Prismatangle

So I've already sent this to you as a PM, but for the sake of others who may come here with similar dilemmas (either now or later, via a google search), I'll also post the links that I sent you publicly here, with a basic explanation of why I linked them. Tools for Analyzing Relationships Queenie's Five-Factor Model of Relationships - Excellent for helping you analyze a relationship in detail. I recommend journaling about this privately as a way to process. Queenie also links to several other tools you can use to analyze/model relationships in that post, which are also useful. Captain Awkward is an advice columnist blogger with a great repository of advice for what to do in a very wide variety of relationship situations, and basically the only dedicated advice-giver I really trust at this point, because the advice given there always considers the possibility of abuse and addresses what to do in that case too. And the Captain is aware of both asexuality and aromanticism and will mention them in an educated way to advice-seekers when relevant. If you browse through the different categories (like breaking up) you may be able to find something relevant and helpful, even if it's not addressing the same situation that you're in. The comments on this site are often full of helpful advice as well. About differences in emotionality and relationship styles Siggy has written some stuff recently that seems like it may help give some perspective in this case, since some of the stuff he has talked about seems generally somewhat similar to how you describe this person, so I thought it might be helpful even if it's not exactly the same. The reason he discusses these things is because he experiences friction between his own preferences and the ways that both the ace and aro communities talk about relationships. Low emotionality - in which Siggy talks about how he experiences emotion in a way that seems "muted relative to the norm." I don't make close friends - in which he discusses how close friendships are not his preferred friendship style, and uses Queenie's five-factor model to quickly explain what matters to him about these friendships near the end. When unimportant relationships are important - in which he critiques how the ace and aro communities often talk about friendships/relationships, and explains how relationships that aren't close can still be valuable. This is not to say that I think your ex is like Siggy, but just that if you can consider what he has to say, it may be a step towards understanding some of the possibilities for how your ex might be feeling, and coming to terms with them (and with not knowing the reasons he feels this way) may help with your own emotional processing. On whether trauma might be a cause for any of this: That is an unknowable, unanswerable question. You can't possibly know whether he'd be different if he hadn't experienced that trauma and honestly? He may not know the answer to that question either. It's best to just avoid asking that. It's not your job to diagnose him and figure out whatever has "caused" him to be the way he is (assuming there even is an identifiable single cause, and not just a multitude of factors all indistinguishably working together with this result). Anything about that is up to him (and any mental health professionals he might decide to hire) to figure out, if he wants to. It's his choice. I have written about what it's like to be on the receiving end of questioning about whether trauma has caused [x behavior/feeling/orientation] a little bit myself (spoiler: it sucks), though not in much detail because I am just not willing to go there in detail yet. I'm also part of Resources for Ace Survivors and I will link a couple other posts related to trauma as a cause/whether a person would be different if it weren't for trauma impacting them that may help to read here too (keep in mind the content warnings listed at the links) : I touched on this a little bit in my February Carnival of Aros post. It's basically the main reason why I am constantly, permanently questioning whether or not I'm "really" aro. When there never was any "before" It Gets Better: Chasing the 'Before' Stop bringing up sexual assault to dismiss asexuality! - written by Julie Decker, the author of The Invisible Orientation, about how often people will try to use trauma to invalidate people's identities Obviously since these are from a support community made by and for asexual survivors, they focus on asexuality rather than aromanticism, but the principle applies to aros too! Just mentally replace "asexual" with "aromantic" when you're reading these. This is the best I can do for now, but if anyone knows any posts to link specifically about trauma and aromanticism, please do link them to me, because I'd like to have them for future reference. Anyway, the point of linking these is just this: when posting on a forum like this, please try to consider how other trauma survivors reading this might feel to hear you publicly debating about whether your ex's trauma has caused him to [blank]. It can be triggering, upsetting, bothersome, or just mildly annoying, depending on the person and how they're doing in the moment that they read it. It may cause people to doubt whether they're aromantic or not all over again, and that's no fun. I don't think anyone should blame themselves for wondering about this, because wondering is perfectly natural, I just would advise people to avoid bringing it up as much as possible, because at best it can't be answered, and at worst, it can remind people of their own trauma and how people have tried to use that against them.

