#i WANT to see romance favorable aro too! i want to see the whole spectrum

[mar64ds]

I think it's important to have different aro representation and to show different ways to be aro but i lose my mind when people complain about romance repulsed aros getting 'too much representation'. we really don't. you can complain about wanting to see more romance favorable aros without throwing us under the bus.

[tossawary]

You know, the more I think about it, the funnier I find the concept of Monkey D. Luffy /& Boa Hancock (especially paired with Aro-Ace spectrum Luffy and Aro-Ace spectrum Hancock) just for what it must look like from an outsider's POV.

For the record, personally, my favorite Luffy ship is Zoro/Luffy - also with Aro-Ace spectrum Luffy, that's basically non-negotiable for me, I don't care whether he's sex-favorable or sex-repulsed, but he's definitely ace. It is so funny to me to think about Luffy's incredible pull with aro-ace spectrum folks. People who once thought "sucks for you fuckers obsessed with sex and/or romance, I'm built different" (Roronoa Zoro, Koby, Trafalgar Law, Boa Hancock, Bartolomeo, etc.) find themselves fascinated by this little rubber man, who regularly declares war on the government and can swallow a roast chicken whole. Some of them are happier about this than others. Some of them WISH they just wanted to fuck or marry him, that would make more sense than this shit.

But, okay, back to Luffy and Hancock (as a friendship or queerplatonic situationship, whatever, doesn't matter). Like, let's pretend this is some kind of Modern College AU (Luffy is probably not IN college, tbh, he's just there to hang out with his friends and for any food anyone makes the mistake of leaving out). You are on your way to class and you see this woman walking down the street and she is - hands down - the Most Beautiful Woman In The World.

Super tall, with incredibly long, muscular legs in shockingly high red heels, a short skirt, artful cleavage, a waterfall of sleek black hair, beautiful face, striking makeup, gorgeous jewelry. Looks too old to be an undergrad student. She looks like if a martial artist became a supermodel. Walks like that too. The phrase "please step on me" comes to mind, but not to the lips, because that's sexual harassment, and also this woman looks like she could stab you through the heart with a kick and her shoe heel, killing you instantly.

She sees someone and her entire face lights up. She runs forward (how is she running in those shoes) squealing in excitement and embraces this guy you didn't even notice before, shouting about how much she missed him, and kisses him on the lips. He is... uh... three-quarters of her height at the tallest. A real Mr. Short King.

Wow, he has a babyface. And a scar on his cheek and on his chest, which you can see because he's wearing an open button-up, in eye-searing rainbow colors and decorated with monkeys, and jorts with fur at the cuffs. And mismatched flip-flops on the wrong feet. And a straw hat on a string around his neck. It looks like he hasn't brushed his hair today. It is impossible to judge his looks because his outfit is too distracting. Now the Most Beautiful Woman in the World is blushing bright pink as she clasps one of his hands in both of hers. Mr. Short King is using his other hand to pick his nose as she talks.

They walk hand in hand together over to where an incredibly expensive-looking bright red car is parked. Mr. Short King opens the driver's door for the Most Beautiful Woman and she apparently nearly swoons at this chivalry. She climbs into the driver's seat and he gets into the passenger's side (Luffy cannot legally drive and also cannot actually drive). They drive off together. What the fuck kind of Roger-and-Jessica-Rabbit-ass Sugar Mama relationship did you just witness?

Boa Hancock keeps a photograph of Luffy as her phone background and also on her desk at work. Everyone is always like, "Is that your... son?" And Hancock is like, "No, that's my number one choice of future fiancé! Isn't he sooooo handsome?" And people can only be like, "...Okay, but why are there police lights in the background? And something is on fire? It kind of looks like he's in the process of being arrested..." And Hancock responds dreamily, "They didn't catch him! He climbed into my exercise duffel bag and I carried him out."

[oh-my-im-ply]

I don't see these slogans used as often as I used to, but I still want to talk about it, especially as a polysexual trans person. Be it as a retrospective, or as commentary aimed towards anyone who might still use these slogans today.

"[Bi/pan/mspec people] fall in love with a person, not a gender" and "[Bi/pan/mspec people care about] hearts, not parts!" are really bad slogans. Here's why.

