snapesonalane

Lol as an aroace I can attest to this. On an ace discord server I'm in they were talking about cuddling and bed sharing for like 15 minutes straight. It's funny because I've never been into bed sharing much. Whenever I would imagine being married I wondered if they would be offended or take it as a bad sign if I insisted on separate bedrooms or at least separate beds.

I remembered this little anecdote of when I was around 4 or 5 (so a very very early sign I was aro). It was my aunt's wedding and I was all cute in a little blue dress, an adorable little toddler. So there was this boy, the son of one of my aunt's friends. He was around my age and they would joke about us being very cute together even though we were fucking five (because, y'know, heteronomativity). So fast forward to the reception. This little boy some how got it into his head that he absolutely needed to dance with little five year old me. He threw a giant tantrum and in the end they forced me to dance with this teary eyed snotty little boy. My older cousin, probably 13 or so at the time, was filming the whole thing in one of those giant early 2000's video cameras. I remember looking up at the camera as everyone teased me about this little boy, holding back tears because I hated it. Years later I saw the video along with my family and I remembered that that part was somewhere in there, and I sat through it dreading the moment when the clip would show. So yeah, that's a very early sign I was aromantic af.

Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Yes! I second this! She likes sex and flirting but whenever a character gets romantically emotionally intimate she seems uncomfortable. Of course, the narrative seems to imply it's because of emotional intimacy issues, but she doesn't seem to have those problems with platonic relationships such as her friendship with angel whenever she appears in angel the series. Also, isn't it just more fun to think of her as aro instead?

Lol saaaaaaaame! I just loved the idea of having a friendship as close as Bella and Jacob's, although admittedly I only ever saw the movies so I'm sure I missed out on their friendship. Things got way boring for me once the love triangle came in, I was not into it. I always used to think those kinds of friendships were what romance should be like, oh how naive my aro ass was. I was always so confused when they told me I must like someone. I just didn't get it. I would think, well who made that silly rule? When pressed I would actually say I liked someone from "my old school" so they wouldn't tease me about a real person because I just loathed teasing. Still makes me cringe and I'm 23.

I'm the same. I won't turn down a greeting hug (even if I don't really like hugging and it doesn't feel natural to me) because I don't want to be rude. I only ever hug my mom or my siblings, true hugs I mean. Not greeting hugs. Kissing is as you said: meh. And I don't even think I've ever even cuddled in my life with anyone that wasn't family and even then I can only take like 30 seconds of that. I can't even fathom cuddling with someone, it just seems so weighted in romantic interest. Even if it weren't no thanks.

YMBAI you've never wanted to kiss someone and were surprised to learn that when people say, "I want to kiss [x]" they aren't just conciously deciding they want to kiss, it's an actual urge for them.

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 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.

I'm glad everyone agrees that Rey is aro/ace. Everyone always ships her either with Finn (whom I adore, got nothing against my fav boi) or Kylo and to me it just always felt... Odd. Like people were seeing someone they wanted to see and not what was really there. Rey just has this very platonic energy with everyone. It just feels platonic. It feels how I feel when meeting new people who others would see potential romantic interest in. So yeah, you can pry aro/ace Rey from my cold, representation-craving hands. Also Scott McCall from Teen Wolf nowadays gives me this feeling. When I initially watched the show he had a very emotional/burning with passion relationship but once that love interest was killed off every other relationship he had felt very platonic even though he had 2 other love interests. I headcanon him as demiromantic.

YMBAI you pushed friends away once they started to show romantic interest because it left you with a feeling of wrongness to be liked. YMBAI you would get mad/uncomfortable when someone teased you about a friend/squish because clearly you can't just want to be friends YMBAI you feel like a bucket of cold water is thrown on your head when someone confesses feelings for you

I saw this guy who asked me out when I was in high school (it was a very public display and I should have noticed I wasn't into romance when I felt like I had had cold water dumped over me instead of butterflies. Mind you I had a squish on the guy which I confused for a crush, so his asking me out wasn't exactly unfounded) one day at the library. He didn't see me. I bolted like I was being chased and never went to that library again. And the first real instance where I could have figured out I was aromantic had I known what I was feeling, was in middle school when my friends made up a secret admirer and left letters in my bag. It wasn't a very nice thing to do and they were probably expecting me to swoon over this invisible guy, instead I hid the letters because I thought it was a real person and I was disgusted by being thought of as a romantic object. We stopped being friends soon after because after a while I figured out they were behind it and I had been stressed for months because of disgust towards this imaginary admirer. Also I could never handle teasing. It mae me feel icky when someone teased me about a boy I was friends with.

I'm 23 and I've never been in a relationship. I tried the whole online dating thing because even though I'm asexual I thought, "well if I love someone I think I could have sex". And I talked to people and it was nice until it started feeling like feelings were being pushed onto me. Like one time I agreed to go on a date with this guy and a couple days before he started getting really mushy. I mentioned that I needed to go to the store because I was feeling under the weather and he would say stuff like, "you have to be well for out date darling," and using petnames and I was just NOT into it. I should have realized then that that was not just me being asexual lol. I also had what I now recognize as squishes but at the time I thought were crushes. Some of those crushes came close to a relationship but I always bailed when things got romancey. I do want a some sort of queerplatonic relationship some time in the future though.