Hi, I'm the one who wrote that blog post Coy linked! More or less, yeah, that's what I was saying. Basically, neither one of us realized we were on the aromantic spectrum at the start of our relationship, and we went into it with the assumption that we were doing a... basically "normal" (whatever that means) romantic relationship. So, we kinda just did a lot of stuff that we thought we were supposed to do, rather than what we actually wanted to do, with neither one of us realizing that the other one didn't (necessarily) want to do that, or have the "romantic attraction" (whatever that is, neither one of us knows) to match. What's funny is that, I guess she was kinda copying a lot of stuff that she saw in movies/TV/etc. and it resulted in her moving the relationship forward REALLY FAST, at a pace similar to how you'd see it compressed in movies. Like, faster than both of us were comfortable with. Because of this and a crappy situation with where I was living at the time, we moved in together way too soon. Which resulted in us breaking up about a year in, and then getting back together 2-3 weeks later, after she moved out. We are still together now, but for the past 3-4 years we've started considering our relationship to be a QPR instead of romantic. [Cw for next 2 paragraphs: abuse, sexual violence, coercion, curative violence] Anyway... I wish I had other things to link you to, but unfortunately I haven't seen anyone else write about this kind of situation much. The only other thing I can think of that might have something relevant is the Rotten Zucchinis zines, but those focus more on QP relationships that were harmful/ended up being abusive, rather than just ending with one partner pulling away as you described. You may still relate to some of the stuff in there about breakups though? Tbh, your situation as you described it reminds me more of my situation with my ex, rather than my situation with my current partner. Except, my ex was very abusive, so I don't want to suggest that it's a close comparison. It's just that, my relationship with him was... very much not-romantic, but it was sexual (although I didn't necessarily want it to be, at least definitely not in the way that he wanted it—ftr, I am asexual but okay with sex under some circumstances, just not the ones he actually offered, because he refused to accept my asexuality/tried to "prove" that I'm not asexual). It was just... kind of this undefined connection. I think that he was probably aro-spec. But this was in 2007-08, so the words "queerplatonic" and "zucchini" hadn't been invented yet. If they had been, that's what I probably would have said is what I was looking for from that relationship. I doubt that's what he would have wanted from it though, I think what he wanted out of it was just to be "f***buddies" (regardless of whether I gave consent) and I bet that's the way he would have described it to others at the time as well. (Btw, I thought about submitting something about this experience to the RZ zine back when they were calling for submissions, but the way it was framed seemed like it was asking for stuff about relationships that were definitely QPR rather than ones that retrospectively could have been QPR, so I decided not to.) So obviously that relationship was totally unbalanced, not mutual, and full of incompatibilities... but just having that kind of undefined aromantic (but still sexual) connection, and not realizing that it could possibly be queerplatonic until after it is over, that part is what reminds me of what you described. I think it definitely could be the same for aro people! In fact, I'm sure it's possible.

I've been wondering some of the same things lately, and posted some of my thoughts about it here, after reading demiandproud's Trying to Define Romantic post The short version is... I think the concept of "romantic attraction" is a lot newer than the concept of romance, and I'm not convinced it refers to one single thing. I think it's probably a bundle of different emotions and desires. And since I don't have those emotions/desires... well, I'm reminded of Sciatrix's Invisible Elephant metaphor. How can I define something I don't experience?

Japanese host/hostess clubs could count as "romance work" I guess? If you're looking for a sort of romantic analog to "escorting" then that's the best example I can think of, especially on the host side, although sometimes (illegally) it does involve sex work too. However, it's not generally presumed to be a euphemism for sex work like escorting is. This would probably be better discussed in a different thread, though. Mark, any thoughts on potential replacements for "tertiary attraction"? Or just other ways of describing them or things they have in common?

Thanks for this explanation, this really helps me understand more of what kind of situation this would be used in. Although of course I'm sure there are more situations than just that. I'm curious about those as well. Yeah, I was there when that model was created, so I thought about it immediately. Decided not to link it though because it's so old. There were apparently still people using it when The Invisible Orientation was written though, I was told. Not sure about now. Course that model got away from its creator too, and turned into something that didn't represent Rabger's views. Anyway... Not gonna comment on the specific suggestions right now, but this is good! Keep em coming! ?

