Personal

Protocol Diaries: Love Letters

Kate Sloan

“Dear Matt: It’s hard to know what to write to you in a love letter because we are already so forthcoming about our feelings. A letter of this genre should be juicy, revealing, exciting, and you already know the juiciest thing I could tell you, which is that I’m extremely, embarrassingly, unchill-ly in love with you and have been for a while.” -April 1st 2018

When Matt came to visit me in Toronto for the first time, 3 months into our sparkly new long-distance relationship, he brought me a present: a little blue Moleskine notebook and matching pen. Tools for my favorite vocation, in my favorite color. I glowed from the romance of it.

Once we’d spent a lovely weekend together and he’d flown back to New York, I began pondering what to do with this adorable notebook. In discussing this via text, one of us mentioned something about love letters, and the other said, “I was thinking that too!” And so began one of our many romantic traditions.

“I love you, Kate Sloan. Come fly with me. Be my co-pilot as we chart new adventures together. The plane I’m in is about to land, but six months in, I still feel like our journey together is just beginning. Yours with love, Matt.” -June 22nd 2018

We each hand off the notebook to the other every time we see each other in person. We jettison it back and forth between Toronto and New York (and, on unique occasions, Boston, Alexandria, and Montreal). Each time we say goodbye, the person who now possesses the notebook writes a love letter for the other. Then, when we’re together again, Matt reads the new letter aloud to me, whether he wrote it or I did. Typically, there is cuddling and crying. And then we go out for dinner.

“Dear Matt: You know this already, but let me reiterate how happy it makes me that you are coming out as my partner this week. It makes me feel so loved, I feel like my heart is going to overflow and explode. It makes me feel like I’m really a part of your life, and like you want me to be.” -October 19th 2018

I dutifully copy each of Matt’s letters into my own notebook, so I’ll have them to review even when our tome of love letters is in a different country from me. They remind me, at difficult times, that I am loved and appreciated. I am a verbally-minded person who absorbs information best when it comes in the form of articulate words, and so these letters are one of my best tools for combating the “Does he really love me?” shadows that come creeping in. Of course he does. It’s right there in black and white. (Or blue and cream, as the case may be.)

“Don’t be afraid that you or your feelings are too much for me. Their muchness has helped me get in touch with my own in a more authentic way than I have in a while. Your transparency and empathy as a partner are striking and rare. I treasure you, your tears, and the sense of relief that comes when we’ve said our deepest truths to one another.” -November 9th 2018

The practice of writing love letters – a new one every other month or so – is an exercise in mindfulness and being present. I have to dig deep in my heart and ask myself honestly: What do I love about this person, and how can I express it to him well enough that he will deeply, truly understand?

It’s so easy, in long-term relationships, to stop complimenting each other on the qualities and behaviors you love, because you’ve loved them for so long that it seems unnecessary to point them out further. But, as Matt once told me, some things bear repeating in relationships. “I love you” is one of those things. I want to say it as much as I can, in as many ways as possible.

“You’re serious about me, and I’m serious about you too. I want to be with you for more years, more laughs, more trips, more late-night phone calls, more milestones, more orgasms, more kisses, more everything I can experience with you. I want to work hard to make this last and to make it good. That’s what I mean when I say I’m serious about you, Sir.” -December 11th 2018

I also appreciate our little notebook as a record of our budding romance – the way it has bloomed, deepened, and aged. For all my past relationships, I only have my own journal entries to refer to if I want to remind myself how each romance felt. For this one, I have direct windows into the people we each were when we were newly in love. Our limerence leaps off the page, and re-reading our letters always reinvigorates me, like: Oh yeah. I can feel like that. That’s amazing.

“Even at times when you feel sick, anxious, depressed, or exhausted, I want you to know that I’m happy I’m with you. I love taking care of you, holding you, figuring out ways to help you smile, relax, and feel safe again. I’m here for you through all of that, little one, and I want to be. I’m not going anywhere.” -December 28th 2018

We’re about halfway through the notebook now, more than a year into this tradition. I hope we keep it up until the book is filled, and beyond. I hope we can remember, even on days when our connection may be strained or the distance may be hard, that the most basic and important thing you can do in a romantic relationship is to love your partner and to make sure they know that you do.

No matter how many different ways I say it, no matter how many letters I write, no matter how much time passes or how many miles we are apart, one thing remains true: I love Matt and I want him to know it.

