By Chloe Halpin
I remember being told that if a boy was mean to me, it meant he liked me or when you made
someone laugh and they brushed your shoulder. The smallest gestures were enough to set
butterflies off in your tummy and send your head spinning at ninety miles an hour.
Growing up, I had my own crushes, made up scenarios in my head and read far too deeply into
the tiniest details. A look, a passing comment, the way someone said my name. Sometimes, the
smallest interaction could keep me occupied for days, building an entire story out of something
that might have meant absolutely nothing to the other person.
Recently, I’ve been wondering why we do this. Why does a compliment from one particular
person make you nervous, but the same compliment from someone else means very little? Why
can holding eye contact be nothing more than basic manners and respect, yet with someone else,
it feels as though the world belongs to just the two of you until someone blinks and looks away?
The gesture is the same. So what changes?
I don’t think there’s anything inherently romantic about a compliment, a lingering look or a hand
brushing against yours. I think we attach meaning to these things because of who they come
from. It’s the person that makes an ordinary moment feel extraordinary. Or perhaps it’s the
possibility of what that moment could mean, the stories we tell ourselves about it, the way we
become hyperaware of someone simply because they’re the person we’ve chosen to notice.
But then I think about the greatest loves of my life, and how many of them have been entirely
platonic.
My girlfriends. The ones who have shown up for me through everything. The ones that drove to
my doorstep to deliver flowers after a hard day at work. The ones that make me laugh so loudly
my belly hurts. The ones that make me feel so warm and cared for. The friendships that got me
out of bed and reminded me who I am.
So why do we reserve certain gestures for romance? Why does a bouquet of flowers feel like a
declaration of love when it comes from a partner, but somehow different when it comes from a
friend? Why are we so quick to look for romantic meaning in the smallest interactions when
some of the most profound love in our lives is already sitting right in front of us?
Perhaps it has never really been about the gesture. Perhaps it’s always been about the person.
The way they look at you. The way they speak to you. The way you feel a little more like
yourself around them, or a little less able to think straight. The way an otherwise ordinary
moment stays with you long after it’s passed.
Nothing has ever happened between you, and perhaps nothing ever will. But there’s something
about this person that makes you feel something you can’t quite explain. You know exactly what
it feels like to be around them, and, for whatever reason, you want to feel it again.
And maybe that’s the thing about love. It doesn’t always arrive in the form we expect it to.
Sometimes it’s a friendship that carries you through the worst parts of your life. Sometimes it’s a
person who makes you nervous just by looking at you. Sometimes it’s a feeling that has nowhere
to go and no particular name, yet still manages to mean something.
We spend so much time trying to distinguish between romantic love and platonic love, trying to
figure out what something means and what we should call it. Maybe we forget that the feeling
itself can be enough to sit with for a while. Love takes shape in so many different forms and
that’s okay, we don’t need to jump to conclusions or label it.
Maybe nothing is inherently romantic. Maybe nothing needs to be.
Maybe it’s simply that some people make us feel things that other people don’t. And whether
that feeling becomes a love story, a lifelong friendship, or a memory we carry quietly with us, it
was never the gesture that made it special.
It was the person.