#sometimes i think i might be somewhere on the aromatic spectrum

[hallowxiu]

if anyone is willing to listen, i'd like to vent/rant under the read more.

This is a little different from what I usually post, but it's been eating at me for a while. I'm also not good at explaining things like this, so I'm sorry in advance, I might jump around a lot.

Basically, I'm bisexual. That's not a secret, but also not really the point, more so it's just context. I'm twenty-six years old, and I'll be turning twenty-seven this month, and out of my almost twenty-seven years, I haven't felt romantic attraction towards anyone since my freshman year of high school when I was around 15/16. This is something that frustrates me as I see my friends and peers getting into romantic relationships, and I want to be in one too.

However, when I meet someone and begin talking to them (usually through dating apps) I start to feel... detached? I'll flirt, exchange numbers, even set up dates, but nearly the entire time I don't really feel anything, but I hope that I might eventually feel something down the road. I usually end up ghosting the person because I know it's wrong to string someone along and I feel bad about it.

I know realistically, somewhat shitty self-esteem aside, I'm not undesirable. There are men who are interested in me, and there are women who are interested in me too. And yet, I have never been in a serious romantic relationship. I want it, but I don't. It's such an odd feeling.

I know I'm capable of liking someone; I know this isn't something that I can't feel at all. I actually had strong romantic feelings for one of my coworkers (this was around 2021-2022) for about a year, and even tried to pursue it, but it didn't work out. But, aside from that, I haven't felt romantic feelings for anyone like that since. I'm starting to worry that something is wrong with me. Why can't I be like everyone else around me and just chose someone from a dating app, go on a few dates, and then get into a relationship with them? Why do I have to make things so complicated for myself?

I don't think my standards are too high. I used to joke about it, but the coworker I had feelings for was really not anything to write home about (I really don't mean this in an insulting way; they just didn't put a lot of effort into things). So instead, for the last few months, I've just been on dating apps, talking to only one to two guys at a time, exchanging numbers, getting to know them, and then ultimately deciding that no, despite them being cute, I'm not romantically attracted to them and it goes nowhere. But I keep repeating this in hopes it'll get me somewhere.

Currently, I'm suspicious that one of my coworkers (a different one) likes me. A few of my other coworkers hint at it, and I just hope that said coworker never makes a move or brings it up. I like them as a friend; we have a lot in common, but I'm uncomfortable thinking about them in a romantic way. Once again, this is really frustrating to me, because we have so much in common, and I don't think they're bad looking at all, that I should be excited at this possibility. But I'm not.

I'm not afraid of intimacy for the most part, and I do want to eventually be in a relationship. I know that. I don't know if I'm asking for advice, if I'm just writing this to let it all out, or a mix of both. All I know is that I'm almost twenty-seven and I'm still no closer to figuring myself out than when I was sixteen, and that's something that's extremely frustrating to me.

[romo-aro-culture-is]

I have a rly complicated situation and I just wanted to talk about it somewhere snd maybe get advice so I hope this is ok!! So lately I've been thinking I might be aromantic or on the aromatic spectrum, but im still really not sure. The issue is that I have a boyfriend who I've been dating for 10 months almost. And I don't really want to break up with him. I kind of want to be more than friends but not romantically dating if that makes sense? Like a different thing entirely or a mix of both. I really have no idea how to bring this up especially since I'm very not sure if I'm aro or arospec or greyro or something... (btw its an online relationship)

Have you heard of alterous attraction? Alterous attraction can be a mix of platonic and romantic or outside of both. As for telling your boyfriend, I would start by thinking about what you want out of your relationship and come at the conversation knowing what you want to change, if anything. It might be helpful for you to have a plan for the clearest way you can say how you feel, in case you get nervous. If you’ve been dating for 10 months, I’m sure he’ll be understanding. Talk it through with him and let him know what you’re feeling, and maybe make sure to define what the terms you’re using mean for you. It might also take him a little bit of time to process or understand what you’re saying.

Finding an arospec label that feels right for you isn’t a necessity, but when I’m trying to figure out labels, sometimes I try telling a close friend that I’m using that label, and see how comfortable I feel with it. Another thing that might seem silly but works for me is looking at memes—I related to a lot of trans dysphoria memes and platonic arospec memes before realising I was genderfluid and aroflux.