20 Local Crushes Who Make Me Blush

Kate Sloan


1. The charmingly bedraggled server at the vegan café. He forever looks like he just rolled out of bed, hung over, the morning after modeling in a Calvin Klein underwear shoot, threw some rumpled clothes on and walked to work. Once I saw him greet a customer, “Hello! Happy Monday!” and it was Wednesday. Maybe he was thrown off because she was cute. Maybe he’s just like that.

2. The hot soft-butch waitress at the diner, who’s clearly just doing this to support her true passion of stand-up comedy or improv or TV acting, because she’s loud and hilarious and talks with her hands. She dresses like a female character from The Sandlot if that movie had any girls, and she always gets my breakfast order perfect. One time I overheard her telling a coworker about the shitty misogynist jokes in an improv show I’d also seen the night before, and my heart swelled for this woke little ragamuffin.

3. The guy who does the lights and sound for my favorite Friday-night improv show. He’s the main reason I keep coming back, week after week, year after year. His cues are usually funnier than the entire rest of the show put together. He punctuates scenes with absurd music stings and unexpected-yet-perfect sound effects that dial up the funny without ever stepping on anyone’s toes. I blush every time he takes my ticket at the door, because brilliantly funny people are my kryptonite. I don’t use the word “genius” lightly, but…

4. The intense blonde hostess/server at the high-end steakhouse who held my gaze with her cool blue eyes while explaining the entire complicated menu from memory. How the fuck is she that pretty. How the fuck is she that smart. How the fuck can I get her to step on my face.

5. The beefy, bespectacled nerd at the Greek pastry place who always brings me my spanakopita right-side-up in its little to-go bag and always, always says “Thank you” when I put coins in the tip jar.

6. The unbelievably tall improvisor I occasionally see in longform shows, but don’t specifically seek out much anymore because one time he made me laugh so hard that I accidentally spit beer into the hair of the lady sitting in front of me and now I am ashamed forever. Also because one time an improvisor friend of mine introduced us at a party and I, at a total loss for words, said, “You’re super funny!” He knows he is. He said, “Thanks!” At least he was polite.

7. The multi-instrumentalist who used to accompany my favorite quirky singer-songwriter in tiny, intimate shows at the queer piano bar. The sight of his tongue darting out to wet his clarinet reed was of particular interest to me. Once I saw him leaving a school playground with his small son in tow, and my heart melted into a sticky puddle.

8. The “senior executive barback” at the fancy cocktail bar with the “verbal menu.” He will take your order, no matter how vague or nonsensical, and spin it into something not only drinkable but downright divine. Once he complimented my arm tattoo and I was so disoriented I nearly fell off my barstool. He’s the only person I’ve ever seen look devastatingly handsome in a pineapple-print button-down. But of course, competence can do that to a person.

9. The musical theatre actor with the impossibly luminous face. His headshot in the playbill never quite captures it. Once he smiled and waved at me and my mom from across a busy street because he recognized us from the front row of the Sondheim musical we’d just seen him in (ugh, help). I would see him in anything, as evidenced by the time I considered taking a 4-hour bus ride each way to see him play the lead in a small-town staged reading of Angels in America. I eventually decided against it because my boyfriend was going to be in town, but… I almost wanted to drag him along.

10. The spiky-haired, big-grinned boy who’s always around to help me find the lube or condoms I need at the giant gayborhood sex shop. He still makes me giggle like an absolute weirdo, even though we’ve been fucking on-and-off for nearly two years.

11. The absurdly competent, pretty, blonde bartender at the cozy cocktail bar. She knows how to make my favorite drink even though it’s not on the menu and everyone else who works there seems mystified by it. The way she handles a cocktail shaker is a source of particular fascination.

12. The tiny brunette server at the Greek diner, who brings me my $6 breakfast with speed and precision, all the while seeming so cold and unaffected that I might as well be a piece of gum stuck to her shoe. Fuck me up, queen. And bring me some orange juice, too, if you could. If you think I’ve earned it.

13. The very tall, very aloof comedian who sometimes tends bar at the improv theatre. It’s not a fancy bar – once, we ordered bourbon on the rocks, and he looked alarmed and said, “Pardon me?!” – but it’s cozy and crowded and sometimes he even smiles.

14. The theatre actor I’ve seen in parts as diverse as George Bailey, Louis Ironson, and Ebenezer Scrooge. His diction is impeccable. He’s a flamboyant, articulate dream. I saw a play once where he paraded up and down the boards performing a half-hour-long monologue in the middle of act one, and I wanted to stand up and scream at the rest of the audience, “Do you even realize how amazing this is?!”

