For many reasons, I have not dated in a long, long time but when I used to and certain topics would come up in conversation, the other person would often be bewildered (or worse, horrified) that I felt waiting was important. So when I read this article, so, so much of it speaking to me, the relief was almost intensely overwhelming...and even though I no longer date nor plan to, I still feel this immense relief and less freakish and alone for having some of the views I have as a single and celibate lesbian:

 
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/gay-waiting-for-marriage/414984/


After I read this article I did some online searching and I discovered that there are more women than I thought that feel this way...and the advent and legalization of gay marriage in our country has made this even more apparent and an actual reality. There would have been a time (there was a time) when people (including other gay people) would have looked at someone sideways and with great skepticism over wanting to wait for marriage.

Articles like the one above and others I found are nice for me because they comfort me that I am not only the 'old-fashioned' lesbian out there, something a friend of mine once told me was an oxymoron. Because of certain circumstances in my life I have just always known that I would most likely end up single for all of my life.

Even so, just knowing that there are other people out there like me, people who value love above all other aspects of being gay or lesbian, well, that just makes me somehow feel a lot less alone...even if I really do never met the woman with whom I want to spend the rest of my life.

https://www.yahoo.com/health/some-gay-couples-putting-off-sex-until-after-205248087.html

I am not a big fan of Madonna herself, though I really like a lot of her music. I do think her quote below is so very true and something to hold on tightly when you are struggling.

When it comes to worrying someone has stopped liking you, there is insecurity and then there is instinct. Maybe your anxiety and worries are false and simply just feeding your concern that someone no longer wants to be in a friendship or maybe there are subtle but still very real signs that just about break your heart. I do not think even the most quiet shifts in tone and how someone once communicated with you and no longer quite does the same way are to be ignored. You hope so, so, so very much that you are wrong and yet you worry. A friendship that has come to mean so much to you is not something you want to lose nor that you want to even think about losing :(

I always, always silently tell myself that I will not get attached to someone and yet I do, anyway. I think The Wizard of Oz was so right when he told the Tin Man he did not know how lucky he was not to have a heart...

I was putting away books tonight and one dropped on the floor and when I picked it back up it was as if this one page, in particular, wanted to be "seen." And I ended up checking it out and taking it home from work with me and now I almost wish I had not. It is both compelling and unsettling and also (it seems) caught up in Gone Girl fever. I told myself I was going to read it because it might work as a possible book club selection for work, but really all it is doing is making me uncomfortable :(

I really think that all you can do when you have unreturned feelings for someone is accept that they are not going to ever be a part of your life, to take peace and happiness from knowing they make your world brighter and to just silently pray that they are okay.

Sometimes, I write quotes down from books that really really affect me and this is something I read that was powerful enough to help me on a very bad day:

“Don't be ashamed. Yes, this is not easy for you. Yes, it is unexpected. But I don't think any one of us should be ashamed of who we love…but even then, peel back the layers, disregard the circumstances, and love is love. Some of us just have the good fortune of finding it under less taxing circumstances.”

--The Look of Love, Sarah Jio

Also helping me (greatly) with this is the support I get from 
a very dear friend I can confide
in, even as I also worry that I am growing to care too much about her and how all confusing and weird and unnatural it seems to actually worry because you care about someone. In both my situations I have to wonder: what is so wrong, anyway, with deeply caring about someone? And which is it that hurts more: the thought of losing them or the thought of them finding out?

I wish I could be like Spock, but C.S. Lewis is right...

If only you could turn your feelings off like a water faucet...if only you turn love off like a water faucet. I have never known that to happen, though, no matter how much I have wanted it to be so.