"[Bi/pan/mspec people] fall in love with a person, not a gender" invalidates the love experienced by those whose attraction is impacted by gender, and erases many aromantic mspec folk who don't fall in love.

Falling in love with a whole person is not unique to those who experience attraction to all genders, or regardless of gender. This slogan implies that if you aren't attracted to all genders, or aren't attracted to people regardless of gender, it's impossible to love people for their entire being... "You just love the gender they have."

I'm a polysexual lesbian. I experience physical and emotional attraction to many genders, but I am not attracted to binary men. Gender impacts who I'm attracted to, who I'm comfortable being physically intimate with, and who I'm comfortable being partners with... But that doesn't mean my love is just about gender.

I identified as bi/pan for years, largely in part because of this rhetoric. I struggled to accept who I am and how I really feel, and a lot of it was fueled by slogans like this one. I felt like I had to give all genders a chance, because if I didn't, that would invalidate my love. I felt like I owed it to binary men to try... and to try... and to try again. Because, how could I really love someone if I wasn't willing to set gender aside?

(Among other reasons, because it was a very complex issue.)

And not only does this slogan invalidate the gendered love that many people experience, but it also erases mspecs who don't fall in love to begin with. Bi/pan/mspec people who are aromantic (or on the aromantic spectrum) exist too, including those who never fall in love.

Please don't devalue or invalidate gendered love by implying that it's less about the person than non-gendered love. Slogans like these harm mono-spec LG+ people, multi-spec people who don't fall in love, multi-spec people who aren't attracted to all genders, and even multi-spec people who are attracted to all genders in different ways.

Please don't use this slogan.

"Hearts, not parts" as a bi/pan/mspec slogan is not only dismissive of other sexualities/orientations, but also carries cissexist and endosexist connotations.

Using this as a bi/pan/mspec slogan implies that a person's "parts" are inherently relevant to other orientations. It implies that gender and "parts" are inherently linked. It implies that transgender and intersex people with certain genitals are inherently excluded from certain orientations, even if those orientations include their gender.

Genital preferences are not an inherent aspect of any orientation. In addition to that, some bi/pan/mspec people have genital preferences themselves. Because, ultimately, none of these orientations are defined by genital preferences or lack thereof; they're defined by how gender does or does not factor into one's attraction.

Not only that, but this slogan can also be alienating to bi/pan/mspec people who are romance-averse/repulsed, loveless aros, and heartless aros, for reasons that are probably obvious. Sometimes, it just isn't even about "hearts" to begin with, and that's okay.

The "hearts, not parts" slogan only works if used to explain the experiences of sex-averse/repulsed love-favorable people, because then "parts" refers to genitals in general, rather than associating specific genitals with specific genders.

Please only use "hearts, not parts" to explain how a person can be in love without having sex involved. Please don't use it as a bi/pan/mspec slogan. It originated during a time when transgender, intersex, and aromantic awareness was even less common, and it shows.

These are just my personal thoughts, but I hope that you take them to heart (no pun intended) and consider dropping these slogans if you haven't already.

[pageofheartdj]

Hi! Autistic aroace anon from before! I saw your post abt ace Donnie and aro Leo (which btw, I LOVE how their colors are basically their flags? But in Leo’s case it’s his green tone)

And I totally agree!! Donnie seems to have somewhat interest in romance, like the innuendo at the Bearnardo “why I always like the cute and mean ones” and with Atomic Lass. But a teen flirty normal level (thank god, I also agree with you at the “pls they dont care yet, its hormones. Pls focus family and friends), than to actually have smth not rlly, and the arosexual part? I may be projecting a lil here. But he always seemed more interested in the flirt part than anything else.

With Leo, he liked to flirt, but more to charm the person to gain their favor than actually flirt, like in Donnie’s case. He always seemed averse, but not against it, just “yuck”. I felt that was also a normal teen reaction like “I don’t wanna get strings attached” but with smth more, a “yeah, rlly not for me” thing. I can totally see him being gray/demi aro (again projecting? I’m gray/demi aroace), since with some stuff he seems fine but with others, more exaggerated or “honeyed” ones, he gets uncomfortable. But I could understand if ppl put him on sex-repulsed full Aro in the spectrum.

