@indi And to bring @literorrery back into this discussion (in part to help save my hands from the typing, if you'll forgive me ^^;), that is where I feel this script helps to illustrate a problem.

Steps 1-3 are common knowledge, but asexuals and those not interested in sex have no place in this 3 step program to deepening relationships. Without a well established Step 4b to fall back on, non-sexual relationships fall into limbo.

@literorrery @indi
"But communication solves that problem!"

Yes, but this is a situation in which the person you spent time with was one of many you met and spoke to; you might not have their contact info, and your last interaction with them was rejecting their advances. That sounds like a lot of emotional labor with a low chance of anything positive resulting from it.

So that conversation doesn't happen.

@indi @literorrery

The next time you see that person is in a community space. You're still fond of them, but they're getting close with other people and you don't want to disturb them.

After this has happened to you a couple of times (or variants of it in which step 2 is avoided because step 3 isn't on the table), getting close and cuddly with folks starts to feel like something that sexual folks do.

Feeling othered from community events isn't a far cry from here.

@mawr @literorrery As you describe more of this, it's sounding more and more like something I can sort of relate to and have even somewhat dealt with myself by keeping myself busy at parties rather than indulging in cuddling. Which makes me think about this in a whole different way.

And it also relates to some of the othering I do feel in this community (and have been thinking about a lot lately) regarding gender presentation/preferences. Hmm.

@indi @mawr This is an interesting framing, because I don't tend to be physically intimate with people until I'm already emotionally intimate with them, so I don't think of it as "indulging" in cuddling at all! Cuddling, to me, is merely one of many ways in which people who're already "intimate" express that intimacy, but that intimacy is built through intellectual and social and spiritual connections first.

@literorrery I'd ask you to not read too deeply into that word choice, as it was not deeply considered.:) I feel the same way about cuddling and other forms of intimacy but at the same time I don't feel up for all the same forms of intimacy with everyone. I agree that communication and connections are important and it sounds like one good avenue here is to consider how to facilitate those more easily.