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Early signs that you were aro


Cassiopeia

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On 11/05/2017 at 1:04 PM, SamwiseLovesLife said:

I NEVER understoood the Disney princess films. I mean, who wants to be a princess? Like all you got was to be locked up by someone evil (and badass) to wait around forever until you got rescued by a prince (who you had met once before in a field somewhere..). Why would anyone want to be that person???

About the only good "Disney princess" characters which come to mind are Mulan (who is actually a commoner) and Leia (since Disney bought Star Wars).

Don't ever recall a case of such a princess complaining about the lack of effectivness of her bodyguard detail or the failure of her own nation to send a military team to rescue her.
Instead some foreigner shows up, typically without any backup. Rarely with the good sense to provide her with appropriate weapons/clothes/armour...

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On 2017-5-4 at 9:16 PM, rivkael said:

everyone is saying they picked a crush... like damn did I pick a crush. I had a 'crush' on this boy for two years just because i found him aesthetically attractive... two years when i'd moved to a different school and never had to see him. (just looked him up on fb and he's okay, but young me was freaking stunned at this draco-malfoy pretty boy)

 

Young me seemed to think that crushes weren't things you act on, merely objects to be admired from afar.

Last year me was considering asking someone out to see if dating was fun ( am still kind of considering it even though i know it's not a good idea. i hate the idea of not being able to give what they need... I JUST NEED A QPR  OKAY

 

Yeah I totally relate. I did make up crushes but the people I would squish on (sometimes thought was a crush) I never would admit to anyone because I was scared they'd find out or someone would try to make me ask them out. I REALLY didn't want to date them or anything, just look. They would be beautiful and smart/confident/creative and I liked to admire from afar. No way I wanted to do anything with them, why ruin it?? :(

 

On 2017-5-7 at 7:30 PM, UnicornQueen said:

When I was on a school trip in middle school my friend has made up a fairytale about me and my best friends. At the end of the story she asked as to choose between the perfect boyfriend and something we really wanted. I was the only one not to choose boyfriend (but hey, not everyday you get the chance to get Aston Martin for yourself).

I love the ending to this story :P

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So I was 8 and one day my uncle on my father's side invited my parents and me to a restaurant with the purpose of introducing his girlfriend to us and the other way round. In my language, one word for "girlfriend" is the same as the one for "female friend". So guess what. "Oh, so she's a woman he's getting along very well with!", I thought to myself.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Never having crushes on anyone, even after thinking I was a lesbian (not a girl, don't actually like girls that way). Thinking crushes were a decision you made. Not getting why people liked to whine about being single (I still don't get that one).

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I was six or seven years old, attending a small school in a small city in East Euroope still rebuilding after the Second World War. The school had normal classrooms and the gym was the courtyard, but there was a largish meeting room.

 

One day, I'm given some schoolwork and am absorbed in it. Suddenly the teacher says my name, and I look up and realize that I'm the only kid still in my class. The teacher tells me to stand and leads me to the meeting room. She opens the door, and the lights in the room are dim, with music playing. All the pupils my age are dancing in pairs.

 

The teacher leads me to one girl from my class, and arranges our bodies and arms in a tango pose. I feel the girl's cheek pressed against mine and shriek and dash out the door. An adult from the school catches up with me in the courtyard and leads me back to the class. Later, the other kids return to class, and the whole thing is never mentioned by anyone.

 

This isn't a delusion. It really happened.

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On 06/05/2017 at 9:43 PM, IceHurricane said:
  • I never thought about getting married or my wedding as a kid. I'd tell people I'm never getting married 

Marriage never made any sense to me. Just didn't understand why anyone would want to do it.

 

On 06/05/2017 at 9:43 PM, IceHurricane said:
  • I never saw the appeal of kissing. My best friend at the time told me that she was addicted to kissing her boyfriend, and I was just like how????
  • When I got to high school (before I knew the label) I just knew I didn't want to date anyone 

Wanted to do both of these. But had no clue how to go about it.
Spent a lot of time wishing I'd be asked. Even prepared to put up with the "going steady"/"In a relationship" type weirdness.
Even as a teenager I though more about friends than romance. Probably trying to interpret "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" as literal rather than misleading euphemisms.
 

On 06/05/2017 at 9:43 PM, IceHurricane said:
  • When I had celebrity crushes, I didn't want to date them or be with them, I just wanted to meet them and shake their hands, maybe hug them. Celebrity squishes lol. I never kissed any posters or daydreamed about them like most teenage girls did at my age.