15. The soft-spoken sushi server who brings me tofu and edamame before my meal. I have ordered the same exact lunch from him dozens of times and he still pretends (?) he doesn’t know what I’m going to ask for. Reserved shyness exudes from his very pores.

16. The no-nonsense bartender at the queer bookstore, who pours me my double whiskey and then hands it to me while entangling her deep brown eyes with mine. One time I saw her on the subway and her biceps were bulging out of her tank top. I wondered if handling big bottles of booze all day makes you strong.

17. The chatty LCBO clerk who reminds me of Fred Armisen, only older and, you know, probably not an abuser. He always seems to love his job, and when I pop in to buy whiskey or wine, he makes a big show of checking my ID because of how young I supposedly look, in a way that seems just the slightest bit flirty.

18. In its entirety, the longform improv troupe that always makes me remember why longform improv is my favorite. The stories they weave are as complex and absurd as their brains, individually and collectively. Once, I matched with one of them on a dating site, and he promptly unmatched me when I gushed that I was a fan. I only slightly regret this.

19. The beautiful brunette barista who always calls me “sweetie” and upgrades my drink size for no reason. We barely know each other, but somehow her conviction that I always need more caffeine feels like a deep, searching knowledge of my soul.

20. The androgynous server at the Mexican restaurant, punctuating her uniform with a backwards baseball cap. She brought me and my boyfriend perfect margaritas, sat almost uncomfortably close to me on the arm of my chair, chatted with us about our plans for the rest of the night, and then asked, inexplicably, “Are you guys chefs?” After she left, we looked at each other in bewilderment for a beat, before my boyfriend asked: “Did she smell good?”

Who are your local crushes?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Do I Want Kids? Part 1: Mental Health

Kate Sloan

Am I too crazy to have kids?

This question haunts me. I’m embarrassed at how often it flits through my head. When I get sucked down into the whirlpool of depression or anxiety, those moods pose a question which only serves to perpetuate them: Are you too fucked-up to ever get the things you want? And of course, in the throes of sadness and fear, “yes” is the only answer I can fathom.

There are times when my mental health is so bad that I can barely take care of myself – food, sleep, hygiene – so it’s scary to imagine trying to take care of someone else at those times. How can you be responsible for another human being if you’re crying too hard to get up off the floor, or if the world beyond your bed feels too scary to contemplate?

I’ve heard many a horror story from people whose parents raised them in a maelstrom of mental illness. Children of the severely depressed can be neglected; children of the deeply anxious can absorb compulsive fears; children of people with personality disorders can grow up hurt and confused, unable to truly trust anyone. Of course, these stories aren’t universal, and I probably know just as many people whose parents struggled with mental illness and who nonetheless turned out fine, but it’s hard to tune out these narratives when you’re scared they could come true for you.

I’d like to think my co-parent would be a relatively sane, grounded person, to help balance me out. (As much as I admire folks who raise kids solo, that doesn’t seem emotionally or financially tenable for me.) But then you risk creating an off-kilter family dynamic where one person is over-relied upon to prop up everyone else, psychologically and logistically, and that’s not fair at all. Maybe this is an area where polyamory could be an advantage: a solid support network of de facto other parents could take some pressure off. They do say it takes a village to raise a child, after all. The results of a legal paternity test can tell you a lot, but they’re not the whole picture, and a parent or guardian obviously doesn’t have to be genetically or legally related to a kid to assist in raising that kid.

Even supposing that I could overcome my own craziness enough to take care of a child – and/or rely on the help of other, steadier humans – I would still worry about transmitting that craziness to my kid. Some varieties of DNA test can predict whether a person might develop certain mental illnesses, but even if I went the adoption route, I’d still be concerned my negative thought patterns and tendency to overreact to emotional stimuli would get passed on to my little one through sheer osmosis. I would have to be careful and deliberate in the ways I chose to behave around them, and the values and habits I let them pick up – though I suppose that’s true for any parent. You probably want to clean up your act around someone you’re raising, to some extent, whether by quitting smoking or cutting back on profane language or, yes, consciously dialling back your “crazy” behaviors if you can. Hell, doing this might even help me feel less crazy, too.

