#loveless negativity

[heartless-aro]

Loveless aro: I don’t really connect with the idea of love. Due to my personal experiences as an aromantic person, I find it uncomfortable to label what I feel as love, and I find it empowering to reject love altogether as a concept.

Non-loveless person: But don’t you love chicken nuggets? Don’t you love your friends and family? Don’t you love the sun on your face? Don’t you love taking a shit when you have a stomach ache? Why won’t you let me force labels onto you?

[redysetdare]

Some of you people need to stop acting so shitty over aspec stereotypes because it's starting to get to a point that you are just shitting on the people who experiences match the stereotypes and it's hurting a lot more aspects than it's helping.

[actuallysafe-for-aro]

I've had 3 people this week do that "buuuut love isn't All ROMANTIC, people have other types of love "

And I'm so sick and tired of this! Fuck you! You don't get to decide what experiences are universal, you don't get to decide what words and concepts people are and aren't comfortable with and do or don't believe in.

I don't care! It's not all love, love isn't what makes someone human, love is not the most important thing, you can go fuck yourself if you think so.

Aros, especially loveless, aplatonic, and lovequeer aros deserve to have their perception of the world respected by other people. We should not have our ideals questioned and told they are straight up wrong or untrue. No one can speak for you on your own experiences and the language that feels good to you.

Aros are important, we deserve respect

[flecks-of-stardust]

i originally put this into the tags, but as a loveless aro and also with some loveless mutuals i should probably not leave it down there. sorry to hijack your post op, but the points you bring up have been discussed at length in the loveless community already and yes, we know. we know. we’re told that incessantly.

“i don’t assume they mean romance unless they’re some kinda weirdo” unfortunately a horrific number of people do, in fact, mean romance. or it’s assumed you also think it’s romantic love, and then they look like a deer in headlights when you point out that in fact, some people do not ever experience romantic love. same goes for platonic love.

the thing is that people just define these things differently. for some people, asking a friend to text them when they get home might not be love, because ‘love’ as a concept is already so nebulous there’s no one definition for it anyway. a lot of people Do consider that love, and that’s perfectly fine and valid, but a good chunk of loveless aros do not for a multitude of reasons. personally i lump it under the broader label of care, because while i’m not certain if i love my friends, i definitely do care about them and want them to be safe. lots of people equate care with love, and that’s all well and good. some don’t.

when you have love, romantic love, shoveled down your throat constantly by society and everyone around you, particularly if you’re also aromantic and romance repulsed on top of that, you get very, very tired of people talking about it. to a specific subset of people, romantic love is the only type of love that exists, and they will look at you weird if you say you love your friends. (i have had the displeasure of meeting that type of person, and i hope you never do.) so sure, when someone says ‘love makes you human’, they probably don’t mean romantic love. but a lot of them do. it’s hard to tell which it is when society is so saturated with it, and it gets tiring. additionally, i’m certain you know that love can be a force used to hurt, too, but it bears repeating. some abusive parents love their children, and are still abusive. some people love their partners, and still hurt them. both of these things combined can make love as a concept very unappealing, and some may choose to divorce themselves from it entirely.

and honestly, i kind of get it. this took me a while to grasp too. most people’s instinct when faced with love that hurts is to look for proof of love that doesn’t hurt, love that they want and love that is reciprocated. and that’s great. but sometimes people just go ‘fuck it’ to it all and remove themselves from it. that’s what the loveless label can mean to people.

and again, love as a concept is so nebulous already, what is love to you may not be love to someone else. telling your friends to be careful? care, affection, intimacy. wikipedia as a resource? dedication, passion. cats and trees? interspecies connection, connection to and with nature. for you that may be love, and for a lot of people it is, but for some people it just isn’t. we may or may not experience the same things, we just label it differently.

for the record, i am loveless and lovequeer in conjunction. being loveless doesn’t necessarily mean rejecting love as a concept entirely, though some do identify that way. a lot of my personal use of love as a concept is to make it so broad that it’s a mundane thing, which is somewhat slant to another core idea around lovelessness, which is to remove love from the pedestal people put it on. you cannot find a universal human experience, and love is not the exception to this rule. some of us are just tired.

edit to add that broadly speaking, aromantic folks just do not experience romantic love (or experience limited romantic love). lovelessness is a separate thing, but this is a fairly common point of discussion in those circles.

ya know I really resonate with the Aromantic label but I can not make sense of the "not experiencing love" concept. when you tell your friend "drive careful, text me when you get home!" that's love. When you lean against a big tree and feel your mind go quiet? that's love. wikipedia is made of love. cats are made of love

[thermodynamic-comedian]

reblog if you're aromantic and not soft or cute or fluffy. i feel like so many aromantic people feel like they need to make themself 'more human' by forcing these qualities onto themselves, and that's fucking sad. you are human. your aromanticism does not make you less human. you do not have to fucking 'redeem' yourself over being aromantic. your anger and your rage and your unapologetic lovelessness and heartlessness are also human. don't hide them in order to appeal to aphobes.

so yeah, reblog if you're aromantic and angry and intense and sharp around the edges and refuse to play the 'acceptable aro' game. i adore you.

[theaddersclaws]

Btw identity headcanons are super accepted, i admittedly struggle with doing anything interesting because of my gender and identity making me be like "imean i dont know with this guy..." like last night i was gonna make copperbranch gray aroace and i was like ok but i dont knowww...

