#lovequalities

[motivatedmindmastery]

Unlocking True Love: 7 Qualities Every Boy Should Have! #4 is the Key to a Lasting Connection! 💑

[beforeamore]

How do you know if it's true love? Is this "the one?"

Join BeforeAmore in uncovering the 8 qualities of true love, and how you can know if you've met your soulmate.

[delphiniumjoy]

You’ve heard of hopeless romantic? I’m a hopeless platonic

[aro-absol]

You know what I like so much about the aromantic community?

We have so many concepts that the average alloromantic person has never heard of. Concepts that make it so much easier to explain our experiences, desires and struggles to other people. They make it so much easier to exist as an aromantic person in this world. Of course, every aromantic person can decide whether they find these concepts helpful and applicable to their experiences. But I find it amazing how many cool concepts the aromantic community either came up with or took pre-existing concepts and made them our aromantic 101. I don't think the allos really get how being aromantic can fundamentally change your worldview. And to be honest, I think they're missing out because I think everyone would benefit from at least being familiar with those concepts.

Being aromantic is basically like this:

Aromantic shrimp colours are real.

Anyways, aromantic community, y'all mean a lot to me and I'm so happy I found y'all and now share your "secret" knowledge!

[theexhaustedqueer]

Guys, there’s a really obvious enemy here and— Oh! What a surprise!

It isn’t each other.

[st-ivangeline]

Big aro thought:

If you figure out you’re grayromantic or demiromantic or aroflux/fluid etc etc and you feel like you have to give up the label aromantic because you experience

You Don’t

You can use the term aromantic forever even if you use a microlabel, if you’re in the aromantic community you can use the term aromantic, and it doesn’t even have to be as a umbrella label, if you feel more connected to being aromantic then you can use that label, you can use both your microlabel and aromantic or one or the other, you’re still aromantic and part of the aromantic community whatever arospec label you use—fight me on it

[aro-barrel]

one of the first things any aro wants to know on their journey of discovery is, “what the fuck is romantic love?” so we end up reading alloromantic accounts of romance, just so we can try to understand. and it’s often a failed journey, simply because people describe different experiences or describe sensations that don’t necessarily equate to romantic attraction. sure, people get a warm fuzzy feeling when they look at their spouse, but alloplatonics might describe their platonic feelings the same. and sure, people are struck with a desire to hold someone close and kiss them, but is that really exclusive to romance? after a while, it becomes clear. love filled with subjectivity.

the question then becomes, what do we do with subjectivity? it’s the first step in disassembling "love." when we choose to investigate further, we may come to realize the subjectivities are (too often) conveniently erased to suit popular notions of love—these stem from dominant depictions of love that don’t reflect reality or practice. put simply: people are told how their love is. yes, they're told how to love, but there is the very real assumption that the same feelings underlie every expression of romantic love, no matter who you are. it's in all the tv shows and books, it's parroted by well-meaning people who wish for your happiness, it's sliced ragged until it's a narrow, "correct" form. but no one loves that singular way, even if they warp their own experiences to fit the narrative. if "love" is pared down, concentrated into an impossibly specific expression, we get awful tunnel vision when we try to conceptualize it. the lived, subjective experiences of love elude us.

so as aromantics, we take the abandoned subjectivities and play around with them. we might attempt to separate components of "love" and poke them with a stick, dissect them, take parts out, Frankenstein them. we might heave "love" into a jumbo garbage bin forever or build our own thing from scratch. when people write of love as a law of nature, we tear it to fucking shreds. there are no rules, it's not a sacred thing, not immutable. we fuck around with "love" on purpose. we carve our own space in a society that insists on myopia.

[ayspec]

less "learning how to love" and more learning how to respect. how to listen. learning how to care about the ones you love. learning that your emotions aren't the only ones that matter. learning that your emotions do not equal your actions. learning that you can love someone with your whole heart and hurt them. learning that love doesn't determine if a relationship is good or not. learning that love doesn't absolve you from being a horrible person. learning that love isn't everything. learning that a healthy relationship is built on trust, respect, and communication, not love.

[mossy-aro]

i hate to be a Downer but no i don’t think making the tenth generic post abt how ‘true love’ is and always will be the most powerful force in the universe and that nothing else compares gives you a personality actually. sorry.

[heartless-aro]

“Love doesn’t have to be romantic” and “not everyone has to define their feelings as love” are two ideas that can and should coexist btw. Platonic love, sexual love, familial love, and so on are all just as real as romantic love, but people can feel platonic feelings, sexual feelings, familial feelings, and so on without those feelings being love. Just as relationships can be defined as romantic, platonic, or something else entirely only by the people involved in the relationship, feelings can be defined only by the person experiencing them

[skittlespizza]

Happy pride month to unconventional connections, friendships or relationships. Shoutout to fwbs and qprs and unlabeled relationships shoutout to friendships or acquaintances shoutout to that one duo who borders platonic and romantic/sexual or all of the in-betweeens. Shoutout to all those who decide not to label things and shoutout to lovequeers and those who dont give a fuck :)

[swordsandflowercrowns]

I was explaining this to a friend recently and I think it's an important distinction to make: not all queerplatonic relationships look the same.

