David Box

I'd say being ace and/or aro leads you to consider how attractive other people view you a) less or b) more. Most people would probably not dress up for other people but occasionally you'd find someone intentionally dressing up to be less attractive. Personally, I don't care. But dudes aren't supposed to as much

Thanks for this, I didn't realize I needed that.

It's hard for me to call myself Aromantic even in private because while I fit right into the aro community by not wanting to date, not liking the idea of dating anyone, and never having a crush, it does imply that I will never fall in love and seeing how I'm not old enough to drink in America it feels like I'm trying to predict my future with no way to do so.

lots of nonreligious people here, including me. nice to know

L.A. Devotee and Boys/Girls by Mercer.

Hello! Welcome to Arocalypse!

Hello! Looking for the same

Nice

I was reading Archie (2015, don't remember which issue but Archie tries to be like Jughead as he deals with Veronica moving away) and I realized - holy shit guys, some people would be jealous of us being aro. One day I will meet someone that realizes I've never really dated and don't want to, and they are going to think "Wow, wish I could do that!". Nice. The Jughead 2015 comics give me life. I still sort of wish I could be ace so I wouldn't feel like a fraud in the larger ace/aro community and Jughead should have been ace and aro, but I'll take what I can get.

4 male, 7 female, and one other. Honestly it feels like there's more nb people on here than anything else. Hope we get more responses

Hello!

Thought I was Pan ("I like everyone equally"), then hetero, then whoops guess I'm hetero and aro.

I want to say up front that after reading the Wikipedia article for romantic attraction I was confused and thought it was saying that romantic love was invented in the middle ages and romantic attraction was just a strong emotional bond + societal norms attached until I asked some of my friends and they confirmed love wasn't invented in the middle ages for me and told me love stories have been found in early stories. So I know where you are at with the confusion. On that note, to answer your question, no, aromanticism was not the norm. Not at all. In societies where people have arranged marriages, you are expected to learn to love the person you marry. In Shakespeare's time, it was considered unhealthy for a woman to marry without loving her husband and arranged marriages would be arranged by having the eligible bachelor woo the woman over time because it was thought if she was unhappy, she would be unhealthy. If you married someone and didn't learn to love them and your partner was not abusive, mentally ill, or completely financially irresponsible then you should try harder and stick through it because you probably already have children and dowrys need to be returned if marriages fall apart. Beauty and the beast originally started out as something to ease young girls into the idea of marrying a stranger. This isn't always the case, as some arranged marriages are heirachial and polygamous, but monogamous ones generally expect love to develop. As for PDA, Pride and Prejudice, Pictures of Victorian couples that aren't actually just staying still and frowning because the camera needs to be set for 10 minutes long (PDA), any source of media from ye olden days where someone doesn't like the person they are being forced to marry, etc. is my answer. > "but it seems that most historical societies were oriented around the idea that having a partner was more about procreation, creating bonds between families, and fulfilling sexual needs; not about romance. Most of the romantic overtures that I have seen from this period actually seem to be pretty demiromantic, partners grew deep emotional bonds and then fell in love...they were not in love from the start." Yes about the former but no for the latter. It was incredibly common for people to want to marry other people than those they were supposed to marry, and lots of tragic/depressive literature from the time was based on this. People had crushes on people they barely met. Demiromantic is a uniquely terrible description of the norm of forced marriages in any society considering the atmosphere of sexism, ableism, homophobia, and more than required people to learn to love whoever they were married off to for the sake of their family unless they had certain socially acceptable reasons to not love them. It wasn't "falling in love after forming an emotional bond" so much as "falling in love JUST for marriage, and just for marriage for practical reasons first, and tough shit if you don't like that*. Demiromantic is only a concept that makes sense in a society that believes that the inklings of any romantic attraction can and should come before you truly know someone and it is, therefore, weird to only fall in love with people you have a strong emotional bond to and does not belong in discussions of general cultures where arranged marriages are normal. >spreading into other cultures This is racist. Granted I'm being a bit hypocritical, considering my first paragraph, but I will say the Wikipedia article only mentioned the west and while I should not have forgotten the rest of the world in my panicked questioning, you didn't forget. The Philippines has a creation story where a God had an argument with his wife (a goddess) and she left, and in trying to find her/get her back he took basically dirt and clouds and made the stars, oceans, mountains, forests, and everything else. China used to heavily romanticise an emporer that cut his robe rather than wake his sleeping (male) lover. There is absolutely no reason to think that after the Renaissance and after colonialism/mercantilism/better forms of communication the west spread its new idea of falling in love before you were married/marrying for love to the rest of the world. > but it would be nice for people to at least acknowledge that romance has not always been as important to society as it is today They do. It is common knowledge that people used to generally marry for social status, money, and practical reasons. Every discussion about arranged marriage either assumes this or will blatantly state this and it is well known that in certain important periods of western history you did not marry without permission. Edit: basically what @awra and @aro_elise said.

1827

Do you think it's important to talk about romantic orientations as well as sexual ones? Do you feel like this is necessary but only within the context of being a-spec, as our experiences tend to be more varied? Yes, and yes, but also because the variorientated (mismatch of sexuality and romantic orientation) community is very, very new and needs work before we go out into the larger world and tell people that not only are some people aro and not ace and visa versa, but also some people have sex with men but love women. We need an icebreaker, essentially, since people wrap sexuality with love. Do you think that it would also be nice if people acknowledged kinds of orientations that are not sexual or romantic more often? ?? What ?? Do you feel comfortable as an aro in spaces that are "for asexual people and also aromantic I guess"? No. I'm considering leaving AVEN. Almost didn't join the AASD server because it just had the ace flag on the little discord server circle thing. If Aro wasn't in the name I wouldn't have joined Do you feel like your experience as an aro is acknowledged/included within other orientation communities (eg. lesbian, pansexual, asexual), or within LGBTQIAPN+/IMOGA/queer communities, if you participate/lurk at those kinds of spaces? Sort of? The general trans community doesn't care, individual trans groups differ in opinion. One trans group I'm in had an aroace that helped me realize I was aro, but the two individual trans groups I'm in make me feel as if I'm the only aro at all (forget being allo aro), and have people that say things: like "you'll understand romance when you get older with experience" after I was questioning if romance even existed after reading the Wikipedia article and seeing if I was the only one; have another person say that they consider heterosexuality to include both sexuality and romance; and just today someone said they consider friends with benefits to be a type of romance (*how???*)