I'd find celebrities physically or sexually attractive. Might imagine kissing them, but kissing a picture made no sense.

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  • 2 weeks later...

When I was about 13, I actually made a schoolfriend cry because I was so vehement that I would never get married. I never said that she shouldn't, just that I didn't want to! She was just that upset by the thought of me being forever alone and unloved and tragic. We were at a church school and she was a big believer, so the possibility that there were other ways to be outside of hetero-mono-romo-wedlock weren't quite on her radar.

 

I laughed at her, which I guess was a little unkind, but it was pretty funny. :P Now she's married with a mortgage and a dog, so I don't think I did any lasting corruptive damage.

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I've always been anxious about the prospect of having to get married or to date someone. As a kid, I wanted to marry my best friend, not because I was in love with her, but because I wanted to live with a close friend. I have always been kind of uncomfortable around romantic things and cringed at them in stories. I've never looked for romantic emotions around me and am oblivious to them in general. When I came out to my parents, they weren't surprised. After reading Percy Jackson, becoming a Hunter of Artemis seemed amazing to me. The idea of swearing off romance to go spend my life with just my friends out in nature going on quests sounded perfect to me. Games of truth or dare always made me nervous because of "The Question". Aka, who do you like? If you said no, no one believed you. I always dreaded that. My friends started having crushes and getting into relationships, but I never did. I guess I've always inherently know that I was asexual and aromantic.

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On 6/16/2017 at 10:59 AM, Gingerplume said:

Now she's married with a mortgage and a dog,


^ My brain, which has a tendency to interpret things literally, read your sentence to mean that your schoolfriend was in some sort of polyamorous trio marriage with a mortgage and a dog. You have brought me much amusement for the night.

 

I feel like my extremely formulaic approaches to romance--and later, sex--ought to have been a glaring sign. I tended to think of getting a partner as a glorified, extended role-playing game where you say certain "romantic" or "sexual' phrases to capture the attention of your target--I mean, er, "interest"...like, "romance" and "sex" were two different languages I would switch to speaking, less because I was actually interested in romance and sex themselves, and more because I just liked to game the systems of romance and sex. I had "strategies" optimized for both games of romance and sex, but my greatest satisfaction resulted from the intellectual challenge of creating those strategies, rather than the successful results of my strategies.

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The earliest sign I can think of was after my first attempt at a romantic relationship went south (in high school) all I could think of for the next week was "All I really want is a few good friends."

 

Took me a decade and a lot of soul searching to figure out what that one little sentence actually meant.

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Well for me these signs didn't really appear until around very late primary school. They were appearing mainly in high school because that's typically the age where kids start becoming hormonal. Whenever I would spend time with other girls (which wasn't often) I would feel annoyed or even sometimes repulsed when all they would talk about would be their crushes. And when they would ask me who my crushes were and I would tell them I have never had one, they would seem to think I was weird in some way. So yeah, its mostly for that reason that I never really got along well with other girls. Guys tended to be far less into the romantic side of things.

I just don't get why a person would feel the need to be in a specifically romantic relationship rather than spend time with a good friend. In fact, I don't understand romance at all. When I think of what romance would be my brain links to platonic love, which somehow seems far more appealing to me. All the more reason that its probably extremely likely that I am aro.

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I was thirteen, and there was a girl  at school who liked me. We had been "talking" (her flirting, me being confused by my conflicting sexual and romantic orientations) for a full year. She realized the depth of the mistake when she tried to get physically close to me. As we were walking to the cafeteria she snuck up next to me and locked her elbow with mine. She probably thought it would be a bonding experience to walk around with our arms linked like that 

 

I instantly broke the lock and pulled my arm free. I had been tense from the moment she showed up, and I was ready for her move. To this day, her attempt is the only thing that's ever really triggered the "fight" part of my fight-or-flight response. She ran away crying, and I just stood there wondering why I had done it. 

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I remember when I was in 4th grade and the Twilight series was still quite popular (my mom still loves it to this day shame on her), there were some graphic novel renditions made of the first book. I would read them obsessively (I thought they made me look more mature rip) and I even brought them to my school, which thankfully didn't end with someone telling me I needed Jesus. But it wasn't the romance aspect I enjoyed, oh no. It was more the story and the characters that I liked. Heck, the romance was barely noticeable to me.