A good way I've found to illustrate what exactly a qpr is, is to say "a qpr is to relationships what nonbinary is to gender". While both of these traditionally function on a binary (male/female, platonic/romantic), by defining our personal outlooks and experiences of the concepts of gender and relationships with new terms, we challenge the boundaries that society has put in place.

And yes, whilst redefining what actually constitutes romantic or platonic relationships, or male and female identities, and what makes them different (and acknowledging where they overlap, or where they can expand past what we traditionally expect) is important to increasing our understanding, so is providing options entirely outside of those two boxes.

And that's what it is - options. It's very easy to trivialise the concept of nonbinary and simply make gender into a trinary, rather than a binary. Male/female/nonbinary, which goes against the very purpose of the nonbinary label. This further erases the spectrum of gender. It's the same with relationships - by giving a strict set of instructions on how a qpr must look and act, you are simply creating a trinary. The point of the concept of qprs is to acknowledge that there are relationships between people that may overlap platonic and romantic, or fall partially within one and partially outside, or ones that are entirely separate from either category.

There are an infinite amount of ways a relationship can manifest, and if the people in the relationship feel that queerplatonic best describes their partnership without romance, or their affection without commitment, or their feelings towards each other that aren't quite what romantic or platonic is to them, or any other reason that rebels against amatonormativity, then they can choose to use that term. Queerplatonic covers the widest range of relationships that come in all shapes and sizes.

I think it's so important when discussing topics like relationships and gender to consciously make the effort to keep queering our ideas of the concepts - to remember that a spectrum is a spectrum. Labels can be useful for finding community, identifying your experiences and validating your struggles, but as soon as you try to start hyper-defining them, you lose the radical nature of queering our understanding of ourselves and our relationships. We name these concepts in order to give a voice to our subversion of society's arbitrary rules and expectations, not to police each other into conforming to a particular understanding of how a person (with a certain label) "should" act or be.

[our-arospec-experience]

Some Arospec Identities:

This is a list of some Arospec identities! It may be incomplete, and I am not an expert, so please let me know if there are any mistakes/identities you want added. :D

Aromantic: experiencing little or no romantic attraction to anyone; not having romantic feelings.

Aro flux: someone who fluctuates between experiencing romantic attraction and not experiencing it, and/or experiencing romantic attraction to different strengths.

Abroromantic: a fluid attraction, that can mean a fluctuating attraction between genders and/or on or out and/or throughout the aromantic spectrum, to some it's just one or the other, and to others it's both. (explained here by an abro person)

Akoiromantic/lithromantic: an individual who experiences romantic attraction but has no desire or need to have their feelings reciprocated. Sometimes an akoiromantic person’s attraction may fade if a romantic relationship is established.

Alloromantic/zedromantic: someone who does experience romantic attraction. An alloromantic person may be allosexual as well, but not necessarily. This identity is not on the aromantic spectrum.

Cupioromantic: someone who does not experience romantic attraction but has a desire to be in a romantic relationship.

Demi(a)romantic: someone who only experiences romantic attraction after establishing a strong emotional connection to someone.

Frayromantic: someone who experiences romantic attraction, but this attraction fades after getting to know the object of attraction.

Grey-(a)romantic: someone who sometimes, occasionally, or rarely experiences romantic attraction. The attraction they experience may be weak, or it might be infrequent. Also used as an umbrella term for all romantic orientations that fall between alloromantic and aromantic.

Quoiromantic/WTF-romantic: someone who finds romantic attraction confusing, or cannot differentiate between platonic and romantic attraction, or is unsure of whether they experience romantic attraction. It can also mean someone who feels like the concept of romantic attraction doesn't apply to them.

Nebularomantic: is a neurosexuality specific to neurodiverse individuals, and it falls on the aromantic spectrum. It's a label for individuals who have difficulty telling the difference between romantic and platonic attraction specifically due to their neurodivergence (or can't tell the difference at all).

Caedromantic: having been able to experience romantic attraction in the past, and not experiencing romantic attraction any more, with the feeling that the romantic attraction was taken away/destroyed or left because of a traumatic experience.

Aegoromantic: Someone who is aegoromantic enjoys the concept of romance but does not want to participate in actual romantic activities. An example of this would be an aegoromantic individual enjoying watching a romantic show or reading a romance novel. However acting out these romantic stories in real life would not be appealing to an aegoromantic person. An aegoromantic individual would typically not desire a romantic relationship.