Okay for context, quoting myself in our earlier conversation from the other thread: This is how I experience attraction: Yes, it's very different from the norm and that's why I've described it. It's all mixed together in ways that are difficult to distinguish. If you want a longer explanation, see here, here, and here. Or just check out my post in the other thread. So to hear these described as "tertiary" feels really wrong to me, since it's totally contrary to my personal experience. And hearing it in the way that @Magni originally brought it up, sort of felt a bit like it was (unintentionally) talking over/erasing my experience with words I didn't choose or agree with. (But we've already worked out that misunderstanding, so all is well. ) It also feels SUPER WEIRD to hear queerplatonic/alterous attractions grouped with sensual attraction, since I feel like they don't automatically go together. I know they can for some people, of course. But I don't even have QP/alterous attraction, so it confuses me. and ...so that's the cliff notes version of our previous conversation. Anyway, I'm not particularly attached to the idea of saying "non-romantic/non-sexual" attractions or the abbreviation that I proposed earlier. I mean, I have never even seen a need to refer to these attractions as a group, so I'm probably not the best person to come up with new terminology for that. I was just saying that I would not use "tertiary" as I feel it's very problematic, and I probably would never even think to make up a new label, I'd just describe what I mean. I agree with @Apathetic Echidna that a term like this is VERY likely to be misinterpreted, and I tend to be the sort of person who just writes everything out rather than getting into specialized terminology anyway. I feel it can be a major accessibility barrier for people who are new to a community. But... I feel like, if there is going to be a new term, how about we focus on what all of these types of attraction have in common? That can be a good guide for coming up with a term that is more agreeable. So far from this discussion I am seeing this group of attractions referred to as: under-discussed, less well known, less "visible", less acknowledged, and perhaps more complex/nuanced/specialized. What else do they have in common? Can you think of any other words to describe that? Brainstorming session! ----- Freshman just means your first year of whatever school, it's not a name for a type of school but rather a group of students. So you can be a freshman in high school, or a freshman in university/college, etc. (Sophomore, Junior, and Senior are words for second, third, and fourth(+) year students.) This extra meaning/association you mentioned explains a lot!! But yeah, still problematic, in a different way.

Thank you! I'm sorry I misunderstood you and said something I didn't realize was insensitive too, and I'm glad we cleared that up! I guess some people might describe it that way, but I don't. I think that's a bit different than what I'm trying to describe. And... well, it's one of those things where, because of my experience in the ace community, and how there are so many problems with sex-favorable vs. sex-averse and creating an accommodating space for both, I wouldn't want to adopt that language even if I felt it fit me. I don't like the trichotomy, feel like I fluctuate too much to fit it, and don't want to replicate that experience when I talk about relationships. Besides that, I feel that "relationship" in relationship-favorable etc. is too broad, it could mean virtually anything. Honestly, I just try to avoid labeling things like this. I feel that labels just tend to impede rather than clarify my communication, so I would rather just describe what I mean, or not get into it at all. I've had some pretty uncomfortable experiences where I felt that people were putting me in one category or another and labeling my experiences for me, with language I really dislike and object to, so yeah... I'd rather not go there.

