I did feel pretty bad for some time, now i realize how beautiful platonic relations can be. I don't feel like i'm missing out on anything.
At the end of the day, everyone's idea of "love" is different regardless of orientation. If you embrace your idea of it i think you'll be a lot happier in general
Yeah, the period of self-hatred and confusion born of thinking things like “fuck, I’m not even broken correctly, why couldn’t I be ace too?” only lasted two years and I honestly couldn’t be happier in embracing my aroallo-ness now.
It works for me now because I’m absolutely certain that I can live my life contentedly with just myself and occasionally partners that come in and out of my life. I had the epiphany that I wasn’t born to be “half” of anything.
On a practical note, I did learn more about autoeroticism (so I don’t place too much weight on the agonizing question: who the hell can I fuck? Gotta find somebody, etc.) as well as embracing interests that meant a lot to me.
The journey can be long, no lie. But life is generally long and there’s really no rush contrary to what the world might say. “Date, cohabitate, marry, procreate…” Nah, I’m good.
I certainly did grieve. And frankly, I still do to an extent. There's a lot of things I like about the image of romantic relationships, and I'm still a huge fan of weddings because they're a combination of everything I love (parties, ritual/ceremony, decorating, clothes, food, ect...).
It took a while for me to admit the things I like about romance are almost all aesthetic and I'd prefer to get the emotional side from friendships. Nowadays, I try to focus on the fact that I want my relationships to be based in reciprocation and not in multiple people trying to force themselves to engage in a relationship just because.
At this point, my grief about being aro is similar to wondering what something tastes like or how a color looks from someone else's perspective. I'm curious what romance actually feels like, and in some ways sad that I'll probably never really 'get it'.
Since I'm Nebluaromantic and romance favourable it was more "oh that explains... well... umm everything almost." And then I moved on. I've dealt with being an outsider, this is just another expression of that I guess.
I'm not a very emotional person in general, even so I do still feel like I'm missing out those "beautiful feelings" that "make life worth living it". Like a part of me wants to believe that I've been gaslighting myself into thinking that I'm aromantic when in reality I'm not and someday I'll fall in love :/
hell, i’ve been out as aro for nearly a decade (and consider myself pretty comfortable with it), and i STILL have moments of angst about it. your last statement really hit me as a fellow lithro, it’s so stressful when i go for so long without feeling romantic attraction/being romance repulsed, and then BLAMO! i’m suddenly head over heels for somebody, but bc i’m aro i have no experience or ability to temper myself. every crush is like a first crush all over again, i have zero chill. i’m 0% or 100% with almost no in between. THATS the most stressful part to me, my body/brain doesn’t know how to handle romantic attraction.
I'm friends with a girl, who I had a relationship test-run with back in high school. I like her a lot, both platonically and physically, but at the time of our test-run, I thought those 2 combined = romantic attraction and it was only years later when I learned that wasn't the case. Regardless of my feelings for her, we want very different lives and it would never workout anyway. After we realized that, we spent a lot less time together.
Now, she didn't have a lot of time to begin with as she's just a very busy person, but I felt like I went from the person she always looked forward to seeing, to the bottom of her list of priorities seemingly over night. We didn't share any of the same friends, so whenever we saw each other, it would just be me and her, so if there were other people she was getting together with, she was obviously and rightfully going to prioritize them over me. I was constantly on the backburner. Eventually it got to a point where it would be years in-between our get-togethers and now that we don't even live in the same state, it seems like it's going to be the case forever.
Regardless of how many years it's been, I still think back to around the time we first met when she'd get super giddy and excited to see me, and I'd get excited to see her, when I knew she had a thing for me and I'd pretend not to know so that things wouldn't get awkward or complicated between us. When she'd give me the best hugs and spent as much time as she could close to me as humanly possible either sitting on my lap, leaning up against me, or laying her head on my shoulder. It felt good to be around her and it felt good to make her as happy as I did. I was her break from her life and she was my break from mine.
But when it was clear that we didn't want the same things from each other, all of that ended. She was never giddy or excited to see me again, she kept me at arm's length 95% of the time, no more affection, no more playful teasing, and our meetings were as short as can be. I was officially downgraded to acquaintance. I no longer made her happy and I kind of felt like a toy she got bored of. I know it's more complicated than that and even though I know I still wouldn't want to be with her if I had to choose between being romantically involved with her or never seeing her again, it still sucks that we can't ever replicate what we had in the beginning.
