NotHeartless

Exactly my sentiments. Growing up, I used to share a bed with one friend everytime when we had a sleepover and I slept next to my roommate (and friend) one night where I coudn't sleep because of nigthmares. It's quite normal for me to sleep next to people I care about and like. As child, I used to sleep next to my parents often, to be honest I still do that when I visit them (well, next to my father but there is enough space between us). I don't know, it's just a natural thing to me. I love my sleeping space but if someone would want to sleep next to me, I would not have a problem with it. I would love to live with several people together where everyone can have their own space but everyone can also come by whenever they like. It's important to keep the balance between closeness and distance. Having people to cuddle with and share physical affection (non-sexual and sexual) is also something I am very fond of.

I did not come out directly but asked my parents today: "What if I want to share my life with five girls and six boys, like a hippie?" (it is a delighting vision for me to live together with several people and be affectionate with each other but without all the romantic stuff). My mother simply answered, with a smile: "It's your life". Always the best answer. Perviously, my dad came home and told us an old friend of him implied he wanted to set me off with his son (I don't know either of them, lmao). My mom replied immediately: "Why, is he gay?" My gender identity is finally recognized and accepted as well ?.

In short: yes. The few times I tried to be in a romantic relationship, I felt very similar to what you describe (always felt very uncomfortable with PDA and my supposed romantic interest). With friends however I like to be affectionate from time to time and don't have a problem with it.

Me too! Great work on your essay and analyzing your feelings. It seemed to help you a lot which makes me happy for you. What stands out to me is that you never wanted to do romantic things with your supposedly crushes. I relate very much. Cute girls can turn your head so much, haha. Learning about squishes and sexual crushes was an eye-opener.

@eatingcroutons Impressive!

@Holmbo funny! And interesting. From a linguistic point it makes sense though, I mean technically for example I am "available" for marriage because I am not married. Emphasis on technically.

First off: no, you are not weird. The atrraction you feel or the way you feel atrraction, I understand it. I don't desire romantic relationships either but found myself in the "I love you"-situation more than one time and yeah, it is not nice for either party. Reading about your cruhes: they could be sexual crushes mixed with platonic attraction. Especially in the case with the guy you want to notice you and want to keep as a friend. Platonic attraction (especially when there is other attraction involved, like sexual, sensual or aesthetic) can be surprisingly intense. I experienced something similar a few months ago; I relate to the feeling that the perfect outcome of your crushes would be to have sex with them and that the others always feel different for you than the other way around. If you're aromantic or not is something only you can tell and if you want to describe your orientation this way. The important thing in your situation is to keep in mind you don't feel a certain way about people and to communicate it. Otherwise, you'll end up in situations were the other one feels "more" than you do frequently as sex or physical intimacy can apparently trigger romantic feelings in romantic people. Hope this helps a bit. Here are a lot of people who can probably relate to your feelings especially the ones who identifiy as aro and sexual.

Right?! I had similar thoughts. I wonder about loyality too; somehow funny how we're all kind of low here. Have to agree with the others, some questions were confusing or had too much context missing to be interpreted right.

I've felt the same, especially growing up. Nowadays it's cooled down but I still get jealous sometimes. I don't show it or talk about it (expect here) because damn, I want my friends and practically everyone to be just happy! But it can still hurt... Honestly, I'm kind of relieved to read about all of your experiences regarding this. I felt selfish because of it too and confused. I asked myself if I'm secretly in love with my friends or something (yes, all of them and simultaneously, haha). As teenager, I only heard of jealousy in romantic matters - it was strange to me.

I absolutely get you here. Problem is: people think whatever about us and anyone, unless you come out or go ahead and tell them. As far as I can tell, people who are open-minded do not automatically assume your sexual orientation, instead want get to know you first. Then there are the ones who don't care anyway. I can see that some people will have a problem of understanding you simply don't have any sexual orientation, but all you can do here is talk to them about it if you really want them to understand. I don't like it either when people have fundamental assumptions about others but unfortunately, there will always be people like that (sometimes even assuming without realizing). There are things we cannot control, as much as we would like to but well, you can try and talk to people about it who you want to know.