@bydontost Okay. Well… I will try to be more mindful of my language in the future. In turn, if you would, could you please try to be a little more patient with me? It’s not just you, but I feel like the overall tone of a lot of this thread has been coming across… just, kind of hostile. And in some places, a bit condescending. It may not be intentional, it may be partly because we have very different, uh… internet dialects? I guess? I dunno, it’s just felt pretty chilly in here, to me. I do feel that it’s somewhat unreasonable to expect me to be perfectly “informed,” as you phrased it, about what your community standards/norms are, given that, yes, I am in fact new here. I’ve been engaging more actively with aro community discussions for a while now (since before the Carnival of Aros was announced, actually). But my time is not unlimited, and forums… are just not my preference, when it comes to internet communities, so I don’t prioritize engaging with them. Thus, I will miss things. I’m sorry, I haven’t seen how many times you’ve been “over this” before. I get that you’re frustrated about it. But I feel it would have been much more constructive to calmly tell me what you wanted me to change, instead of just calling me uninformed. It was really not obvious to me what you would have had me do, because from my perspective, it was already totally clear that this is an aro forum and it seemed unnecessary to mention it. I thought it would have actually come across as very condescending to you, like telling you what your own space is. Of course you already know! And I will say that now that I’ve caught up on the thread, it’s feeling better now than it was. Still, I want to drop a link here to Siggy’s post that explains the different cultural perspective that I’m coming from, just in case anyone here hasn’t seen it, and wants a better understanding. I feel that some of our miscommunications may have been happening because of issues discussed in that post. @Apathetic Echidna Thank you for the welcome! As for whether I use/used SAM… Well, yes and no. I’m going to try to get into this in more detail in a blog post later, but basically, I used it in the past to figure out asexuality. But that was very hard, because at the time, I identified as gray-asexual and attraction was super confusing. (Now it’s somewhat less confusing, because my attraction patterns have shifted, and have stabilized now to have a pretty clear absence of sexual attraction.) And I tried for many years to categorize whatever other attractions I felt. But whatever attraction is there, it’s not really a separate/distinct experience, and not easily categorized. There are elements I can distinguish, but it’s all very nebulous, and feels like, to borrow some phrases from Coyote and epochryphal, a “cohesive whole” or a “holistic feeling” of fluid grayness. In my own words, I would say that my various attractions are integrated with each other. They’re not exactly the same thing, but they’re very closely connected and not something I can “split.” How do you split a cloud? In the past, I assumed there was some kind of romantic element mixed in there, but was there really? I have no idea. If so, it's gone now, I think? Either way, when it comes to romantic orientation, attraction is pretty much useless to me as a metric for figuring that out. And for my bi (not further specified) identity, attraction is entirely irrelevant. There is an orientation there, some raw experience that existed before I consciously labeled it, but it really isn’t particularly connected to attraction patterns. I don’t form relationships based on my attraction patterns. So, I don’t use SAM at all for one of my orientations, I’ve tried to use it without success for another, and it only sort of works for asexuality now that my attractions have shifted to have a clear absence of sexual attraction. And like you, whatever you want to call this model, it’s not something I use anymore, because it’s no longer useful to me. I eschew naming my attractions, for the most part, but because of the intense scrutiny about them coming from all sides, I end up having to try to explain them a lot more than I would prefer to. I'm going to try to gather my thoughts more and explain what I think about how exactly I would define "orientation," but as I mentioned here, I don't define it as either a pattern of attraction, or an identity. I think Echidna and Coyote both have similar understandings of what "orientation" means to me. But this... could take a while.

@bydontost Umm… yes? Obviously this is an aromantic forum. I’m well aware. And I assume you are aware that in 2004 there was no such thing as an aromantic community?? These terms/concepts did in fact develop within the asexual community (it was not even called “the ace community” until… hm, maybe ‘09 at the earliest? I remember in ‘07-’08 there was still debate about whether it should be spelled “ace” or “ase”... and forget about “aspec,” that’s at least 5 years more recent than that). It is shared terminology. I am naming the community I was part of when these concepts developed, for clarity’s sake. I mean, look, you may not like where these terms originated, but it IS relevant to my point. Snapping at me about this… isn’t really going to change it. Sorry I guess? And uh… I have to say, if I’m going to get this kind of reaction when I enter an aro community space just for saying I’ve been around aspec spaces for about 15 years… I mean, this is part of why I’ve been hesitant and uncomfortable with engaging with specifically-aro spaces, and even publicly IDing as aro-spec. Am I not welcome here? I don’t think “this shifted” is completely accurate. I think the default assumption has shifted, yes. Now, people assume that generally, people identify with a romantic orientation because of their patterns of attraction. But I think that assumption is not always correct, even today! I personally know some people who identify as lesbian despite occasionally being attracted to a few men, because of their strong preference to only date women. And there are also people who ID as asexual for similar reasons. So yes, it’s correct to say that identity is not only affected by attraction, there may be other factors as well. ---- @Coyote It’s cool! It certainly made sense to me too, so I totally get it, haha. Oh yeah, “squish” was definitely a predecessor of “platonic attraction,” I remember that one being coined. I think I recall someone using “platonic attraction” shortly before or around the same time as queerplatonic was coined, but it’s possible I’m misremembering, and what I’m thinking of is actually someone saying something like “the attraction is just platonic” as in not romantic and/or sexual. LOL split fruit! And yeah, exactly! I think this sort of thing is what you were getting at with the idea that “SAM” (the name, not the concept) is kind of amatonormative, maybe? Right?

