#i’ve realised that romantic attraction really is this irrational and intense thing that i’ve just never experienced

[yea-baiyi]

ok i’m working off my own aro revelation here but grey-aro xie lian who is experiencing romantic attraction for the first time w hua cheng, and that’s why the whole experience feels so startling and new and foreign

[vampiregirl1797]

Hoodies & Lacrosse

Peter Kavinsky x Reader

 GIF Not Mine

 For my Masterlist, Click Here.

 Word Count: 1,566

 A/N: This one was requested by the awesome @mychemicalimagines​. I hope this is everything you imagined it to be, lovely! I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get this done for you, but I’ve been so swamped with uni work and placement that I’ve just had no motivation for writing. But inspiration struck tonight and I decided to put it to good use.

A/N/Pt2: If you’re in to Friends and Twilight check out their imagines! The series’ are so good and addictive, I cannot recommend them enough! Leaving a link to the Masterlist HERE.

 I blinked owlishly, trying to make my eyes feel less exhausted, but it was to no avail—I’d been unable to sleep last night and I was unwilling to admit that it was because Peter had asked for his hoodie back. I’d taken it months ago, well not purposefully, he’d just left it behind one day after we’d been hanging out. I’d been chilly that night, and I figured I’d throw it on, only to discover it was the comfiest thing ever—it was huge on me and it smelled of him, and so I’d grown accustomed to how content and safe it made me feel. Obviously I hadn’t realised how much I’d grown to rely on it to sleep until last night at around three in the morning, when I realised it was the first time in months I’d gone to bed not wearing it.

 I yawned, pulled my cardigan tighter around me, and took a large gulp of the coffee I’d poured myself before leaving the house to head to school. I’d managed to drop off around five in the morning, which led to me sleeping through my first four alarms. By some grace of god, I’d made it to first period as the bell rang. I finished off my coffee, and threw the disposable cup into the recycling bin on my way out of the room—thank god I’d had the beverage as my first period had been math; I’d have definitely dozed off without it.

 ‘Hey, Y/N! Wait up!’ I paused at the sound of my best friend’s voice, mixed feelings erupting through me. Tiredness made me clingy, which Pete was used to, but I was also a little pissed being as in my mind it was his fault I was tired to begin with.

 ‘Hey, asshat’ I grumbled, wrapping my arm around his waist and melting into his comforting warmth.

 He chuckled, ‘such wonderful greetings from you, Y/N. It’s a wonder my head fits through the halls with how much you boost my ego.’

 I rolled my eyes, an involuntary smile forming on my face, ‘I’m tired, I think I got thirty minutes of sleep last night. I can’t to go home and sleep until Sunday.’

 ‘Why didn’t you sleep? Is there something on your mind?’ I felt my irrational irritation with him soften at the concern in his voice; he knew me well enough to know if I had trouble sleeping, it usually meant there was something on my mind causing my insomnia.

 ‘No, I just didn’t realise how much I’d come to rely on your hoodie until you took it away.’ I felt my lips form into a slight pout, and had I not been exhausted and as a result, needy, I would have been embarrassed.

 My head was tucked into his side, my face against his chest, and so I missed the soft, fond look that overtook his expression. I did notice the new girl giving us a look of longing and jealousy, but I ignored her. The other students would clue her in soon enough—we were friends, best, best friends. It may look like we were more due to how touchy we both were with each other, but our relationship didn’t extend beyond a deep, meaningful friendship. It had taken a while for everyone to understand it, and to stop giving us the same look the new girl was giving us now, but they learned eventually.

 ‘How about this…’ Peter’s voice bought me back to the conversation, ‘you come to my game tonight, and I’ll give you my hoodie to keep forever.’

 I bit my lip to hide my smile; it was typical Peter Kavinsky. He knew I wouldn’t miss one of his games—I was always there, rain or shine, wearing his jersey and cheering him on. But he was sweet enough to make it sound like I was doing him a favour when in reality, it was him who was doing something nice for me, by making sure I got his hoodie doing something I was planning on anyway.

 I looked up to him, ignoring how my heart fluttered when he tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear when it fell in front of my eyes, ‘you’d give up your favourite hoodie, for me to come to your game?’

 I felt my heart melt at the bashful expression that overtook his features, ‘of course I would. I mean it took me months to realise you had it anyway. Clearly it means more to you than it does to me.’

 ‘You make a good point.’ I teased, biting my lip as I thought and missing the way his eyes followed the movement, ‘okay, if you’re really okay with it, you have a deal.’

 ‘Awesome.’ He grinned, and I found myself subconsciously beaming back at him, powerless to not return his happiness.

 //

 ‘Come on, Peter!’ I mumbled under my breath, the tension in the air palpable and affecting everyone, it was as if we were all holding our breath in anticipation, ‘you’ve got this!’

