mac-aro-ni

[mac-aro-ni]

You do not have to be a representative for the entire ace and/or aro community. Your individual choices should only matter for what's right for you, you are not obligated to take into account how other people may shallowly perceive them.

[mac-aro-ni]

shoutout to the aspecs who DON'T want QPRs!! we shuldn't enforce that platonic attraction is inherently more pure/better than other forms. as someone whos plato repulsed at times (it varies) the idea of being in a QPR actually makes me sick. no, not in the "i hate people who r in them way", but i do hate those who view it as inherently the best form of relationship. fuck relationship hierarchies. send pozt

[mac-aro-ni]

aros, do you label your sexual orientation?

yes

no, but i label one or more tertiary orientations

no i'm just aro

results

[mac-aro-ni]

Allosexual aromantics, what's your sexual orientation?

heterosexual

bisexual

pansexual

homosexual

other

unlabelled

unsure

results

[mac-aro-ni]

peace and aromanticism on planet earth

[mac-aro-ni]

What does it feel like to have an aromantic crush?

So this is a weird question. Aromantic people don’t get crushes. We don’t experience romantic attraction, and a crush is, by definition, feeling romantic attraction towards another person.

We do get other kinds of attraction feelings, though. A squish is a platonic attraction to someone, the “oh my god this person is so cool and has the same interests as me I need to be their best friend” feeling. There’s also lush, which is a sensual attraction towards a person. It’s harder to define since everyone’s definition of what is sensual v. sexual is different, but it’s usually the “I want to spend as much time as possible in physical contact with this person”. If you experience queerplatonic attraction you might get a plush, which is a desire to form a qpr with the person. There’s also smush, for sexual attraction if you’re gray-ace or allosexual, and swish for aesthetic attraction (“Man this person is just so nice to look at I want to look at them all the time.”).

Feelings of attraction vary from person to person. I’m gray aromantic so I do occasionally experience crushes. For me it’s a combination sort of of a lush and a squish. I want to spend tons of time with the person, and usually I want there to be kissing since for me kissing is a romance behavior. More often though I just get squishes or plushes. I’ll meet someone knew and get really impressed with something and then *bam*, I am suddenly desperate to be considered their friend. I had a discord friend come to visit me specifically and I about died because I had such an intense squish on him.

This got kind of rambly. I hope I at least answered your question some! If any of the other mods want to add on to this, or if you want me to elaborate more or something, feel free to!

- Mod Meg

[mac-aro-ni]

any aroace ppl that hate how ppl mix up aromantic and asexual like no being ace does not mean you are automatically aro as being aro doesn't automatically mean that you are ace

[mac-aro-ni]

This has been my go-to aro anthem since I first listened to it.

- Mod Meg

Check all your favorite songs and share with us the ones that make you feel proudly arospec or just about any song you feel like claiming for the community for no specific reason.

Send them our way and don’t forget to visit the master list tag and follow our playlists!

Note: We only include the songs we get in our inbox, so, please, submit them there.

[mac-aro-ni]

some arospec flag gifs below for your aro doomscrolling experience

[mac-aro-ni]

That’s the thing though. Romance is a social construct. Technically, society decided what counts as romance and everyone else is just sort of following the lead of books or movies they read/saw as children and real relationships they saw playing out in front of them.

I can’t tell the difference between my platonic feelings and my romantic feelings. They can honestly kind of flip on a dime. For me, it boils down to if I feel icky calling it romance myself. If I don’t, I’m open to labeling a relationship romantic if the other person wants that. If I do feel icky, I decide my feelings must just be platonic and don’t pursue anything further.

The reason alloros and aros both struggle to define romance is because it’s not really a thing. It’s kind of like how some trans people don’t really experience dysphoria or euphoria on a gender level and kind of just decided they’d prefer being referred to differently from before and maybe get GAT/HRT. And how no one can satisfactorily answer what a woman is.

you ever just question whether you're aro but then realise it's impossible because you don't know what romance let alone romantic attraction is and you also don't know if any of your past feelings for people were crushes or not or if what you felt for your partner was just emotional closeness and you decided that this is a relationship now

like for some reason the idea of being demiromantic popped into my head recently but also what

[mac-aro-ni]

The great thing about the aromantic spectrum in my opinion is that this experience can also be aromantic (like. Not gray, just a). You can id as aromantic for the same reasons you seem to currently ID as quioromantic/WTFromantic (hi! I use these labels as well, also grayromantic, aroflux, and sometimes demiromantic because at least some of the time I can develop what I believe to be romantic feelings after being close friends with someone for long enough).

