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What issues effect you the most as an aro person?


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21 minutes ago, Mark said:

I've never wanted to do the cohabitation thing anyway.

I've never lived alone. I've been flat sharing since I was 18. I've always had my own room and secluded myself from time to time, but I always appreciated that there's someone at home who can take my mail or let me in if I accidently shut myself out or with whom I can calculate living costs, discuss issues in the house and share some foodstuff with, that'd just spoil if I bought it for myself. There's just something intrinsically reassuring about the fact that there's someone who'd hear you out if problems occur, because you're kind off in it together. It's also nice to know that there's someone who'd notice, if something medical happened to me. Problem is, as perfect as good roomies are (not to close but not to distant either), they are expected to leave your side and start their own life/family. The older you get, the more crazy involuntarily single people can become =D" 

 

Like, I think I'd be fine if I lived alone, but I'd fear that I'd socially isolate myself, which is something I really don't want. To much freetime and social isolation gives way to negative cognitive spirals. Roomies keep me grounded and offer distractions. They can also introduce me to new people. If I isolate myself, I'd further reduce my chances of ever meeting a few kindred souls IRL and while I said that I have zero hopes of meeting anyone, I don't really wanna give up looking either .___. 

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3 hours ago, Kojote said:

Like, I think I'd be fine if I lived alone, but I'd fear that I'd socially isolate myself, which is something I really don't want. To much freetime and social isolation gives way to negative cognitive spirals. Roomies keep me grounded and offer distractions. They can also introduce me to new people. If I isolate myself, I'd further reduce my chances of ever meeting a few kindred souls IRL and while I said that I have zero hopes of meeting anyone, I don't really wanna give up looking either .___. 

 

I agree. But if you move a lot maybe you can rent a room in someone elses apartment?

 

My biggest aro issue right now is that as I try to make friends in a new city I feel like I have to hold back with some people. Because otherwise they might take it as romantic interest. Otherwise I don't feel much affected.

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2 hours ago, Holmbo said:

I agree. But if you move a lot maybe you can rent a room in someone elses apartment?

 

Well idk. Maybe everything will be alright. I'll be moving in with a friend of mine soon. New city, but at least I've got a familiar face. It's only for 4 month, though (duration of my bachelor thesis). After that it's a game of wherever I get a job. Maybe I can stay, maybe I can't. Just thinking about forming all those new bonds, trying to socialize, coming out, struggling with romantic threads and all that jazz just to rinse and repeat is exhausting. I've moved a lot in my life, I guess I'm just wishing for some stability, preferably in form of a few, already close people I don't have to win over and come out to all over again. I don't really want to room with a new stranger for the rest of my life.

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14 hours ago, Hey you in the corner said:

The obscene amount of romance in media. 

 

It's like @Morpheus says in The Matrix :D

 

Quote

The Matrix Romance is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

 

 

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But taking my joke above a bit more seriously, if I may - what is "the truth"?

 

So, I think part of the reason that romance is so prevalent in mass-media is that it's convenient for various political/economic elites to let it be so. It functions a bit like the distraction used in a magic trick (don't look over there! look over here! don't look behind the curtain!). Or like the 'soma holidays' in Brave New World. As the 'opium of the people', in Marx's original sense. And if people are constantly guided or steered to frame the surest road to their happiness in terms of chasing the 'perfect' one-to-one relationship, then they need never seek fulfillment at a societal level. They never have to properly face the idea that our society isn't presently run in the interests of making the majority of people happy. Or actively do stuff to change that. Basically, romance, as conventionally presented, does nothing really to challenge the political/economic status-quo and arguably reinforces it in all kinds of ways - hence its prevalence in mass-media (which goes far in excess of any intrinsic appeal it has, IMO). I might go as far as to say that Romance has replaced God (and (neoliberal) Economics has replaced Theology). 

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@NullVector In Lauren Berlant's opinion, you're actually a lot more right than you might expect! Have this quote from their essay Sex In Public that I recently wrote a paper about because it really resonated with me (it's specifically in relation to heteronormativity and the problems of its inherent shunting of all "intimacy" into the private sphere, but I definitely read it as applicable to amatonormativity in general): 

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"[Heteronormativity] conjures a mirage: a home base of prepolitical humanity from which citizens are thought to come into political discourse and to which they are expected to return in the (always imaginary) future after political conflict. Intimate life is the endlessly cited elsewhere of political public discourse, a promised haven that distracts citizens from the unequal conditions of their political and economic lives, consoles them for the damaged humanity of mass society, and shames them for any divergence between their lives and the intimate sphere that is alleged to be simple personhood.

Ideologies and institutions of intimacy are increasingly offered as a vision of the good life for the destabilized and struggling citizenry of the United States, the only (fantasy) zone in which a future might be thought and willed, the only (imaginary) place where good citizens might be produced away from the confusing and unsettling distractions and contradictions of capitalism and politics." (Berlant, 553) 

That's from the 1998 essay in which they coined the term "heteronormativity" in the first place. Still disconcertingly relevant 19 years later...

