any pressure about particular things, I’m fine with taking it slow as she’s comfortable with, but I sort of imagined some combination of cute physical contact – holding hands, cuddling – along with some sexual contact, starting with making out a little and escalating up as far as she’s interested. So I don’t want to take her rejection personally; she’s not interested in physical or sexual relationship, and that’s totally fine.

I am therefore trying to learn from the event as best as I can, and my takeaways are (1) I’d like to have more of a physical or sexual relationship, not just emotional or friendly; and (2) I really need direct communication to make that clear to both of us so we’re on the same page and I’m not misreading social cues or otherwise.

This isn’t to say I necessarily want a purely sexual relationship – though there’s part of me that would sort of love a good hookup! haha – but that I really want some flirting and risque text messages to be apart of our overall relationship. And as much as I felt Crush and I connecting, I think we did emotionally, but never did in a romantic or sexual flirty way, and that’s I think the part I was missing and confusing. So I’d want to clarify this in a future relationship as early as possible; do we have any chemistry or sexual tension that might go further, or are we just friends? Totally fine with both, I just don’t want to confuse the two again. Secondly, I really appreciated New Girl’s directness which she attributed to autism; I don’t know if that was necessarily true, but whether it was neurodivergence or something else, I really appreciated the more direct communication. I felt like she or I could just ask honest questions and get honest answers. Maybe it helped to not know each other too well yet; there wasn’t a history of friendship on us like there is with Crush and I, so maybe it’s a little easier to be honest and let someone down directly if you don’t know them and don’t have to ever talk to them again if you don’t want to. Again, I do feel bad that maybe Crush had more to navigate than I was thinking of.

Whatever it is, I think I need the flirting and the directness. I’d like to still try to keep meeting folks. I wouldn’t mind meeting more good friends, I don’t have too many friends right now so it’s good to fill out the roster some more so to speak, but of course I’m really interested in some kind of poly relationship and so I need to be more honest to myself and others that that’s what I’m looking for. Anything from friends with benefits up to a deep poly relationship. I think I’ll finally try one of those dating apps sometime soon, now that I’m getting a better feeling of what I want out of a relationship and I’ve talked with Spouse about it.

But maybe not this weekend. Looking forward to some more home repairs while I have the energy.