nonmerci

I probably have adhd but I don't have an official diagnosis. However, I don't thing I have high sensitivity.

It can be both. Personally I don't have squishes, but I still have friends (I suppose you can call me platonic-favorable). It can be more difficult to keep the friendships as the lack of attraction leads to a "out of sight out of mind" thing, but I tend to see my friends at least once a month and I'm happy this way. When I was a teen, I was telling anyone I don't have Facebook cause I was already seeing my friends all day at school and didn't see why I would need to see them after; that was probably a big aplatonic sign lol. I still care about my friends and enjoy their company when they are around. I personally never used a word for that before I entered the aro community when squishes are discussed a lot, and noticed that the way I felt about my friendships were different than other people. But that's probably because I have friends and never mind it. Some other aplatonic people are not this way though and indeed don't want or need friendships. Usually they value alone time but not necessarily, they can enjoy other type of relationship, like familial or romantic (cause yes, there are people who are aplatonic but alloromantic). They also usually have a stronger bond with this term than I do as it impacts their platonic relationships more. For instance I read a lot of stories about aplatonic being pressured as kids to form friendships even if they didn't want to and prefered alone time, cause their parents were concerned about it. As aromanticism it is a spectrum, so you find a lot of different experiences.

You can tell him that being called uninteresting, dumb and stupid for your orientation is already a for of discrimination. For instance it leads to a complete lack of representation in media, and when this representation is justified by "you are uninsterested and no one wants to hear about you", it is discrimination. Conversion therapy is also a thing : you'll find a lot of aros temling how their therapist saw their identity as something to cure and always want to talk about it, instead of treating what the person really needs to treat. You can also point out that labelling your orientation is not onlh about how much discrimination you get. I suppose that when someone says he's gay or bi, they doesn't say it to say "look how I'm discriminated" but primilarly to say "this is the kind of people I can date and why". At least that's why it is useful to me : to explain that if I'm single, it is because I am not attracted to people this way. Finally you can explain that the word is very important cause usually, aromantic and asexual people force themselves into relationship they don't want or need cause they don't know not being attracted is an option. That leads to a lot of distress, people thinking they are broken, etc. This label is litterally life saving for some people. It helps people understand themselves and know they are not sick or broken. And if you don't want to talk about it yourself cause you don't think he'll get it, send him links to articles or videos that talk about the issue. Sometimes it is easier to not confront someone directly and let them think alone, then they'll come back at you when they are ready.

Personally I call myself anattractional. I've seen the word panaspec but I personally don't use it (to my ears it sounds like pansexual, so first time I heard it, I thought it has a complete different meaning... then I realized it is actually clear if you look at the word and I felt stupid lol). This is aphobia so having a new label sadly won't fix this. No matter how you call yourself, some people will still not get it cause for some reason, they are unable to understand the concept of not feeling romantic and sexual attraction.

Funny cause I find her friendship with Enid a lot more forced than her romance with Tyler (I don't count the one with Xavier as romance as it is just him flirting with her and her rejecting him; but if they date in later seasons, that will be forced). However I don't like that people and even the show read this as "character development". Even the friendship with Enid. I think the show sometimes confused "loving and caring for people differently" with "being aromantic and aplatonic", so people who are aro and apl recognize themselves in her and then get confused when the erasure of their identity is presented as development. It is also annoying when people assume relationships are the only way to have character development.

It depends if you are on the spectrum if you are "strictly" aromantic. People on the spectrum get crushes, people who have 0 attraction don't. Also orientation can fluctuate. So even if you felt attraction in the past, if now you don't, you are aromantic. I had I think one crush that lasted two weeks, but as it is one in 28 years old, I consider it irrelevant.

I have no opinion on this, as I don't really care about what counts as LGBT+ or not. The importance for me is that the srtuggle is real, important, and not talked enough in our societies.

There is aceflux and aroflux for sexual and romantic attraction. For platonic attraction, I find platonicflux or aplatonicflux. There is also cupioplatonic if you desire platonic connections but don't feel platonic attraction. That's a possibility too from what you said.