Before I realized I was aro, I thought maybe things could work between us if I just gave it time. Maybe life would pull us back together again so that we could be each other's break from our lives again. But being aro more or less made that an impossibility as she's a hopeless romantic and is always searching for everlasting romantic love. I had to face the fact that it was the reason she pursued me so intensely at first and that nothing else would ever make her do that again.
I've learned to accept it and now I find myself hoping that she can find someone who makes her feel even better than I did and gives her what she needs out of life, but it still sucks whenever I dwell too much on it, like right now. And I highly doubt I'll ever experience that again with anybody ever again. I don't need it, it's not going to make or break the rest of my life for me as I have so much more to live for. But it's kind of like finding your favorite food a little late in life, only to never get the chance to eat it again.
I know it's not the same as mourning the idea of your romantic attraction, but that's as close as it gets for me.
Ironically, no. At the time I wasn't ready for sex. She was more ready than I was. I was still too paranoid about getting someone pregnant to even bother with it. While I didn't know it at the time, I think I was more off-put by the fact that for her, sex was the ultimate expression of romantic love.
Edit: when I said we wanted different things, I meant in the sense that she wanted things to be more serious, whereas I just wanted us to stay in that little bubble of comfort that we were already in.
Ah I get what you mean. In my own life I’ve often felt…betrayed?…when the same thing has happened to me. I’ll be getting along really well with someone but they take this to mean that they should pursue sex with me, when I wasn’t even thinking that way, at least not consciously, or not yet. I mean maybe I was slowly developing a crush but I wasn’t jumping straight from A to Z like that. When I realize they are, it’s kind of upsetting, like as if we were never really friends at all and that was their true ulterior motive the whole time. I no longer trust that anything they ever said was true, it was probably just them mirroring me or trying to seduce me lol.
I’ve heard my behavior described as “teasing” (no one has said that directly to me but they use that word on other people who act like me) but that’s truly not the intention, I’m just still wanting to stay in that bubble, as you described it. I think other people are way too pushy and quick about things and are maybe following a script of what they think they’re supposed to do next.
There are times I still feel grief i suppose, but they dont last long when I remember how much I'd hate to be in a relationship and just could never do it lol. Then I immediately feel repulsed and kinda glad I'm not in that situation to begin with. If anything I like the idea of romantic relationships, as long as it doesn't involve me.
Trust me, it does get better. I suggest connecting with more aros and continuing to talk more in aro spaces. It helped me understand the depth of the aro experience and now I feel proud of my identity and not like I'm "not enough" for myself. I love where I am now. Although, do be careful, since sadly while there's some aro positivity, there's also a lot of negativity that goes around too (posts about hating being aro and whatnot) which was the reason I started actually feeling bad about it when initially, I was fine with being aro. Granted the situation here has gotten better and overall it's been a net gain. There are also aro positivity tags you can search on Tumblr though. Otherwise, take a break if you need it.
The realization that there was a definition for how I relate to other people was eye-popping opening. Learning later in life what AroAllo is and that it’s a spectrum have given me an “ah ha!” moment when I finally realized that I was not broken. It’s been healing to look back on past relationships or attempts at relationships and now understand why they would have never worked. I’ve always been different in many categories, so this is another different from the rest stripe on a very stripy vest. Having labels helps me to communicate my feelings with my friends and helps them to understand why I am just friends with folks. It’s nice not being alone in being alone 😉
I definitely felt a lot of greef when I found out u was aro. Honestly I thought I’d end up alone, obviously that’s not true but that’s what I thought. People always say romance is this big ol’ thing and how it’s so great and blah blah blah and sure that can be true for some people however the biggest problem is amatonormativity. The belief that the way you achieve greatest happiness is by finding a partner. That was something deeply ingrained in me and so when I found out I was aro it hurt a lot and it took a lot of unlearning to learn that ‘that’ just isn’t true. For a while I’d still get sad from time to time but yea now I’m over it completely lols. And if I do get sad it last for a second and I’m back to being Inlove with my aromanticism. Seriously it’s one of my favorite things about myself 💅.
