Tag: aromantic

attraction confusion – when you compare yourself to allos

arospecinitiative:

so here’s the thing, as i understand it – most alloromantic and allosexual people have an easier time figuring out what they’re feeling for another person than aro and ace people, because the various attractions that can exist separately are usually all present and directed at one person at the same time. a standard allo person will say “i’m in love with them” and they’ll mean that they want to be in a romantic relationship (a sign of romantic attraction), kiss them and hold their hand (a sign of sensual attraction), be able to be emotionally intimate (a sign of emotional attraction), desire to have sex (usually a sign of sexual attraction) and that they find the looks of the person captivating (a sign of aesthetic attraction). and that usually comes as a full set!! which is fine, cool and absolutely no problem with that. it just can become confusing when it’s presented as Attraction that doesn’t consist of several different parts, but as a monolith. it’s clear that it does feel like one big thing and so it’s intuitively understandable for allos, but for a lot of a-spec people, those types of attractions don’t typically all appear together. and it’s the majority experience – the allo experience – that we’re comparing our experiences to. 

what does it translate to functionally?? this depends!! say you’re allo ace and experience romantic + emotional + sensual attraction to a person – you can form a romantic relationship that can mostly follow the allo relationship model, but maybe without sex. say you’re aroace and you experience sensual + emotional attraction and it may feel like “tfw you want to kiss but no romo. what do??”. what do indeed, when you’ve been hearing that usually wanting to kiss someone and be emotionally intimate with them means infatuation, but you don’t feel you want that romo. and the feelings may be very intense, you just can’t stop thinking about this person and you’d love to talk to them so much and then make out. and you may wonder what does it all mean, maybe you’re just afraid of commitment, because wanting to kiss someone sure is romantic, right?? 

as many people come to realize, no, a lot of actions considered romantic don’t have to have romantic intentions behind them, it’s just that for the majority they do and when that majority talks about their experiences, we assume that it’s universal and it’s not. the Attraction that is a monolith for them doesn’t have to be that way for us – we may feel a mix of different kinds of attraction towards different people. allo’s Attraction is perceived as a powerful force and our attractions can also be powerful, just different. it can also vary from one a-spec to another – we can personally have a certain mix that we usually feel towards friends, a certain mix that makes us want to ask another person to be our qpp and other a-specs may feel completely different mixes that are connected to friendships for them. 

what i want to emphasize at the end though is that – if you’re a-spec or questioning being a-spec, remember that you’re comparing yourself to the majority for who attraction can really work differently from yours and not only because you experience little to no sexual or romantic attraction and they do – it’s also that a lot of them can’t make distinctions between other kinds of attraction (hell, sometimes not even romantic and sexual attraction) and the guidelines they lay out (for example: “if you want to kiss, that’s a crush”) may just not fit your experiences. they also may describe their Attraction as the most intense feeling, but that doesn’t mean that all intense attractions are romantic and/or sexual. so question what the attraction actually means for you, don’t worry about the implications intensity has, and hopefully understand yourself a bit better 

actuallyaro:

Aromanticism is often more difficult for me to discuss because it is less tangible for me than my asexuality, and yet more emotionally intense than any other part of my identity. Romance is a very abstract concept, but in order to justify myself as aromantic I am often asked to examine what romance is or isn’t.

Romance is so much an accepted part of every day life for a large number of people, that they probably don’t spend hours of their day trying to quantify it or qualify it. It is already done for them by our romance obsessed culture. When this is challenged by aromantic people, we’re asked to defend ourselves.

Romance is something that I’m equally hyper-aware of and emotionally distant from. I am both extremely familiar with the culture of romance and extremely unfamiliar with romantic feelings. I know romance without knowing romance, because I’m often required to just to exist.

The great irony is that while I am often asked to quantify and qualify romance in order to prove that I am aromantic, my familiarity with it as a concept can call into question the validity of my aromanticism to those adamant about disproving it. This can certainly be frustrating.

However, what people who are not aromantic don’t seem to realize is that being aromantic in a largely romantic culture can be very challenging mentally and emotionally outside of these identity debates. My aromanticism comes with a lot of paranoia and a preoccupation with analyzing my social interactions.

My inability to understand and feel romantic feelings firsthand not only leads to awkward uncomfortable interactions with peers, but it can also cause a strain in my working relationships and it can actually impede my ability to succeed in a work environment. 

For me, a paranoia over how my own feelings and behavior will be read by my peers has led to an identifiable strain or distance between myself and my peers. I am emotionally distant from many people, and it is very difficult for people to truly know and understand me without knowing my aromanticism.

My peers often don’t know about my aromanticism, because 1) we live in a culture where aromanticism “shouldn’t” exist, 2) I spent the majority of my child and teenage years fighting against my peers forcibly misinterpreting my feelings, and 3) my lack of romantic feelings has been treated as a threat.