What is even the logic? It's rare, not impossible... What about their alloromanticism, is it certified by a professional? 😡

Everytime I see Bloom into you mentions I think "I have all the books in the school library, I should read them". Now for my headcanon Jack from the Rise of Guardians. The Tooth Fairy is totally into him but it feels to me like he doesn't realize that and see her as a friend, even in the scene at the end when they hug. All he wants to do is having fun. Everytime he is sad cause he is alone, it is always because he lacks platonic bounds, he never mentions romance. Merlin from the show Merlin. He is the main character of a tv show, and never had a romantic interest (well there is maybe one episode where he is coding as crushing on a girl, but it is never said clearly, and it is one episode on 5 seasons so he still has my respect for that). He doesn't even notice when people crush on him, and he supports his friends's relationships without expressing distress about having no love life himself. A lot of people ship him with Arthur, some with Morgan, and I can understand why, but for me it is platonic. Diana from Anne with an E (as you can tell with my profile picture). I find it interesting that she cared more about her friendship with Anne than her romance with Jerry (if you see season 3 episode 7, you see what I mean), and the actress herself said she played her character as being not in love with Jerry, which you can see in her relationship, and it's interesting to see how they both act differently in the relationship due to the lack of attraction on Diana's part. It's one of the few characters that really got me questionned if her being aro was intended or not, and if it would have been revealed in future seasons that she was if the show had been renewed. I headcanoned Will from Stranger Things untill season 4, but in season 4 it really seems that they coded him as being in love with Mike... His aro vibes from season 3 is still iconic though. She is a minor character (she must be there nine or ten episodes in a show with almost 180 episodes right now so... yeah minor is the word), but Gypsy from the Flash. Her arc with Cisco gives me aroallo vibes and you can't change my mind.

I'd say it's like being ace and has sex, or being aro and romantically dates : it is not the most common but nothing stops it from happening. Attraction is a feeling and friendship a relationship. Usually they go hand in hand, but it is not a necessity. Personally, I don't feel platonic attraction cause I don't met people and think "wow I want to be their friends", and because I don't have anything that pushes me to continue a friendship with a specific person, in the sense that I don't miss them when they are not there. That makes it more difficult to pursue friendship cause I can stay weeks without thinking about my friends, so harder to keep contact. A common experience of aplatonic people in friendships is being told that we don't initiate enough. I know that so I try to initiate, as I still enjoy my friends company, but it is not something that comes naturally as it did when you feel attraction, if that lakes sense. At least that's how I understood it after talking with both alloplatonic and aplatonic people, correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway tuanks you all for your answers, very interesting!

That something tthztt was in my mind lately. I am what I call "anattractional", which you can understand as : I don't feel any kind of attraction. I am even more positive about it cause I think I've felt romantic attraction once, platonic attraction once, so I can absolutely tell tthe difference between this and no attraction (just saying for people who are like "but you say this which means you feel attraction even if you don't call it that"... I don't see people say that here, but I've seen elsewhere). However, though I feel no attraction, my feelings towards being loveless fluctuate. Some day I want to label my feelings towards my closed friends as love, sometimes I want to label it as not love. Let's say I am fluid in being a loveless aro lol (though not really as I still coonsider love is not necessary to be good and happy, so I still fit one of the loveless aro definition). That makes me wonder : in the aspec community, we tend to link all to attraction, but is there love without attraction? Personally I think that yes : as I say, I am 100% anattractional, thatt doesn't fluctuate, contrary to my relation to love. But I was curious to see other opinions, and also what are your opinions about how love without attraction would fit in the aspec discourse.