@Cristal Gris as it was already stated, it's completly fine to go by "just aro". I tend to do it too because my aromanticism affects (potential) relationships in my life way stronger. Only recently I realized how exactly (and how serious) my aromanticism has an impact on my sexuality. It's complicated. The "demi-bisexual" label is/was an attempt to explain what I feel to the outside world but even that is not completly accurate. The split attraction model gave me the opportunity to realize I'm aro - because where I lingered before, people never distinguished between sexual and romantic attraction which confused me for a good amount of time. I felt sexual attraction sometimes but romantic feelings did not want to come along (whenever I questioned if it's a crush, it was often simply lust). Sometimes it's better to refrain from labeling certain feelings if it's not possible for you to spot them and it's immaterial. Not labeling can give you as much freedom as labeling, if not more.

Care 86% Fairness 69% Liberty 53% Authority 44% Loyalty 33% Purity 19% Your strongest moral foundation is Care. Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal. Fair enough, it was fun. I have to grin a bit on my purity score (not that it wouldn't be fitting).

Hello Nancy and welcome to the forums . Here are all kinds of people with (very) different views and feelings on aromanticism so you'll surely find people who understand you and vice versa.

Hi and welcome to arocalypse ! You are definitely not heartless just because you don't feel a very specific way towards people. To me, romance is a social construct (or idea) and that's it. Hope you have a great time here and enriching conversations .

Usually, I don't think about it but when I have a conversation with someone and e.g. they ask me if I'm single, I feel a bit weird every time. For the exact same reason as you; somehow implies I'm not complete on my own or that I'm alone (which isn't the case). Speaking of different languages, a German word for single is "ledig" (often used in offical documents). It just means being unmarried and I like that a bit more than single, although it's probably nitpicky .

Oh god, this happened to me a few years ago, too. In my case, it was a mentally unstable person which I had befriended. I told him we can be friends but it became clear after a while he wants "more". After he made that clear (and I said I don't feel that way for him) one day he just went out and claimed to his friends I was his lover. I never forget the nauseous feeling inside my gut as I realized what he was doing and the way he ignored my feelings completely. I wanted this friendship to end eventually, that's when he said he would kill himself if I left ?. I'm very glad for you the mother of this guy helped you out; just keep your distance. Romantic harassment does exist indeed and it's really bad, makes my stomach turn.

That's a tough one because it's always hard to tell from far away what the exact reasons were to why and how, etc. But to answer your question: As someone who has suffered emotional neglect as kid as well, I can say the fear of emotional vulnerability isn't exclusive to romantic relationships/feelings. Your friend's(?) emotional coldness could be alexithymia but it could be that he did not learn how to have an open heart and let people in, too (contrary to some views I do think you need to learn this, especially if you missed out on it as child/teenager). When he says he has difficulties with understanding his feelings, it's even more complicated to learn this. When you are in a situation like that, it may be easier to say "you're aro" than to admit you went through difficult times which shaped the way you view people and interact with people and value (or do not value) your relationships (something I spent a lot time questioning myself). I would guess for him saying he's aro was an explination to why he felt things (or not). It's his absolute right to label himself like he feels comfortable with but one should look critically into the issues before shoving oneself into a drawer. In the worst case, labeling could also be a way to run away from emotional problems/to avoid letting people close. Was he in psychotherapy or something similar? All humans can have problems with emotional closeness/vulnerability, I fully agree. A friend can hurt you as much as a lover (even more, if you ask me). I'm sorry he left you and you feel like you lost a friend. Let him be. When he says he wasn't ready for your connection, then it's best to listen to it (for your own health as well). In some cases (I experienced myself) people say they have emotional issues when in reality they are "just" very selfish. I don't want to accuse your friend of that, it's just a thought I want to give you to think about. A selfish person can seem (or be) uncaring and cold too. People do not always realize how selfish they are or act; it's a lesson I had to learn with my personal growth too. I acted and felt egocentric in the past without realizing it, hurting people close to me and hurting myself, only because I thought it was "better" for me to act this way. Maybe your friend had sometimes similar thoughts and with him having trouble in building healthy and stable relationships, everything would add up. Aromantic people are not cold, we feel as much as any other sentient being - this is a big misunderstanding about aromanticism, unfortunately. When someone is cold or feels like he/she is cold it's not connected to aromanticism in my opinion, it's rather a personal/psychological issue. P.S: Feel free to PM me if you want to talk about it in private.

