#obligatory disclaimer that this is from my own personal experiences as an aroace person and not written to be universally representative

[thefortysecondolive]

Been thinking about allo- and amatonormativity lately and how many examples I can offer up first-hand even from the last couple of years and I’m just… I’m tired.

I’m tired of it only being a matter of time before showrunners turn that close m/f friendship into a romantic subplot. I’m just about as tired of “if they don’t kiss/hold hands/make out/have sex on screen then it’s not queer rep” as I am of “there’s no platonic explanation for this” and “friends don’t do that.” I’m tired of “I just don’t get why you’d headcanon them as aspec,” even about characters who have never expressed any preference at all. I’m tired of the implications that reading a character as aspec or a relationship as platonic is somehow homophobic. I’m tired of aspecs who are canon in the source material being erased in adaptations and fandom. I’m tired of “they can still have a relationship though!” as a justification for shipping without engaging with aspec identities.

And that’s just talking about internet spaces—the spaces I come to as a form of escapism. That’s not even starting on the bog-standard get-to-know-you questions about having a partner, which I can either tactfully deflect or answer honestly and out myself in a first conversation. The “well, but if you had to—?” The “when you’re a parent you’ll understand” and the insinuations that the types of relationships I do form aren’t meaningful. Being told I’d clean up on lesbian dating apps and having to explain to my therapist why that took me aback. The way people say “just friends” like friendship is something lesser. Every time I’ve been taken to be dating a close friend. The way a bartender once asked “what’s funny about that?” when my friend and I laughed at the implication we were in that bar as a couple. The friend from my very queer contra community who said he didn’t really get why people wanted to have words to express that they didn’t do something. The other friend who told me I needed to “reevaluate my prejudices about romance.” The frequency with which in-person queer spaces are sexualized or focused on finding a partner. The podcast I listened to that defined QPRs with barely any reference to the term’s origins in ace and aro communities. The tax benefits for married couples and the restriction of visiting privileges in medical settings. How difficult it is to afford rent on a single income.

It’s all just. so. tedious. And I’m so tired of it.

[dasaene-archive]

as a sp/so how do you form a deep connection with your friends? do you prefer to hang out in groups? how do you feel when you lose a friend? how do you deal with rejection? (sorry if this is too personal!)

It’s no problem, I don’t mind talking about it lol (in fact I think I like talking about myself too much). Not all sp/so people are the same obligatory disclaimer yadayada. Got longer than I was expecting so uh whoops

For your first question, the short answer is: I don’t. As an army brat that has moved around a lot since I was 3 yrs old, that’s probably contributed to how I became sp/so in the first place and how I lack many stable friendships. I have maybe two or three people I can say I have healthily and happily bonded with to a closer degree to in my life.

I really like being able to know things about people so I can individually cater to other personalities and experiences, but I’m really bad at returning the favor with personal information of my own. So because I believe in an equal trade of info, I generally don’t want to get personal with people because I know that since I don’t have that accurate sx radar to choose people, there’s no guarantee I’ll trust the person enough to be willing to try to push my sp boundaries for them even after they do the same for me. It’s……really bad lol

I guess that makes my definition of being close to someone is that I seek out consistent interaction with them, know most of their tastes, and continuously want to know about their life? I mean, having a deep connection to me means that I’m willing to talk about things that are bothering me, about things I consider bad about myself or events in my past, wanting to help carry the burdens of the other person, and willing to share my personal space and belongings with them, but very few have ever reached that so I consider the degree of closeness I have to my friends based on the first criteria.

Second question, I like hanging out in groups because that way I’m less likely to run out of things to talk about. I’m a bad conversation starter irl but I’m pretty good at adding onto other people’s thoughts, so that’s easier in a group situation where more people = more ideas to go around. It’s really draining though, so most of the time I prefer one-to-one. I think most variants do though. It can be pretty awkward sometimes if it’s another sx-blind I’m alone with since sx-blinds seem to be better at adding to conversations than starting them, from my experience.

Third, I’ve lost a lot of friends since I’ve moved so much, but before I got a cell phone it was really bad. I would move to one place, start some friendships that only would last a year or two at most, then move and never speak to them again. They would give me their emails or phone numbers so that I could call them from my home phone or my mom’s cell but like….it was super awkward. And most of them looked weirded out that I was a twelve year old without a cell phone. So they probably weren’t good friends anyway, but early on I had to accept that none of my friendships would last very long. I think the first friendship that sent me on my way to sx-blind city was this girl in first grade that was literally my best friend but when she moved and I wanted to call her up again since I hadn’t heard from her in two years she was like “um…hi?” So you can see how that affected my poor lonely 7 yr old self. So basically now whenever I lose a friend I feel sad but it’s usually not hard for me to accept because…that’s kind of how it’s always been my whole life

Thanks to cell phones though, now I have record-breaking friendships that have lasted a hefty five years and two moves. So that’s nice, although one of them not speaking to me after about two years of talking to me before stung, especially since we moved to the same area and I spotted them at the mall once after we had stopped talking. I think this mutual “friend” started up some drama between us that made them not want to talk to me anymore buuuuuuut that’s another story for another day. Ya know, typing this out makes me realize that was such a stereotypically teenage thing that you see in the movies

Four, idk if you mean romantic rejection or just rejection in general, but I haven’t had to deal with the first since I’m basically aroace and as of right now am not interested in that. I’ve been a pretty fortunate person and the only real threat I’ve felt when it comes to rejection involves academics. My identity got so messed up and closely tied to academic success (which is why I debated a 3 fix for a while) that in order to avoid threats to my academic prospects I became a raging perfectionist with horrible anxiety. So my version of dealing with rejection was to overpower the possibility I would ever be rejected. Do not recommend whatsoever, I’m still recovering. When it comes to friendships, when someone wants to be left alone or doesn’t want to be my friend, I don’t take it personally since I don’t generally get that close to people anyway and if I was in a bad mood/didn’t want to talk to someone I would appreciate if people left me alone too. My sp-domness makes it easy, at least in my case, to back off from people, even if I don’t always understand or like the reason