[snowychicken]

I am unlovable!!! Yippee!!! Wahoo!!! And other things of that nature

[snarlingteeth]

How could I ever be proud

Of such a vast emptiness

[arcanegalaxy]

i don’t know exactly how to articulate my thoughts on love. all kinds of love. but it makes me want to break everything in sight

i will never understand

and i can’t tell if i don’t care or if i care so so much

i want to get it i want to feel what it is that everyone talks about so much but i don’t want it i want to reject it i want to hate it

[weepingfireflies]

no love is literally worthless and the people who act like it has any kind of value are stupid, is it not prove enough that people can go there whole life never feel love or never being loved

I do have to disagree with that a bit tbh. It's really fucking annoying when people act like love is the base of all human development and interaction, and I will bite anyone who tries to peddle that shit, but it's also an Emotion Some People Feel and has inherent worth in that sense. As much as I hate to admit it, alloromantics and non-loveless aros do have a right to meaningful love - the problem I have is when they try to push those ideals onto me. I have emotions, personhood, and relationships beyond love, and no one has the right to tell me my life is "less than" because I don't experience love. At the same time, I don't think it's fair to say love - or any emotion - is worthless because it has value to the people who experience it, even if I'm not one of those people.

And for the record, I do believe most - if not all - people have been "loved" in the mainstream way, or at least have people who care about them. It's obviously not all there is to life, but I guarantee someone cares for you in some fashion (whether it's "love" or not). And it's completely fine to not see this as love, even if the person who cares for you does, but I think it's important to recognize if "not being loved" is something that is just occurring or is actively hurting you. This may not be applicable to you, but I don't want you to feel like you're "alone" in the bad sense.

[dumblemonchickenwing]

tragedy prompt

one was born in accidental pregnancy and left by the father. the other was born in long lineage of arranged marriages in a loveless family. One was chasing love and living with various different people in search of true love. The other never left the home and was taught by family that love is not real. Both were too different in every aspect but found relation in each other over the fact that they both never knew what love is.

[skrunksthatwunk]

really fun letting all of my favorite shows take turns being the "i can't think about it i can't think about it i can't think about it!!" bingewatch during finals season/associated crunch times. they're being inducted into a society

[genderkoolaid]

#I mean I guess#it’s a fair point but it’s a little subjective#i agree with OP up until they use the word ‘tainted’#so much of our existence as people is built off someone’s urge to fuck someone else it’s not surprising those connotations exist#and while it’s valuable to discuss the deconstruction of those connotations#‘tainted’ is such an inherently negative word that I sorta wish OP reflected on how really beautiful love and relationships can be#even if they don’t relate to the experience much

I get what you're saying, but it's kind of rude to tell an aromantic person they need to "reflect on how beautiful love can be", especially when they are specifically talking about how amatonormativity alienates us from language. It's upsetting to not be able to talk about how you feel and the relationships you do have when everything is assumed to be romantic, and romantic attraction is given precedence over everything else. Aromantic people are extremely alienated from relationships and the language used to describe them (at least in English) because of this. I imagine OP used a negative word on purpose because this can have a really negative impact on aromantics; it's upsetting to constantly have to try and navigate language and relationships when everything is romantic by default, especially if you are romance-repulsed and that distresses you.

I'm not saying this was your intent, but to me, it feels kind of... a bit too close to "why do aromantics have to be so negative about love, stop trying to ruin it for the rest of us just because you're bitter!" for comfort. We are allowed to express negative feelings about love and romance, and we shouldn't have to pander to alloromantic people's positive feelings about it, you know? Most aromantic people have had to think a lot more and a lot deeper about the meaning of love and their feelings about it than alloromantic people have.

It bothers me how, at least in the English language, so many seemingly neutral and basic words are assumed to have romantic connotations by default. When you “like” somebody it means you have a crush on them, and when you’re in a “relationship” it means you’re romantically involved… even though “like” and “relationship” are among the most basic words to describe any human relations whatsoever.

We can’t even have language to describe how we relate as people without it being tainted by amatonormativity.

[strawbebyjam]

truly cannot tell if lc/nc has been poison or antidote for me LOL

[hagravenholm]

.

[monstrousparalysis]

Fuck it, on this Valentine's Day, here's a post devoted to every single aromantic who fits the negative stereotypes!

Every aroallo, no matter what other labels they use!

Loveless aromantics, especially ones who are loud about not feeling love and refuse to listen to the countless "but what about"s!

Aromantics who don't feel other, even more "universal" attractions, like platonic or familial ones!

Aromantics who lack empathy, who are "cold", who prefer logic over emotion!

Nonhuman aromantics, especially the loveless ones, for whom "Love is what makes us human" is a dismissal in both directions!

Aromantics with trauma, trust issues, or fears of intimacy!

And of course: the aromantics with personality disorders, especially the narcissistic or antisocial aromantics!

If you meet one or more of the above criteria, you are entitled to keep being who the fuck you are and to do so with pride!

Arophobia is not our fault, it is the fault of the arophobes who use our image to justify attacking others. We are hurting nobody just by existing as we are.

No matter what you want in terms of relationships, be that friends with benefits, queerplatonic partners, multiple partners, or no partners at all, ever, I hope you get it!