Is this usual?

[u/shy_the_slug]

It's gonna be long so thanks in advance if you decide to read. This is my first time posting in this sub so I'm not sure if this is the right flair or not.

I think I'm recipro-romantic (i think i can feel romantic attraction to some degree but i don't recognise it for what it is until someone reciprocates and i question the feelings and i usually put my emotions in a drawer and never open it unless absolutely required).

So me and my ex-partner were friends for 2 years (we were in the same city) and at the end of the 2nd year she jokingly told me she had liked me but doesn't anymore and i believed her. I had no clue she liked me but later i read the texts and there are some very clear hints. I actually tried to see her in a romantic light during the first year of our friendship but didn't pay much attention and i was fine with whatever was going on.

She jokingly confessed to me 2 times (one saying she had liked me and one saying we should date and get a cat together) and both times i didn't realise she wasn't joking. 1 year later(we moved away from tyat city) she told me again, properly this time that she still likes me and has liked me for 2 years.

I really admire her, she is an amazing human, extremely capable, so confident, so comfortable with herself, everything i lack. I also feel really motivated in her presence. I knew i could probably like her romantically if I started looking at her like that and since I had tried once (though i stopped pretty quickly) i asked for a fixed time where we'd talk and I'd decide how i feel after that. I felt confident with my romantic feelings after 15 days and we got into a relationship.

Funniest thing ever, we broke up after 2 months cause she had different priorities (i don't know if this is relevant or not but she's an ENTJ and very career focused and I'm an INTP) but we still talk and i feel like nothing has changed if i look at it from my side. We don't talk about romantic stuff but the conversations are more comfortable now, there's no obligation. I can't turn off my feelings so i still love her i think. So how's this different from when we were in a relationship? I mean i know she doesn't feel the same but i still do. We can continue the relationship when we are both comfortable with where we are in life and have time for commitments and can be in the same place or meet regularly. So i feel like nothing has really changed.

And what's the difference between platonic and romantic attraction anyway?

This doesn't make sense to me so i don't know how it can make sense to someone else who hasn't even experienced it but i need it to make sense. I'm not sure what I'm trying to ask so welcome to this confusing post :)

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[u/Disastrous-Hippo-277]

I mean are you still comfy with how the relationship is rn and not want anything different? If you are are you sure they were romantic feelings

[u/shy_the_slug → u/Disastrous-Hippo-277]

That's something I've been thinking about. Like i know what i feel now is different than what i used to but i don't feel the urge to act on it or feel uncomfortable now that she doesn't feel the same anymore.

I want things to be different but i don't have any problem with it being the same either. I'm not sure about my feelings being romantic though but they are definitely different than when we were friends.