Since we’re trying to define ourselves by the lack of something, and it’s hard to know if you’re experiencing the thing you might be lacking, there’s lots of room to just. Decide things for yourself. I decided that the deep attachment I have with my current partner was romantic and that I was in fact open to dating them. I got sick of trying to have the feelings tell me what they meant, if they were platonic or romantic feelings, and made the choice of what they meant to me and told the feelings they better stick around.

Being arospec or even fully aromantic can mean you get to decide what you think romantic feelings are. And if that’s something that sounds appealing to anyone reading this I encourage you to make a decision about anyone you’re feeling confused about. And if it feels impossible to choose, maybe flip a coin and see how the result makes you feel; do you feel trapped trying to label the feelings romantic, or maybe do you feel disappointed labeling them platonic? And you are of course always allowed to give things time. Maybe you can’t make a decision about this person now, but will be able to one day in the future (I wasn’t able to choose when my partner originally asked me out and it took another three months for us to get together romantically).

you ever just question whether you're aro but then realise it's impossible because you don't know what romance let alone romantic attraction is and you also don't know if any of your past feelings for people were crushes or not or if what you felt for your partner was just emotional closeness and you decided that this is a relationship now

like for some reason the idea of being demiromantic popped into my head recently but also what

[mac-aro-ni]

some people on here need a gentle reminder that arospecs ARE aromantic. thats the point of the aromantic spectrum. that being aromantic.. is a spectrum. ive had demiromantic people ask me if they can call themselves aromantic. YES OF COURSE YOU CAN YOU ARE AROMANTIC. im sure some people choose to identify more as arospec than aromantic and thats fine, but in general, arospecs ARE aromantic, by virtue of being on the aromantic spectrum. like aromanticism is defined as little to none romantic attraction. the ‘little’ part of that is there for a reason.

[mac-aro-ni]

Happy Pride to the cishet aro men out there

[mac-aro-ni]

ASPEC PRIDE POST GO

Happy Pride Month to:

Alloaces and Aroallos

Gray Aces and Aros

Demisexuals and Demiromantics

Aegosexuals and Aegoromantics

Acespikes and Arospikes

Fictosexuals and Fictoromantics

Trans Aces and Aros

Nonbinary Aces and Aros

Xenogender Aces and Aros

Aspec system members

People who are Aspec due to trauma

Aces who want sexual relationships and Aros who want romantic relationships

Sex averse Aces and romance averse Aros

And any other aspec folks we didn’t mention here! All of yall are so cool and we hope you have a wonderful Pride Month!!

(Everyone feel free to add on other specific aspec labels that we didn’t include!)

[mac-aro-ni]

People said that Tumblr isn't a great place to post original art that isn't fanart, but I'm doing it anyway because I haven't got the motivation to draw anything else

Happy pride month lads! 🧡💛🤍💙

from an aroace potato :)

[mac-aro-ni]

shoutout to acespec and/or arospec people who still feel some amount of sexual/romantic attraction btw. shoutout to everyone who isn't fully aro/ace and isn't fully allo. shoutout to the aspecs who feel like they don't fully fit in aro/ace communities or allo communities because of it. i love you all i am baking you cookies

[mac-aro-ni]

*emerges from my slime*

What’s going on this webbed site? I’ve started primarily using cohost, but I don’t have an aro focused page (yet, just because the ability to mass edit posts or queue them isn’t a thing yet and it’s difficult to run a blog like this without a queue to help spread things out. Maybe I’ll make a bot that automatically crossposts from here? But then I have to learn how to make a bot… oh, the woes of brain fog and various other cognitive problems)

- Mod Meg