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I did a poll some while ago about the gender distribution here on the forum. Apparently, there are twice as many females here than males. This result was also reproduced by a study I saw on tumblr some while ago. Since then I've been wondering if this is something which inherent to aromanticism or if it is just a sampling bias.

Right now, my theory is that it is a sampling bias caused by women talking more often about love with their friends. If this is true, it might lead to an increased psychological strain because of not being able to contribute anything to the conversation and just realizing more easily that something is "off", resulting in a higher proportion of women actually investigating about aromanticism.

But I don't have any experience with this. I can just say for myself that I personally basically never talk about love with my friends (but this could also just be because all of my friends are nerds) and only looked into aromanticism because of curiosity as I didn't think it would matter much if I was aromantic.

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I think that aromanticism has some epigenetic cause. With this explanation, both answers can be true. Epigenetic markers can be set before birth but can also be changed due to environmental influences.

Why did we just go down from 1947 to 1826? 1828

I never really got why you should ship two fictional characters. If they have a relationship it's lucky for them but I only really care about the main plot.

In real life I wouldn't like it if somebody shipped me so I don't do it myself (not to menting that I'm way to less empathic to actually know if some people would fit together). I also think it would be kind of an invasion of their privacy and free will.

1947

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I had a lucid dream once when I realised that there was a logic error in a dream and then reliced that I had realiced the logic error.

I can't use the new one either, it also says expired

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I had a one romantic relationship. I already suspected I was aromantic, but when she asked I thought maybe the feelings would come once we are in a relationship. Obviously, they didn't, but the relationship wasn't really bad, I just did what I thought she wanted. It worked quite well as I'm not romance repulsed and we have pretty similar characters. After a while the relationship developed into being more of a burden but I didn't want to hurt her by ending it. Thankfully she "cheated" on me with somebody else so she ended it and we're still friends.

I think the point where I knew I was aromantic was when rumours about her and her new boyfriend began spreading, my reaction was "this isn't that bad, I just want to be sure what's going on so I can react accordingly". It basically was the best possible outcome: I didn't have to end it and knew I was aro.

Right now I'm thinking about telling her that I'm aromantic as I think she has a right to know, would get it and wouldn't be too upset. Does anyone have any experience with that?

By the way, why does the facebook relationship status matter so much? I don't even have a facebook acount?

On 8/6/2018 at 10:21 PM, Ice Queen said:

On the one hand I'm heartbroken and it hurts that I want to cuddle with him, hold his hand, give him cute pecks and I can't do it anymore. But on the other hand, my desire for him has not faded in the slightest. More often than not I long to do all those things, I crave to feel his body close to mine. But the impossibility of that has no effect on my system... it just make me very sad and it is hard... And yet, the idea of having sex with a guy, other than him, grosses me out.

This part seems to be normal. At least this is what this TED talk seems to suggest. The whole talk is interesting, but here's a transkript of the applying part: 

On 4/2/2018 at 7:22 AM, Abster said:

I feel  that just because I am Aromantic but allosexual people will think that all I care about is sex and that I’m only using people for just that.... they will probably write me off as some kind of ‘emotionless whore’ (I am a cis female) for having a sexual attraction to men rather than wanting a romantic relationship as ‘all women do is desire romance’

It even isn't only in conversations with allosexual people. When I posted my situation in the aromantic subforum of the german branch of AVEN(as it is the only german forum dealing with aromanticism) I got a similar reaction.

While reading through some threads, I felt like there were way more female people here than male, so I wondered if this really was a thing or just the distorted perception of a heterosexual boy.

For me, it's basically the same. I really like learning about romantic relationships and how/why they form. For a while, I tried to train myself to display the symptoms of falling in love, as I really wanted a realtionship but didn't want to be an asshole ( it worked to some extent as I could convince myself that I was in love).

In my opinion, the problem is that there are two major definitions of aromanticism I found. The first, which I found primarily on AVEN, is "somebody who doesn't desire a romantic relationship" and the second is "somebody who doesn't experience romantic attraction, for example never has a crush". Based on the first one, we wouldn't be aromantic, based son the second one, we would. But this one has the the major problem that prove that you're aromantic - you could still have a crush in the future.

Disclaimer: Right now, I'm thinking about if I really wanted a romantic relationship or just a really close friend because as a shy introvert, I never really had one and may have subconciously thought that a relationship would be a good way to force me into opening up.

1. "I enjoy fictional romantic relationships and would like to experience the same kinds of feelings" Yes. But mostly to understand why everybody around me acts the way they do.

2. "I like nearly everything about romantic relationships but do not experience romantic attraction" Yes.

3. "I would like to be in a romantic relationship, just not with anyone I have ever met" Kind of yes, but I think I imagine it more as a close friendship than a relationship

4. "I love the idea of romance but I can't deal with it in real life" I don't really love it, but it would be easier if I could deal with it.

5. "I would like to be in a romantic relationship for practical reasons (not feelings)" If I can find such reasons, sure. Having someone you can discuss things with wouldn't be bad.

6. "I think I would like it if someone had romantic feelings for me" In theory, yes. In practice I think I couldn't deal with it.

7. "I would be fine in a romantic relationship or a QPR" I think so, but don't really know.

8. "I would like to know what it's like to experience romantic attraction" I would like to know for scientific purposes if it isn't habit-forming (see 1.)

9. "I'd rather be romantic than aromantic" I don't like loosing control, so no.

10. "I can't imagine spending the rest of my life as an aromantic person" I can but I think I'll be very lonely as I'm really not good at making friends.

11. "Being in a romantic relationship would help me attain other goals in my life" I don't think so.

12. "I think dating sounds like fun" Not dating itself, but to determine if someone has feelings for me is kind of like solving a really complicated puzzle.

I don't really know if I want a romantic relationship or just a really close friend.

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.