Oh don't get me started. First I like to differentiate official and non-official. I consider itt to be official when a character says the word, or expresses feelings that fit the definition of the word. For instance, Saiki seems to fit that (I never watched the show so I don't know). However a non-official would be a headcanon where we know nothing about the orientation (for instance : Isabela in Encanto, Elsa in Frozen). I see no problem in taking the non-official characters into fanfiction and do what tou want. However, for the others... I consider that fanfiction is all about twisted the canon. It can be fun to say "what if it was like this instead, let's see the consequences". But it is different to say : "I don't like that X is from a minority Y, it goes against my personal fantasy, so I decided to change that". Here's there is a personal problem. And let's be honest, most of this shipping falls into this last category, not in the "good fun" one. It is like saying "my fantasy is more important than someone's identity". And it is even more problematic when itt erases the real identity of the character, to the point that everybody forgets tthe character is aro. People should think about how it impacts them to say "I don't care that you are never able to be seen, I don't like this identity from your character, so I'll change that". And I think the fact that it comes from the queer community is not as surprising as it may seem. I think that most straight people learn that it is a bad thing, they learned how to care about other minorities. There are assholes of course, but thise who cares about diversity know what they should do and not do. But queer people are usually the erased minorities, not the one who erases. They are not used to this position. Do you remember how some queer people were arguing that "allonormativity is not a scene cause that would put queer people in the position to oppress people for ttheir orientation, which is impossible when you are yourself oppressed by your orientation?" That's the same logic : thethey think they can't do nothing bad cause they are themselves victim of erasure, so if they an aro character to put them in a queer ship, they don'tt see it as bad. But the thing is : it doesn't work like that. Just imagine someone taking an Asian character and turn him into a Black character (I've seen it once, itt was the Artemis Fowl movie). Would that be ok? Not at all. Finally I think there is a real problem that people don't get that there is no need to have the word "aromantic" in the media for it to be official, if the aromanticism were clearly shown or expressed. For instance, I am writing a story in a medieval setting, one of my character is not aro, but ace, and there is a whole arc about that. But I don't say the word ace as they don't have a word for that. Just imagine if people say it is not canon just because tthere is not the word, despite all the arc being about it? Same thing can happen with the aro characters. It is just disrespectful and show that word don't understand and don't care about us. I also partly blame the whole fiction for that. Too often there is the story of the character uninterested in romance that falls in love when they find "the one". I'm sure it is one of the reason people don't take it seriously when a character expresses aro traits.

I never thought about it this way. I always thought queerplatonic attraction was a thing as from what I see, the feelings involved are different than platonic, but indeed the true word would be alterous attraction.

The problem with roles is that it limits people. So I won't say they are great. Also I think that some people think you have to fit all the cases to be a real man or a real woman, which will only limit themselves more. So I don't think that having gender "categories" is bad per se, but the way they are now and the way they are used are bad.

It is meant to be like that. Aspec can also include other identities like agender and aplatonicn But I've seen places where people, usually aces, use aspec and acespec as synonymous. It can be because it pronounces the same way so they forgot they are not the same. But too often, it is because they forget that the ace community don't encompass everything that starts with an A : though they don't say it explicitly, I've seen people talk as if aro were not its own community but just a subcommunity in the ace one.

Shit, I didn't want to write a long post about AVEN cause I feel like I'm behind their back, but well, too late. Am I the only one who didn't feel surrounded by alloaces on AVEN, or is it because I joined later than you (I joined in August 2021 I think). Maybe it is because I never went in subforums like "asexual relationships" but I never saw anything amatonormative. Once I saw a topic saying (in subtance), "if you are romance-repulsed, are you sure you don't have an avoidant disorder because why would someone be repulsed by romance", but that's it. I do agree however that there is a complete lack of knowledge about the aro community and some impossibility to think about it as its own thing by some members, and that some members delibarately erase what aros have to say... OK I just remember a specific member for that who basically refused to take into account aroallos cause they were saying the contrary than what she was saying, but that was big enough to make me consider leaving. I know. And maybe I would have let it slide if I were not already disturbed by other things. But here's all I could think was that 1 staff member was already too much. I think that the majority of people on AVEN are wonderful people. I placed several people on my ignore list, and except one, they all ended up banned or left on their own, which means ghe moderation do its job. I just think it is difficult to draw the line between freedom of speech and safety, and AVEN doesn't place it where I want to see it. I suppose it works well for some people, who would probably think the places I lack better are too controlling, but I know it is not for me. And again, I have no problem with (most) of the members there. Most are people I enjoy interacting with. It is just the way the website work that were not for me. (OK now I stop with AVEN, I don't want to make people who likes the website feels bad)