That said, I don’t think it’s all bad for a mentally ill person to raise a child. Hell, both my parents struggle with depression and anxiety, and if anything, it just made them more empathetic when I started to notice my own psychological symptoms. I’ve also learned about cognitive-behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy while getting treated for my mental illnesses, and these are useful frameworks for anyone seeking to moderate and process their feelings. I could teach these systems to my kid(s), and maybe then they would have an easier time with childhood’s classically outsized emotions, like sadness, rage, and restlessness. Increased emotional literacy is one of the major silver linings I’ve found in my struggles with depression and anxiety, so I may as well try to impart it on my spawn.

It’s also worth noting that depression and anxiety don’t necessarily preclude you from being loving and supportive; you may just show your love and support in different ways than a neurotypical person, depending on how your symptoms manifest. I can still be there for loved ones when I’m having a rough time. It definitely looks different than my emotional support does when I’m feeling better – there’s fewer words of wisdom and more sitting in silence and solidarity – but it’s still a form of love. As the brilliant Carly Boyce pointed out in a suicide intervention workshop of hers that I attended, sometimes a person in distress doesn’t need you to pull them out of that distress – they just need you to keep them company until the feeling passes. As someone well-versed in distress, I could certainly do that for my kid.

So, am I too crazy to have kids? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s off the table entirely. I think, in order to feel comfortable taking that step, I would first have to feel stable in my medication regimen, brush up on my CBT and DBT skills, and have a relatively settled, dependable social support structure. But once those things were in place, I might just become a hyper-empathetic – if chronically frazzled – mom.

 

This 3-part series on parenthood was generously sponsored by the folks at TestMeDNA.com. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

How I Became a Full-Time Sex Writer

Kate Sloan

Friends, this blog is SEVEN YEARS OLD today, and that feels absolutely wild to me. I was not always the delightfully busy, proverbial-phone-ringing-off-the-hook sex writer you see before you. Even people who seem like they sorta “have their lives together” had to start somewhere. I’ve read my hero Alexandra Franzen’s post “A chronology of my life as a professional writer” many times seeking answers and comfort, at times when it seemed like the writer thing just wasn’t going to work out… and so it feels like good scribe karma for me to explain, in a similar fashion, how I got to where I am now. As the youths are saying on Twitter nowadays: Buckle up.

2000 or thereabouts. I am a voracious bookworm, a semi-closeted nerd, a precocious weirdo at age 8. I spend hours chronicling my days in my Little Mermaid journal – and, secretly, penning erotica in my ornate Anne of Green Gables journal. Later, I will rip all the filthiest pages out in a bout of shame – but for now, the anatomically ill-informed trysts on those pages fill me with joy.

2006. I’m knee-deep in a musical theatre obsession, and believe, genuinely believe, I will be a Broadway performer someday. I devour all the books I can find on the subject – Audition, Making It on Broadway – and go to voice lessons and memorize monologues and make lists of my dream roles. One night, at a family party, during a discussion of all the kids’ various ambitions, my wise older cousin turns to me and says, “I think Kate will grow up to be a writer.” I laugh, because she’s wrong: clearly I’m going to be singing and dancing on Manhattan stages instead. Right?

2009. My (hot, British) English teacher pulls me out of science class to tell me my recent essay for him was exemplary and that he wants to use it in future lessons. My glee cannot be quantified. That same year, I win first prize in a student poetry contest, and I get to read my extremely gay poem onstage in front of a bunch of literary types. They give me a $100 bookstore gift card which I promptly spend on a lot of Bukowski.

2010. I take a Writer’s Craft class where I get to explore various different forms, ranging from Shakespearian verse to sitcom scripts. Later, one of my favorite teachers lets me take a one-on-one literature/creative writing class with her, tailored to my tastes and goals as a reader and a writer. She assigns me twisted fairytales, feminist essays, Angels in America. I write a play about romance, non-monogamy, and gender confusion, and they do a staged reading of it at my school’s Fringe Festival. I cry a lot in the aftermath, having heard my words in other people’s voices and been utterly lit up by it.

2011. That same teacher recommends me to Shameless magazine as someone they should profile, and they do. It’s my first appearance in a magazine, albeit not a byline. The article captures my frazzled artistic life at the time: improv, painting, poetry. I’m still not settled on the “writer” identity, though I’m getting there.

