#relationship anarchy

[bread-is-bread]

"You can't just pick and choose the parts of a romantic relationship that you want"

No, actually I can.

I can do exactly that. If I want to see them multiple times a week with no commitment and no exclusivity I can.

If I want to cuddle and kiss and not be any more intimate than that I can.

If I want to go on fun dates and spend time together and have little adventures but never call them my partner I can.

If I want to do these things with multiple people at the same time I can.

If I want to call it hanging out instead of dating I can.

If I want to keep things private but also post us being silly on my close firends stories I can.

I can do anything I want to as long as all the parties in the relationship are happy and it's not hurting anyone.

Other people cannot define my relationships for me.

[theemomarshmallow]

God I love freedom

welcome to "what relationship is it anyway" where the rules are made up and the points don't matter

[sminny-wew]

It's so funny being a shipper when you're aroace it's like you're an anthropologist, like hey fictional blorbos who live in my head let me study your bonds under a microscope and take notes on what happens when I throw Valentines Day into your enclosure

[millybrowm]

i made this zine while experiencing the emotional come-down of a week spent with close friends. the kind of friends to whom you never have to explain yourself. the kind of friends who make love, joy, goofiness, and tenderness so easy to access. the kind of friends with whom you can always pick up where you left off, no matter how much time has passed. while parting ways has become easier over the years, it is always still a Little Heartbreak. every time. i am grateful we get to do what we were made to do: love each other, touch each other, swim in each other, and yes, miss each other.

[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!

[twigstarpikachutroll22]

Reblog for something aspec to happen to you this summer

[agrebel18]

i love you polyamorous relationships, open relationships, friends with benefits/friends that have sex with each other, queerplatonic relationships, friendships that have some weird queer element to it, relationship anarchy, staying single and i love anything that doesn't match what society considers "normal"

[homobuckybarnes]

[Image ID: a meme of two men holding hands, text over the man on the left says “aromanticism” and text over the man on the right says “polyamory”. Over their joined hands it says “relationship anarchy”. End ID]

[runwiththerain]

more people need to be aware of the term alterous attraction (a desire for a close emotional connection with someone, but it's not completely romantic or platonic) and use it instead of calling everything a qpr. because by calling everything a qpr you are turning that term into a label instead of what it actually is - an umbrella term for many non conventional types of relationships.

[aroacemisha]

My brain gave me this image.

[underwhelmingalchemist]

"There's no platonic explanation for this" there is if you're aromantic enough about it, hope this helps!

[lapdogchase]

i’ve begun saying people “obviously aren’t in a romantic relationship, they have something deeper and more intimate going on” as this seems to confuse and upset alloromantics

(ID: a banner with text over the aro flag. the text says: i don't care about blorbotags go wild but this post is about hating the hierarchial system of relationships & if you're mad about it you're probably been poisoned by ace discourse brainworms. and are also proving my point. /end ID)

[aceonice]

Fandom, and conversation about relationships in general, is more fun when intimacy and romance are viewed as concepts that exist independently of each other. Then you get more nuanced and unique relationship dynamics instead of just "intimacy = romance" that perpetrates a hierarchy in which every other relationship falls below romance

[ale-arro]

the annoying thing about unpacking amatonormativity is that it is both an internal and external force. and so i do all of the work of unpacking my internal amatonormativity, like ok the hierarchy of relationship types is bullshit and built on systems of power, you can do whatever with whoever, etc. etc., but i can't actually do whatever with whoever, because i still live in a world that's amatonormative, and so nobody will do whatever with me. and in turn this makes unlearning the fact that internal amatonormativity wants me to incredibly lonely when i am single very very hard because well. um. i am lonely. for a real and concrete reason outside of my control

[heartless-aro]

Dismantling the relationship hierarchy is not about rearranging it so that sexual and romantic relationships are devalued while QPRs become the new “more than friends.” We need to completely do away with the idea that relationships exist on a fixed hierarchy. Some people will consider friend(s) or a zucchini/QPP the most important part of their life. For some people, their most important relationship will be a sexual relationship (and not necessarily one which includes romance!). And some people will still consider their romantic partner the most important person in their life, and that’s fine too.

Just as it’s harmful to tell an aroace person that romantic and sexual relationships are the most important ones, it’s also harmful to tell an alloaro person that sex is inherently less important than romance or to tell an alloromantic aplatonic person that friendship is inherently more important than romance. There is no way to rank relationships that will not devalue the experiences of at least one group of people, nor is there any reason why we need to rank relationships in the first place.

[yeehawpim]

here is the original comic i'm talking about

here is some stuff on relationship anarchy

here is a blog post that helped me (it's about sexual attraction but it resonated with me about romantic attraction too)

I get this isn't a very satisfying conclusion, but hopefully this helps someone😅also to add on, it's totally ok not to have a label or change as you figure out more about yourself! I think realizing I could be comfortable and happy being aro/ace really helped me decide