 Peter ran forward, passed the defence and took his shot at the goalie. It was so quiet I could hear the puck hitting the back of the net and I was unable to hold back my cheer of happiness, which seemed to snap everyone else out of their shock and they joined me. Brown eyes found mine and I felt my heart skip a beat as he unclipped his helmet, tucked it under his arm and made his way over to me, easily bypassing the rest of the audience who’d flooded the pitch. I felt my heart beat pick up and by the time my best friend reached me, my heart was pounding against my ribs. He was watching me with such intensity, that it made my knees feel weak. His beautiful brown eyes were soft with an emotion that I couldn’t identify, as well as fondness, happiness and determination. I had no idea what to expect when he finally joined me on the stands, but when he tossed his helmet aside, and placed both of his hands on my cheeks, I knew that everything was about to change. And when his lips met mine in a tender, tentative kiss, I threw my arms around his neck and succumbed to it. It was meant to be, and I was powerless to fight the passion, and the intensity that moved between us. But more importantly, I didn’t want to.

 //

 Third Person POV

 Daisy Hank didn’t know what to think when she attended her second day of school. It seemed that there was a buzz in the air from the moment she walked through the doors, as if something had happened and everyone was talking about it. She felt a nervous knot form in her stomach, worried that it was somehow about her, but after a few deep breaths and reassurances it dissipated. There was no way it could be about her; she’d only started yesterday and she hadn’t spoken to anyone for long enough for her to accidentally reveal anything embarrassing.

 She frowned and walked to her locker, trying to focus her hearing to pick up what was going on from the group of girls that were gossiping next to her locker. She opened it up and pretended to search for something as she managed to get close enough to listen in.

 ‘Is it true? Peter and Y/N are actually together?’ one of the girls murmured, Daisy didn’t know any of their names, but she could easily hear the disappointment in her voice.

 ‘Yup, apparently it happened last night at the lacrosse game. He scored the winning game and ran on the stands to kiss her.’ This girl sounded dreamy, and Daisy felt herself instinctively relax a little at the absence of aggression in her tone.

 ‘It was like a Cinderella Story. So romantic.’ The third girl mirrored the second’s tone and even sighed.

 ‘So unfair. Kavinsky is the most attractive guy at this school, now what—‘ the first girls bitterness was cut off by an elbow to her abdomen.

  Daisy frowned, until she followed their gaze and saw the aforementioned couple walking down the hall. They were in the same position as yesterday; her arm around his waist, his over her shoulders and her face tucked against his chest. And yet, there was a definite change between them, Daisy noticed. Maybe it was because Y/N was wearing a hoodie that was obviously his, or because he now had her backpack slung over his shoulder along with his own, or maybe it was the soft, fond and loving way they looked at each other. But either way, a change was definitely there, and Daisy once again found herself wishing that she had someone who looked at her the way they were observing each other, just like she had yesterday when she’d first laid eyes on them. Except now, she only wanted it more, because unlike yesterday the love and affection they had for each other was radiating from them without restriction. It was as beautiful as it was mesmerising and Daisy released a dreamy sigh of her own as she slammed her locker shut at the sound of the school bell. As she made her way to English, she hoped one day, she would find someone who loved her like that.

[sinesalvatorem]

Do you think that people who are insecure will naturally become monogamous and people who aren't will become polyamorous?

I’m not sure how to interpret this, tbh. I think “insecurity” is a vague enough concept that I don’t know what would count as a person who lacks insecurity.

Is it insecure to be worried about your partner leaving you if they literally just told you they would? Or is this just “having preferences over whether your partner dates you”? Do they need to be irrational (and how is “irrational” to be defined)? And are we only counting people with irrational fears about relationships or about anything? Is a person who feels scared when they stand on a glass roof insecure?

So I’ll instead try to define a specific value - how regularly and intensely one experiences fears about one’s relationship(s) - and call people who have more of this (holding the behaviour of their partner(s) constant) “more insecure”. This gives us “insecurity” as a personality trait. How much fear one feels can obviously go up and down depending on what one’s partner does, but people who will respond with more fear than others in identical situations can be thought of as more insecure for this purpose.

So, does being more insecure cause you to be more monogamous. It probably does for a lot of people! And, for others, the reverse might be true!

“Wait, what?” you may ask. “How can that be?” Well, I’ll give the example of my own case:

I have been a pretty insecure person (in the general, not relationship-specific sense) for a very long time, which is not too surprising given my backstory. However, until I first started dating (two years ago), I didn’t know what it would be like to be in a relationship.

I had a major advantage out the gate in understanding how to build good relationships, due to reading a lot and knowing people with good relationships that I could model. Nonetheless, I had no idea what being in a relationship felt like. Turns out it felt extremely tenuous.

I had a whole suite of insecurities; most of which were related to the newness of relationships. I felt as unlovable as back when no one would date me and was terrified that, if I let any opportunity pass me by, I’d never find a girlfriend again. I continued to have the suspicion that everyone secretly hated me that I’d held since primary school, which made it hard to trust that any given person would stick around, and made me want to distribute my risk. I was afraid that the rules around what others considered “cheating” were obscure and unknowable. And also, like, my own jealousy was a thing.

Given the particular cluster of insecurities, polyamory was the obvious choice. Three soul-crushing anxieties pushing me one way beat the one pushing me the other. For over a year, being polyamorous was clearly the best way I could satisfice my preferences. But, over time, most of my insecurities faded, leaving behind almost nothing besides the jealousy. So now I’m way less insecure and have a way stronger natural leaning toward monogamy. Funny how that works.

