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What You Thought You Were Before You Identified as Arospec


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So much relatable stuff on this thread!

 

To answer OP's question, I guess at various points I've thought I was:

  • broken
  • socially retarded (despite my never really having problems making and maintaining friendships...)
  • emotionally immature
  • too 'picky'
  • too proud/aloof/smart for anyone else (yeah, I know! especially that last one :facepalm:)
  • a coward

Well, maybe I still think some of the above :D  I'm still figuring this thing out after all...

 

I'm wondering if this is something anyone else has done: inventing bullshit rationalizations for why you could never pursue a romantic relationship with somebody? (y'know, when it seemed like it might be an actual possibility) As is: well, I like this person, they are single, but there is REASON X which means it would be a VERY BAD IDEA. And at the time, REASON X seemed like an oh-so-logical reason, highlighting some fundamental incompatibility between us that could just never be bridged. But, looking back now with 20/20 hindsight, it was actually something incredibly trivial! :D Anybody else ever been 'played' like that by their own subconscious?!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 09/04/2016 at 10:17 AM, IncrediblyIncompetent said:

I thought I was bi and just really cynical

Me too! Or I thought maybe I was just too shy to want to approach anyone who wasn't already a friend. 

 

(never quite managed to justify to myself how my friends liking me was also not okay) 

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I'm mildly autistic so romance didn't really stand out among the many other social things that confuse me, I assumed I was strait but that everyone else was just making a big deal out of nothing.  A few months ago I wondered if I might be bisexual because I can appreciate a good looking guy just as much as I can appreciate a good looking girl even though I'm not romantically or sexually attracted to either.  Later I came across asexuality and realized that it fit me, I assumed that I was heteroromantic but later I came to the conclusion that I'm aromantic.

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I thought I was apathetically straight or pan in theory. Pan because when asked about dating and if I would be willing to date guys/girls, I would respond that it didn't matter, and if it happens, it happens. Little did I know that in the future someone would, in fact, admit they had a crush on me, and that it would panic me to the point of blanking out on how to even react (error 404: socially acceptable response not found). Thankfully this sort of situation has only happened once.

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Default (straight) but my bi-aesthetic attraction confused me for quite some time xD

 

before I had a name for my aro-aceness, my friend and I decided to just call any good-looking person I found visually attractive, but would never approach as "eye-candy" lol

 

so yeah, I find people's faces to be very interesting, but I never bothered to check out the rest of their bodies, like normies did

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Well I honestly didn't care for the most parts. Most of my friends were late bloomers so I never had that much peer pressure. Figuring myself out didn't seem important for a long time.
 

Then I had a time were I went with bi, later pan (after I learned that there's a more inclusive word than "bi") for quite some time... - Pan - of course(!) because little me confused indifference towards gender with hypothetical attraction to all people :facepalm:

 

Once confronted with my inability to love I felt broken, inhuman, cruel, sociopathic and like a scared little prude, which lead me to try ace and demi to find an explanation. That didn't help since they didn't fit, so I never openly used them (And yes, I did discover the word "demi" before "aro". I feel like I've discovered every possible orientation before aro :rofl:). 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, first I thought I was straight, and a really late bloomer. Then I thought I was gay, since the only three orientations I knew before high school were gay, straight, and bi, and I knew I wasn't into boys. Then I found out about being pan, and thought maybe I was that since I had the same feelings about being in a relationship no matter what gender the person was (I didn't acknowledge to myself that those feelings were "hell no!").

 

Then finally I found out being aro was a thing, and I finally felt like I didn't have to force myself to try and have feelings other than the ones I have.

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  • 10 months later...

straight.  i never doubted i was heterosexual, so i just assumed i was heteroromantic and when i felt sexual and platonic attraction towards a guy i thought it was a crush (i now refer to the phenomenon as an 'aro crush').  when i came across the term 'aromantic' and the concept of romantic attraction or lack thereof, i thought it sounded like me but tried to dismiss the notion because surely i just hadn't really experienced it yet as i'd never dated.  a year and a relationship later, i was like "oh man, i'm aro as hell".  two more years later, still am.

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so....I thought I was a default straight, then high standards straight, then I thought I was broken, then some sort of asexual, then I didn't care/focused on studies, then I thought I might be a sociopath and all my friends thought I would marry a serial killer, then back to high standards straight but broken, then I am fine being me and everyone else is weird, then finally aromantic. 

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  1. More “mature” than my silly classmates
  2. High standards
  3. Seriously dating challenged
  4. Emotionally dried cod (can one say this in English?)
  5. Incompatible with anyone
  6. Sociopath
  7. Maybe something very broadly related to asexuality? (wrong, but it was the right track!)
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1. Straight (by default)

2. Bi...? (Middle school when I had pretend crushes on boys and a squish on my best friend (girl) )

3. Just not interested in dating and not bothered to figure out anything beyond "maybe bi" (high school after I moved away from everyone I was or pretended to be attracted to)

4. Asexual demi-panromantic (discovered asexuality (yay!) but hadn't yet realized what squishes were and was slightly in denial)

5. Aro ace (discovered "You might be aromantic if..." and realized what a squish was and that I wasn't the only one who had made up crushes (that they then forgot

 

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  • Straight by default
  • Bad at being straight
  • Not interested in dating
  • Not interested in dating yet because of being immature, "I'll just try again in a few years, I'm still young"
  • Unable to form (romantic) relationships with other people (feeling guilty for all the people I had hurt)
  • Asexual, whatever, it doesn't matter
  • (Aromantic and not asexual
  • Aromantic asexual)
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1 hour ago, time-is-ticking said:
  • Straight by default
  • Bad at being straight
  • Not interested in dating
  • Not interested in dating yet because of being immature, "I'll just try again in a few years, I'm still young"

Haha. YES.

