the stereotype that asexual people are childlike because we dont feel sexual attraction is pretty damaging because it is once again insinuating that in order to be a fully functioning adult you have to feel sexual attraction and if you dont youre obviously immature and lesser as a person
there are two aro feels: when you think people are just exaggerating their attraction and crushes because they like being Dramatic or when you think there’s something wrong with you for not experiencing attraction like that and you fake crushes
Then there’s confusing platonic/aesthetic/sexual attraction for romantic attraction.
i spent so much time being told that i “wasn’t ready for relationships” and that i was “too nervous” or “not mature enough” to handle them that i began to believe it. i tried so hard to better myself and do self-reflection and work at understanding why i had such a problem with being in relationships with others that i never considered the possibility of being aro-spec. moral of the story: please don’t let others tell you why you feel the way you do!! explore! research! find what’s right for you, because you are so valid and deserve to be happy!
Controversial opinion maybe, but I feel like people should really let up on pretending that “romantic attraction” is something that’s ever going to have a one-side-fits-all definition.
There’s absolutely a distinction between romantic and platonic relationships, but I think saying that the line exists, and that it exists in the exact same place for everyone, is really different – and the source of a lot of pain and confusion for people who are trying to figure out their identities, or even just understand other people’s. It’s why the distinctions between close friendship/queerplatonic relationship/romantic relationship are very blurry and often sound the same, and why people tell each other that someone else’s name for what they have or want is wrong, because it looks like the other kind of relationship that they have or want – because one of those things can look a lot like another, depending on the participants. And it’s also why there are people who say they can’t figure out what their orientation is due to people keep giving them different or contradicting definitions – because unlike, say, sorting out which gender(s) you’re attracted to (which is still complex, but more empirical), figuring out the category or strength of attraction is a lot less objective and a lot more personal.
I have read a lot of definitions of romantic attraction that made me feel very broken, because to me they defined what I want out of platonic relationships. But since I’m very romance-repulsed, and I was being told that was romance, it made me wonder if the relationships I wanted were something I’d ever actually get to have and still be comfortable with. It took me years to break things down enough to acknowledge that those things could exist in platonic relationships too, because I’d spent a long time seeing some them get called romantic. However, I am obviously in no place to tell the (allo) people who wrote those definitions that their idea of romance is wrong – to them, those things do characterize their romantic relationships, and likely are a way they distinguish them from their platonic ones, and it’s okay for them to say so! Our lines just fall in different places. The thing that is less okay is to make blanket statements about what is and isn’t romantic or platonic, because there are pretty much always going to be people that feel differently.
Being a very affectionate person who craves (and I’d like to think reciprocates) a decent amount of intimacy, I know that I have important relationships that some allo people would say have things in common with their romantic ones, even though I never want to have a romantic partnership in my life. Being those things and aromantic, I know that there are probably other aros out there who look at what I want and have and would personally be uncomfortable being in those kinds of relationships, even though I categorize them as platonic. None of us – not me, not the allo people, and not the other aromantics – are wrong. But pretending that a romantic relationship is something that has a solid definition would dictate that somebody has to be, if we’re all looking at the same level of intimacy and seeing different things. And someone’s going to come out of that feeling broken, because they don’t fit into a box that actually varies wildly in size depending on the person. Which is why I think it would be for the best if people started acknowledging that these lines vary for different people.
any other aroaces have a Weird relationship w gender, esp womanhood?
like ik mine’s already extra complicated bc im nonbinary (like idk im simultaneously part woman and absolutely not a woman at all. and also ive had years of thinking i was a woman and still get called one?).
but even (at least i think) unrelated to that, i’ve always felt weird about looking “girly” because i didn’t want men to look at me as romantically/sexually. so i’d dress masc to try and make me not seem available to them (and also to fit my gender identity- two birds one stone). or i’d go a brand of cutesy but very non-conventionally-attractive girly when i was too nervous to dress masc
like kinda vaguely related to how i’ve heard some butches describe their relationship to womanhood (but not exactly!!! bc theirs involves not only not being interested in men but ALSO being interested in women instead. and that second part adds a whole new note to their experience which i dont experience personally and will not claim to). bc of how much womanhood is related to being available to men (and also being unavailable to women. but, yknow, that part doesn’t quite apply to me)
If you don’t think having aromantic representation is important, I just walked past a girl who was worried that she never could get feelings for anyone, and she friends comforting her saying “don’t worry, you’ll find someone.” Instead of “You don’t need to have feelings for someone else to be happy.”
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