things that make me insane :

-cas confessed making the dean & cas relationship automatically a textual romance
-dean the part of the equation that didnt get to reciprocate on screen didnt have another love interest
-spanish dub of dean saying "me too" is official & approved

-the fandom has been vocal about the dean and cas relationship for decades and they did not read the relationship as one sided pre confirmation of cas's side
-the focus of the dean and cas relationship in an emotional level more often than not fell on dean.

-the arcs that involved seperation of the two also more often than not, if not exclusively, focused on dean's reaction
-dean is heavily bi coded and he has shown "potential for love in all places" towards men who are not cas. he partically (for the sake of argument) is canon bi

meaning he is not unable to reciprocate because of sexuality
-dean canonically wanted to be the man cas believed he is and cas was "what dean needed the most" aka the person who could lift the anger he carried.
-destiel is not written as one sided from any perpective

the only time you can argue its written as one sided is when cas says "the one thing i want i cant have" but that is castiel's pov not dean's therefore is not a valid argument against dean's feeling
-bobby's suggestive eyebrow wiggle when mentioning cas to d (its bobby pov tho)

-dean's utter silence on how he feels being filled with the following : "i am sorry jack" lucifer : "let me in", "cas! you gotta bring him back", "yeah i think about them too but you know that pain is not gonna go away right (...)sacrifice is gonna be for nothing"

-dean and cas share the same attitude about eachother and cas is canonically in love with dean
-the show cancelled cas's no homo moments, the moment 15x18 aired so if cas's no homo moments !are! to be explained away so can dean's.

there is gap and the gap is dean's response, there is a gap and nothing suggests it should be filled with "dean doesnt feel the same", quite the opposite in fact. i made this thread to feel better about it, hope you will too.

(i'd like to add that dean calling cas a brother and making him flirt with women falls under the category of things that can be explained away and it doesnt reflect his attitude towards how he views cas because he thought cas was unattainble due to his nature)

(one could try to argue that this ^ automatically makes their story written as one sided romance however its easily disproved and outnumbered by the sheer amount of things that are not written as one sided)

(cas wanted to go to a date with nora, cas slept with april, cas bro talked to dean about april, cas seemed ok with deanlisa, cas flirted with meg, cas had orgies in the end, cas married a queen? no matter cas loves dean. dean does a seemingly one sided action last in s12)

(and the same episode castiel says "i love you...all of you" after that dean doesnt call cas a brother again...he gives him a mixtape..... and when cas dies in season 13 he grieves and never sleeps with a woman again. self explanatory)