Casual physical touch between friends is one of those things that terrifies me. Not for like, I dunno, other reasons, but rather that for me physical touch is always so charged with meaning and intent and always always always communicates desire to and from me. And I can’t turn that off. I’ve tried. I can’t change that. It’s Just Like That.

This caused a lot of problems last year (though I have recently learned that.. sigh no I shouldn’t get into that… 🙁), but it’s constantly caused problems in the past too. It’s to the point that I feel broken in some way. Why are other people so okay with casual touch, even casual cuddling (and god forbid casual sex, but we’ll get there), but I just can’t do it?? Even back in college it was very difficult for me. My first girlfriend just started as a casual cuddle during my friend group’s weekly Doctor Who night. She warned me that I shouldn’t read anything into it at all. I don’t actually know how we transformed that into dating, but uh, it wasn’t supposed to be lol. Also, she already understood herself as polyamorous and was super close to other people and friends and I couldn’t handle that at all. (I do understand myself as polyamorous now, but it took 12 years and specifically a new gender to get there) Watching her cuddle with a mutual friend KILLED me inside. Because touch MEANS something big to me..

A month and a half ago (what the fuck, already that long ago?) I went to a birthday party for someone I only tangentially knew. I mostly just observed the people there and I noticed one big thing: practically everyone was touching each other. A lot. Very casually, very regularly. I did learn that at least one small set of people were fucking, a lot. So I can easily see why they’d be touching. But the rest of them? All that touch??? I’ve been thinking about this constantly since then (how has it been a month and a half already?!), and it really highlighted to me how broken this makes me feel.

I’ve TRIED to change this!, I’ve tried to make myself okay with casual touch having casual meaning. It’s backfired, it’s blown up, it’s hurt me and other people badly. I think I’m just stuck this way. It feels so lonely though, watching other people be casually physical with each other and knowing that if I let myself do the same thing I’d just end up hurting myself or hurting them too. There are people I want to be physically close with, people I want to just enjoy their presence and warmth. Some for, yes, romantic reasons, but some for not those reasons too! I want to be able to enjoy casual closeness, I imagine it feels really nice! I want it to be okay if I sit on a crowded couch or train and I’m shoulder to shoulder with my friends. I want it to be okay to casually touch a friend on the arm while talking, or be touched on the arm in turn. I STILL think about the time in 2018 when I went to my friend’s wedding in San Francisco (a few years before I would temporarily move there) when after the celebration me and a few friends went to a late night diner and one friend let her knee touch mine for most of the night. Did that, was that, …????

Why am I this way? I still can’t tell if I should just work to accept this, accept that I’ll always be missing out on this, or if I should keep trying to make further efforts to be okay with casual touch.

I said I’d get to casual sex, I just don’t know how to smoothly segue into that. There’s this “have sex with your friends” attitude that pervades a lot of trans culture that I whole-heartedly support, and deeply deeply wish I could partake in. I tried it once and it fucked up the entire friendship. A woman named Sarah (not my exfiancée) and I hooked up a few years ago and ever since then our friendship has basically ceased to exist. Knowledge of the hookup (but not the fallout) made someone I had feelings for think it was okay to initiate a bunch of casual touch towards me that left me so confused and hurt. What this latter person didn’t know was that Sarah and I had years of flirting and sexual tension before we finally met up! It wasn’t a “fuck your friends” thing, it was a “we’ve been flirting for ages, and now it’s time to follow that up with sex.” I regret it though. It blew up the whole friendship for me. Sarah and I do not talk anymore, and I just can’t make myself do it. I don’t know why. And I really wish that this one instance hadn’t been used to drive an assumption that I was okay with casual contact between friends. I wish I had been asked instead of assumed about.

I really love the concept, I love the idea, I love the casual intimacy of fuck your friends. I just foresee that if I actually engage in that it will cause MASSIVE problems, even bigger than with Sarah where there was a ton of mutual flirting and interest! I wish I wish I wish I could do it. I know however that I’d be that bitch who constantly complicates every friends with benefits situation she found her self in. I’d either ALWAYS catch feelings or ALWAYS disappear and lose the connection entirely. I would just hurt a lot of people and get hurt a lot in return.

I only got four hours of sleep last night, so I’m feeling really emotionally dysregulated and decided to process some shit. If you read this far.. thank you. Remember when I said this would not be a diary…?