Fears

[hippiesthop]

I decided I would appreciate a place to just vent about how aromanticism affects my plans for the future.

 

For example, the fear that all of my friends are going to pair off with someone else who will take over their lives and leave me with no one. My mom has one friend from college she stays in contact with, and she sees her maybe twice a year, and they live within two hours of each other. My dad has been reconnecting with people on facebook some, but he barely ever sees his friends too.

[rayofsunshine]

I'm scared that my friends will leave me for their romantic interests too. They are all trying to get boyfriends and I feel like eventually i'm just going to be on my own. But i also feel that i'll have more time to do things that i love because of my aromanticism, like all the time and effort people are spending on their love life i can spend on my hobbies and hopefully my career in the future.

[owl]

I find it hard enough being friends with my best friend because I feel like she's always going to choose romance over me - so, I understand what you mean OP. 

No matter how close I get to someone, I don't feel like our friendship will last (at least, in terms of really close friends who I can talk to about anything) if they're not aro. I feel too different from them..

[Dusty]

I'm afraid of that too since my best friend has crushes and talks about wanting to fall in love. Though, my biggest fear atm, since I discovered I might be aro only recently, is that I'm going to be forever alone. I mean, I don't want to date anyone who expects me to have sex with them or wants me to be more open with my feelings (like my ex kept asking why I'm not calling her with cute nicknames or telling her more often that I like her and back then I still didn't understand why I couldn't feel any romantic attraction thinking I was broken or something so it was horrible!) but that doesn't mean I want to be all alone the rest of my life. I like being alone, sure, but how about Christmases, birthdays, all that because I know my friends have their own lives as well as my family (my parents are getting old too so I won't be able to go to their place one day). I dream about being in a queerplatonic relationship or maybe just dating someone who's okay with little contact and almost no sex. Somehow I don't see that happening so... yes, forever alone and really lonely. Maybe I just haven't gotten used to the idea I just won't fall in love and that's the reason for feeling lonely all the time. 

[hippiesthop]

I also get really afraid that my friends will develop crushes on me. It's happened twice before and it's absolutely awful. I care about them so much, but I can't the way they want me to and it kills both of us.

[Mikasa]

I'm also worried about ending up completely alone. I'm also not very good at making or keeping friends, so that doesn't really help. At least there's the internet... 

[aesthetic mess]

me and my friend have declared each other parabatai (platonic soul bond thing, google it) and when we leave home we want to live live together, but i know that one day she'll want to be with her romantic partner rather than me, and although we'll still be best friends, i won't be her First Person. i want to be someone's First Person so bad, i want a qpr, i want a qpr with her maybe in the future. i can't imagine that level of friendship with someone else. i also have no idea what i'm going to do with my life in general. i'm a  m e s s

[Tal Shi'ar]

I'm used to people coming and going, and then sorta disappearing after getting a partner or getting married or whatever. I don't care about it either, so that's not a problem. Other than that I really can't think of anything off the top of my head at the moment.

 

Edit: Back in my early AVEN days the only thing I got sorta concerned for was that if I did end up with a partner, and then having a whole heap of people throw "oh so you're not ace after all" crap. So I spose that's something.

[46odnetnin]

I've kind of accepted im not going to have many friends later in life. It really really sucks but all my friendships feel temporary now that I know what people will do for romantic love. Every single one of my friends that has a partner I barely talk to anymore, and it's not them or their parntner's fault directly, so I have no one to blame but I just feel so 'pushed to the side' all the time to make room for romance. The future looks bleak :c

[Blue Phoenix Ace]

Fearing loneliness is very natural. I have experienced my friends running off to get married many many times now. Fortunately, none of them have completely forgotten about me. They may spend less time with me, but it's not zero time. I've had a great time acting as the honorary uncle to their children too. I'm trying to make more friends, but it is difficult as I get older. I have met some great people through AVEN, so that has been a positive experience as well.

