lonelyace

I have to wonder how you guys can all be so proud of being aromantic. I don't mean that it's a bad thing to be proud of your aromanticism, I'm sure it's a great thing. I just can't seem to be able to bring myself to accept it about myself. Last night my friend texted me that I'm lucky that I don't get crushes and... No. I feel the exact opposite of lucky. I hate knowing that friendships are considered are considered less important than romance. I hate knowing that the only way to settle down with a person is romantically. I hate knowing that in the end all of friends will move on. Whether they intend to or not they will get married, have kids, be too busy for an old friend. They might write a Christmas letter and call once a year, but what am I supposed to do the other 363 days of the year? i feel so so deeply about my friends but in the end it doesn't matter. My feelings, my relationships are sub par. They're unimportant because they aren't the right type of love. I just wish I could feel the right kind of love. That I wouldn't lose everyone. I don't know how you do it.

To everybody who has commented so far, I really appreciate your insightful responses and I hope that there are more to come. I very much appreciate the discussion so far, though I'd like to comment on a few things. I hadn't thought about this. In my mind aromantic and asexual are orientations and the oriented at the beginning is just to demonstrate the extra orientation. But I can see where you're coming from, and now that you've pointed it out, it will probably bother me a little bit too. I only know one lesbian and I think that she would probably be pretty understanding. I've considered bringing this up with her, but the level of explanation this would require would be astronomical. Even then there's no guarantee that she would even get it. I have tried to explain all of this to my two queerplatonic partners with varying levels of success and as much as I would like to embrace this, the explanation is really a killjoy. My experience so far has been that the division between the different segments of the larger LGBT+ community exists almost entirely on the internet while real life queer spaces tend to be much more mixed. I could be wrong as I have heard of trans and asexual specific groups, but for the most part it seems being pretty mixed. That being said, yes, I think I would like to interact with lesbian/wlw communities. This aesthetic and alterous attraction to women has been a source of confusion for me, as I first identified as gay, then as homoromantic asexual before realizing that I didn't quite match up with what I was hearing from other homoromantic asexuals. I think it would be wonderful to interact with other lesbian aroaces but that doesn't seem likely to happen. I mostly get excited if I meet someone who fits one category, whether its lesbian, asexual, or aromantic. I would love to interact with others who have as you say "unorthodox-axis" identities. I almost think that @bananaslug and I should start a little support group or something of our own. To be honest my original question was somewhat muddled in my head. I was asking if lesbian aroace is a real thing, and I appreciate your input on that. I do tend to agree more with Coyote in that new identities can be made up. It seems to me that much of the lgbt+ community is built around creating new words to describe our diverse experiences. And yes, the ethicacy of using the lesbian aroace label is also a question in my mind.

The idea of oriented aroaces is something that I came across fairly recently. The gist of it, to my understanding, is that the split attraction model can include more than just sexual and romantic attraction and can include sensual, aesthetic, alterous, queerplatonic (etc.) attractions, and that any of these can be important enough to warrant a label of their own. Thus someone could be a straight aroace or a gay aroace or a pan aroace. When people describe crushes and romantic attraction to me I can say that I don't feel that emotion. Whatever it is that they are feeling, it's foreign to me. But at the same time some people are more "special" than others. Girls are definitely gorgeous in a way that guys aren't (sorry guys). And I think I do feel alterously or queerplatonically, I'm still not sure exactly what the difference is. I feel like some people do wind up in a gray area for me. I do want to cuddle with them and go on dates with them and build a life together with them but I don't want to kiss them or do anything beyond that with them. And with that I do have a preference: girls. I feel like lesbian aroace is fitting for me, but I'm also hesitant to use it. I don't know if alterous and aesthetic attraction is really enough for me to also call myself a lesbian. I feel like maybe if I called myself that it would be unfair to real lesbians who do experience sexual and/or romantic towards women. And the more labels I take, the more difficult it is to explain my orientation to others. Hell, I can't really comprehend it myself. I also think about amatonormativity in this mental debate with myself. Is it amatonormativity that has me telling myself that I need to spend my life with someone? I really do get attached to some people to the point where I can't imagine my life without them. But I don't know, maybe that really is normal for friendship and I'm just overgeneralizing the alloromantic people's seeming tendency to eventually leave friends behind. And is it amatonormative if you really want to spend yourlife with a small group of people? I like lesbian aroace. It feels more right than any of the many other labels I've tried on for myself. But... I just don't know if it's really a real thing that I could use. I just don't know.

