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What You Thought You Were Before You Identified as Arospec


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6 hours ago, RedNeko said:

Before I realised I was aromantic I thought I was asexual. I actually dismissed aromantic at the time because I tried to imagen what it would be like to not experience romantic attraction but I just couldn't. Turns out that's because I was trying to remove an experience from my life I had never had, hence finding it impossible to do.

 

And why did I think I was asexual? I have no idea, it's a complete mystery to me. (Although if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them)

i also wonder if I were asexual due to aromantism. i think maybe it's because aromantism is almost only mentioned together with asexuality not to mention that sexual and romantic attraction is so often linked together, so the logic mind were like if i feel a lack of attraction (without knowing the word) maybe that means im asexual? Because that was the only term with a lack of attraction I knew. 

 

 

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28 minutes ago, Natkat said:

i also wonder if I were asexual due to aromantism. i think maybe it's because aromantism is almost only mentioned together with asexuality not to mention that sexual and romantic attraction is so often linked together, so the logic mind were like if i feel a lack of attraction (without knowing the word) maybe that means im asexual? Because that was the only term with a lack of attraction I knew. 

 

 

Yeah, maybe it was something like that

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I started with straight then figured out I might be bi. I always thought I had to feel some kind of romantic attraction since I had a total of two squishes and both of them were towards girls. Then I started to date a girl to whom I thought I had a crush on but it wasn't enough. It was just a strong feeling of wanting to be friends and when everything went romantic it felt wrong. After a breakup I thought I was straight in the end but it just didn't fit so I was back to bi or demi or pansexaul. Then I saw something about aromanticism and a seed of doubt rouse inside my mind. I dismissed it, though, since I still thought my squishes were crushes. Then I started dating a guy and I finally understood that I'm aromantic. Also, with him I understood I might be asexual too. I didn't think I was at first and still am not sure but I felt no desire to do stuff with him nor did I feel romantic attraction. And now everything makes sense :D 

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First, I thought I was heteroromantic and heterosexual. It just made sense since I looked at boys and thought they were "cute." As a kid, being straight was encouraged and I didn't even learn that gay people existed until I was in 6th/7th grade. As I got older (16 y.o.), I realized that sexual desire was a thing for others, and switched my label to heteromantic and asexual. However, even as I came out to my mom as heteromantic asexual, it felt like I was trying to justify myself and minimize the change, rather than being truly honest about how I felt. I didn't really feel like heteromantic was an accurate description of myself. By 18, I realized I wasn't interested in reciprocation, but still felt romantic interest in men, so I went with lith(hete)romantic. A year later, I realized I could be interested in girls and, realizing that gender didn't even really factor into it, I changed my internal label to lith-panromantic. I'm not 100% sure about how to label my identity now, but I know I'm at least somewhere on the aro spectrum.

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Before I realized that aromanticism was a thing I assumed romantic and sexual attraction were always tied together so if I was bisexual I was biromantic by default. Then I became familiar with asexuality, romantic orientations (not aro tho, somehow), and split attraction and I ran the gamut from thinking I was bisexual homoromantic to bisexual heteromantic, to heterosexual homoromantic and it was so confusing because I knew my romantic and sexual orientations were different but I couldn't figure out what exactly was wrong with all the ways that I was trying to describe myself. Nothing fit comfortably until I learned about aromanticism.

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I definitely thought I was straight at first, simply because i thought, "well, i'm not gay, so i must be straight." I think another part of that is that i have been aesthetically attracted to girls, so i thought that that was what crushes felt like. Even though i was perfectly content just viewing them from a distance. The aesthetic attraction definitely confused me for a while cause i went from heterosexual heteromantic (despite never having any interest in sex or romance), then asexual heteromantic, then finally asexual aromantic.