 

All I can say is, yes it certainly does suck to see all your friends get married. They seem to have this special bond with someone, but it's not an arrangement that would probably ever work for an aromantic. You aren't anybody's NUMBER ONE, but then again deep down, would you really want to be? I find that kind of obsessive attention a bit icky.

[Starry Sky]

I fear that I won't be able to survive as an independent person. There are many things I don't know how to do and/or am not capable of handling myself. Social anxiety gets in the way of a lot of things for me and I often need someone with me to help me out in public/social settings. I just recently have gotten myself to be able to send emails. Not having someone to with me to help with such things that social anxiety and other "issues" refuse to allow me to do will make living very difficult for me as an adult in the future.

[46odnetnin]

6 hours ago, Starry Sky said:

I fear that I won't be able to survive as an independent person. There are many things I don't know how to do and/or am not capable of handling myself. Social anxiety gets in the way of a lot of things for me and I often need someone with me to help me out in public/social settings. I just recently have gotten myself to be able to send emails. Not having someone to with me to help with such things that social anxiety and other "issues" refuse to allow me to do will make living very difficult for me as an adult in the future.

Social anxiety is really rough, I have it too and yes while it does make independant living hard, the plus side is you're on your own, so there's less pressure to socialise. It's a balance :T

[aihpen]

18 hours ago, hippiesthop said:

I also get really afraid that my friends will develop crushes on me. It's happened twice before and it's absolutely awful. I care about them so much, but I can't the way they want me to and it kills both of us.

I feel like thiswith straight   guys. Somehow whenever I thought I was about to make friends with one, I always had to find out they had a crush on me and when I told them I wasn't interested, they either wouldn't stop trying, so I got annoyed and broke the contact, because I couldn't stand it anymore or they broke the contact themselves. None of them were fine with "just" being my friend. The closest I've ever been to being friends with a guy was with someone who was more of a friends friend than my friend. We got along really well, but weren't really that close and he also was gay, so obviously I wouldn't have the same problem with him.

[piplup]

11 minutes ago, aihpen said:

I feel like thiswith straight   guys. Somehow whenever I thought I was about to make friends with one, I always had to find out they had a crush on me and when I told them I wasn't interested, they either wouldn't stop trying, so I got annoyed and broke the contact, because I couldn't stand it anymore or they broke the contact themselves. None of them were fine with "just" being my friend. The closest I've ever been to being friends with a guy was with someone who was more of a friends friend than my friend. We got along really well, but weren't really that close and he also was gay, so obviously I wouldn't have the same problem with him.

i want a guy friend but im scared that might happen to me too lmao i have lil to none experience w/ boys outside my family

[PerformativeSurprise]

12 hours ago, Blue Phoenix Ace said:

You aren't anybody's NUMBER ONE, but then again deep down, would you really want to be? I find that kind of obsessive attention a bit icky.

 

I'm my mom's number one...does that count? 

 

9 hours ago, Starry Sky said:

I fear that I won't be able to survive as an independent person. There are many things I don't know how to do and/or am not capable of handling myself. Social anxiety gets in the way of a lot of things for me and I often need someone with me to help me out in public/social settings. I just recently have gotten myself to be able to send emails. Not having someone to with me to help with such things that social anxiety and other "issues" refuse to allow me to do will make living very difficult for me as an adult in the future.

 

As someone who has always struggled with social anxiety, I get this.  It's really tough sometimes.  I worried about this a lot when I was in my teens, but I've made huge strides in this in the past ten years or so.  And now I've lived on my own in three different countries! I never would have imagined that to be possible when I was younger, but through a lot of hard work I got to a place where I can handle it.  The anxiety doesn't necessarily ever go away, but I have learned how to function with it, and it has lessened a good deal.  I hope the same can happen for you too

 

(And for me, emails aren't too much of a problem, but answering machines scare the crap out of me.)

[hippiesthop]

I feel like I need a roommate to function at my finest. I just enjoy being with my friends all the time, I'm the happiest I've ever been, and as time passes they're all just going to drift away and that terrifies me. I love them all so much, but it's not the kind of love that gets people to stay.

