Are MAPs typically sensitive/romantic people?

[Hopeful]

This is something I've wondered about for a while. I've always seen myself as a sensitive person, a dreamer, or the "hopeless romantic" type, and I'm curious if that's common to other MAPs. I've only known one other MAP in real life, and that was only after he was caught (and I still fell the suffering he went through/is going through). He always seemed much the same as me. Of course a sample of two isn't much...

So, I'm curious how other MAPs see themselves, personality-wise.

[FairBlueLove]

Now you have a sample of three.

Maybe you can setup a poll.

[Fragment]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39118553/

I read through this paper the other day. It goes through some qualitative data regarding MAPs' romantic experiences and categorizes the kinds of statements.

One part that particularly stood out was:

Furthermore, an existing popular conceptualization of romantic love, Sternberg’s (1986) “triangular theory of love,” likewise characterizes MAPs’ descriptions of falling in love in this study. The data fit Sternberg’s model so well that, despite our inductive approach, two analysts independently recognized and documented links to this model while coding and generating candidate themes, and our final organization of participants’ falling in love experiences was inspired by the theory. Sternberg proposed that one’s experience of romantic love involves any single or combination of three components: passion (i.e., infatuation, idealization, thought preoccupation, psychophysiological general and sexual response); intimacy (i.e., closeness, connectedness, bondedness, as well as care for the loved other’s wellbeing); and commitment (i.e., the decision to love the other, and a desire or decision to maintain love/a bond with them long-term).

I actually almost cried when I read it. Our love is so normal and typical that it fits Sternberg's theory perfectly. Each MAP, in each different relationship will have a different balance of passion, intimacy and commitment. Just like adult-attracted people.

I think it's easier for us to become "hopeless romantics" because we are stuck in a world of fantasy. Our imagined relationships become more idealized than what normies experience. But our feelings are fundamentally normal. Our romantic experiences exist, basically, on the same spectrum as adult-attracted people.

[gedjarvis]

I'm not in the slightest bit a romantic or even caring

[NotTrueToMyself]

I am a hopeless romantic. I always have been. I even wrote poetry in high school.

That’s part of my struggle is because with each year that passes, the chances of me finding a YF get smaller and smaller.