Apothiromantic: individuals on the aromantic spectrum who consider themselves to be romance-repulsed, are called apothiromantic. A romance-repulsed aromantic is repulsed by the idea of romance all together. Like with any romantic identity, apothiromantic individuals can have any sexual orientation. Their aromantic identity is not directly connected to their sexual identity.

Arospike: is an aromantic orientation on the aromantic spectrum. This identity is for those who usually do not feel a romantic attraction. Sometimes however, an arospike can experience a (rare) sudden spike of aromantic attraction that will last for a short amount of time. After this they will return just as quickly, to aromantic.

Autoromantic: is a term for individuals who experience a romantic attraction (exclusive or not) towards themselves. It can occur in different forms, such as: fantasizing about a romantic relationship with yourself. Or, as described above: feeling little to no romantic attraction to others but being able to feel romantic attraction to yourself.

Bellusromantic: defined as someone who has interest in (certain aspects of) traditional romantic behaviour such as holding hands and cuddling. However, a bellusromantic would not experience romantic attraction and does not want an actual romantic relationship. So they keyword here is ‘interest’. The interest is there, but a bellusromantic can’t and wouldn’t want to put it into practice.

Fictoromantic: falls under the aromantic spectrum as they do not experience romantic attraction to (real life) people. Fictoromantic is a term used for individuals who experience romantic attraction exclusively towards fictional characters. Fictoromantic is also known as fictonromantic.

Myrromantic: Someone who identifies as myrromantic is on the aromantic spectrum but might feel confused as to where exactly, as they can experience multiple aromantic identities at once. They can also rapidly fluctuate. As an example: a person who considers themself to be both demiromantic as well as grayromantic. This might be confusing to some, which is why myrromantic can be a more comfortable label to identify with.

Recipromantic: (also known as reciproromantic) someone who does not experience romantic attraction until they know that the other individual is romantically attracted to them first.

Requisromantic: someone who experiences a very limited, or no romantic attraction and interest due to some form of emotional exhaustion. The reason of emotional exhaust may have many reasons such as (bad) past experiences dealing with romance or other emotionally draining reasons.

Amicusromantic: means you don’t have romantic attraction to someone unless you form a platonic bond/ friendship with them.(explained here by an amicusromantic person)

Uniromantic: also known as oneromantic or unianthroromantic, refers to someone who feels romantic attraction toward one person and one person only for advanced periods of time, or perhaps one’s whole lifetime.

Desinoromantic: when one does not experience full-on romantic attraction, but a romantic attraction akin to "liking" someone rather than "loving" them

Idemromantic: when one experiences no notable internal differences between platonic and romantic feelings, often categorizing relationships (and feelings) as platonic or romantic based on external factors.

Alicoromantic or Agnoromantic: someone who knows they are somewhere on the aromantic spectrum, but their romantic orientation does not fit in any aromantic spectrum label.

Iamvanoromantic: the desire to not show romantic affection to someone but you may have the desire to receive some (via @/aroace-safe-space-for-all)

Placioromantic: you don’t have the desire to receive romantic affections but you do have the desire to show some (via @/aroace-safe-space-for-all)

Arohaze: alabel for an arospec individual who’s other orientation(s) are in between or both allo and ace/void. source

Apathromantic: Someone whose orientation form of "romance indifferent" which can also be used as a title. It does not distinguish if the person does or does not have romantic attraction, but just that they are indifferent in receiving it or acting it out. Source

Loveless Aromantic: describes someone who is on the aromantic spectrum that is in some way disconnected from the concept of love, does not feel love, may doubt that they feel love, or rejects the idea of experiencing love. source

Lovequeer: someone who fully rejects the concept of “love” as society applies it for romance, and to redefine the word around oneself and the types of love neglected by amatonormativity. source

Subtiliaromantic: someone who experiences zero romantic attraction.

Non-SAM aro: an aromantic individual who doesn’t use the Split Attraction Model, aka the SAM.

Again, tell me if there's any I can add/ have got wrong :)

[sallertiafabrica]

When your love is insignificant.

A comic about my relationship with love as an aromantic and low-empathy person.

Just for context: I was having an aro anguish moment in the middle of the night, woke up and couldn’t sleep again, wrote out this poem-thingy so it’d leave my head, fell asleep again, then proceeded to work on this comic all day this evening, cuz I wanted to do an aro comic for the longest so might as well turn my night-anguish-induced-poem into one.

[st-ivangeline]

I haven’t posted in a while but I just wanted to say I still love being aromantic

[117-opossum-teeth]

<2 hand symbol anyone ??