It’s totally wild and funny to me how the fandom is rlly 8/80. The dynamics of both of them being switched in the fandom to fit the box idea that they created for these two is wild to me. “Oh, Donnie’s autistic and 10% of the time, specially in stressful situations, he doesn’t want to be touched? And also a genius nerd? Nah, he’s a goofy goober which the idea of relationships is totally alien and foreign to him, he totally runs from it and has 0 experience of it”. “Oh, Leo’s has narcissistic tendencies and flirted to gain favors before in specific and numbered occasions? He’s totally a flirt, believing everyone wants to date him and he’s a heartbreaker, he totally loves that attention, not uncomfortable at all”

So yeah, sorry for my lil rant, but I rlly do feel whatchu said in that post a whole lot!!

Speaking of colors, he is blue and wore that orange uniform in Air Turtles so yaknow XD

The thing is, the turtles are teens, PLUS they lived an isolated way of life. They had NO way of acting on their interests no matter if they had or didn't have any.

And also. Attraction and relationships are not connected whatsoever! They can. But they don't have to! So the allo person might not want any relationships and aspec person can want and be in one. The relationship status says NOTHING of their identity xD

And moving on to Donnie. He has crushes on fictional character and makes sense, again, no people around. But he also used this his type on Strawberry who are very real and in the moment and is very cute and is very mean to him xD Donnie has a type with real girls too. What he wants to do with this attraction and if he has any sexual attraction is unknown and obviously, it's a kid's cartoon and romance is basically a non-existant part of it(thank god xD). And anyone can hc almost any queer and not queer identity on him, because all of them can and will work xD

Same with Leo, we have some canon moments with him, but it can work for so many queer identities. He is aro as a very direct conclusion. He is grey or demi and his repulsiveness tones down if he falls for someone, etc xD He can also be just a teen who is not into romance but now it extra disgusts him. Anything can work and as long as we are not forcing our hcs on others, it's all good xD

I also hc Donnie a quick developer, he had his plastron developed first, he instalearned his mystics. He could get into the whole romance territory earlier than Leo too xD Leo might not be that enthusiastic the way Donnie is, but still!

Although Mikey doesn't seem to mind and Raph is a big supporter as a comparison xD

And yeeeeeeah I am not a fan(although I can VERY much understand) of latching on this one trait, no matter if it's a rare one or not, and making it the whole personality. Donnie is autistic and very rarely is not 100% excited for a touch? He is touch repulsed autistic. He has canon romantic interests? Nah he is aroace. (Which I LOVE aroace hcs. But I've noticed that in fandoms aroace hcs 99% mean NO romance and NO sex NEVER, even though aspec has SO much variation). With Leo he has these few sad moments and BOOM he is a 100% 24/7 sad boy that was born depressed and all that. Despite the fact that he is very joyful and very confident and very cocky most of the time. YES he copes with jokes, this doesn't mean ALL his jokes are just cover ups. Donnie's copes with collecting data, doesn't mean he doesn't do it on regular just cause he likes it. HECK both of them tend to cope with the thing they like, so they would feel better. Donnie likes data collecting so he copes with it. Leo likes joking so he copes with it.

I love your rants🤝

[aroaceconfessions]

so. I'm aro, right. And dating. I'm not fully aro but I definitely am on the aro spectrum, and I've always wanted a relationship. But when I was younger I saw everyone getting together super quickly, making out behind the school a couple of weeks and then breaking up and the whole thing just being extremely messy, so I didn't want to deal with that. I wanted a relationship that would be just like a friendship, but I'd have the security and commitment to each other (which are all things you could do with friends too, but I kinda suck at connecting with people, so I couldn't really imagine a deep friendship). And then I got out of school and started spending time with other adults around me and I realized that I'm actually extremely lucky I'm aro, because just because I don't experience romantic attraction (or if I do, it's so mild it's basically nonexistent), romantic love is not the same thing as that. So many couples break up because they're romantically (and/or sexually) attracted to each other, but they don't actually love each other, but since I'm basically not attracted to anyone, things usually work out for me way better. And that's great!!! I see so much sadness in romance favorable aro posts, people are worried no one would want to be with them because they're aro, so I wanted to throw in my two cents. It can work out! It worked out for me, and I'm happy now!