@momokoala I confused admiration with crushes for a long time too - I can quite relate to your experience there. Especially when someone has an outstanding intellect. In my case, I confused sexual attraction with romantic attraction as well. It made me wonder how I can think about sex but don't want to kiss or hold hands.

Fitting for Valentine's day . Romantic love definitely is a losing game. Though a game I don't want to play in the first place. The graphics and controls are atrocious.

To add a little different perspective also: I tend to be emotional instable (I show some significant symptoms of borderline) and there is the assumption people with borderline are extremely afraid of losing someone and basically live in symbiosis with their significant other. While I do tend to feel intense about my friendships and do suffer (a lot) when I lose a close friend, I still don't fall in love and don't like the whole idea of exclusive (romantic) relationships. Which seems rare for someone with BPD (I swear you have no idea how many articles and books I have read about the disorder where it's all about the relationship to a romantic partner). I know this isn't exactly what you asked @yester but I want to illustrate you can have a mental condition and still be aro. With other mental conditions it can get really complicated to tell apart if you feel the way you feel because of mental health or because you are just that way - it's your orientation. But either way it's important to accept oneself and I personally don't make a difference in what the exact cause for e.g. aromanticism is. As long as you don't suffer because of it (which is a safe sign something is wrong) I don't consider it as something you need to stress yourself about it. Just take care in general.

With the current terms available, I would consider it a friendship/connection with sex or "friendship with benefits" as they say. But I realized, thanks to arocalypse, most alloromantics seem to think "friendship with beneftis" is only about the sex, the "friendship" is basically non-existent or consists of exchanging a few words and that's it. So, no friendship at all and it comes down to casual sex all over again. And then it seems impossible for allromantics to not fall for someone they're banging. Which is hard for me to comprehend but that's one reason why I'm here. Honestly, if the situation would ever came to be and I find another aromantic person I like, we'd have a non exclusive, close bond and sexual fun together, I wouldn't term it. I would just take it as what it is. Society feels like a deadlock with their monogamous romantic relationships. The closest thing I got was a close friend I experimented sexually with. It was awesome - until he found himself a girlfriend and it ended. Same, old procedure.

"I don't fall in love but I feel like my love is scattered all over my friendships."

Both of your points are really good ones IMO. People talk about being touch averse here (and on AVEN) very openly which is refreshing and even comforting at times, to know you're not the only one. And since I stick around I finally have a word for this "quirk". Whereas in the past I thought it must be because of mental health problems or the way I was raised. I tried to explain my aversion to touch to my current psychotherapist but after we analysed my childhood situation he said something along the lines of: "eh, you''re going to like it in the future" (generally, he's a good psychologist that helped me with a lot difficulties but I do wish professionals would desist from projecting some of their personal beliefs onto their patients. Even with my former therapist; whenever I only mentioned I'm not interested in romantic relationships, they flipped their shit a little. But that belongs in another topic). In past relationships I tried to convince myself to like being touched so much. It didn't work and felt revulsion too many times. This is a little less touch related but you know how people say it's romantic when someone (you like) looks deep into your eyes? Happened to me in my first attempt at a relationship. It was plain horrible. I still get shudders just remembering and not in a good way.

@awkwardchickenpotatodragon Great! I see. It's the Internet, often you can't be careful enough. Then again, I feel like this website is a kind of safe space. But only do what you're comfortable with.