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What You Thought You Were Before You Identified as Arospec


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I actually never thought about romance or crushes at all until I discovered the term asexuality. I had a couple platonic crushes, but I never confused them for crushes. And I guess my friends just never talked about their crushes around me, as I could never contribute much to the conversation, or told them who mine was. I heard of asexuality through a GSA assembly at my high school. Asexuality was squished in on the last slide of their presentation, which had two others above it. I still didn't think much of it until that summer though, when I had enough free time to look into the term.

 

Briefly, in between the period that I heard of asexuality, and to when I actually spent time to look it up, I thought I might be gay. Then I considered that I might be bi, but I knew that I had never had a crush. And since I had heard of the term asexuality from the GSA assembly, it fit. And probably an hour after researching asexuality, I had adopted the term aromantic as well. Both labels fit well, and I had no problem using them. I accepted them pretty quickly. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

My overall process of labelling my romantic orientation was straight => bi => pan => queer => aro

At first I was used to the default then I realized I felt the same towards both girls and boys with no concept of nb so I used bi. Once I had heard about pan being attracted to everyone regardless of gender, I used that label because it I felt the same for everyone. Up until that point I was sure I was a romantic person. I liked seeing healthy versions of it in the media and I liked the idea of having a bff for life. I didn't realize people felt romance separately from platonic attraction and the feeling was distinct. After I had a serious life crisis and thought there was something wrong with me because I didn't feel love like "I was supposed to". That was when I called myself queer because at that point it was so confusing. I knew about aromanticism before but I didn't think that applied to me until I finally came to term that I was not able to feel romance. Everything is so much clearer.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Asexual, bi, pan.... I realized I was heterosexual because I couldn’t imagine myself being sexually with other women and I thought I couldn’t be straight since I wasn’t big on romantic relationships with men.... but liked the idea of having sex with them... really confusing journey that took awhile for me to figure out... esspecially since it took me awhile to figure out romantic and sexual differences 

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There was a bit in highschool where I thought I was aromantic without realizing that was an actual thing. It was just something I came up with on my own.

 

Me finding out I was demi didn't so much change how I saw myself as much as it changed how I saw others. I just thought everyone was like that. I thought people dated people they weren't attracted to all the time and due to societal pressure both people just went along with it as part of an unspoken agreement to pretend like they were. So I guess this was just a long winded way of saying I thought I was a normal straight person and then realized the world was different than how I thought it was.

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  • 1 month later...

I thought I was a heartless bitch who only cared about sex and would always use everyone. Or someone who could never be able to satisfied herself with anyone because secretely too much of a stupid narcissistic. I never had a really great self-esteem but still that's what an alloromantic society can do to people. It's disgusting. I still hate myself for other things but at least now I know this particular issue really isn't my fault.

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2 hours ago, Costati said:

I thought I was a heartless bitch who only cared about sex and would always use everyone. Or someone who could never be able to satisfied herself with anyone because secretely too much of a stupid narcissistic. I never had a really great self-esteem but still that's what an alloromantic society can do to people. It's disgusting. I still hate myself for other things but at least now I know this particular issue really isn't my fault.

Can’t even begin to tell you how much I can relate 

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Okay so I highly think that the fact that I'm asexual (I prefer the definition of no desire for partnered sex because really why is asexuality the only sexuality defined by sexual attraction? Anyways I digress) was at fault for me not realizing I was also aromantic. I used to think, well I don't get that tingly feeling in mah nethers so romantically I could like anyone, right? 

 

So before I knew I was ace I just thought "I have crushes on boys" (really they weren't crushes just that my poor young self had no concept of squishes). I didn't think, "I'm straight" because in a heteronomative world you kind of don't feel a need to define your "straightness". But then I thought, "Wait, Natalie Dorman is really gorgeous" so I figured, "I must be bi!" 

