#romo ambivalent

[flip-flopping-frede]

My attempt at Lithromantic Positivity

I want to preface this by saying I am ~in general~ not a fan of positivity. Trying to “force positivity” is quickly a slippery slope to toxic positivity and superficially. Nonetheless, I feel like I could have realized some lithromantic positivity, and thought it was necessary to share rather than keep it to myself.

It is ok that there’s nothing good about being lithro. It is ok if there are no benefits that we can exploit from ourselves and take advantage of ourselves (or our relationships) with. Lithromantics not necessarily having *any* positives to being lithro (besides our dope flag) means that those of us that have accepted ourselves, are some of the most compassionate, kind, strong, and resilient souls. The amount of self-compassion one has to develop before they can radically accept themselves as lithromantic, is so much higher than essentially any other queer identity.

In a world that has yet to be educated on aromanticsm, aromantics and cupioromantics are scared to date alloromantics, due to alloromantics behaving like it is a “dealbreaker” or “end of the world” if their [romantic] partner is not “in love” [essentially experiencing romo attrac] towards them. It’s valid for both aros and cupioros to be scared to date alloros because of this arophobic mindset they have, tho.

Anyways, a lithromantic might “seem” more appealing to an uneducated alloromantic, since we do experience the romo attrac, or what alloros mistake for “love”. At the same time, once an alloro experiences and returns that romo attrac towards the lithro, the lithro’s romo attrac fades. Not necessarily fades, but flees and turns into romance repulsion (for most lithros). Uneducated, insecure, and/or unaccepting alloros might feel very hurt for the lithros sudden change. Simultaneously, the lithro may also be hurting for not being able to “keep” or “hold on” to the romo attrac. It feels like, being lithro leaves everyone worse off (and is potentially traumatizing for the lithro). This is why lithros who have accepted themselves have learned how to be compassionate and kind to themselves to an extent that most other queer identities never have to go to before they can accept their queer identity, due to there being more external support, education, and acceptance for their queer identities (including for aros).

It is so easy for lithromantics, especially lithros that have chosen to remain closeted, to drown in a sea of their own self-hatred and shame of being an arospec identity that leaves the alloromantics that reciprocated the romo attrac angry and confused. In a world where alloromantics have all the privilege and amatonormativity is everywhere, lithros are so strong, brave, and resilient for existing as our lithromantic identity in a world that refuses to see us, acknowledge us, validate us, support us, accept us, or understand us.

This is where the lithromantic positivity comes in: lithromantics can relate to everyone. Lithromantics know what it feels like to experience romantic attraction; and we know what it feels like to have a romantic relationship look you dead in the face and not want it. We are also romance ambivalent! We understand what it means to have more than one attitude towards romance. We can understand both apothiros and cupioros. We can relate to another largely unknown arospec identity—frayromantism, since frayros also experience involuntary, primary romantic attraction, just like lithros do. We can even relate to alloros in terms of experiencing romantic attraction involuntarily and getting crushes. And finally, we can relate to aros with struggling to desire romantic relationships in the same way an alloromantic does.

There are so many other identities lithromantic is similar to, like aegoromantic, bellusromantic, and frayromantic. Lithros belong in arospec spaces, and lithros’ voices are so valuable to the arospec community. Lithros are essential in terms of helping to bridge the distance and alienation that is only growing between aromantics and alloromantics.

At the same time, lithros need support. Unfortunately, a lot of lithos hate their identity, and feel no pride for it. We don’t feel seen or validated, and a lot of us feel a lot of shame for being lithromantic. I personally didn’t really see any actual lithros celebrating their lithromanticsm during this year’s arospec awareness week, which is sad. We need the arospec community to affirm that are voices are valuable and that our experiences are valid, especially as we are struggling to accept ourselves.

[flip-flopping-frede]

LOL lithromantic and aegoromantic should be best friends. And YES FINALLY for some lithro and frayro rep! I never see lithro nor frayro acknowledged.

Also it is nice to rep for arospec identities that have not figured out the dating thing yet. Some lithros (like myself) may want the type of human connection dating provides, but aren’t able to do that in a full on romantic way so we can’t just “jump into” a relationship with someone who wants to date us.