 

That might be the root of my dislike of my aromanticism. It's been ground into my brain by society that romantic love is superior, so I feel like if I can't experience it I'm not living my life to the fullest.

[RedNeko]

21 hours ago, hippiesthop said:

I also get really afraid that my friends will develop crushes on me. It's happened twice before and it's absolutely awful. I care about them so much, but I can't the way they want me to and it kills both of us.

 

2 hours ago, aihpen said:

I feel like thiswith straight   guys. Somehow whenever I thought I was about to make friends with one, I always had to find out they had a crush on me and when I told them I wasn't interested, they either wouldn't stop trying, so I got annoyed and broke the contact, because I couldn't stand it anymore or they broke the contact themselves. None of them were fine with "just" being my friend. The closest I've ever been to being friends with a guy was with someone who was more of a friends friend than my friend. We got along really well, but weren't really that close and he also was gay, so obviously I wouldn't have the same problem with him.

I've had this happen to me with straight guys as well, 3 times in total. It would always really shock me because I've always had a mix of male and female friends so I don't think of they way they treat me before they ask me out as anything special, but I sure as hell was scared of them afterwards. It also makes me very suspicious of all my other friends for a while.

 

I keep putting off shareing mine, but since I'm posting anyway. My fears connected to my aromanticism are how it affects my mental health. Every time someone has asked me out my reaction has got worse (since the same old thing of them continuing to pursue me happens everytime), and this may be only one of a number of things which makes it worse but it causes the most damage. It would be much easier to get better if I wasn't living in fear of another metaphorical bomb being dropped.

[DannyFenton123]

Well I had a guy who I thought was trying to be friends end up almost stalking me until I told him to stop (if he continued the behaviour after I directly said no, I would have defined it as stalking), so nowadays I'm terrified of people asking me out. 

[Xerces Blue]

I'm scared that I'll be left alone and that I'll never leave my house again. I don't know if I can trust myself to look after me.

[Dusty]

5 hours ago, aihpen said:

On 4.4.2016 at 10:34 PM, hippiesthop said:

I also get really afraid that my friends will develop crushes on me. It's happened twice before and it's absolutely awful. I care about them so much, but I can't the way they want me to and it kills both of us.

I feel like thiswith straight   guys. Somehow whenever I thought I was about to make friends with one, I always had to find out they had a crush on me and when I told them I wasn't interested, they either wouldn't stop trying, so I got annoyed and broke the contact, because I couldn't stand it anymore or they broke the contact themselves. None of them were fine with "just" being my friend. The closest I've ever been to being friends with a guy was with someone who was more of a friends friend than my friend. We got along really well, but weren't really that close and he also was gay, so obviously I wouldn't have the same problem with him.

I have experience with this too. First I met this girl who's an amazing person and we became friends in no time. I didn't know back then that my crush was actually a squish and was wondering why I couldn't think of her romantically. So we started dating and she had a crush on me but in the end the thing became really messy because I couldn't help but treat her like a friend. I had no idea how to act like we were dating. She got pissed off by that and in the end I started to feel like I was in a cage and started to avoid her. Yeah, there's no need to say we couldn't get that friendship back ever again even though I liked her a lot as a person and a friend. Dating literally messed everything up because I couldn't give her what she wanted. So now I deeply hope none of my friends will ever fall for me. That just means I'm going to hurt them somehow. 

I also get afraid with straight guys and for a long time couldn't talk to them normally at all (you know, all that pressure of having to date a man one day and getting married, it's always made me so awkward, I believe all straight men have ulterior motives and that's stupid, I know). Though, I became friends with one nice guy with same interest about half year ago but he developed a crush on me. I told him I don't want to date and he was okay with it but nothing got back to normal. I was always self conscious since he treated me gently, cooked for me when I visited his place... I just couldn't, I started to freak out. And now I don't know if I can trust any guy to think me simply as a friend and treat me just like that. I don't want to be treated like some princess. I'm anything but. 