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I guess I used to think I'm just a really weird straight kid... Because everyone seemed to be convinced  of my straightness (and they still are), but I always knew I wasn't as interested in relationships as everyone else, so I just thought I was weird. Then I found out about asexuality and could identify with that very fast and thought that was the whole reason why I felt like the weird kid. I thought my squishes were crushes, so I thought I might be biromantic and after that it took me some time to understand that my that I'm actually aro. I think my problem was, that I used to think of boyfriends and girlfriends as really good close friends kind of like in a qpr.

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16 hours ago, Zemaddog said:

I definitely thought I was straight at first, simply because i thought, "well, i'm not gay, so i must be straight."

Yeah, I had the same feeling. A few years ago, I was really confused cause I realized that I might not be straight, and of course, I hadn't heard about aromanticism, so I thought that meant I must be gay automatically. And then I realized I was overreacting and went back to calling myself straight, which was still totally wrong.

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I assumed straight for a while of course (here's to heteronormativity), then I realized that there were other options besides gay and straight, and that they were okay! :o and for a while (when I realized that um wow let's be honest girls are really friggin cute and I am a sucker for pixie cuts) I assumed I was panro demi- because I hadn't experienced sexual attraction but still figured I probably would eventually, maybe when I was married (I had a conservative upbringing and wanted to wait til after marriage anyways), and, well, I had squishes galore that I thought from context (and the lack of knowledge of the term 'squish') that they were probably crushes. Fast forward, I got married, panro ace? Until my husband and I had a conversation that started getting me thinking that I was more in line with aromantic.

 

So... heteronormativity's a mess, everybody is adorable, and I have no feelings ever :D

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I thought I was straight at first and then I realised that I never felt any attraction to, or had a crush on a guy before.Then I thought I must be gay until I realised that I didn't have any attraction to or crushes on girls either. Leading to me being completely confused and thinking something was wrong with me. But then I heard the term aromantic in a youtube video and after some googling I realised that I was aromantic. I still thought I was heterosexual for a while after that until I learnt that (unlike media portrays it) you don't have to be sex repulsed to be asexual. So, now I identify as aromantic and asexual :)

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Well, I mostly questioned if I was straight lol. Cos you know, every lesbian has a straight girl crush, and I did not have one, so I must be faking right? Everyone said strong feelings and sexual attraction supposed to come together as a buy one get two deal.

 

Also the situation was more complicated, as the only thing close to a crush was a platonic squish, but I had that with all sorts of genders. I was so confused. Most of the time there was nothing sexual about it, I just wanted to have deep conversations about the meaning of life, hear their opinions about space travel and extra terrestrial life, wanted to bake brownies with them, or go for a hike in the mountains... I did not really mind that one of these friends was a gay man, in a committed relationship. Or a straight girl. Or you know, my actual (now ex)girlfriend. Quite often, I had several people I had squishes on, but I did not dare to talk about it. Cos you know. It does not supposed to work that way.

 

So yeah, I thought I was proper messed up.

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I thought the reason I wasn't crushing on anyone was because I live in a small town and just figured that it wasn't happening because the lesbian population in any town is hard to find.  I was okay with this, even though my aunt kept bugging me about finding someone.  I finally told her 'I don't give a fuck about relationships' and this was before I discovered the word 'Aromantic.'  So I think I knew even though I didn't have a word for it.   And what's great is my aunt hasn't brought romance up since :)

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i always thought i was straight, and tbh i internalized a lot of homophobia & arophobia that existed around me & that came out in me doing this obnoxious double-reacharound thing where i pretended to be superior for not being interested in romance (singles club & all that) but sort of believed that One Day I Would Get A Crush and tbh it was probably v immature and annoying but it was also sort of this way for me to convince myself that i was Just Like Everyone Else™

 

anyway im pretty sure doing all that really damaged my emotional development, 0/10, do not recommend

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Started off straight, got confused because I thought girls were more aesthetically pleasing than guys, but I didn't wanna date anyone so I must've been asexual (yeah I know), then I got into a relationship so therefore couldn't've been ace (YEAH I KNOW) and wobbled between bi, pan and gay, though it was always hard to tell exactly where I was for lack of data and just accepted whatever labels I was given. I slowly settled on various parts of the aro/ace spectrums when it was obvious that I wasn't developing any significant desires for anyone or anything, but I'm still finding my feet here.