"Over It"

[aroapl]

Shoutout to ALL aromantics! To aroaces, aroallos, neu aros, nonsam aros. To loveless aros and heartless aros. To lovequeer aros, lovelustic aros, arolovic aros. To aplatonic aros, afamilial aros, analterous aros. To nonaesthetic aros, asensual aros, anattractional aros. To aroqueers, unit aros, primaros. To romo aros, partnering aros, polyamorous aros. To nonpartnering aros and nonamorous aros. To polyplatonic and polyerosis aros. To romance favorable, romance indifference, romance averse, romance repulsed, and romance ambivalent aros. To arospecs of all kinds and questioning aros. To aros who love being aro and aros who still have a hard time with it. To aros that are out, loud, and proud, and aros that are closeted. To gay aros, straight aros, bi aros, and aros of every identity under the sun! To aros all over the world! Shoutout to aros!! You're all so wonderful!

[aromanticmina]

hmmmm 15 22 aro ask

aro fandom ask meme

15. Is there a character you think wouldn’t feel romantic attraction at all, but would still enjoy a romantic relationship?

Misa Amane from Death Note.

hear me out on this one.

I know she's obsessed with light, but to me it feels like she thinks these big feelings of admiration and adoration and aesthetic attraction she feels for him = "being in love"

She's the type of person that romanticizes romance, and probably believes that love is the "biggest feeling" you can have for someone, and she feels so much so strongly for light that she doesn't realize she really isn't actually in love with him.

Even then,because she wants to be closer to light and know everything about him,she becomes his girlfriend and she is genuinely happy in this relationship (even though light treats her like crap and is only using her)

As far as I remember, the anime never mentions if misa had any past relationships, only that she rejected a guy that was obsessingly in love with her (who after that tried to kill her) and was saved by a shinigami that was in love with her. Therefore one could guess that light was her first ever (serious) relationship.

22. Do you have an opinion on romantically shipping aromantic characters?

While is true some people on the arospec experience romantic attraction in some level,or would be okay with being in a romantic relationship, I think if someone is going to ship an aromantic character romanticly, that someone has to be aro(spec). I don't think alloros should ship aro characters at all.

Every time I've seen alloro writers ship an arospec character with another character they either do them like "oh I haven't been able to love before but know that I met you I can finally love!" or simply write a alloromantic relationship and slap the aro label over it.

relationships with one or more aro people in the mix are very different from a fully alloromantic relationship, they're even different from each other! a romo relationship between an aroflux person and a alloro person is going to be different from one between a demiromantic person and a bellusromantic person, and that's without taking into consideration if they're aplatonic or romance ambivalent or loveless aro,etc etc.

I just don't think an alloromantic person could fully understand the beautiful complexity of aspec relationships unless they're in one themselves.

(also,most of the time they're just shamelessly erasing the characters aro identity)

[aroace-cat-lady]

When i say im sex ambivalent i mean i think horny ppl in fiction is the funniest shit i have ever seen.

When I say im romo ambivalent i mean romance in fiction and in other ppl's life is an abstract concept that i can be happy (or even passionate) about if I care enough for the person/character.

But as soon as it is any near at my direction, im running the fuck out of the country, changing my name to Rosmelda Buenavista and pretending that it never happened.

Just for the record.

[aro-culture-is]

Greyro romo neutral is slowly coming to the realization that you can be in a relationship with just anyone and there is auch a thing as incompatibility, even if theoretically in your head you can make any relationship work. It's not that easy. That you might have different needs or values that just don't match up or work.

.

[itsoktocallmegay]

Shoulder touches, my weakness.

[isobug]

Alt. Alloromantic / Alloro / Allorospec flag

I am Aro but me and some friends thought the current Alloromo design was very... plain and hard to work with if you wanted to make an edit or combo. Also lacking meaning beyond "well it's a conformant label so it must look similar to the black and white hetero flag".

I had Alloromo/Alloromospec and Orchidspec (who considers emself to be more allo/allospec instead of aro/arospec) input while making this. I'm just the flag maker.

