techno

This is hilarious.

The original "Submarines" by The Lumineers:

"Submarines" run through Catalan, Polish, and Romanian:

1576

game

For me the repulsion is mostly auditory (I definitely have issues with misophonia, so it could just be a facet of that). Like, the sound of kissing is one of the many sounds that hardcore squicks me out. It's also like... seeing things that would typically be associated with a sound that I don't like? Like if I see two people kiss, even if I can't hear it, it'll elicit a similar response.

In media, books are totally fine (it might annoy me but it won't usually result in repulsion), songs are fine, movies and TV it depends. Real life is definitely the worst contributor, because of the auditory thing. It also depends on who it is, how close I am to them both emotionally (like whether or not we're friends) and physically (in terms of literal proximity).

And if it's directed at me, it'll be a thousand times worse!

It's funny, two of my best friends just kind of... know?? I never really outright told them. The knowledge just kind of came upon all three of us around the same time! I suppose they might consider that a high honor, having been part of the discovery.

The first person I ever actually came out to, I only came out to as ace, although I implied I was aro. It was to another one of my very close friends, who had a crush on me as it turns out. So he texted me, and in this long-winded, fake, drawn-out lie in which he told me his sister's friends all thought we should date and then proceeded to say "haha what if we did" and then when I freaked out he said he was lying, but only about part of it, and meanwhile I was texting aforementioned two best friends and panicking, soooo I told him I was acting weird not because of him but because I was asexual. Which isn't really using the proper definition of asexual, but it conveyed what I wanted to convey to someone whose reaction I could only guess blindly about, and I figured he would be more likely to know the word asexual than the word aromantic. I was right, and it was fine, and while I'm not sure he has any recollection of me coming out to him, we've still been good friends ever since.

The second time I came out was to three people: one was another best friend, who I'd already spoken to about being aro, just without using the words, a girl I was friends with at the time but have since drifted apart from, and another girl in our school's band. We were in a practice room after school before a parade or something, and we were discussing sexuality and gender since there was a presentation on it in health class (a story for another time). The topic of asexuality and the ace spectrum came up, and there was a lot of misinformation so I decided, okay, guess I'm coming out! So I did, as both ace and aro. My best friend is acutely aware of my aroace-ness though I don't think she quite understands labels, but that's okay because she's still super understanding and actually agrees with a lot of what I say. The girl I was friends with at the time kind of sounded like she pitied me, which was annoying, and then it was like she forgot (I think I've talked about her before on here... in fact I feel like I've talked about a lot of these people over and over). As for the third girl, she probably doesn't remember and that's honestly okay with me!

For me, like several people on here have said, it was less that I thought I was anything and more that I just kind of defaulted to "uninterested straight person." I didn't really actively consider myself straight, I just figured I didn't have any sort of realization of being attracted to girls, so I was probably just straight but not interested in anyone. Then I discovered the words ace and aro offhandedly one day, but I still just kind of  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ through the whole thing for a little while until a few things happened after which I just kind of slowly settled into ace and aro spaces.

So it was something like:

uninterested straight person --> ace??? aro??? both maybe but what's the difference between sexual and romantic??? ehh whatever --> yup i'm aroace this is fine

6 hours ago, Mark said:

You could try this test. http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

I took the test, and I got:

Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 106 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 90 of 200
You seem to have both neurodiverse and neurotypical traits

...well that's inconclusive.

I was wondering how many of us on arocalypse play instruments!

@Dodecahedron314 I think I may have found it for you, is this it?

http://theasexualityblog.tumblr.com/post/146220597456/the-actual-meaning-of-the-word-aplatonic

17 minutes ago, Quinoa said:

I don't understand how as soon as two people get into a relationship, the way they act around each other changes dramatically. 

This!

Like... you're literally just changing how your labeling your relationship and doing more romantically-coded things. Why should that make you treat each other differently? Ugh that confuses me.

@comedyofaros consequently, not knowing how to turn them down and not hurt and lose them (if they're like a close friend) without coming out...

Why is it that, once people get into a romantic relationship, they only want to talk to their friends if they're significant other isn't around? Like, why do friends become second best?

Why do people get back together even after they've had a really bad breakup and can never have a healthy relationship? WHAT ARE THEY GAINING

Why do couples who are really excessive with PDA never understand that they're making everyone else around them feel weird? Do they just not pay attention??????? ? ? ? ?

Just joined! I'm techno-trashcan there too.