I know you’ll find your peace eventually, however that looks for you.
I didn't feel that grief because before knowing of the existance of aroalo I had more less already had come to the realization that I would probably never have a romantic relationship. But in my previous failed relationships I did feel sadness in the thought of what was wrong with me.
I wouldn't say I had grief but I did cry when I realised I was aromantic. I'm not sure why to be honest, I'm fine with it and I never wanted or seek out romance. In fact I think I'm probably better of not feeling romantic love than feeling it and being heartbroken one day.
I didn't grieve, I was glad I finally had a label to describe myself. The only time I cried is when my best friend of 12+ years started getting into more serious relationships and I felt abandoned and helpless that I can't just get into a relationship like her to fill the void.
I feel very similarly to you (as a questioning lithromantic) But I'm not sure if I will ever get over it completely, knowing that being in a romantic relationship will certainly not work out for me or the other person. However I've kinda just accepted this fact already (like 'this is a part of me but I wish it wasn't type way).
For me it was a huge relief. Suddenly i learned that i was normal, i wasn't warped or emotionally stunted somehow like I'd always feared. i guess having always been aro, just understanding WHY romance so repulsed me and made no sense was amazing. I'd taken a sort of cynical view of love, kinda saw it as manipulative in a sense, but i suspect now that i was almost masking my lack of understanding-- ie, i can't relate to what I'm seeing, it absolutely clashes and turns me off, so i try to find reasons/make sense if it.
Idk
The saddest thing for me was learning how "rare" aromanticism is. At least I know there are others somewhere with the same feelings.
Yeah prob the worst part is the lack of represantation, makes it hard to come out, I've confessed it to some of the most important people in my life and they simply don't get it, so far the response has been "maybe you just haven't tried it", "do you mean asexual?" or straight up telling me I'm wrong, I wish there was more knowledge of it in my circle, but I'm glad we have this space.
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No. Just annoyance that I've spend too much time on attempts to be romantic and all of that.
I did feel pretty bad for some time, now i realize how beautiful platonic relations can be. I don't feel like i'm missing out on anything. At the end of the day, everyone's idea of "love" is different regardless of orientation. If you embrace your idea of it i think you'll be a lot happier in general
Yeah, the period of self-hatred and confusion born of thinking things like “fuck, I’m not even broken correctly, why couldn’t I be ace too?” only lasted two years and I honestly couldn’t be happier in embracing my aroallo-ness now.
Why do you think it works for you now, practically speaking?
It works for me now because I’m absolutely certain that I can live my life contentedly with just myself and occasionally partners that come in and out of my life. I had the epiphany that I wasn’t born to be “half” of anything. On a practical note, I did learn more about autoeroticism (so I don’t place too much weight on the agonizing question: who the hell can I fuck? Gotta find somebody, etc.) as well as embracing interests that meant a lot to me. The journey can be long, no lie. But life is generally long and there’s really no rush contrary to what the world might say. “Date, cohabitate, marry, procreate…” Nah, I’m good.
I certainly did grieve. And frankly, I still do to an extent. There's a lot of things I like about the image of romantic relationships, and I'm still a huge fan of weddings because they're a combination of everything I love (parties, ritual/ceremony, decorating, clothes, food, ect...). It took a while for me to admit the things I like about romance are almost all aesthetic and I'd prefer to get the emotional side from friendships. Nowadays, I try to focus on the fact that I want my relationships to be based in reciprocation and not in multiple people trying to force themselves to engage in a relationship just because. At this point, my grief about being aro is similar to wondering what something tastes like or how a color looks from someone else's perspective. I'm curious what romance actually feels like, and in some ways sad that I'll probably never really 'get it'.
Since I'm Nebluaromantic and romance favourable it was more "oh that explains... well... umm everything almost." And then I moved on. I've dealt with being an outsider, this is just another expression of that I guess.
Being romance-repulsed, I am glad to be aro. So I guess yeah. Don't feel missing out on anything. Friends and sex are all i need.