White for those who experience full Romo attraction and are Romo-positive.

Grey for those who experience Romo-attraction but are not solely Romo-positive or Romo-repulsed (those who are Romo-ambivalent/Romo-Oscillating/etc.)

Black for those who experience Romo-attraction but are Romo-repulsed.

Purple-pink for Orchidromantics /Orchidspecs (those that experience romantic attraction but do not desire romantic relationships) who consider themselves as (or closer) to being Allospec than Arospec or who simply wish to be included. Color taken from the Orchidspec flag.

Pink-red for Romo attraction itself

This was made for friends, so please don't be weird on this post. @conformant-archive

[aroaceconfessions]

I’m technically Grey-aroace (dark grey, way way closer to a- than anything allo) but sometimes I wish I didn’t have that 0.0001% chance of feeling allo attraction because I’m gay and I relate way more with all of the Oriented Aroace gay experiences I’ve read than the Angled Aroace-spec ones. I mainly feel tertiary attractions to other men, all of my QPPs have been other guys, my boyfriend and I are “dating” and plan to legally marry but it’s honestly more of a QPP set-up, I’ve never felt anything beyond “we could be friends maybe” for girls (I don’t even find them aesthetically attractive), and so on. Sometimes I wish I could get out of this grey area (pun intended) because I love my fellow aroace-specs but man. I really cannot relate when anyone talks abt romantic love or sexual attractiveness, even though I’ve felt those about 2 times in my entire life for like a year respectively. Being romo/sex ambivalent doesn’t help either :^|

[approximately20eggs]

hello i am interested in hearing ur Thoughts abt infighting if u wanna share

hello!! yk what sure I will share them

I feel like 90% of the posts in the aro tag that I see fall into one of two categories: either that partnering aros/romo-aros/etc are throwing everyone else under the bus by posting about how they can "still love" and that makes them "redeemable," or about how loveless/romance-repulsed/etc aros are excluding people who experience love in other ways or still want relationships for not being "aro enough." I swear I never see a post uplifting one side of the divide without putting down the other, and as someone who's pretty ambivalent about romance as a whole it's just kind of like.... good god, guys. we're all aro. we're all fighting amatonormativity. other aromantics and other aspec people are not the enemy here and it really makes me sad. like I'm considering just filtering out the aro tag as a whole because of how much of it is stuff like this. and idk how much of that was coherent or what your thoughts on it are but that was what I was thinkin about this morning, and thank you for asking about it /gen

(there's also maybe something to be said about how this seems to almost parallel some other debates I've seen dominating the asexual community before that were regarding ace opinions on sex, but luckily that infighting seems to have died down quite a lot. recently I see many more posts about aces supporting each other regardless of how they feel about sex)

[honeybeeofficial]

really wild how time is fake and within two (2) days I can have both of the strong, distinct thoughts “I don’t actually want to ever get married” and “someone date me Immediately”

[mathematical-cheese]

Thank you for the tag @lostlovepunk :D

1. Where are you on the aromantic spectrum?

I'm aromantic :)

2. What are some other labels you have tried out?

I used demiromantic for ages but then realised it was all more platonic

3. How long have you identified as arospec?

4 to 5 years now I think

4. How old were you when you first heard the term?

14

5. Are you sam or non-sam?

I use sam. I did consider being non-sam but my asexuality certainly isn't entirely influenced by my aromaticism, it's just that being aromantic is a much more important part of my identity. (And also my sexual attraction is whack, I think it's aceflux but with mostly no attraction. The reason I don't want to say greyace is it feels like it's fluctuating rather than it just happens sometimes. But asexual still feels comfy. And this has nothing to do with the question oops)

6. Do you wear a white ring?

Not at the moment, but I want to try. I'm not sure how whether I'll cope with having rings for sensory reasons though :/

7. Are you out?

I am out to my friends. If someone asks, I'll decide whether to tell them or not, usually I'll just say I'm asexual so I don't have to explain and I hate it because as I said before aro is a much more important part of my identity. And I'm not out to my family and probably never will be because my parents have said things that would suggest they'd be arophobic

8. What are some aro headcannons you have?

The Doctor is aro, and Donna Nobel and Rory Williams are both arospec (most likely demiromantic).