Early 2012. I take a year off between high school and university, trying to figure out what the hell I want to study. One night, at my commencement, I’m mesmerized by the ASL interpreter onstage, and ponder whether I should go to school for ASL translation, something I’ve often idly thought I might enjoy. But then I realize it would probably be best if I studied something I already know I enjoy and am good at… like… writing. Something clicks. I race home that night and write in my notebook: “MAYBE I SHOULD GO TO JOURNALISM SCHOOL??”

March 2012. I apply to a shitty retail job at a sex shop. I do some Googling about sex toys to make sure I know my shit incase they call me in for an interview – but they don’t. However, in the process, I discover sex toy reviewers like Epiphora and Lilly, and I think, “Hey, I could do that.” I start a Tumblr-hosted blog. I name it Girly Juice. “Could be a fun summer project,” I note in my journal.

April 2012. The owner of a website called Sex Toys Canada reaches out to inquire about a partnership. I’m still new to the sex toy reviewing game, so I eagerly negotiate a deal whereby I will get $140 in store credit each month in exchange for writing 2 articles for the company blog. I acquire my first “free” toys, including an Eroscillator, and feel like a business genius. (Over a year later, I will renegotiate and get them to start paying me in actual money. Only $50 an article, but still.)

September 2012. I start classes at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism. It’s hard – especially “streeters,” where you have to interview random people on the street for a story, the bane of my socially anxious existence – but I feel invigorated and inspired by the smart writers who surround me and the wonderful work I get to read every day.

2013. I get an unpaid internship writing and editing articles for a dating newsletter aimed at middle-aged women. A recommendation letter from my supervisor at the end of the summer says that I have “excellent written and verbal communication skills, [am] extremely organized, can work independently, and [am] able to effectively multi-task to ensure that all projects are completed in a timely manner.” I try to parlay the internship into a paying position, but they don’t go for it – probably, in retrospect, because their economic model hinged on not needing to pay people like me.

2014. I’m invited to write some pieces for on-campus publications, the Eyeopener and the Ryerson Folio; far from limiting me, my sex “beat” just makes people think of me first when they need a sex story written. A J-school colleague of mine interviews me for a story she’s writing for Herizons magazine about labiaplasty. In seeking out the mag so I can read the story, I realize they’d be a great fit for lots of the stuff I like to write about. I pitch the editor a feature story about toxic sex toys, and she loves it. My friends and family rejoice supportively about my magazine debut, a heavily-reported story called “The Greening of Sex Toys.”

2015. I attend a sex bloggers’ retreat called #DildoHoliday, and teach a workshop on generating content ideas and staying on task, since I am, according to one of the retreat organizers, “the queen of productivity.” Throughout the year, I’m interviewed for the University of Toronto campus newspaper, the Offleash podcast, Kinkly’s Sex Blogger of the Month feature, and Sex City Radio. Everyone seems suddenly interested in this weird sex writer girl.

Early 2016. I do my final-semester internship at the Plaid Zebra, where they let me write about sexual health, social psychology, and dick tuxedos. It gives me a taste of what it might be like to be a full-time staffer at a publication – and I discover that I think I’d rather freelance. I take a gig writing monthly articles for a sex toy shop’s blog, to supplement my growing income from blogging and journalism.

July 2016. I pitch an essay to the Establishment about dating faux-feminist men. They accept it, I write it, and… it goes viral. For several days, I basically cower in my bed, overwhelmed by the onslaught of tweets and trolls and threats. I wonder, many times, if the sex-writer life is really for me. I conclude that it is.

Early 2017. I work a sex toy retail job, briefly, before they fire me for no real reason. At first I panic about how I’m going to make ends meet, but then somehow the sponsored post requests and freelance story assignments pour in at exactly the right moment. The sex and relationships editor of Glamour reaches out via DM to say she loves my blog and would welcome any story pitches from me. I write for her – and Teen Vogue, and the Establishment, and Daily Xtra. I dutifully update my portfolio every time a new piece goes up. The Daily Mail writes about what a slut I am, and I’m terrified it’ll incite the trolls again, but it doesn’t, not really.

June 2017. I start my new dayjob as a social media writer for a firm that works with adult-industry clients. It’s 10-15 hours of solitary, largely self-directed work per week. The steady work allows me to relax and not worry so much about whether my more creative work will be able to support me. I stop shopping for button-downs and pencil skirts in a gesture of supplication to some future office-job self; I accept that maybe I am just A Person Who Works From Home Now, and that therefore it’s okay for me to buy star-print leggings and sparkly T-shirts instead.