[aspecpplarebeautiful]

Sometimes I really hate being neurodivergent. I know I should be proud, but I can’t help wishing I was neurotypical instead. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel like a liar when identifying as aroace due to the way I love. It’s easier to defend the ace since I’m sex-repulsed/neutral but the aro part? I love love, I love romance. There are days where I’m fed up with society’s view of romance and its “importance”, but I’m mostly romance-favorable. But the whole attraction part? I feel no difference between the way I feel for my cat or my partner. I love them. Easy as that. Sex is pretty gross and meaningless to me. I don’t get the hype and would rather clean my toilet. I’d probably get more out of that to be honest. But then I see people being so sure of their attraction, whether it exists or not, and I feel like I’m too allo to be ace. Like I can’t use these terms because it’s very likely that I do feel this attraction. Someone give me a piece of cake and send me to nowhere with it where I can live in peace until I die

Honestly I think that sort of gray area or in between area for platonic and romantic where you're not sure what you're feeling or feelings feel the same is a very aro experience in itself. And personally I tend to look at aromanticism more as someone who's experiences don't match or don't fit alloromantic people's experiences. That how you experience or romantic spectrum identity is just somehow different.

There is a whole set of identities too that are about that kind of gray area between (or separate from) the romantic/platonic binary.

For example you may be interested in Nebular-romantic, which is someone who because of neurodivergency has trouble distinguishing between romantic and platonic attraction.

Quoiromantic is another big one I'd recommend looking into. And that's a very large umbrella term for anyone who either wants to disidentify with the concept of romantic attraction/romance/romantic orientation, or who finds it inaccessible, inapplicable, nonsensical, not useful, etc.

A lot of people who aren't sure what they're feeling find quoiromantic to be a really useful label for them. (There's also a really great article on Quoiromanticism here)

(Other common identities in this spectrum are idemromantic, platoniromantic and alterous attraction, if you want to explore more, but don't feel like you have to if you're not interested.)

For being ace I definitely recommend looking to gray-asexuality as a well. Which was coined specifically for being that gray area between allo and ace, and that line you had about feeling to allo to be ace reminded me a lot of that label. Especially because it sounds like allosexual as a label doesn't feel like it fits you right either. And quoisexual is also the sexual spectrum equivalent of quoiromantic. So that's something else you can look into or consider.

I definitely get the frustration, I think it's always a lot harder when you don't have something tangible you can hold onto or a clear cut category you can put your feelings into. And that always invites doubt because the less defined something it is the easier it is to think you may have it wrong.

But hopefully some of these labels here help, or at least gives you a direction to look into and feel less alone.

All the best, Anon! Good luck!

[shades-of-grayro]

The Relationship Between the Aro and Ace Communities: A Greyromantic Perspective

This is my submission to the Carnival of Aros hosted by @theaceandaroadvocacyproject. There are three parts: my personal journey with my ace and aro identities, a discussion of how the aro community can learn from the ace community in order to do better by gray and romance-favorable aros, and my thoughts on aro inclusion in ace communities.

Thank you for reading!

Part 1: My personal journey with my ace and aro identities

When I first realized I wasn’t straight, I played around with identity labels a bit, eventually landing on “greyromantic asexual,” which I still feel describes me well to this day. How I identify my orientation to others, however, has fluctuated over time.

For a few years, I identified solely as asexual without any romantic orientation, only occasionally disclosing my romantic orientation within ace communities with the specific intention of discussing the topic of romantic orientation. Even then, I often just called myself aromantic, because I still felt that was accurate. There were two reasons why I more strongly identified with my ace identity for this time.

The first reason is that it was easier. I absolutely hated having to explain my identity when I came out to someone. Leaving it at “asexual” meant that it was more likely that someone was familiar with the word, and also that it would be easier to explain if I needed to do that. No, this was not the best aro and ace activist approach, but it was what I needed early in my coming-out journey, and that is okay.

The second reason is that I liked the ambiguity of my romantic orientation when I only called myself asexual. My asexuality is solid. I can say with 100% certainty that I don’t experience sexual attraction. My romantic orientation is more nebulous — I am not convinced that I feel romantic attraction and I am not convinced that I don’t feel it, but either way I would still be somewhere on the aro spectrum. The identity “asexual” doesn’t imply any particular corresponding romantic orientation. When I identify solely as asexual, the amount of uncertainty others (should) have regarding my romantic orientation feels more accurate to how I feel about my romantic attraction.