I you need someone to help you talk out those feelings more, feel free to send another ask :)

—Mod Thomas

[luck-system-shenanigans]

!!!!! a lot of us who are on here are introjects! if we don't state our source it's usually because we aren't super comfortable talking about it. I think some of us are pretty easy to guess but please don't mention it unless we do !!!!!

Uh hi, making a list of some alters who post or are mentioned on here.

We sometimes sign off with a name or emoji, sometimes forget or aren't sure whos fronting, might put it in the tags or the actual post idk.

Catchalls are Lucky or Luck and He/Him but any pronouns are generally fine.

Hi, I'm Silver, I'm the host, I use primarily She/Her pronouns, my emoji signoff is 🤍, I like music and playing Minecraft.

I'm Toby, He/Him(?), I'm a mixed introject of c! and cc! Tubbo, I'm pretty chaotic, and I like bees and parcour! I have some trouble with reading and writing/spelling, I don't know enough about brains to know if it makes any sense. -🐝

Hey! I'm Lucky/Max I use He/They/She pronouns, I'm pretty into DC and superheroes in general, I'm not really sure what my role is, and my emoji signoff is 🪲. Don't worry, most of what I do and say is /hj.

Hi, my name is Lillian, but only close friends get to call me that. You can call me Lils, Lil, or if you wanna be formal, Lillia. I use She/They pronouns, my gender is Bitch (jk I'm a demigirl) and I'm a lesbian on the aromatic spectrum. I'm also 🍁, and if I'm mean to you don't take it personally. (Seriously don't, she affectionally refers to one of her close friends as "slut")

Uh, hey. I'm Lilly and I'm basically our ideal future self? I like making stuff (writing, drawing, music) and playing videogames.

HELLO! My name is Peter Lightning Williams (i sign off with ltng mostly) i like writing (mostly poetry) and im here to have problems and cause problems! if you can guess my source, please don't mention it. im mostly based on fanfic and stuff and i don't like to talk about my actual source. also i mostly use he/him pronouns but i dont mind they/them either. UPDATE: I also got by A sometimes but im not telling you what it's short for and im good with she/her.

Hey :) I'm Red, im probably somewhere between 14 and 19 (usually 17) I like art and videogames, and i have a pretty fucked up sense of humor. I usually sign off as -red but sometimes i do -g bc me and G are different versions of the same person and it gets confusing. she/they.

Akira 🧵 She/? lesbian, lieks cats

Theseus/Tommy ❤️ He/? mostly based on fanfic versions of tommyinnit, has a lot of opinions about panic at the disco

Ranboo 🌓 He/they/? cc! (& c! ?) Ranboo

V 🎆 he/they i guess. i'm an introject. if you can figure out who i am i won't give you anything but i will be very impressed.

G - you don't need to know shit about me. called Jaskier a slut once and no one is ever going to let it go.

S/M - hi

Live - weird, bitchy, not over his ex.

Lem - doesn't believe in sleep, food, medicine, dentistry, or birds. does believe in aliens.

Spencer - weirdly protective of Live, likes to pretend he's the responsible one but is actually just as chaotic as his frends.

Tyler - he/him, likes roller skating and rollerblading, protective of Lightning.

this'll probably be added to later

[beels-burger-babe]

Honestly it took me a while to realize I wasn’t straight cause as a kid I never had any sort of interest in the romantic parts of life, and since I still have never really had a crush on anyone I’m starting to think I might be somewhere on the aromatic spectrum, but I’m not sure. Back in seventh grade was when I realized I liked girls too tho, there was one girl in my class who I thought was really cute so I would stare at her sometimes, then I would apologize to God in my mind cause I thought it was a sin. I stopped believing that once I got over my denial, so yeah as of rn I identify as pansexual :D

But B isn’t it really late for you? Remember not to stay up to long, I’m gonna go to bed now myself so good night

I love hearing these stories be shared cause a) awareness and breaking stigmas b) it reminds people that it's okay to question your sexuality and to change your mind about it in the future. Just because you currently identify one way, doesn't mean you have stay as that identity for all of your life.

So thanks Pactemon!

Also...

