I spent most of last year orbiting a guy named Miles. Same friends, easy to talk to, the kind of person who makes you feel funnier than you actually are. Every time we hung out I'd come home buzzing. Every time his name lit up my phone I'd grin at it.
So I sat down and did a reading. The question was straightforward: should I tell him how I feel?
The reading came back and it didn't say yes or no. What it said — what really landed — was something I hadn't considered at all. It pointed out that the feeling I was calling "love" might actually be loneliness with a nice face on it. That I hadn't stopped to figure out whether I was drawn to him, or just drawn to the idea of not being alone anymore.
I'd been single for a while. The apps were a graveyard. And here was a real, warm person who looked at me like I mattered. Of course I thought I was into him. The reading asked me to sit with a different question first: if you took away the loneliness, what's actually between you two?
I sat with it. The answer was uncomfortable.
Miles was kind. He was present. I genuinely enjoyed his company. But I wasn't in love with him. I'd been conflating companionship with romance because that corner of my life felt empty and he happened to be the nearest person who filled the space.
I didn't tell him. I didn't ghost him either. I just stopped treating every interaction like it needed to become something. The friendship actually got better once I stopped loading it with expectations that had nothing to do with him.
A few months later I met someone I was genuinely into — not because I was desperate for a relationship, but because they were specifically interesting. That distinction matters more than I'd realized.
The reading didn't predict anything. It didn't tell me he wasn't "the one." It just pointed at a question I'd been dodging, and I'm glad something finally did.