Early 2018. A Spanish newspaper calls me “the Canadian Bridget Jones.” At my boyfriend’s urging, I pitch a story to a dream publication of mine, Cosmo, and they say yes. When it goes up, my perfect brother tweets, “My sister is now a Cosmopolitan-featured writer!” and I don’t quite believe it until I see his words.

Late 2018. I win an award from the Association of LGBT Journalists. I get nominated for Best Blogger in NOW magazine’s Readers’ Choice Awards. I write big meaty reported pieces for The Walrus and an op-ed for Herizons. I sell several sponsored posts a month, and do odd jobs copywriting and ghostwriting for various sex shops, dating sites, porn sites, and adult content creators. I do my best to follow Alex Franzen’s advice: underpromise and overdeliver. Then I’m invited to teach a sex writing class at the Naked Heart Festival and it validates me, affirms me. This is really my career. Wow.

2019. Herizons offers me a column; I accept. I do more copywriting and ghostwriting and social media writing. I pitch, and write, and network, and brainstorm. The sex writer life, to my delight, goes on.

 

Big takeaways, if I had to choose a few:

  1. Even if your heart is in a particular genre of writing, consider branching out into other areas. I wouldn’t be able to do my fun, creative blogging and essay-writing if it wasn’t supported at least some of the time by social media work, promotional copywriting, etc. – not to mention, going outside your comfort zone helps stretch your creative muscles.
  2. Pitch, pitch, pitch, and pitch some more. Pitch publications you would love to write for, not just ones you think would “let you” write for them. Aim high!
  3. Getting paid for your writing – particularly blogging – can be a slow, long haul. Don’t expect anything to happen overnight. It is more than okay to supplement your income with a dayjob along the way, and even once you become more established. We all gotta eat.
  4. Trolls, h8erz, and rejection letters from editors can all feel much bigger and more important than compliments, fan letters, accolades, and achievements – but they’re not. Do your best to let setbacks fade into your history; they don’t have to define you, as a writer or as a person.

Thanks for being here! It’s been a pleasure spending seven years with you – or however long you’ve been around. ❤️

Obsessed & Distressed: Reflections on Rabid Love

Kate Sloan

I learned what love felt like from someone I couldn’t bring myself to love.

She was a close friend in high school whose harmless puppy-love toward me darkened into something deeper over our sophomore year. Try as I might, and try though I did, I couldn’t conjure the caliber of crush in return that she shone on me like fervent floodlights. Love can’t be forced, and she knew that, but I’m sure it made her sad anyway. I’m sure it also made her sad that we had a sexual relationship for over a year that remained only one-sidedly romantic. Look, tenth-graders don’t always make the most rational decisions.

I’ve spent ten years processing that relationship, and I guess she probably has too. We’ve made amends for the ways we fucked up, each trying to squeeze the other into an ill-fitting box. But what’s stuck with me most from that relationship was how obsessed with me she was.

(A note worth noting: this post will throw around the words “obsessed” and “obsessive” in their colloquial senses, and not the sense used in mental health diagnostics – although I and at least some of the people I’m describing have mental illnesses that feature some degree of invasive thought-loops one could consider obsessions.)

My tenth-grade paramour wrote me long emails and romantic poems. She kept up with my foibles on Facebook and Twitter, both relatively new and uncommonly-adopted technologies at that time. She mined me for minute trivia, plumbing my lore like I was my own cinematic universe. After a while, she knew everything from my favorite flavors of ice cream to my top 5 favorite Regina Spektor songs to my darkest fears. When our English teacher gave our class carte blanche to do a deep-dive on a topic of our choosing for our final project, she did her project on… me. Those documents are still tucked away in my Google Drive somewhere, curious little remnants of a love that once was.

It is, of course, flattering to be someone’s top priority and main focus – assuming this attention doesn’t frighten you or make you uncomfortable. But I think the reason her love comforted me was that it felt familiar. My crushes had always taken on a similarly obsessive tone: when I pined over pseudo-celebrities of the local comedy or theatre scene, I Googled them late into the night, memorized their answers to interview questions, gave them more real estate in my brain than perhaps they deserved. So when I felt that similarly laser-focused love being aimed at me, I recognized it for the love that it was. Though she was the first person ever to fall in love with me, it wasn’t hard for me to believe or accept; I knew what it was because it looked how I expected it to look. It looked like how I would love someone, if I ever did.

Almost a decade later, the shadow of that old love filtered through my consciousness again – because I fell in love with someone who wasn’t obsessed with me. And it hurt.