And for me the "I'll just try again in a few years, I'm still young" excuse/procrastination has lasted into my 30s :D (unfortunately I'm not ace. oh well)

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  • 2 months later...

Love reading everyone's experiences in this thread; I identify with so many of you!

 

Of course, I always defaulted to straight but not explicitly since I was always focused on other things. But then once I had some intense feelings for a girl (I thought that it had to be a crush because I didn't know what else it could be, but now I can say that in hindsight that the attraction was alterous), so I edited to bi.

My attraction suddenly faded and I found myself disgusted by romance and sex a lot. I got to ace before I got to aro, but figuring those labels out went hand in hand as I learned about the aspec family online.

The aroflux is something I have started using recently, to incorporate the two or so times I have experienced alterous attraction. Labels are confusing but aroflux ace is a place where I comfortably sit. 

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Had a brief moment in eighth grade when I thought I might be gay (turned out to be a friend crush). I had heard of asexuality first on a documentary while channel surfing, then on social media. I imagined what a catch I would be as an asexual, someone you could settle down and raise kids with and didn't care if you saw other women. Lol. Of course it was all hypothetical. I stumbled upon the word demisexual, that seemed to fit. From that point on I was just ambiguous. I had a friend who liked me as more than a friend, and we agreed to just wait and see how things worked out. I never used the word "asexual" because that seemed like giving up, but I did tell him I didn't know my sexuality, and that I felt about 12 years old when it came to this stuff.

When I started university I did some soul searching. I had always been "the girl focused on her studies", and realized that wasn't an excuse for not experiencing desires. I reached the inescapable conclusion that I was indeed aro, had some mixed feelings about that. Now I'll tell anyone who listens. :D

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I thought I was straight for most of my life. Then there were a couple of months where I thought I was gay because I had a huge platonic crush on this one girl.

I didn’t identify as aro until this past summer when I was talking to one of my friends about gay stuff and they suggested I might be aromantic, which totally clicked.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I thought I was straight. I didn't really like girls (probably because I was projecting my dysphoria all over them) so I thought "huh, guess I have to be straight!" (And this was also back when I thought I was a girl because "huh, I don't feel like a guy, must be a girl!") I really like the looks of gender-neutral-presenting people, so I just figured I just had a thing for pretty boys.

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Bi --> Gay Woman --> Straight Man --> Bi 

 

My sexual identity was complicated by my gender identity. I came out as bi in middle school, faced some nasty biphobia and internalized it all to hell, so I began identifying as gay. But I'd always struggled with my gender, and eventually claimed a trans male identity. Strictly identifying as a man and strictly identifying as woman-attracted just wasn't gonna fly though. I'm too much in the grey. So I reclaimed my bi label, and adopted a non-binary label. 

With so much going on with my gender and sexuality, I paid almost no attention to my romantic inclinations. I assumed I was just broken somewhere, or traumatized without knowing how. I figured I'd eventually work things out. I did, it just wasn't the result I expected :P 

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  • 2 weeks later...

When I was 15 I thought I was lesbian because I wasn't really interested in boys and then i hav had a crush on a couple of girls and this made me believe i was gay... as the years go by i figured out that i wasn't really interested in girls neither

Now if i think about that crush i realize that i wasn't romantically attracted

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I thought for a long-time I was too emotionally damaged by my childhood trauma to have the ability to love someone. I also thought for a while that I was a nymphomaniac or just a really sexually perverted person because I'm allosexual but aromantic so I thought I valued sex and sexual attraction so much more than romantic attraction because I was mentally ill and obsessing over sex. I also thought it was a defense system because I'm a really cold person (even with friends and family...I'm just really cold. I'm really nice and comprehensive tho so I never thought I was like sociopath I just keep my emotions for myself that kinda make me a bit scary sometimes and I like that idea) so I could reject everyone because I was afraid to get hurt. You know all these things that people basically drill into your heads either you're super romantic and love romance or you hate it and say that you won't catch feelings but in the end it's just because you're afraid of love and opening up to someone so I thought it was something like that.

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I always assumed i was straight and just hadn't met anyone worthy of my attention :D and because I always kinda blocked everyone interested in me without realizing it (so I've been told) I kinda assumed no one was really interested in me (which is strangely depressing for me considering that normally I have quite a high self-esteem). Then someone got interested in me and i actually noticed (took me only about half a year \o/) and I realized that there is no attention to be worthy of romance wise. 

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