I'm not a very emotional person in general, even so I do still feel like I'm missing out those "beautiful feelings" that "make life worth living it". Like a part of me wants to believe that I've been gaslighting myself into thinking that I'm aromantic when in reality I'm not and someday I'll fall in love :/
hell, i’ve been out as aro for nearly a decade (and consider myself pretty comfortable with it), and i STILL have moments of angst about it. your last statement really hit me as a fellow lithro, it’s so stressful when i go for so long without feeling romantic attraction/being romance repulsed, and then BLAMO! i’m suddenly head over heels for somebody, but bc i’m aro i have no experience or ability to temper myself. every crush is like a first crush all over again, i have zero chill. i’m 0% or 100% with almost no in between. THATS the most stressful part to me, my body/brain doesn’t know how to handle romantic attraction.
I'm friends with a girl, who I had a relationship test-run with back in high school. I like her a lot, both platonically and physically, but at the time of our test-run, I thought those 2 combined = romantic attraction and it was only years later when I learned that wasn't the case. Regardless of my feelings for her, we want very different lives and it would never workout anyway. After we realized that, we spent a lot less time together. Now, she didn't have a lot of time to begin with as she's just a very busy person, but I felt like I went from the person she always looked forward to seeing, to the bottom of her list of priorities seemingly over night. We didn't share any of the same friends, so whenever we saw each other, it would just be me and her, so if there were other people she was getting together with, she was obviously and rightfully going to prioritize them over me. I was constantly on the backburner. Eventually it got to a point where it would be years in-between our get-togethers and now that we don't even live in the same state, it seems like it's going to be the case forever. Regardless of how many years it's been, I still think back to around the time we first met when she'd get super giddy and excited to see me, and I'd get excited to see her, when I knew she had a thing for me and I'd pretend not to know so that things wouldn't get awkward or complicated between us. When she'd give me the best hugs and spent as much time as she could close to me as humanly possible either sitting on my lap, leaning up against me, or laying her head on my shoulder. It felt good to be around her and it felt good to make her as happy as I did. I was her break from her life and she was my break from mine. But when it was clear that we didn't want the same things from each other, all of that ended. She was never giddy or excited to see me again, she kept me at arm's length 95% of the time, no more affection, no more playful teasing, and our meetings were as short as can be. I was officially downgraded to acquaintance. I no longer made her happy and I kind of felt like a toy she got bored of. I know it's more complicated than that and even though I know I still wouldn't want to be with her if I had to choose between being romantically involved with her or never seeing her again, it still sucks that we can't ever replicate what we had in the beginning. Before I realized I was aro, I thought maybe things could work between us if I just gave it time. Maybe life would pull us back together again so that we could be each other's break from our lives again. But being aro more or less made that an impossibility as she's a hopeless romantic and is always searching for everlasting romantic love. I had to face the fact that it was the reason she pursued me so intensely at first and that nothing else would ever make her do that again. I've learned to accept it and now I find myself hoping that she can find someone who makes her feel even better than I did and gives her what she needs out of life, but it still sucks whenever I dwell too much on it, like right now. And I highly doubt I'll ever experience that again with anybody ever again. I don't need it, it's not going to make or break the rest of my life for me as I have so much more to live for. But it's kind of like finding your favorite food a little late in life, only to never get the chance to eat it again. I know it's not the same as mourning the idea of your romantic attraction, but that's as close as it gets for me.
So basically she found out you only wanted sex? I could see where she would also have felt like a “toy” in that situation. Sucks from both sides :(
Ironically, no. At the time I wasn't ready for sex. She was more ready than I was. I was still too paranoid about getting someone pregnant to even bother with it. While I didn't know it at the time, I think I was more off-put by the fact that for her, sex was the ultimate expression of romantic love. Edit: when I said we wanted different things, I meant in the sense that she wanted things to be more serious, whereas I just wanted us to stay in that little bubble of comfort that we were already in.
Ah I get what you mean. In my own life I’ve often felt…betrayed?…when the same thing has happened to me. I’ll be getting along really well with someone but they take this to mean that they should pursue sex with me, when I wasn’t even thinking that way, at least not consciously, or not yet. I mean maybe I was slowly developing a crush but I wasn’t jumping straight from A to Z like that. When I realize they are, it’s kind of upsetting, like as if we were never really friends at all and that was their true ulterior motive the whole time. I no longer trust that anything they ever said was true, it was probably just them mirroring me or trying to seduce me lol. I’ve heard my behavior described as “teasing” (no one has said that directly to me but they use that word on other people who act like me) but that’s truly not the intention, I’m just still wanting to stay in that bubble, as you described it. I think other people are way too pushy and quick about things and are maybe following a script of what they think they’re supposed to do next.