I also think Ralsei from Deltarune is quoiromantic and he's very confused about how he feels about Kris

9. Are you romance favourable, indifferent, averse or repulsed?

I'm romance ambivalent, and also quite tired of romance. My feelings of romance are quite mixed, and a lot of what I'd enjoy partaking in are things that could easily have a platonic spin on them. (This includes kissing, whilst the idea of kissing most people is repulsive to me, there's a least one person I'd like to kiss platonically, as more of a 'this is one form of physical intimacy that I'd like to try' rather than a 'kissing is one of the highest forms of expression of (romantic) love uwu' because the latter makes me sick)

Whether I find certain romantic things, like seeing couples being lovely dovey, does also depend on how exhausted I already am of romance on a particular day.

10. Are you in a qpr? Do you want one?

I'm not currently in a qpr. I do want at least one though I think I'd prefer a queerplatonic polycule. To be honest, I'd really just like a small group of people that I'm really close to but there's different facets of closeness, sure some of those would probably be qpps but not all of them

11. Are you in a romantic relationship? Do you want one?

No and probably not. Maybe a soft romo thing but it'd have to be with someone who understood that no matter what I wouldn't be able to reciprocate their romantic feelings

12. Tag at least one arospec blogger:

@shinekittenace @untableflip @arospecjamie @arandomuser17 @aro-thoughts (no pressure though!)

13. Do you know any facts about aro history?

Unfortunately not :(

14. What piece of media that you like has a canon arospec character?

I don't think any of them do :(

15. What's your ideal friendship?

The specifics depend on the particular person but generally honesty and openness. That doesn't mean share everything, like I'd much rather have a friend say "I'd rather not talk to you about x" than have them feel pressured to do so. Also clear boundaries (which can be flexible as the relationship grows/changes) and no pressure to do anything

16. Did you have a good discount chocolate day? (The day after valentine's Day)

Honestly I don't really remember. The entry in my mood tracker says it was an alright day so it wasn't terrible

17. What are some issues you've faced from being aro-spec?

The loneliness. Not just the existential fear of being pushed aside by people you care about for a romantic partner, but also the fact that most people around me won't understand that so I can't even talk to most people about it and it's so isolating

18. What are some positive experiences you have had from being aro-spec?

I feel so free. More free to choose what sorts of relationships I have without being stuck to particular predetermined structures.

I've also made some pretty cool friends who are aro who I probably wouldn't have met if I wasn't aro. (You know who you are heheh)

Arospec Awareness Week Ask

Where are you on the aromantic spectrum?

What are some other labels you have tried out?

How long have you identified as aro-spec?

How old were you when you first heard the term?

Are you sam or non-sam?

Do you wear a white ring?

Are you out?

What are some aro headcanons you have?

Are you romance favorable, indifferent, adverse, or repulsed?

Are you in a qpr? Do you want one?

Are you in a romantic relationship? Do you want one?

Tag at least one aro-spec blogger on tumblr to help grow connections

Do you know any facts about aro history?

What piece of media that you like has a canon aro-spec character?

What’s your ideal friendship?

Did you have a good discount chocolate day? (the day after Valentine’s Day)

What are some issues you have faced from being aro-spec? (if you’re comfortable answering)

What are some positive experiences you have had from being aro-spec?

[aroace-cat-lady]

Im romo ambivalent which means that romance could make me want to throw up or has me giggling and smiling and prophecing the ship as a preacher would do with the bible. There's not in between

[aro-culture-is]

Roleplayer aro romo ambivalent (flux? reaction to romance changes) culture is personally not often having a romance replused day, but still being really touched when your friends ask what to do if you're ever romo replused, since there's some characters dating, and just...Again, being really really touched <3

.

[aroace-cat-lady]

Hopeless romantic but like in aro

[aroace-cat-lady]

Being romo ambivalent is fangirling with your eyes close while your otp kiss on screen.