Not sure if I will help or not but here's my thoughts. The aro and ace communities talk about romantic and sexual attractions because they can indeed be separate and ny consequence, are different things. However, for people who can experience both, it is tricky cause they often go hand in hand. So it is very possible that for them, sex triggers romance and vice versa. And there are stories of friends with benefits who "catch" romantic feelings. However, I don't think that "sex and after romance" is necessarily the common experience, if I simplify what you describe. Maybe it is some kind of demiromanticism? Demiro is when you only develop romantic attraction after forming an emotional connection. Maybe for you this connection was form through sex and then you started feeling romantic attraction? I don't know, just a thought.

I'm just mad about something that happened. TW aplaphobia (is that a word? If it were not now it is). Basically, someone comes in the aplatonic subreddit and says something about how being shy is not a sexuality (as if we pretended aplatonicism was a sexuality) and how we just have no social clues and should cure our sociopathy. Most people said it was offensive of course, but there were also a comment about how if we don't want friends we need therapy. It just annoys me so much. If someone is happier without friends, why on earth would they seek therapy to change that? People are just projecting their own needs on others and thisbis dangerous. Also, though I'm not sure that the two people saying that were aro or not (I think only one wasn't), but it just reminds me a problem I have with some aro people who tend to replace romance by friendship in the amatonormative discourse. Like, they will tell about how romance is not needed to be happy or normal, but will talk about how platonic love is. I just don't get it : why can't we just get rid of the idea that their is an universal way of being that is good for everyone, and just let people define for themselves what they want and need in life?

Not happened to me, but I am at the complete end dof the spectrum so aromantic describes anything I need. However I've seen a lot of people who look for a more precised label. I don't know if they are obsessed as you said, but I can't count the time I've seen "is there a label for this". In fact, the huge number of labels in this community show how important it is for a lot of people to catch a label that expresses exactly how their aromanticism looks like. So I say you are not alone in that.

Yeah same. That's where I left. I know that there are good people in the moderator team, and that these good people seem to be the more active moderators (or maybe I'm just lucky and I happened to be in the same thread as them). But it disturbed me to know that at least one moderator not only agrees with the idea but spoke up about it publicly. So yeah @Alaska Native ManitouI totally believe you when you say it is better now than before, and I personally was surprised at first cause it wasn't as bad as I heard. There are also incredible people there and I think you are one of them. But I still think that some things can be done to make it better.

I like pets but I don't know if I want one for myself. When I was a kid I wanted a cat and to this day I still prefer them over dogs. First I don't like how dogs smell, second cats are more independant and I like that about them. I always wanted children. When I was a kid I wanted three. Now I think that one is already great. I planned to start adoption procedures in two years, when my appartment will be built, so I no longer live with my parents.

My that's crazy. I don't know why I'm surprised disabled people can't yet married in some countries, of course humanity discriminates about this. 😡

Yeah you are probably right. I just saw a topic about it in another aro place, and it just seems to me that some people don't get that mocking another group of people is not a healthy or respectful way to deal with amatonormativity. It is easy to become antiromance when you've been hurt by it, but it is not the way to go. I think for some it goes away when they mature and take confidence, but not everyone sadly.

I don't think queerplatonic refers to queer people and it would be very weird to use it that way. The word and concept are quasi unknown outside of a-spec communities, but if it changes in the future, I won't be surprised if some straight person realizes they are in a QPR with someone else, straight or not. It would be weird to say "don't use the word queerplatonic relationship even if you are in one". Also, imagine if an aro for instance is in a QPR with a straight person : one could say it is a QPR but not the other, that makes no sense. I can understand people finding the term problematic, but in this case, they just should create a new term to replace QPR, that everybody can use.