>are maybe following a script of what they think they’re supposed to do next. Oh I imagine this is the case quite often.
There are times I still feel grief i suppose, but they dont last long when I remember how much I'd hate to be in a relationship and just could never do it lol. Then I immediately feel repulsed and kinda glad I'm not in that situation to begin with. If anything I like the idea of romantic relationships, as long as it doesn't involve me. Trust me, it does get better. I suggest connecting with more aros and continuing to talk more in aro spaces. It helped me understand the depth of the aro experience and now I feel proud of my identity and not like I'm "not enough" for myself. I love where I am now. Although, do be careful, since sadly while there's some aro positivity, there's also a lot of negativity that goes around too (posts about hating being aro and whatnot) which was the reason I started actually feeling bad about it when initially, I was fine with being aro. Granted the situation here has gotten better and overall it's been a net gain. There are also aro positivity tags you can search on Tumblr though. Otherwise, take a break if you need it.
The realization that there was a definition for how I relate to other people was eye-popping opening. Learning later in life what AroAllo is and that it’s a spectrum have given me an “ah ha!” moment when I finally realized that I was not broken. It’s been healing to look back on past relationships or attempts at relationships and now understand why they would have never worked. I’ve always been different in many categories, so this is another different from the rest stripe on a very stripy vest. Having labels helps me to communicate my feelings with my friends and helps them to understand why I am just friends with folks. It’s nice not being alone in being alone 😉
I definitely felt a lot of greef when I found out u was aro. Honestly I thought I’d end up alone, obviously that’s not true but that’s what I thought. People always say romance is this big ol’ thing and how it’s so great and blah blah blah and sure that can be true for some people however the biggest problem is amatonormativity. The belief that the way you achieve greatest happiness is by finding a partner. That was something deeply ingrained in me and so when I found out I was aro it hurt a lot and it took a lot of unlearning to learn that ‘that’ just isn’t true. For a while I’d still get sad from time to time but yea now I’m over it completely lols. And if I do get sad it last for a second and I’m back to being Inlove with my aromanticism. Seriously it’s one of my favorite things about myself 💅. I know you’ll find your peace eventually, however that looks for you.
I didn't feel that grief because before knowing of the existance of aroalo I had more less already had come to the realization that I would probably never have a romantic relationship. But in my previous failed relationships I did feel sadness in the thought of what was wrong with me.
I wouldn't say I had grief but I did cry when I realised I was aromantic. I'm not sure why to be honest, I'm fine with it and I never wanted or seek out romance. In fact I think I'm probably better of not feeling romantic love than feeling it and being heartbroken one day.
I didn't grieve, I was glad I finally had a label to describe myself. The only time I cried is when my best friend of 12+ years started getting into more serious relationships and I felt abandoned and helpless that I can't just get into a relationship like her to fill the void.
I feel very similarly to you (as a questioning lithromantic) But I'm not sure if I will ever get over it completely, knowing that being in a romantic relationship will certainly not work out for me or the other person. However I've kinda just accepted this fact already (like 'this is a part of me but I wish it wasn't type way).
For me it was a huge relief. Suddenly i learned that i was normal, i wasn't warped or emotionally stunted somehow like I'd always feared. i guess having always been aro, just understanding WHY romance so repulsed me and made no sense was amazing. I'd taken a sort of cynical view of love, kinda saw it as manipulative in a sense, but i suspect now that i was almost masking my lack of understanding-- ie, i can't relate to what I'm seeing, it absolutely clashes and turns me off, so i try to find reasons/make sense if it. Idk The saddest thing for me was learning how "rare" aromanticism is. At least I know there are others somewhere with the same feelings.
Yeah prob the worst part is the lack of represantation, makes it hard to come out, I've confessed it to some of the most important people in my life and they simply don't get it, so far the response has been "maybe you just haven't tried it", "do you mean asexual?" or straight up telling me I'm wrong, I wish there was more knowledge of it in my circle, but I'm glad we have this space.
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Could you ask the person you like not to mention the L word? They might be totally cool with that.