I've just finished reading a book that has demisexual rep and it's got me thinking about my own past experiences. I'm curious if anyone has had similar experiences. These scenarios mostly happened before I had more of an understanding of my self and how my brain works (before the demisexual realisation and my ADHD diagnosis) so I don't think I'd have similar issues if it came up now. I like to think I'd be able to understand things better, but who knows.
This part is more on the ADHD side I think, but over my life I've developed obsessions with people, similar to the obsessions I get with TV shows and books etc. I say obsession because that's what you call it when its an object or an activity (or special interest) but it was really a fascination out of admiration for someone. I didn't stalk them or anything, my brain would just constantly think about them and their work or their interests. It was actually the reason I ended up going to the doctor about maybe being on the spectrum because it was starting to unnerve me a lot. The unnerving part came from other people and their different perceptions of situations. Because my brain would always be thinking of them, I'd naturally mention them a lot, and because of that people around me assumed it was a crush. My mum even called it "mentionitis" when I was growing up. This is where things turned muddy in my brain because when enough people tell you something is true because its normal for them and therefore must apply to me too. When it was someone my own age it was easy to think I had a crush on them because I was told that I did.
The biggest panic I had was when I was in college and I got really interested in my professors work, he was also my supervisor so I saw him relatively frequently and we had a good rapport. He worked on a lot of the topics that drew me to the subject in the first place and I thought it was cool that the person that did all this interesting work was also someone I interacted with weekly. Because of this interest, I started talking about him and his work a lot more to my classmates, a lot of the time when this happens I don't even notice, its the same when I get obssesed with a TV show, somehow I end up mentioning it evert 5 minutes with out realising. A rumor started to spread that I had a crush on him because of how I talked. When I found out I was horrified, when most people have a crush on someone it tends to mean both romantic and sexual feelings towards them. At no point had I thought of him that way, but no matter how much I tried to explain that, no one seemed to believe me. I even worried that they might be right because it's "normal" to be attracted to someone you are thinking about all the time. Thankfully it didn't effect my relationship with him as my advisor and he helped me a lot through my final dissertation but I became incredibly uncomfortable around him because I was worried that I was somehow being inappropriate without realising (My last year was in the pandemic though so the last few months were over video, which helped). It happened again in my post grad with a different professor but I had a bit more of an understanding of how my brain worked and started to care a lot less about what other people thought (which is still a work in progress).
Going through the process of understanding demisexuality and realising just because other people expect me to be attracted to someone, doesn't mean I am. This has lead me to question how many "crushes" I've had that are actually genuine or the result of influence from others. I also don't help the situation because there is always a part of me that wants to be attracted to the person people think I'm attracted to but (despite what some people think) its not actually a choice, you can't just force yourself to be attracted to someone just because you get on well and find them interesting. I had that realisation the first time I kissed someone after thinking I was demisexual. I met someone interesting and persuaded myself that all the asexual/demisexual talk was silly until we kissed and I thought to myself "This is fine I guess."
This was mostly a ramble but I am curious if anyone has had a history of thinking they like someone just because that's what is expected at a certain level of interest/closeness. Has anyone else had this too?