I’ve been thinking a lot about this in the last few months.

I didn’t date casually or otherwise until I turned 24. I’m neurodivergent, was overweight as a kid, and had a bit of a delayed emotional and social development.

There’s a much longer story about those days, but I digress.

But up until I started dating in my 20s my only release of oxytocin (also known as the love hormone) was emotional intimacy.

On some level I guess you could say that my developmental track as a straight, cisgender male essentially happened in the reverse order than most of my male peers.

I’m a “wears his heart on his sleeve” kind of guy, so on some level that part came more naturally but as a guy I’ve found it can be a big turnoff romantically and socially.

Anyways, I’m known to pine. Don’t get me wrong— I’ve learned to “casually date”… but casual sex and one night stands never feel like “enough” to me.

But I’ve recently realized that the handful of women I’ve felt a strong emotional and sexual connection with in the last few years has been like a double dose of heroin (metaphorically speaking) which has made the withdrawal when things haven’t worked out (often because I’ve come off too strong after a few sexual encounters) that much harder to deal with.

I have plenty of abandonment and rejection issues, but I’ve been working on that in therapy for a while now— learning to break it all down to a biochemical level has been helping.

Even platonically, I tend to latch on quickly once I’ve felt a strong emotional of intellectual connection and have run new, fast friends off by being a little too intense sometimes.

Anywho, thanks for posting this. It was pretty validating just to write this anonymously on the internet.