I’ve never had a boyfriend and no, I do not want to be your girlfriend

I want to be my own person, do my own things and no, I definitely don’t want constant communication.

I want to live my own life and I want you to live yours. 

The modern world has made connection effortless. A call, a text, a FaceTime away. It’s supposed to feel easier. It’s supposed to feel freeing. Instead, it feels like a chokehold. Like everyone believes a relationship is proven by availability, not by depth. That if you don’t answer fast enough, it means you don’t care at all. The lines between love and surveillance are blurring.

Why has silence become something people feel entitled to fill?

When did loving someone mean keeping your phone in your hand at all times, refreshing conversations that should be able to breathe?

Why is autonomy mistaken for cruelty?

Why is stillness mistaken for absence?

I don't want to be someone's hobby. I don't want to be anyone’s background noise, the default notification they reach for when they're bored. I want to be my own person. I want to live my life with my hands full of things that are mine, dreams that have nothing to do with validation. I want you to live yours too.

I don't want constant communication. I want real connection. The kind that doesn’t collapse the second you don’t respond for a few hours. The kind that doesn’t punish you for being silent, for being busy, for being human.

Love should expand you.

It should breathe life into your lungs, not take the air from you.

But here, now, it feels like love is expected to consume you.

And if it doesn’t, if you still have pieces of yourself that aren’t immediately available, it’s treated like betrayal.

People confuse closeness with constant access. They think loving you means owning you. They think connection means surveillance.

They think the tighter they cling, the deeper the bond.

But love isn’t measured in panic texts and desperate check-ins.

Love is not a competition about who can cling the hardest.

I want someone to want me. I don't want someone to monitor me.

I want to exist as a whole person outside of love, and still be loved for it.

There is grief in realizing that most people don’t want partners. They want mirrors. They want codependence. They want you to make yourself small, fold yourself into their pockets, be something they can reach for whenever they feel lonely, then put back when they’re full.And if you want space? You’re cold. You’re selfish. You’re cruel.Not a soul stops to think maybe you’re just protecting yourself.Maybe autonomy isn’t rejection. Maybe it’s survival.

Being neurodivergent makes the world louder than it should be. My mind is full even when my hands are empty. I don't have the stamina to be constantly "on" for someone else.

I can love you and still need to be alone.

I can adore you and still need silence like oxygen.

But most people don't understand that.

They think silence means you’ve left.

They think stillness means you’ve stopped caring.

They think needing room to breathe means you don’t feel it enough.

And maybe that’s the tragedy of it.

That the world has taught people that the only real love is the loud kind.

The overwhelming kind. The cloying kind. The one that never lets you breathe without asking permission first.

But I don’t want that.

I want a relationship that doesn’t ask me to apologize for needing to be a person outside of it.

I want someone who doesn’t take my need for space as an indictment against them.

Someone who doesn’t need me folded into their phone, their minutes, their demands.

Someone who doesn’t confuse silence for absence.

I want to be able to say,

"I miss you,"

without it being a confession of guilt.

I want to say,

"I need time alone,"

without it being treated like a declaration of war.

I want to miss you without drowning.

I want to love you without shrinking.

And if that makes me too much?

If it makes me cold, or distant, or selfish?

Then I will gladly be all those things.

Because I will not apologize for needing space to exist.

Love should not require your extinction.Love should not demand your erasure.

If you need me to be constantly in your pocket to feel loved, you do not want me.

You want a version of love so small, so fragile, that it breaks the second it has to breathe on its own.

I deserve a love that feels like a hand resting lightly in mine, not shackles clamped to my wrists.

I deserve a love that waits for me to speak, not one that demands noise to prove its worth.

I deserve to be chosen, not chased down.

I deserve to love and still be free.

And so do you.