A combination of entering a romantic relationship and starting to do more advocacy work changed my perspective on the first reason, and I have started actively labeling my romantic orientation again. Because I am in a romantic relationship, I now need to explain the bits I didn’t have to before. I also feel the need to assert my aro-ness in a way I didn’t before, both because I think it is important when I do ace and aro advocacy work that I clarify that I am coming from an aro perspective, but also because people (mostly other aces and aros) now assume I feel romantic attraction because I am in a romantic relationship.

Now that I have entered a romantic relationship and started actively labeling my romantic orientation again (as greyromantic), people have started assuming that I feel romantic attraction because of that identification. But I am not convinced that I do. I know I feel something — but that something is significantly different from what it seems that non-aros feel when they talk about romantic attraction. What I feel is probably more in line with what is referred to as alterous attraction, but I don’t experience any other emotion-based attraction to contrast it with, so I prefer to be more general and vague about it.

This assumption gets me to my next point:

Part 2: Learning from the ace community: How the aro community can better support gray and romance-favorable aros.

In my experience, the ace community does a better job including and discussing gray-ace and sex-favorable aces than the aro community does with including and discussing gray-aro and romance-favorable aros. I think we need to look towards the ace community in order to see how we can improve.

As was discussed a bit by Siggy in his submission and in the comments on the post, the ace community isn’t always perfect in this regard and the aro community should also look to the ace community to see what to avoid. Siggy specifically suggests avoiding empty affirmations and rather talking about specific experiences. I think that is an excellent idea, though with a caveat that sometimes the topic of sex-favorability and romance-favorability can be immensely personal and people don’t always want to share, which is okay. Honestly I think some of the empty affirmations probably come from aces who are sex-favorable and feel excluded in some way, but don’t want to share their personal experiences due to how personal they are. But that is just a guess.

Here are some personal experiences and ideas in no particular order:

Gray and romance/sex-favorable aspec people often experience attraction/romance/sex very differently from how non-aspec people experience those things. We should avoid characterizing these things (especially gray identities) as being half-allo(sexual/romantic) and half-(aro/ace), because that is not what it feels like most of the time.

As a romance-favorable aro, I grew distant from the aro community while I was single and planning on staying that way. I felt more aromantic when I entered my romantic relationship, because there is nothing quite like seeing a non-aro person experiencing the same situation to highlight just how different you are. People (aros) around me implied that I was less or only partly aromantic for being in a romantic relationship based on ~feelings~, and that just didn’t fit my experience.

I’ve seen several people who say they understand sex-favorability but not romance-favorability recently, and I think this is probably due to the fact that romance as a concept is less well defined and separated from other experiences than sex. Many people don’t understand how an aro person in a romantic relationship is any different than a qpr. Ultimately, I think it comes down to preferences on language usage, much the way the difference between bi and pan does. For me, I don’t really see a difference between my romantic relationship and an ideal qpr. But my relationship is romantic for my partner, the word romantic doesn’t bother me, and it is honestly easier to describe to people who aren’t ace/aro. Most of the time I just call them my partner, which doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) imply one way or the other whether it is romantic.

I just want to reiterate - There is a recent trend towards using the phrase “aromantic spectrum” to refer gray aros, and specifically to separate them from people who identify specifically as aromantic. I absolutely hate this, as aromantic spectrum has always been the unifying term for the whole aro community - aromantic and grayromantic alike. Ultimately this language shift makes me feel like others are calling me less aromantic because I have a less clear-cut experience, which I really don’t like.

I think we need to stop emphasizing the non-romantic nature of qprs (when talking about them as a whole, not necessarily individual relationships) and focus more on them not fitting into the traditional boxes of friendship and romance. Many aros, and gray-aros in particular, don’t differentiate between platonic and romantic feelings and they might feel that their qpr is partially romantic and that is okay.

Gray-aro identities are almost always very complex, fluid, and hard to pin down. People who are not also gray-aro might not be able to wrap their heads around it, and that’s okay. Us gray-aros have a hard time with it too. I more or less just accepted that our language is never going to be sufficient to describe my experiences.

