I was thinking about love today, and I came up with a question. Has anyone here had romantic feelings of love towards another person and yet had no sexual attraction toward them? Specifically, has anyone here had feelings of romantic love for the same sex (or, if gay, for the opposite sex), and had no sexual feelings for that other person? Or, hell, had romantic love for a gender you are usually attracted to, but no sexual feelings?
It dawned on me today that I could have romantic love for another man, though I am not a gay, and would not, therefore, want to have sex with another man. I don’t have another man I’m in love with, but anything’s possible.
Romantic feelings go hand in hand with desired physical intimacy with me, (which is what sex is all about in my opinion) so no… I can’t say I’ve ever had romantic feelings without sexual undertones.
Typically, it’s the same thing with me Aesiron, but it occured to me that I could love, truly love, someone without wanting to stick little Sidd into them.
That sounds like you’re talking about agape, the Greek word for spiritual love but in the OP, you’re talking about eros, which is romantic or sexual love. Two entirely seperate things.
At one point in my life, for a number of years, I had a very, very close friend, a gay male, who claimed that this was exactly the way he felt about me. We actually dated for some time during high school, and I was a little perplexed that, on the one hand, he never did more than kiss me on the cheek, but, on the other hand, he kept asking me out. After he came out, he expressed sadness, more than once, that he couldn’t love me “the way he really wanted to”. At one point, when we were both in our mid-20s, he said to me “just think. If I were straight, we’d be married and working on having kids by now!” I don’t doubt what his true feelings for me were. He really was “in love” with me. Unfortunately, I was the wrong gender!
Well, to me, “romantic” love implies a sexual element by definition, so I don’t think I can relate to being romantically attracted to someone without finding them sexually desirable. But, yeah, I definitely think it makes sense you could feel a deep, loving bond with someone without wanting to have sex with them. That’s how I feel about my best friend, for example.
Then there’s that phenomenon that Seinfeld talked about: “the non-sexual crush”. I’ve felt that way about some people too.
Does it count if you could happily spend an entire evening smooching with the person, but never have the desire to take it further than that? If so, then yes.
I’ve known this guy for going on 20 years, and I still kinda feel that way about him, but we’re pretty much just old friends at this point. We did date briefly in college, but although we have a great deal of mutual respect and admiration, and he gives great backrubs, we just aren’t each other’s physical type. Or emotional type. But I’ve still got a soft spot for him. We can spend hours talking, but I think we’ve both realized that the former stuff is the case.