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Interesting - I'll have to try reading the whole essay some time. I think it's rather tragic actually @Dodecahedron314. To watch people (parents, lovers) invest so much in the attempt to create little islands of happiness and sanity in the midst of the surrounding chaos. But that's never going to be enough. You have to address the chaos as well.

 

I read this a while ago (in a short essay of David Graeber's) and it stayed with me:

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The fact is that most children grow up believing in anarchist morality*, and then gradually have to realize that the adult world doesn’t really work that way. That’s why so many become rebellious, or alienated, even suicidal as adolescents, and finally, resigned and bitter as adults; their only solace, often, being the ability to raise children of their own and pretend to them that the world is fair. But what if we really could start to build a world which really was at least founded on principles of justice? Wouldn’t that be the greatest gift to one’s children one could possibly give?

 

*by which he is meaning the sorts of things parents will tell their children - like play nicely, treat one another fairly, share your toys, etc.

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Quote

The Matrix Romance is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

It's even true for the taxes.... like income splitting for couples!

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@Ace of Amethysts this exist in some countries.

 

 

If we have a country with a very simple (unrealistic) tax plan for yearly incomes:

 

10%  $0 – 30,000

20%  $30,001 – 100,000

40%  $100,001 and higher

 

Say, my partner makes $110,000 (good catch), but I make only $30,000 . We would now pay in sum taxes of:

$110,000 · 0.4 + $30,000 · 0.1 = $47,000

 

But when income splitting is available and we are married, she can now “transfer” her income to mine. So together we make:

$110,000 + $30,000 = $140,000

which we split and distribute on both of us, resulting of two incomes of $70,000. This is the middle tax bracket, so in sum we would pay taxes of:

$70,000 · 0.2 + $70,000 · 0.2 = $28,000

 

This means we save $19,000 in taxes with income splitting. Clearly such a rule benefits married couples with a high difference in income.

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Feeling left behind because people tend to talk about their romantic relationships in the light while leaving my platonic ones in the dark. It’s a hard feeling that can often be lonely.

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On 2/2/2017 at 7:35 PM, Kojote said:

 

Well idk. Maybe everything will be alright. I'll be moving in with a friend of mine soon. New city, but at least I've got a familiar face. It's only for 4 month, though (duration of my bachelor thesis). After that it's a game of wherever I get a job. Maybe I can stay, maybe I can't. Just thinking about forming all those new bonds, trying to socialize, coming out, struggling with romantic threads and all that jazz just to rinse and repeat is exhausting. I've moved a lot in my life, I guess I'm just wishing for some stability, preferably in form of a few, already close people I don't have to win over and come out to all over again. I don't really want to room with a new stranger for the rest of my life.

I'm currently in the process of looking for new apartments after living with my closest friends for 3 years, so I totally get this. For me I just want to be able to live with someone for an extended period of time, for stability, without them choosing to live with their romantic partner over me. Uhg. I really hope you find a comfortable living situation, moving is stressful, and finding new people to be in our lives is so hard the older we get D:

 

 

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Honestly, I didn't really have any issues with my parents' divorce, but I'm staying with my mom this week and it appears as though she has a...boyfriend-type creature????...and seeing them interact in a way that parses as romantic enough to trigger my romance repulsion is really throwing me off, in a big way. This is, to be perfectly honest, the one thing that's bothered me the most about their entire divorce, is the fact that now I have to deal with my mom doing the romance thing with people.

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The most common issue I see is that I have had really good female friends over the years but once they are involved with a guy they can't really be close to me anymore. No amount of telling them I am not a threat to them helps. 

 

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The fact that some people tell you that you haven't found the right person yet. Also, when I tell them that I'd rather be in an untraditional relationship where there's no romance and sex involved and would rather be just platonic companionate partners and they smack back with 'that's not right' and/or 'that's not possible'.

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8 hours ago, Iamwilliame said:

The most common issue I see is that I have had really good female friends over the years but once they are involved with a guy they can't really be close to me anymore. No amount of telling them I am not a threat to them helps. 

Romantic relationships appear to have this odd exclusive quality. In that it's common for people getting into them to start cutting off other kinds of relationships. Most notably friends, but sometimes even family.

 

6 hours ago, karnzter said:

The fact that some people tell you that you haven't found the right person yet.

Something which it seems never stops :(
 

6 hours ago, karnzter said:

Also, when I tell them that I'd rather be in an untraditional relationship where there's no romance and sex involved and would rather be just platonic companionate partners and they smack back with 'that's not right' and/or 'that's not possible'.

IME it tends to be OK to be seeking amantonormativity, nothing or (even) "just friends".
But the moment you indicate you are interested in something outside the romantic/platonic binary you tend to get this kind of response. (Or something along the lines of "keep your options open", with the implication that you really should only be looking for something romantic.)

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