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It may or may not be 2am

[ineffablefool]

(1/4) hey uh ur bio says that u r demiromantic and if it's not too much trouble could i get some help? so i'm starting high school next year and so far, i haven't gotten a crush or anything. romantic attraction? don't know her. but whenever i thought or pictured myself "grown up" i imagined myself with a boyfriend. (i'm a woman) all the evidence is pointing towards me being aromantic, but a little slice of my brain is still, "oh, you're just super demiromantic and violently straight, all of your

(2/4) super close friends have been girls, you just have to become really close friends with a guy and there! instant boyfriend" but i know that won't happen. i won't have some man come and suddenly i'm head over heels. but i've always figured i'd have a boyfriend. i know i'm ace, and i am calling myself ace, but whenever i go to call myself aro, my brain goes "but what if ur actually demi and then all the people you told u were aro will think you were a liar" which i kNOW is stupid but i cant

(3/4) stop thinking it. i dunno why i can't fully accept the fact that i'm aro. is it society claiming that you need a partner to be happy? is it the fact that being in love sounds amazing and like floating on clouds and i want to feel like that? i have no fucking clue. and it's not something against aros, like, i know that if someone told me they were aro i'd have no problem with it. which makes it worse because why is it so hard to let go of the fantasy that i'll have a romantic partner one

(4/4) day? i know, in my heart, that there is a like a 1% chance i wont be aro. but i still cant call myself aro my brain won't let me >:( when did you get your first crush? when is it normal for a demi to first feel romantic attraction? did you think you were aro at first? also i sometimes feel like i shouldn't call myself ace bc im too young to know if i like sex yet? when did u start calling yourself ace? ugh sorry for the super long ask,,, also fun fact it's "how do u write kisses" anon hiii

Hi anon.  I cannot promise you excellent help, but I am still glad you wrote to me again, and I really hope you are about to have a straight 72-hour period of Good Days.  (It might take you that long to read this.  Oops.)

So, first of all: there is nothing wrong with calling yourself aro now and then later deciding you aren’t.  Or realizing you aren’t.  (Two different framings for the same thing -- both are good.)  Or deciding or realizing that you’re somewhere on the aromantic spectrum which you feel is better described with a more specific term.  Demiromantics are still part of the aro umbrella!  It’s not an exclusive club where You Must Be Pure Aro To Enter!  (Anyone who tells you otherwise is setting themselves up as Decider Of What It Really Means To Be Aro, and where are their credentials for that?  Hmm, hypothetical gatekeeping person?  Can I please see your certification from the Institute Of Defining Other People’s Identities For Them?  Oh.  Oh you don’t have one.  Because it doesn’t exist.)

Me saying that doesn’t magically make your brain accept the label, of course.  I am just trying to gently show your brain the door, and it’s the one that has to walk through it.

Assuming you want it to walk through it.  Maybe you decide you don’t.  That’s fine!  But “yes, I am indeed aro -- I am on the aro spectrum somewhere so I am using the label” is a perfectly fine thing to tell people, and if they are not carrying forged credentials from the Institute Of Defining Other People’s Identities For Them, then they will probably be okay with this.

I am not any kind of expert on being aro, or ace, or anything.  I am only an expert in being me.  But to somewhat exhaustively answer the questions from your last part...

I had my first crush when I was thirteen or fourteen.  When I was about ten, I was friends with two girls who both had a very public crush on the same boy, and I claimed to also have one on him in order to fit in, but I was completely lying.  Sorry, Drew.  I’m sure you were quite the catch, but I was not feelin’ it.

I don’t know if there’s a specific time when it’s “normal” for a demiromantic person to start feeling any particular way.  It just sort of happens if it’s gonna.  Maybe it never does.  People are complicated and different and that’s wonderful.

I didn’t know what being aro (or being ace!) was when I was your age, because they weren’t really identities yet.  “Asexual” was for amoebas, or maybe robots.  “Aromantic” was, like, dude, did you misspell “aromatic”?  (Keep in mind, there was technically an Internet in approx. 1995, but there was no Google, no Wikipedia, no YouTube, no social media, the concept of what is now called a “blog” didn’t even really exist yet, and often your parents would not let you on the Internet connection if they could even afford it themselves, not least because it was frequently billed by the amount of time you spent using it. It was incredibly hard to know what things existed in the world back then to even begin to learn about them! Now is so much better. I have all the treasures of the world in my pocket via my telephonic device.)  When I started to learn about asexuality, specifically that you could be ace but not be “an emotionless robot” (gosh has unlearning that kind of judgement been a journey), I jumped straight on that label and never looked back (this was roughly when I joined Tumblr, so I would have been about 32).  I thought I was alloromantic for a while after that, but I’ve come to realize that my feelings on romance probably put me somewhere on the aro spectrum.  And that’s where I am now.