My female family members were saying how in high school they never had many female friends... I didn't get this because most of my friends are girls, so I thought maybe I just had really cool friends (and I do!) until they said, "yeah, they always stab you in the back as soon as you get a boyfriend!"

So I smirked to myself.

Aros have more fun.

I was raised Catholic, but when away from my family I choose not to label my religious beliefs both because they are rather nebulous and because of my own personal philosophical beliefs regarding religion. Mostly I guess I'm still vaguely Christian in some way or another, and frankly I would never come out as aro/ace to any super-religious Christian that I know (for all the same reasons as you guys mentioned already). The kinds of Christians who wouldn't accept aro and ace people are the kinds of Christians that I don't like; they're dividing people and spreading hatred when the way of God is supposed to be about love and peace, and those kinds of people in my opinion don't deserve to know something that personal about me. I get by with just saying "I'm not really interested in relationships" when confronted, I brush off the inevitable "you'll change your mind someday" because we've all heard it a thousand times, and then I move on.

Being totally oblivious if other people have romantic feelings for me...

Disclaimer: This got really long. Oops? I'll put a tl;dr at the end in case you don't wanna read the whole thing.

I think the problem comes from -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- the tendency of many aros and non-aros alike to use the word "queerplatonic" as meaning "like a romantic relationship without the romance" or a "soft romo" or "romance light" so to speak, instead of using it as I believe it was originally coined, to refer to bonds of friendship that are different from what many romantics see as friendship. Because we can pretty much agree that many romantics view friendship as a far more casual, less exclusive or less important thing than many aromantics do (obviously I'm generalizing here, but if we're looking at it from a broad perspective).

We have words like "queerplatonic" and "squish" to emphasize that platonic feelings are of value and importance and that platonic bonds can be very strong and deep. It's to show romantics that when we think of friendship, often we're thinking of something stronger than the more casual acquaintanceship that many romantics consider friendship. Because we all feel stronger bonds to some people than we do others, no matter what kind of bonds those may be, and words like "queerplatonic" establish that strong bonds don't have to be romantic, that there isn't an invisible ceiling between friendship and romance, that they are two separate things.

And "queerplatonic" shouldn't even be reserved for partnerships. Who ever said you had to be someone's partner to have strong platonic feelings for them that don't fit the mold of what romantics call friendship? We all define words differently, and I personally define queerplatonic as really strong platonic feelings/love/attraction that's different from casual friendship. That's just me. But regardless of how we define it as individuals we can't confine it to this box of being basically dating without the romance, because that's really ignoring the vast spectrum of different types of bonds people can have and the forms they can take.

The problem arises when we start to use these words not to describe something unique but to instead defend ourselves by trying to make ourselves seem more "normal" to romantics. It is not our job to conflate our experience with theirs in order to make them more comfortable with our existence. None of this "I'm aromantic, but I can still form queerplatonic relationships which is like dating without romance!" Being aromantic is beautiful, not something that has to be made up for by trying to act like we're anything like romantics. Let's change that to "I'm aromantic, and sometimes I form really strong platonic bonds with people that are unlike casual friendship. Sometimes we call that 'queerplatonic.'"

tl;dr yeah, in some ways we dig ourselves into a hole by using these words, but not because of the words themselves, but because of the way we use them to conflate our experiences with those of romantics, instead of using them to define something all our own. We can combat unconscious amatonormativity by embracing our experiences instead of trying to make them seem worthy by comparing them to romantic ones.

Because being aromantic is nothing to apologize for.

EDIT: For some more reading about amatonormativity and queerplatonic friendship, this article sums it up pretty well, and is where I got a lot of my inspiration from for all of the above.

Ehh I like lowkey ship stuff? But not really romantically... like, on occasion, I'll be like, "yeah, I can get behind that!" but not in the way that fandoms are like really aggressive about it?

Mostly I just look at characters and I'm like "their friendship/story/etc. is really interesting and I want to see more of that" you know?

Though I feel like even when I ship stuff "romantically" it's still pretty platonic by most people's standards...

I remember like, never really having a crush on anybody?? And I didn't think that was weird until some stuff happened that kind of sparked my aro discovery...

I've always liked to write, but I've never been good at writing romance, the few times I tried it. It was always just like, they were really close friends, and sometimes they kissed. And it was never the main focus of what I was writing, it was just kind of what you were supposed to do??

Elementary and middle school was a weird time. Like, I think there was ONE time I thought I had a "crush" on some kid (I was like 5 years old) but I really just thought he was nice and wanted a friend lmao

I didn't understand crushes for the longest time... it was weird.