Another thing that's been happening for as long as I can remember were my "crushes." In reality they were just squishes, but little uneducated me interpreted them as crushes. I would think, "Woah I like that person's face and I also want to be their friend. Obviously has nothing to do with platonic or aesthetic attraction. It must be a crush!" 

My most telling young aro moment would probably have to be when I was younger and I thought, "I need to have a celebrity crush!" I mulled it over and I came to the conclusion that it would be Paul fricking McCartney. I mean he was a fine young man back in the day right? I cringe just thinking about. 

So gee willikers that's my aro story.

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I thought of one. Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy came out back when I was still a kid. I really liked the idea of having a daemon (that was female if you were male and male if you were female). The implication being that you weren't missing some essential part of yourself, in search of your 'other half' to 'complete' you; you were already whole in and of yourself. You could be your own 'soulmate'. I really liked that idea. 

 

(when I was much older I also read Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which has a similar idea)

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  • 1 month later...
On 28/06/2017 at 1:40 PM, McNuggetManChild said:

@James Oh there's nothing wrong with Paul McCartney. It's just that he's hella old now and choosing him showed how much of a noob I was in the realm of celebrity crushes. Also the fact I had no attraction to him whatsoever; I just liked the Beatles and their music.

I chose musicians I liked the music of because I was less likely to forget who I supposedly had a crush on. Though that kind of backfired on me when Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) album came out, friends freaked when they thought my crush was Marilyn Manson. I picked more generic looking singers for the next 10 years. sigh. 10 years of being asked who my crush was.....did my friends never notice I never asked them? probably because they couldn't compute that I didn't care...and teens are self-absorbed.

 

On 02/07/2017 at 7:27 AM, NullVector said:

I thought of one. Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy came out back when I was still a kid. I really liked the idea of having a daemon (that was female if you were male and male if you were female). The implication being that you weren't missing some essential part of yourself, in search of your 'other half' to 'complete' you; you were already whole in and of yourself. You could be your own 'soulmate'. I really liked that idea. 

 

(when I was much older I also read Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which has a similar idea)

I just found out I have the first 2 of his trilogy, though I only remember reading 1. I am really loving the premise as I re-read them at the moment!

 

as for early signs of being aro...I guess the first time I was asked out I must have been 12 or something, I startled, said no, then preceded to freak out, terrified of being attacked by other offers for dates. I have mellowed, but back then being asked out felt like an attack or a threat. 

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Well I simply adored Disney and still do. I loved the animation more than anything, but I was very content with the plot, most of the time. One thing I did say was "How did the kiss make Snow White alive again?" and my mother would reply "Chloe, you saw the movie! It was true love's kiss!" and I would reply "Well do all the dead people in cemeteries have no one they loved or that loved them?". I was certainly a cheeky little child, but I still loved Disney movies, I was simply very confused when "true love" became the answer to everything. That's probably why Lilo and Stitch is my favorite movie of all time! 

 

Other than that, I hated and still hate romantic books, like the bachelor, or Divergent. I also covered my eyes and screamed "EWWWWW" whenever people would kiss in movies. I also said "I'll never get married! Never ever!". Guess I was aromantic for most of my life!

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There was this ice rink I used to go to every now and then when I was 13-14 or somewhere around there. The one guy who worked there was always friendly. One day my mom said "I think he likes you". After that I avoided him like the plague.

 

So many things I've forgotten from years ago that make more sense now... :rofl: 

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  • 4 weeks later...

there are plenty in the couple years before I started identifying as aro (at 17) but I think the earliest was when my best friend and I used to plan hypothetical weddings and honeymoons.  seriously, we had a notebook and we'd plan a whole bunch, including themes, dresses, locations, menus, etc.  I don't remember how old we were, around 8-11.  we also sketched dresses--I've wanted to be a designer since I was about 6.  anyway, I never once imagined my own wedding.  yeah, i'd think about my dress, and even about the other aforementioned aspects, but it was just...what i'd like, not what I wanted.  does that make sense?  like, not "I want to get married in the winter" but "a winter wedding would be beautiful".  and I certainly never gave any thought to my future husband whatsoever.  to this day, I think everything about a wedding would be great fun (and I do plan to design and make myself a dress, just to have) except for the marriage part.  similarly, any depiction of romance in media had no effect on me beyond "that looks like a fun activity to do with someone you like" (platonically, maybe sexually).  never anything to the effect of "that looks so romantic, I wish I had a boyfriend".  I was totally neutral towards romance, until my personal experience of what it's like, which happened sort of in tandem with my discovery of my aromanticism: since then I've been fairly repulsed.

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