I started calling myself ace, again, when I was about 32, but I didn’t have that label available to me when I was younger.  Ya boi was 13-14 years old, sitting in his bedroom writing letters-to-never-be-sent to his crush, which included long sections about how I had already decided I would never have sex so long as I lived, so once we obviously got married because how could we not when I had such Emotions, he would have to find some other way to get that if he wanted it.  I had no interest in it then.  I never developed an interest in it since.  If I had had the knowledge I have now, back when I was in junior high, I am absolutely convinced that I would have taken the ace label then.  Was I too young to know for sure?  I dunno, we don’t say that people are too young at that age to know they’re heterosexual, so why do other sexualities have to pass a higher bar?  (Because compulsory heterosexuality.  That is why.)

Regardless of your age, if the label of ace resonates with you, you can apply it to yourself.  If the label of aro resonates, you can apply it to yourself.  Or a more specific variant of either, or something else entirely.  And the day you realize “oh gosh, this is not, in this moment, actually me”, you can let the label go, because its only purpose for existing is to be useful to you.

Finally -- this is not something I can personally speak to, but I have seen people who identify as completely aro also state that they enjoy things that our (my? I do not know where you are from) culture frequently sees as romantic.  Like, if you want to have a person who you can snuggle up with, hold hands with, say “I love you” to and have them say it back and both of you mean it -- there are aro people who do all that with their partners, and enjoy it, and don’t see it as interfering with their aromantic identity at all.  I believe them, because they are the expert on being themselves, and I have nowhere near the ego required to decide that I know better.  So that’s something to keep in mind -- cloud-floating and an aromantic identity do not have to be completely separate, because there are lots of kinds of love and of affection, and people are complicated, and that is wonderful.

I hope you enjoy this novel, anon.  It is for you.

[theladyaroace]

So, I need some help. Quite a while ago I figured out I was ace and only a few months ago I started to figure out I might be somewhere on the aromantic spectrum. But I'm a teenager so it's been kind of difficult. I' ve identified as demi-romantic but I can't remember ever feeling romantic attraction. I think I might be because I have a girlfriend and I'm pretty sure I feel differently about her than I do with my friends but I'm not sure. I'm just really lost and was hoping you could help.

Anon, I completely understand. When you’re ace, romantic attraction can be really difficult to parse out. There were a few things that helped my figure out I was aro, like the fact that I’ve never had a crush and how even though the idea of a relationship doesn’t disgust me it always just seemed like way to much work. 

I suppose one thing you can do is to try and examine how and why your feelings towards your girlfriend are different. Maybe if you and her are up to it you could even try and compare how you feel (as I’m assuming she’s alloro?). You could also look into the different forms of attraction to see if those help you discern what you are feeling, that helped me a little. Self reflection like this can be hard, but with something as slippery as romantic attraction its really one of the only ways to figure out what’s going on.

I wish I could help you more, it took me quite a while to figure out I was aro and sometimes I still question it. I don’t have that many followers, but if any of them have some input that they think might help they can feel free to reply!

At the end of the day though, you get to choose how you label yourself. So if you want to try on the aromatic label for a while and see if it works for you then you totally can. I wish you luck figuring this out anon!

[rainbow-sides]

Kinda looks like you’ve been busy tonight with other people, so I’m gonna make this as short as possible. I’ve always felt attracted to people, never sexually, always romantically, so basically asexual. But I’ve never really wanted to be in a real relationship at times, and it always seemed really weird. Am I just weird? What does that mean? I’m finding trouble actually making how I feel into words, sorry!

I'm never too busy to try and help you out, dear (I mean sometimes I'm not on tumblr so I won't see an ask right away, but I'll always help when I see it).That could mean a lot of things, and ultimately it's completely up to you to decide how and if to label yourself. Could mean you're just not in a place in your life where having a romantic relationship would be a positive thing for you. Could mean you're somewhere on the aromatic spectrum. Could mean you're a bit nervous around intimacy based on inexperience or past experience. And all of those things are perfectly okay! Take your feelings and experiences as they come, choose what labels feel right for you in the moment and don't worry about thinking they might change. They totally might, and that's fine! You grow and change as a person, and whether you choose one label to identify with your whole life, or change every few months, that doesn't erase any of the validness of you and your identity. A permanent sense of self identity is rare. It's okay not to know what words to use. Just be you, and that's enough. 💙