Part 3: Aro inclusion in ace communities

Currently in aro communities, ace communities have a bad reputation for being aro-antagonistic. Personally, I don’t think this is a fair reputation, as ace communities tend to be much less of a monolith than people think.

Besides recently, I have seen criticism regarding poor aro inclusion and poor alloro inclusion in ace communities. And after talking with a few people individually, I have come to the conclusion that it is different in different parts of the ace community. Some in-person ace meetup groups are dominated by alloromantic aces talking about struggles with romance. Others, like mine, are dominated by aroaces. As an event organizer and leader in my local ace community, I have to politely correct assumptions that negatively harm alloromantic aces much more frequently than assumptions that harm aros. I genuinely believe that this is an issue that can go both ways.

Additionally, individuals can be individuals. Not every ace person is an expert on everything to do with asexuality, and they will sometimes say not-so-great things. This doesn’t excuse it, but in these cases I think polite education is generally the way to go. There is a big difference to me between individuals saying (unintentionally) aro-antagonistic things and community leaders saying or doing aro-antagonistic things. While the latter does occasionally happen, I think it is the exception not the rule.

Conclusion

Overall, I am really happy with the new independence of the aro community, and I am really excited to see where it goes from here. I think we all (aces and aros alike) have work to do to better understand each other in this process. This carnival has been a great start, and I have really been enjoying reading everyone else’s perspectives so far!

[lamujerarana]

Do you think that other being speculated to be on the ace spectrum, Reed would be romantically attracted to other genders than female?

Yes, definitely! I mean, in the first place, (I hope?) we all know about that canon alternate universe where Reed is married to Johnny instead of Sue. So there’s at least one universe where he is openly and canonically into men. Personally, I wish he’d married Ben instead and I resent the fact that there are no canon BenReed universes, because there should be. @androidavenger and I agree that it’s because Marvel is afraid of how powerful and convincing Ben and Reed’s love for each other would be. They’re practically married already in 616, so seeing them together as a romantic/sexual couple would probably feel pretty natural.

I personally think of Reed as being a sex-favorable/indifferent bi ace with a low libido (but pan or poly or any mspec label works for me). Like, if Sue wants to have sex, he’ll oblige and enjoy it, but he just rarely feels inclined to seek it out himself, and when he does, it’s more about the intimacy and romance and showing Sue that he loves her than anything else. (I wrote a longer post about Reed being coded as ace in canon, which you can find here.) He definitely experiences romantic attraction to some degree, though, since he canonically fell in love with Sue at first sight. But I could see him being somewhere on the aro spectrum because it’s not like he gets romantically attracted very frequently. Sue and maybe Alyssa would be the only two people he’s ever been romantically involved with in canon, which is…not a lot. I also think it explains why he’s so over-the-moon in love with Sue – he’s never really felt that way about anyone before or since. 

Personally, and I admit that I ship them pretty hard, I do think that Reed’s relationship with Ben is probably the one that has been framed as the queerest. I have a very hard time seeing his relationship with Ben as anything other than queer. But I do admit that the fact that Reed doesn’t seem to experience sexual attraction means that it’s a bit harder to find panels where he comments on Ben’s looks or gets flirty with him, although I can show you plenty of panels where Ben gets very fixated on Reed’s attractiveness and/or flirts very openly with him. 

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any panels where Reed expresses a deep and abiding love for Ben that is even framed in romantic terms and couched in romantic phrases. 

More beneath the cut!

I mean, he says this about Ben in Fantastic Four v1 #51:

“You know how I felt about Ben! He was more than just a friend!” has very clearly romantic connotations, as does the fact that he’s willing to die for Ben. And Ben echoes that sentiment – as well as Reed’s willingness to die for him – later on in Fantastic Four v1 #382:

There’s also just the fact that Ben, Reed, and Sue pretty much already act like they’re a thruple and always have, and if polyamory wasn’t so taboo, they probably would be. They make sense as a thruple, they balance out each other’s flaws perfectly and keep each other in check, they love each other deeply, and frankly, they just need each other. I’ve seen, for instance, people say that Sue’s the one who functions as a check on Reed, but that’s just not true. For one thing, Sue is pretty vicious and ruthless herself, thank you, MUCH more so than Reed, who tends to be gentler, kinder, and more forgiving than Sue. Sue and Reed 99% of the time make their plans together, and Ben is normally the one who functions as their conscience. See Authoritative Action for a perfect example of that. But what I’m getting at with this is that Reed and Sue very much need Ben. 

