#god this post is fucking long. sowwy would edit it down a little but i'm rushing out to get to work. wanted to get you an answer asap <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[knifearo]

hi, i’m having a really hard time rn and i found a post of yours randomly on my dash, so i’m not sure if you’ve already answered a thing like this. if you have, feel free to just ignore this! if you haven’t though, how did you know you were asexual? i feel like romance is just a hypothetical for me, but i crave it so badly. it just feels like the second i try to put anything into action, im suddenly repulsed. but it also makes me so sad that i respond this way. am i just socially anxious, or does this sound like an aromantic who has fallen victim to societal standards?

hi hiiiii!!! first of all: i love you and you're doing great. second of all: being aroace, my discovery of aspec stuff kind of went hand in hand. i was lucky enough to have terminology available to me, and figured it out pretty young; i had a lot of the same stuff going on, though. when someone first suggested i might be ace, i (not really knowing enough about what that meant) said "sure, but i want a partner. someone who's always there with me and supporting me." later that year/the year after, i looked a little more into it and went, "oh, that's what it is!" and then it felt super natural from there to pick up the aromantic label too. to me, they've always been intertwined.

the actual things that helped me Figure It Out were definitely shared experiences (hearing people describe squishes was an aha moment for sure, and hearing someone say that they had thought sexual attraction was a joke and then realizing that it. wasn't an elaborate inside joke. very jarring lmao) but i definitely had the same hesitations when it came to romance. six or seven years after coming out, i've since realized that what i wanted wasn't actually a partner; i was craving intimacy and the feeling of being special and prioritized by someone, and the way i'd been programmed to want that was through a partner. i'm super strong about being non-partnering now, and i feel that all my needs in that direction are met by my close personal relationships, cause what i actually wanted was never romance; at least personally, it never occurred to me that you would probably want to like. kiss a partner. maybe share a bed or smth. not a single thought in my head about that lmao

if you're feeling repulsed, my instinct is to say that it's probably not something that you want. my advice here is to really examine what you're looking for. do you want romance because you want romance, or because amatonormativity has gotten it into your head that romance is the only way that you can have certain things?

another thing to consider is that amatonormativity can and will kind of like. program you to want romance. and it can be really hard to let go of that, even if romance is something that actively repulses/stresses you out. remember that you have a lifetime behind you of being told that romance is the greatest thing on earth, that it completes you, that it's life's ultimate goal, and that that stuff can be hard to overcome. i know a lot of people feel a fair bit of grief over losing the chance at romance, even if the reason is that they don't actually want romance. it's a strange place to be in. your prerogative here is to figure out your own personal relationship with romance, and however it ends up, that's fine.

it's also totally possible that you're aromantic and you just want romance. that's totally fine! wanting romantic interactions does not constitute romantic attraction, which is the core thing here. you can be aromantic and be in a romantic relationship. the external things are not as important as how you feel on the inside.

so much more that i could say, but i'll try and pause myself here for now. to quote one of my own posts: you can literally just be aromantic. it's free and nobody's stopping you. as long as that label is useful to you, it's yours. look more into amatonormativity, think a lot about things, and spend some time in community spaces; you have all the time in the world, and all the support you could ever want from me and the rest of the community <3 stop by in the ask box or the dms anytime! absolute best of luck to you. kisses <3