I have been set up and pushed into relationships that I did not want and/or that I refused, with resentment and blame shifted onto me because of an inability on my part to return romantic feelings. My awkwardness re: romance can be misinterpreted as attraction or jealousy, straining professional relationships.

This isn’t the way with all aromantic people, but my feelings towards romance as directed at me is literally met with a panicked stress response in which my social interactions will play on loop in my head and every word and every action I make will be analyzed to ensure that I am safe.

I have been put into romantic situations where I do not feel safe, because they have involved me feeling as if I need to change who I am for the happiness of other people or else receive negative consequences in the way of abandonment, isolation, humiliation, guilt-tripping, and even physical violence.

This is what it means to be aromantic, for me, in a romantic culture. It means stress, obsession, paranoia, panic, frustration, anger, and an incredible amount of sadness that I cannot be who I am and be accepted for who I am without others insisting they have control of me emotionally or physically.

growinguparo:

i just found a text file from early 2016, the same day i created this blog, called “growing up aro.txt” that had some of my early ideas for posts here. here’s what was in it! 

(with some commentary in italics cuz these were just my own notes and some of it makes no sense. also a self-reflection at the bottom that ended up way longer than i intended ahh sorry)

Keep reading

forkless-a-spec-wonder:

hey, by the way, being proud that you’re aro isn’t the same as saying no one else should ever be in love and people who get defensive over it when you say you’re proud to be aro are not your problem

same goes for people proud of their asexuality as well. being proud of who you are, isn’t saying nobody should ever be sexually attracted to other people.

beranyth:

there is something so insidious and disgusting about the fact that aromantic people have to trot out some One True Friendship to impress allos with when they start questioning our worth

when society teaches people to replace us the moment they even get near a romantic relationship 

not to mention how hard it can be to get close to people once that’s happened to you enough times

but nope, gotta have that perfect profound friendship that resembles a romantic relationship as closely as possible to show off whenever people start doubting you to get your Human Points back

aroacelibrary:

The attraction ‘off switch’

I think I’ve talked about this here before but, let me tell you, it took me a really long time to realize that other people couldn’t just ‘turn off’ their attraction for someone else.

For me it was as easy as going ‘ya I don’t want to have a crush/like this person any more’ and poof! There went all my feeling towards them.

It was because of this that I never really understood why it was so hard for people I knew to just break up with someone or WHY they would keep going back to someone again and again.

Because for me there was an ‘off switch’ for my attraction to someone, because that attraction had never existed in the first place and I was just fooling myself into believing it was, while for others the attraction was a real, tangible thing that they couldn’t just turn off like it never existed.

thewanderingace:

Asexual Charlie Weasley

  • Charlie wondering why everyone is so focused on who’s dating who
  • Charlie shyly turning down all the girls that ask him out
  • Girls getting mad at him and guys asking him what the fuck is wrong with you! After he turns down hot girl after hot girl.
  • Bill being super protective over Charlie and beating up on anyone who makes fun of him
  • Bill asking Charlie if he’s into guys and Charlie telling him no he’s not into guys or girls. He’d rather focus on his studies
  • Charlie coming across asexuality and realizing that it describes him perfectly.
  • Asexual Charlie coming out to Bill who smiles and says “I knew it”
  • Mrs. Weasley constantly asking him when he’s going to bring home a nice girl and when he tells her never she moves on to how about a nice guy?
  • Asexual Charlie having enough of it and deciding to come out to the rest of his family. They are confused and have questions but mostly accept him (helps that Bill just came out as bi not too long ago)
  • Mrs. Weasley agonizing over not having grandchildren and how unhappy Charlie will be all alone
  • Asexual Charlie going off on his mom telling her that he doesn’t want kids and he is quite happy studying dragons thank you very much. You have plenty of other kids who will give you grandchildren.
  • Asexual Charlie going back to Romania and getting a package from his mum containing a sweater in ace flag colors with a C on it.
  • Whenever anyone questions him about dating he just smiles and says he’s “more interested in dragons that he is about girls”
  • Asexual Charlie treating his dragons like his children and reporting their growth and adventures to his family back home
  • Molly sending ace colored items and things for her new “grandchildren” to either play with or wear.
  • Everything in this post especially the last one

sarahhascooties:

I think a pretty good way to figure out where you are on the ace/aro spectrum is to, if you find yourself attracted to someone, think about how you’d like to spend your time with them:

Do want to hold their hand? Have sex with them? Kiss them? Talk with them? Play video games? Watch a movie? Cuddle on the couch? Spoon with them?

And additionally, when you’re in a relationship:

What do you do together? What do you want to do together? Do you feel differently about what you’d like to do with them than when you started?

Based on your thoughts and feelings, find the label that works best for you!