Even just in canon, Ben, Reed, and Sue are pretty committed life partners. They all live together and Ben and Reed have done so for the entirety of their adult lives, from 18 years of age to 40. They are also raising their kids together – kids that Reed and Sue canonically think of as being just as much Ben’s children as they are theirs:

Sue’s horror there stems from the fact that they ARE Ben’s kids, of course. He takes care of them just as frequently as Reed and Sue do. Sue is a CEO and philanthropist and Reed is a busy scientist – frankly, Ben takes over childrearing duties pretty damn often. Again, the three of them work well together as a thruple.

Ben even tells Sue at one point that he loves Reed almost as much as she does, and this while Reed and Sue were technically still on their honeymoon. From Fantastic Four v1 #44, which, you’ll notice was written all the way back in the 1960s:

But the most romantic BenReed story, in my opinion, is Hereafter. In the previous arc, Ben is murdered by Doom, and Reed spends a full hour frantically trying to bring him back to life. When he can’t, he completely falls apart. He shuts down, won’t talk to anyone, and throws himself into figuring out a way to get Ben back, because not even death is taking Ben away from him. When he does figure it out, he calls Sue and tells her that he can’t stand not having Ben by his side…so he’s going to Heaven to get him back. Reed literally can’t live without Ben. Johnny and Sue decide to join Reed on his mission, and when they get there, they pass through each one’s idea of Heaven. Sue’s is a nice, safe day with her kids, Johnny’s is camping with his parents, and Reed’s…Reed’s idea of Heaven is Ben’s face in the shape of a puzzle that he has to assemble. As though there is something about it that he’s trying to figure out, but hasn’t quite managed to yet (his romantic feelings for Ben, maybe?). This is from Fantastic Four v1 #510:

So, yes, Reed’s idea of Heaven is canonically Ben’s face. I think too that this is a great parallel – what Reed perceives as the mystery of Ben – to Reed’s rapturous love letter to Sue a few years later in Fraction’s run, in Fantastic Four v4 #4, where he calls her the mystery he’s never quite been able to figure out. 

His feelings for Ben and Sue seem awfully similar, don’t they?

Anyway, Hereafter climaxes with Reed having a meltdown because Ben announces that he doesn’t want to go back to his life and Reed blames himself for Ben’s death and just can’t handle the idea of life without Ben. Ben realizes at this point that the reason he hadn’t been able to get into Heaven is because he couldn’t bear to leave Reed, so he snaps Reed out of his meltdown by promising, over and over, that he’ll never leave Reed.

I swear to god, I have read romances that are less romantic than this scene. 

But also it makes sense that they care about each other this deeply. Ben and Reed are extraordinarily close and have been since they were college roommates. They’ve been inseparable since college. Once they graduated, they kinda just…kept living together the rest of their lives because they couldn’t stand being apart – in earlier canon, they joined the army together during WWII because they didn’t want to be separated after college. Ben’s said he loves Reed so much he’d die for him, Reed’s said the same about Ben. Ben, Reed, and Sue have gone on romantic island vacations together. Ben used to call Reed “lover boy” and “pretty boy” VERY regularly, and Reed never complained. He still occasionally calls Reed “baby,” and Reed acts like it’s totally normal for his supposedly platonic BFF to be calling him pet names. Ben also apparently is in the habit of wolf-whistling at Reed when he’s looking hot, and Reed doesn’t mind. Tweaking their relationship to make it explicitly romantic/sexual is just…not much of a stretch. Their love for each other is already intense, their relationship close and intimate, and I’d be lying if I said that Ben hasn’t pretty overtly flirted with Reed. He even once promised to kiss each of Reed’s fingers, which just. How is that even remotely straight, Marvel?

I could also write whole separate posts about the queerness of Reed’s relationships with Black Bolt, T’Challa, and Victor.