I wonder, in retrospect, if I was drawn to him because he was everything I’ve never been able to be: chill, cool, aloof. Aside from initiating our relationship by asking me out on Twitter, his expressions of enthusiasm toward me were scant. Maybe that just made me want him more. (Is this a lesson we all have to learn at some point? That the chase is fun but also exhausting? I hope I’m done learning that one.)

I felt – to partly dilute a word that maybe I shouldn’t be diluting – gaslighted. He told me over and over again that he liked me, loved me, wanted to be with me, but his behavior was comparatively devoid of evidence he wanted me around. He’d ignore my texts for hours at a time, neglect to keep his promises, back out of plans at the last minute, and pull away coldly when I wanted closeness and warmth. I don’t know that he was doing this intentionally, as the “gaslighting” label would suggest – but the net effect was, regardless, a sense of emotional whiplash. I kept reminding myself to listen to his words, because they no doubt were truer than my anxiety-warped perception of his actions – but actions, as you well know, tend to speak louder. His were drowning out his words.

I brought this to his attention only once, and came to regret it. We were looping the same argument we’d been having for basically our entire relationship: I resented that he wouldn’t give me the assurances I felt I needed, and he resented that I needed them. Grasping at straws, I tried to explain: “It’s hard for me to recognize love as love when the person isn’t kind of obsessed with me, because when I like someone, I want to know everything about them, I want to see them as much as possible, and I think about them almost all the time.”

Some part of me hoped he would counter with what I wanted to hear: that he did think about me constantly, that he was obsessed with me; how could I not have noticed? Instead, he replied, “I don’t really get obsessed with people. I never have. That’s just not how I operate.”

Wise and level-headed people in my life, like my therapist and my best friend, would probably tell me to just accept a lower level of attention and devotion from partners. Just because someone doesn’t pine over you nonstop, they might tell me, doesn’t mean they’re blasé about you. If you broaden your view of what love can look like, you expand your ability to be loved, to feel loved.

That’s true, I guess. But I wanted love I didn’t have to do cognitive backflips to understand. I wanted love that was more joy, less compromise. I wanted love that mirrored my own, that matched me in my wild zeal. So when that boy broke up with me, although I was crushed, part of me was relieved. It felt more peaceful, more pleasant, to know for sure that no one loved me romantically, than to beg for scraps of affection that never quite felt like enough.

When I met my now-boyfriend, then-Twitter-crush, one of the first things he told me about himself is that he’s obsessive. I thrilled at the possibility of familiarity.

It didn’t take long for me to discover how right he was, how core this quality is to who he is. Intrepid Googling and curious research have left him well-informed on a broad range of topics. He can tell you the top 5 best cocktail bars in any neighborhood in New York, off the top of his head. He geeks out about etymology, psychology, philosophy. Once, during a conversation over drinks about whether or not our D/s dynamic is technically 24/7, he said, “That reminds me of this quote from SM 101…” and pulled it up on his phone in seconds. I swooned.

As we got to know each other, he’d casually reference old videos of mine, tweets, blog posts. He got embarrassed each time I called him out on it, backpedaling and blushing audibly over the phone, but my screeches of “How do you know that?!” were never accusatory – only excited. For me, combing through a crush’s internet presence is par for the course; it had been years since anyone had made me feel spotlighted that way in return.

He commissioned me a custom perfume based on a list of preferences he cobbled together from research. He devoured my sex toy reviews so he’d know what I like to be fucked with, and worked his way through my podcast so he’d know how I like to be fucked. When he sends me flowers or brings me treats, his selections are educated guesses – or sometimes, exactly the right thing.

The more I think about it, the more I doubt that “obsessive” is the right word. The essence of romance, and indeed of love, is focusing on your paramour: giving them your attention, putting effort into them, demonstrating your enthusiasm for them over and over. That sharp passion is what was missing from so many of my past relationships, which is why it feels especially good in this latest one. I spent years making desperate excuses for aloof partners, twisting their apathy until it looked like love. I settled over and over for paltry affection that barely warmed my skin, let alone my insides. I gave up on thinking of myself as someone worthy of obsession, even as I continued to furtively memorize my crushes’ likes and dislikes by the dim glow of my laptop in the dead of night.

I’m so happy now to be loved in the way I’ve always craved, and so happy to have discovered that love doesn’t have to be a compromise at its core. Sometimes it can just be exactly what you want.