Famous while I'm alive. Screw everyone who comes after me, I want to know that I'm appreciated. I don't care if that makes me shallow. Would you rather be haunted by ghosts or abducted by aliens?

Holding hands for some reason makes me very uncomfortable. Hugging is great and I enjoy it, but I don't like to cuddle unless I know the person really really well. There are maybe 2 people in the world that I feel comfortable cuddling with and even then its more of sitting close together than actually like, holding each other. I've never kissed or been kissed but the thought of doing so just makes me vaguely uncomfortable.

Anyone who stops to think about the story usually comes to that conclusion. But in pop culture Romeo and Juliet are often referenced as the paragon of love, the relationship that all couples should aspire to have. I've also seen Sampson and Delilah, another relationship that ends in tragedy, referenced as a couple to model. It's odd that alloromantic people seem to glorify these relationships that end so badly as the thing that everyone should want, and yet that's what they do.

Man, I want to know what the next page says now.

I'm currently obsessed with The Runaways right now. It's one of my all time favorite comic book series and the tv show was a bit slow in the first season but great in the second season. I started headcanoning Molly Hernandez (or Hayes in the comics) as aroace as a joke, but now I kinda really like it. She's the only one of the main characters who never has a love interest. The show writers probably do it because she's the youngest and they want to make her seem less mature than all the other runaways, but she's 15. Everyone I knew at 15 already had crushes and were dating. Still, Molly hasn't been given a love interest. Every story arc she has is about wanting everyone to get along as a family. The time she brings an outsider into the group, it's a guy that she thinks might be her brother. I don't know, there isn't really a lot of evidence for aroace Molly but I like the idea. She's so full of love for everyone around her but it all seems to be familial and platonic love.

On surveys like these I always put atheist or non religious, because that's what I am. It always feels a little bit weird though since my family is conservative Christian, and I go to a Baptist private school. I've been an atheist for about a year and no one knows that so I still have to go to church and all of that. So when I answer these kind of questions, I wonder if I should answer what I really believe or what I practice, if that makes sense. Oh well, it won't be an issue for much longer. I move out in August.

Ravenclaw all the way! As for my factions in the Divergent world, I got equal parts erudite and dauntless.

Break dance. That seems like a cool talent to have. WYR be the only immortal person in the world, or have everyone in the world be immortal except for you?

When I was about 8 a friend of mine had a crush on a guy, and for some reason she thought that walking around with me on her shoulders would impress him. I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world. First of all, why would that impress him, and second, what were they gonna do, ask their parents to take them on play dates? But okay, whatever, I sat on her shoulders. It didn't help her any. When I was in sixth grade my entire grade went to a camp for a couple of days (it was a small school, there were probably only about 40 people in the grade). One of the teachers went around the girl's cabin and asked every single one of us who we liked, and actually noted it on her iPad. When she got to me, I said I didn't like anyone, and no one believed me. They would not leave me alone until I picked someone to say I had a crush on. My freshman year of high school I thought I had a crush on a guy, although in retrospect it's pretty obvious that I just wasn't used to having a squish or whatever on guys. Anyway, I was excited because I finally didn't have to get all evasive whenever my friends asked me who I liked. Then my best friend at the time asked the guy to a school dance. Everyone was enraged on my behalf, like how could she do that, she knows you like him!! I didn't really think it was that big of a deal. If she liked him, she could have him, it wasn't worth ruining a friendship over.

Romance is Boring by Los Compasinos

Maybe this show is too old, or just not what everyone is watching. It's definitely not what I normally watch, but everyone has heard of the 90's sitcom Friends right? Because I totally headcanon Joey Tribbiani as heterosexual and demi or gray aromantic. I mean, he sleeps with plenty of women, but only seriously dates once in the show's entire 10 year run. That one time, it's with Rachel, whom he'd been friends with for years, and admits to being afraid because this is a completely new feeling for him.