 

Sorry, I always talk too much :'D

[PhysicsOwl]

My best friend who's a bi girl had a crush on me right now which is super weird and I've been trying to ignore (I might make another post about this but idk where?). I can see how it would be worse with straight boys because they often don't know how to take no for an answer. So I'm afraid of letting her down by not liking her back and I'm afraid of losing her once she finds out I don't feel the same way, and she's really important to me so I really don't want that to happen. I'm also afraid to come out to her because of this even though I trust her to be okay with it. 

 

I am also afraid of ending up alone and lonely. I'm not good at emotionally connecting to people regardless of our relationship and even though I love my friends very much, I never feel like I'm their number one, even the ones who are single. Even if we manage to stay friends once we graduate, I'm not good at keeping in touch so we probably wouldn't be close. I would hate to live alone, but you can only have a roommate for so long. Basically all my friends are going to move away and have awesome families and friends that aren't me and I'll be someone they remember fondly and send Christmas cards to. I feel lonely enough now as it is and I have a roommate and some awesome friends who I see everyday, so I can't imagine how I'll survive alone for my whole adult life with just seeing my co workers and family occasionally. I can't even be a cat lady because I'm allergic. 

 

Sorry that was long, but it's good to get it off my chest. I'm glad it's not just me who feels this way. 

 

 

[hangryeowyn]

I'm so afraid of friends leaving me for their romantic relationships that it's really hard for me to trust someone enough to try to become friends with them in the first place. I'm working on accepting that people move on and I won't be anyone's Number One but it's hard. It's kind of funny because before I knew I was aromantic I thought I wanted a romantic relationship, but what I really wanted was to be important rather than a periphery.

 

Another related thing I'm afraid of is finding a long-term QPR and maybe even platonic marriage (tax and loan benefits and convenient sex woo!), and not being enough for them. How could I possibly know if my platonic love for them is enough of a return for their feelings? I don't want to hold them back from finding the actual love of their life who can love them back in the same way, you know? They might say that they are okay with the arrangement at the beginning, but there's no real way to know if that's how they'll always feel, and there's no way to know if someone else better suited will come along. I don't want to hurt someone just because I can't feel romantic love. And then of course if that were to happen, I would then have to deal with the emotional fallout of someone leaving again. It's a messy business.

[Cassiopeia]

Yes, all of this.

 

Also sex messes it up on a whole new level. Quite often I wish I was ace, so then I did not have one more thing to worry about.

 

The no-strings-attached thing only works if the people involved so to speak lack the strings to attach. Otherwise it is a can of worms.

I decided not to do one night stands, or casual physical things because a, I won't notice if they'd develop feelings for me, and b, if they would, I don't think it could possibly work out well.

Also, being with someone who has a romantic relationship with someone else, even if all parties know what is going on and it is consensual...lets just say, a horrible idea.

[RedNeko]

13 minutes ago, Cassiopeia said:

Yes, all of this.

 

Also sex messes it up on a whole new level. Quite often I wish I was ace, so then I did not have one more thing to worry about.

 

The no-strings-attached thing only works if the people involved so to speak lack the strings to attach. Otherwise it is a can of worms.

I decided not to do one night stands, or casual physical things because a, I won't notice if they'd develop feelings for me, and b, if they would, I don't think it could possibly work out well.

Also, being with someone who has a romantic relationship with someone else, even if all parties know what is going on and it is consensual...lets just say, a horrible idea.

Ah, but if you were ace you still might have that problem, not all aces have no sex drive

 

But yeah, I get you. I used to get so confused when I explained to someone how I felt about those sorts of things, only to have them behave in the ways I had said made me uncomfortable, do and say things they said they wouldn't, etc. But now I feel like I've gone to far the other way and assume everyone is lying to me. Hopefully I'll be able to rebalance myself and find some middle ground to it all.

[Blue Phoenix Ace]

1 hour ago, RedNeko said:

Ah, but if you were ace you still might have that problem, not all aces have no sex drive

 

Yeah but we're perfectly happy taking care of it ourselves, which is pretty hassle free.

 

I would think being aro-ace is easier than being aro-allosexual.