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I just kind of defaulted to gay when I was younger, which confused me greatly later on, because in my mind whenever I liked a guy it was gay, but because I'm trans and hadn't figured that out yet I eventually had the thought, "Oh, I'm a girl. Being gay would mean I like exclusively girls".  So I identified as bi for awhile, then I figured out that I'm trans and identified as bi/pan. Then I tried to date a girl, immediately (I'm talking as soon as I asked her out) felt trapped by the relationship, over corrected into identifying as ace and aro and denouncing marriage and condemning everyone who was in a relationship. Luckily enough I kept most of that to myself and didn't make the girl feel awful. Anyway now I'm super gay and aro, so that's pretty cool.

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I'm a transguy, and before coming out, I identified as lesbian. Then I came out as a straight trans guy. And then after discovering non-binary people and the occasional attraction to men, I identified as queer. Except no matter what I identified as, I always had trouble staying in relationships, or actually wrapping my head around relationships. Whenever I asked people out, I actually felt more nervous about them accepting me than rejecting me, and whenever people started going after me, it felt really weird. I always assumed I was just insecure, but the aversion to getting into romantic relationships persisted after I worked on making myself less insecure.

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On 04/04/2016 at 2:17 PM, nina said:

I assumed that my inability to prioritize my romantic partner over my friends, and also the lack of certain feelings usually associated with romance (especially jealousy), simply meant that I was polyamorous - I've loved more than one person at the same time without being able to make a distinction between different types of love/connection (i.e. friendship vs relationship) and also sometimes felt sexually and sensually attracted to a few of them.

Somewhat similar. Though it took me quite a while to find the term "solo poly". Since I find "group poly" and "hierarchical poly" as unappealing as monogamy. Where I had a big difficulty with fitting in with poly was never having wanted anything like being married, nesting relationships or to be "coupled".

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I figured out I was ace a while before I figured out I was aro, so I thought I was ace and heteroromantic. It took me getting my first serious boyfriend to realize I was attributing a lot of my aro feelings to my ace-ness and that I was actually both. And not into him. 

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On ‎04‎-‎04‎-‎2016 at 3:17 PM, nina said:

I assumed that my inability to prioritize my romantic partner over my friends, and also the lack of certain feelings usually associated with romance (especially jealousy), simply meant that I was polyamorous - I've loved more than one person at the same time without being able to make a distinction between different types of love/connection (i.e. friendship vs relationship) and also sometimes felt sexually and sensually attracted to a few of them. Polyamory doesn't make much sense anymore, I just want to have very close friends (and possibly a sexual relationship with some/one of them).

I also thought I were just poly, and also didnt want to marriage because its normal in the queer enviroment where I live that people dont marriage.

I pretty much noticed the difference because I didnt really felt at home in the poly comunity, like it made sense but it also did not make sense. the talk about relationship and stuff were rather pointless, And then I had a friend who identified as poly and who did not want to get marriaged either, and while some of the thoughts on disliking amatonomativity is simular for poly and aro people I also felt there are things were we are just not the same at all so it kinda was a turning point like "wow she is poly and I she still talk about romantic love like its the greatest deal every wtf" haha.

 

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For a while I oscillated between identifying as gay or bi, or maybe pan or omni, because I found pretty much all the genders to be (sometimes) attractive. What I didn't know what that I was mistaking aesthetic attraction for sexual attraction... *sigh* Nothing actually ever felt 'right', though.

 

Then I discovered asexuality sometime in senior year of high school, and it was great, because I finally could look at something and go "yes, this is me, I identify with all of this!". Never looked back.

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