All right, y'all have talked about me enough, I've been Summoned. This is Elizabeth (from Prismatic Entanglements, pronouns she/her), the commenter on Coyote's post. I'm just gonna clarify my position, since I think some of you have misunderstood me. The concepts (plural, there are multiple concepts involved) of the so-called "Split Attraction Model" have been around for a very long time, and I have no trouble understanding those. What I was confused about is the name "Split Attraction Model," which concepts exactly it refers to, why it came to be referred to that way... and why we keep using it this way still. Some background: I first encountered the asexual community in late 2004, and joined in 2005 (both LJ and AVEN). So please don't assume that because I said "I don't bother with Tumblr" I'm therefore uninformed about the ace/aspec community or unfamiliar with the concepts. When I first joined, I'm pretty sure the concept of romantic orientations was already around. The idea of having both a romantic and a sexual orientation has been established for a very long time. I think that aesthetic attraction and sensual attraction were also around, or were established shortly after I joined, so they've been around for almost as long, but they were less developed than the idea of having separate sexual vs. romantic orientations. However, the ideas of platonic attraction and definitely alterous attraction, were still a long way from being conceptualized. There was a span of like 4-5 years in between there, as I recall, before people started talking about platonic attraction (as in, that it was defined as a specific type of attraction, rather than "I'm attracted to you [in x/y/z or unspecified way] but it's not sexual/romantic"). I believe that "platonic attraction" as its own specific thing happened maybe a year or so before "queerplatonic" was coined (Coyote made a great post about that, which I think was already linked here?). Now, I'm not saying these are for sure the exact dates/time frames or anything, my memory may be off and I'm really not the best at keeping track of time, so I wouldn't really be surprised to find out some of these terms are even older than that. It could be I missed the introductory thread for any of these terms. Those of you who first encountered the aspec community since "SAM" was coined, and probably also those of you who encountered it 2-4 years before that, have had a totally different experience with your introduction to these concepts. You've experienced them as a packaged deal, very likely explained in the same slide or page. It makes sense to explain it that way, so that's what we (asexual activists) started doing. But it wasn't always like that. For me, first encountering the asexual community so much earlier, it was really different (there was no aro community, "ace" wasn't a term yet, and there was no gradient spectrum on the AVEN logo, it was a black triangle within a white triangle). These were two separate ideas, related but very much distinct. Idea #1 was romantic orientation. Idea #2 was "there are many different types of attraction, not just sexual." And believe it or not, romantic orientation did not necessarily involve the idea of romantic attraction. That is an assumption that people make now, because of how dominant the “aromantic = does not experience romantic attraction” definition has become, but back then? I remember many people talking about it in terms of “who I want to have a romantic relationship with,” without considering attraction. The question was sometimes “who do I want to date?” rather than “who am I attracted to?” In most cases, there was probably also some kind of attraction, but you can’t just assume that’s the case for everyone. Some considered it a preference, not necessarily a pattern of attraction. Some people would base their romantic orientation identity label more on their comfort level, or their tendency to form emotional connections, with people of their preferred gender. So to me, it does not make sense to refer to BOTH of these concepts as if they are exactly the same and one is an automatic consequence of the other, and call it “The Split Attraction Model.” That is why I could not figure out which concept “SAM” was referring to initially. I think the name for this model should either be separated to add “The Split Orientation Model” or expanded to “The Split Orientation/Attraction Model” at the very least. I also dislike “Split” because it feels very wrong to call it “splitting” to me, but that's sort of a different discussion (see my original comment + Coyote’s reply for more on that). To sum up: I think Coyote understood me correctly, and I’m coming from a similar place in that I want to talk about the name of the thing, more so than the concepts behind it, and potential alternative names for them, because “SAM” sure as heck doesn’t cut it for me, and "non-SAM" is even worse.