(Note that I continue to date polyamorously, because the switching costs to becoming monogamous would not be worth it. This is just to say that the type of person I am is better suited to monogamy than polyamory now. My actually love life is poly.)

Why did my anti-mono insecurities go away while my anti-poly insecurity didn’t? Honestly, I really don’t know. To some extent, the jealousy did go away, as it’s now something like 30%-50% as bad as it used to be. On the other hand, everything else is less than 5% as bad as it originally was, so that’s a pretty big gap. It’s also a pretty annoying order in which to self-improve, given that my life continues to be poly. But I do have some guesses about why it happened in that particular order:

Experience: Most of my insecurities were about things that were gradually proven by my own experiences to not be that important. After a year of it happening very consistently, I stopped being completely shocked that I attracted romantic interest from other girls. I found that the people around me probably didn’t hate me, because they had too much ADHD to play a con this long. (It didn’t hurt that I could see other people having fears of being hated and notice that theirs were irrational.)

Somewhat more surprising to me was that I picked up a model of cheating. Or, more accurately, several models, such that I could predict how several different types of jealous people might feel about things. It was actually somewhat like learning to read faces, which I originally thought would be impossible. Then I started picking up the cues of a raised eyebrow here and an upraised mouth-corner there, until eventually I could do it. Similarly, navigating relationships with different types of people, and listening to the thoughts of people I wasn’t dating, helped me get a new sense, so the problem no longer seemed scary.

Meanwhile, this didn’t really happen with jealousy. The lessons experience taught were that yes, my partner sometimes starts dating someone cooler than me and then dumps me; and yes, my metamours sometimes interfere in my relationships in ways that sabotage them; and yes, my poly friends tend to (on average) have less secure primary relationships than my mono friends. None of these were universal, obviously, but common enough to sting.

I’d certainly rather I was weighing risks like these with system 2 than with system 1, but if my system 1 was exposure therapied out of most of its problems, that isn’t going to work for a problem where system 1 is sometimes correct.

Environment: A while back, a Tumblr post went around where someone talked about why the casual suicidality of Tumblr culture was unhealthy. That suicidality must always be taken Extremely Seriously because it is a Real Adult Problem that you need to Seek Help for. Almost everyone who responded said that this was actually very valuable to their mental health and that they wouldn’t be able to express their feelings in a different environment.

This is basically what I’m like with my insecurities. Being in a social environment where people were like “lol, of course we’re all afraid that everyone in the world hates us” helped me work through that.

Meanwhile, I’ve mostly been surrounded by people who think jealousy must always be taken Extremely Seriously because it is a Real Adult Problem that you need to Seek Help for, who of course make me not want to admit to such Serious Defects. Plus, of course, the people who think monogamy is evil and that violating monogamous people’s boundaries is always justified, who doubly make me never want to talk about jealousy in public.

The combined chilling effect probably leads to me working through my problems less well than if I could talk about them, which may contribute to why my fear that everyone hates me faded at a much faster rate than my jealousy has.

Self-Deception: Probably related to environment is the fact that, while I could admit most of my problems to myself, I was convinced I didn’t experience jealousy. After all: jealous people are Bad; I am not Bad; therefore, I am not jealous. This lasted me through quite intense levels of doublethink and reams of excuses that are embarrassingly invented in retrospect.

This, of course, also meant I wasn’t working on the problem directly, because I couldn’t admit to myself that I had it. Thus, I may also be behind on subduing jealousy just because I’ve been consciously working on it for a much shorter period of time.

Regression To The Mean: As far as I’m aware, most people tend not to be incredibly scrupulous and convinced that they’re inherently unlovable and universally hated. However, they do tend to experience jealousy. They do at high enough rates that the default dating system is built around an assumption of jealousy.

This means that, of my listed insecurities, the ones that were obstructions to monogamy were uncommon. Thus, just due to the random ways people change, there’d probably be a higher chance of them going away than of jealousy going away. One might expect jealousy to be more firmly fixed in place just because it’s very common. (This is also my handwaviest and least endorsed guess.)

In the end, it was probably several of these, plus maybe other things I haven’t yet thought of. Whatever the case, I can at least say that I’m better off now than where I started. On basically every metric, I’m a more self-assured and less insecure person.

While I’d rather have vanquished my insecurities in a different order, I am still immensely grateful that they’re going away at all. If I had but gained some more trust, but had still been just as jealous, Dayenu.

Honestly, I’m just shocked anyone put up with my insanely insecure ass long enough for this much improvement to take place. The fact that anyone could stand me this long, when I can’t stand myself, is the best evidence I have that I might actually be pretty or something.

(Though I still have the insecurity that I’m bad for the people around me, even if not the one that everyone else realises this and hates me. This is part of why I’m way more reluctant to date new people, now that I no longer have the automatic urge to accept every opportunity I get. However, if you want to try anyway, I’d be immensely flattered.)

Anyway, sorry to give you a long story about my personal life. The point was that insecurities can pull you in any of several directions, so you can’t be sure that one set of people is more or less insecure than another without finding out why they’re doing what they’re doing.