 

Years and years later I realized I just mostly don't feel sexual attraction, so now I'm identifying as asexual/biromantic for a couple years. Then I was all, "gender doesn't matter, I'll fall in love with anyone regardless of gender." And then I was thinking, must be ace/panromantic. Then I just thought, eh I'll think about this later and settled for queer. Then I had a crisis and finally realized I was aromantic. I'm fucking happy I did because it takes the pressure out of some interactions because I can be comfortable with purely platonic relationships without thinking I'm leading someone on when I have no plans of having sex (as was my worry when I just identified as ace/pan). Now I can comfortably say, "well I'm aromantic and asexual," when someone accuses me of leading them on. 

 

My aceness prevented me from realizing that just because I feel no sexual attraction didn't mean I should be as uninterested in people romantically. So I guess I understood rationally that asexual=/=aromantic. But since I had no frame of reference as to what liking someone romantically meant I just thought all aces were like that. 

 

So it went: straight-->bi-->ace/biromantic-->ace/panromantic-->queer-->ace/aro

On 3/30/2018 at 10:29 AM, yenyyoo said:

At first I was used to the default at first then I realized I felt the same towards both girls and boys with no concept of nb so I used bi. Once I had heard about pan being attracted to everyone regardless of gender, I used that label because it I felt the same for everyone

 

Felt the same towards girls and boys yup. If only I had realized sooner that what I felt was nothing! i.e no romantic attraction. It certainly didn't help that I confused aesthetic attraction with romantic attraction. 

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I never really had any concept of myself in terms of romanticism, sexuality, or gender before I started to question whether I might be ace or aro. Then everything kinda cascaded and now I'm spending all my free money on pride stuff.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I thought i was bi (which i am) and just not up for a relationship yet. I figured i'd develop that desire when i met the right person, or when i got older, or when i was in a better mental state... Never happened. There were always things about relationships i didn't want, and i knew deep down that the only reason i was even considering getting into one was because A) i was lonely and B) i liked the idea of having someone around to have sex with on a regular-ish basis. It seemed like such a shallow, selfish way to think that i didn't want to acknowledge it, so i pushed it to the back of my mind and convinced myself i must actually want all the other romantic stuff too. Spoiler: I didn't lol and trying them out made that very clear.

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  • 2 months later...

I never really understood love, so I tried to learn more about it by reading books with lovestories and biology papers. I basically treated it like I would treat quantum field theorie or general relativity - an abstract concept I tried to understand. Based my research, I tried to emulate love, regularly chose girls I wanted to be in love with and tried to find logical reasons why i should have a girlfriend ( I really found some, but interestingly sex never was one of them). After a while I noticed that this could not be how love is meant to be so as I was lucky enough to find out about asexuality and aromanticism by chance on twitter I did my research. Right now I settled for heterosexual and aromantic, as this combination is relatively self-explanatory (contrary to some other subgroups I found here) and the exact subgroup doesn't make much of an actual difference in the real world in my opinion.

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straight --> gay --> gay-aro --> queer

 

(straight to gay was when I accepted being trans)

 

the circle of LGBT+ folks I knew at the time (freshman year of high school?) didn't really use queer beyond genderqueer, so I wasn't really aware that it was an option to just use queer as the sole identifier. as I've spent more time on r/ftm, a few tumblr blogs, and in various other queer / LBGT+ spaces irl, I've been able to get more comfortable with using queer as my label.

 

I suppose the backlash against queer on tumblr had something to do with it, I'm a spiteful person, but queer is just the right word for me. if pressed I will label myself aromantic or transgender, but queer is really the only word I'll accept for my sexuality specifically or my identity in general.

 

sorry if this isn't quite coherent, I'm having a Time

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I thought I was straight then realized I am VERY asexual. Then I thought I was heteromantic which soon turned to panromantic with a few dreams, but after a long personal conversation with an alloromantic friend realized I am aromantic and the reason I could imagine myself going out with anyone is because I thought of dates as, like, exclusive friends hanging out (and it's not like that, apparently..?). So ya.

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Scum, in short. I was from a place with a reputation for casual relationships and I just thought I was the sort of idiot young lad who went along with that.

Later on I went to university, studied physics and I was a self hating nerd who thought the reason he didn't get into romantic relationships was because he was the sort of loser who shouldn't get into romantic relationships. Of course I wasn't comfortable flirting, of course I wan't looking forward to dating, that was what happened to people like me. I had a few years of self hatred before I heard about aromanticism.

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