When I Loved Someone

An Excerpt from QUEERPLATONIC: A LOVE STORY

SAM:

In 2018, I had this incredible relationship with a woman I met in a Meetup group. Her name was Claire. It was a meetup group for asexuals looking to partner, so she and I both thought we were coming into this with the same goals, on the same page, but … I mean, I should have known better, right? When have I ever been on the same page with anyone I’ve wanted to be with? Why start now?

We started seeing each other one-on-one, going out on what I referred to as “queerplatonic dates.” She never seemed to have a problem with that description. She was clever, and funny, and really pretty; I liked to just look at her and to think of how proud I was of her, and how hard it was not to smile when she smiled, and how much I loved to hear her voice messages first thing in the morning.

She invited me as her plus-one to her sister’s wedding, and on our way there in the car, she said “I haven’t come out to my parents yet, so this is gonna be hard.”

“Oh,” I told her, “don’t worry about it, you can tell your folks that we’re just friends, right?”

“But we aren’t just friends,” she told me, reaching for my hand. “We’re so much more than friends.”

And I remember how insanely happy I felt in that moment, because we WERE more than friends. She was my person in every single way, and it felt like my brain was singing and my heart started beating faster just thinking about how wonderful it was to know that someone I loved felt the same way about loving me.

…and then she leaned over to kiss me, and I was so confused and surprised that we made out for a full half-second before I shot back in my seat and yelled “NO!”

Then it was Claire’s turn to be shocked. “What?” she asked. “Why? I’m sorry!”

And she was sorry. Maybe not as sorry as I was, but she was definitely really sorry. We spent the rest of the car ride in silence, and when we got to the wedding, we barely spoke to one another; it was horrible. We were miserable.

And so, on the way home, I tried to explain.

“I’m not really interested in a romantic connection,” I told her. “I … I thought you understood that. I thought-!”

“Then why have we been spending so much time together?” she asked. “Why have you been taking me out on dates? Why have you been leading me on?”

I wanted to ask her why she had been leading ME on, because we’d met in an asexual group, so I figured we had the same ideas about what love and sex meant, but … obviously that was a stupid thought. I realize now that it WAS a stupid thought, because love is complex and not as easily categorized as we think it is, and I should have asked. I should have asked, and she should have asked, and we should have checked in with each other to make sure we were going in the right direction, together on the same page, but-!

“I love you,” she told me, and it was the first time she’d ever said it … and the last. I was elated; I thought we were going to take this and meet in the middle, and find a way to compromise for love, so, I said “I love you too. I’m so-!”

“No you don’t,’ she snapped back at me, obviously really hurt and aching inside in the same way that I was starting to ache. “You don’t love me, because when you love someone, you want to kiss them. You want to hold them; you want to touch them. That’s what happens when you love someone.”

“I’ve never felt that way about anyone,” I heard myself say.

“Then you’ve never loved anyone,” she told me, “And that’s really, really sad. I feel bad for you. Maybe you can’t love anyone; maybe you never will. That sucks.”

I’m not sure anyone has ever said anything to me that hurt more than those words did.

We never spoke again after that day, although I did see her a couple more times at the meetup before I stopped going.

At the time, I thought she must be right. I thought I must be broken, unloving and therefore totally unlovable, but … but it only took me a couple of years to meet the right people and to figure out that she was way off.

I’ve loved so deeply and so much in my life. My love is real and powerful and true and unique, and when I love I love with my whole heart … just without my hormones, without my body, without sex, and THAT … that is what love means to me. That is what queerplatonic means to me.

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