Erederyn

I get the struggle. I haven't used it myself yet, but I was recently recommend an app called Lex, in which you post short personal ads. It's for queer people and there are people looking for a variety of relationships/connections (romo, friendships, fwb...). Perhaps that's another option to try out! 

Welcome! There are a lot of people here who enjoy writing as well :) I hope you find this space helpful in further understanding yourself and finding what works for you! 

Welcome! I also know what it's like having lived in a conservative area and not having any in-person LGBTQ+ groups around, so online spaces are seriously a gift. I hope you feel comfortable and welcomed here.

Learning survival skills sounds cool, I started getting a bit into foraging the past two years myself! 

Hello Toast, I hope you can learn a lot here, there are definitely some interesting discussions! Welcome and nice to meet you ?

Relationship anarchy has been so instrumental in how I navigate my relationships now. I wish more people know about it mainstream! You're right in that the RA manifesto is inspiring, I like to read through it once in a while, thanks for sharing it. 

12 hours ago, Guest - aro? said:

I've seen both the aroace flag with the aro heart over the ace backdrop and that with the orange yellow white and blue, and I'm not sure which is used more or is more 'official'/recognizable. I also haven't seen anything explaining why the orange/yellow/white/blue color scheme is used, as most flags' colors symbolize certain things (my bad if there is a good place to find information on this that I haven't found, I don't mean to ask unnecessary questions). 

Apparently the orange/yellow/white/blue flag is one of the most populars ones and is used on the aroace LGBTA wiki, so maybe that's the official one (perhaps someone else knows better?). 

But here's an explanation of all the aroace flags! https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/Aroace

I also identified as greyro for a bit before identifying as aro. I wasnt sure if I had experienced romantic attraction ever, but I knew I wasn't too into the idea of romantic relationships. I used the greyro label as a way to allow myself some wiggle room in case I was a late bloomer. It did help ease the transition for me and once I was a bit older, I felt confident that I was aro. Perhaps it goes another way for you, of course. Either way, sometimes labels are about the journey of self-learning.

But like Autumn said, you can always change your label later. Labels are supposed to serve you and it should be something you feel comfortable with, even if it's a temporary description of you and your experiences.

Hello! I'm glad that despite the difficulties, you're becoming comfortable with your identity. Nice to meet you, and welcome to the community!

Hi Ava! The aro experience can be very diverse. But great that you're figuring this out about yourself, and I hope you feel welcome here. Nice to meet you!

That's a good idea to start asking people about their friendships! I also feel frustrated that my friends don't ask me about my relationships, but then expect me to talk about their romantic relationships. I had a queerplatonic partner for a couple of years and I have a couple of very close and important friends, but none of my friends ever asked for updates about them.

I think you could just ask about how their friends are doing in general (especially if there are particular friends they spend more time with regularly). Maybe ask if they did anything fun the last time they hung out with their friend. (I do that with my friends, I just ask "Hey, how's so-and-so doing, by the way? Have you gotten to hang out with them recently?) I think it can be appropriate during this time with covid to ask people how they are doing with their friendships and close relationships. It might be sensitive, but if it's someone you know well and it's at a good time, it can be sincere and they could appreciate it. People might just not be used to it and could be surprised at first, but could like it.

6 hours ago, Elin W said:

Is there a aro discord chat? (Me: total newbie ) ☺️

Yeah, there's an Arocalypse discord! I'm not sure if we can just put the invite link here, so I'll PM it to you :) 

22 minutes ago, DogObsessedLianne said:

What do people think?

Has everyone been able to access the Doc and been able to contribute if they wanted to? In other words, is it working properly?

 

Have a lovely Xmas / Yule / Season and see you in January :-)

Sounds good :)

Happy holidays!

Welcome! That does sound pretty aro, but yeah, compulsive heterosexuality and amatonormativity can sometimes get in the way of figuring out one's identity. You're most welcome to use this space to figure things out and learn more about aromanticism and whether this is right for you or not. Plenty of people here are doing the same.

1 hour ago, Elin W said:

thing is, heterosexuality and me - we never had that much of a passionate relationship, in fact nothing has happened in that department. 

Also, this is such a great description ?

Nice to meet you and good luck on your journey of self-discovery!

Welcome! Figuring out one's identity can be a long and confusing process, but an identity/label doesn't have to be permanent. If identifying as aroace feels right to you now but you later on feel differently, that's okay! I hope you can gain some insight here on the forums. 

That can be really frustrating! I've had similar experiences. I come from a very family-oriented culture, so I've had a lot of pressure to be romantically involved/get married and have children from my family ever since I've turned 20ish. It was really difficult at first and I would get into arguments with my parents, but I kept standing my ground. I haven't come out to them, but I've been firm about not wanting to get married/have children. I know they get disappointed and frustrated and they find it really sad that I won't be giving them grandchildren. My brother has taken care of that haha, but my mom especially still wants grandchildren from me and to see me get married. However, after many years of steadfastly telling them that this is not the life I want, they've become more (grudgingly) accepting of it (or at least less in denial). I even told my mom last year that I don't view partnerships as necessarily having to be romantic and that I want to focus on my friendships and on being an aunt. I could tell she didn't fully understand it and she was still sad about it, but she didn't argue with me or pressure me or tell me that I would change my mind. So that's some progress! It only took ~8 years haha. 

I hope that your family can come to accept you and what you want in life! 

9 hours ago, Skylord said:

That's always been my favorite, that and A Mad Russian's Christmas, also by Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I got to play it at a Christmas concert once and that only made me love it more because it's a lot of fun to play. 

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That is a good one, would love to play this in an orchestra! 

I'm a fan of "Thank God It's Christmas" by Queen and "Carol of the Bells" performed by the Trans-Siberan Orchestra. After living abroad for some years now and going home for Christmas every year to be with family and friends, "I'll be Home for Christmas" has become a favorite, especially hearing them in the airports. 

I'm grateful for my aroness and for the process of accepting my aromanticism. I've learned so much about myself, and I feel self-assured and comfortable with who I am. In a way, being aro and accepting my aroness has opened my heart in the sense of feeling more free to love and care for people the way that I want and also in the sense of being more accepting of others and treating them with more compassion.

I feel like this post perfectly captures for me what I love about being aro and being part of the aro community. So glad to be a part of this community!  
https://asexualfitzroy.tumblr.com/post/637701655163453440/the-aromantic-agenda-is-a-good-one-go-and-think. 

For me, one of the worst parts is that I find it difficult to have the kind of meaningful relationships that I want. I tend to feel like I'm more committed to friendships and that I take them more seriously than other people. I sometimes feel like I'm dispensible because I'm "just" a friend. I want to have close long-term platonic relationships, friends that I can make a life with, but some people think that's not normal or that it's silly to have those sorts of relationships.

17 hours ago, Venuxxx said:

For me, the worst part is that I end up alienating the people that I like a lot. Because, from the moment I discover that they want to have something more than just friendship I end up alienating them and I end up losing their friendship. And sometimes I fell like what I fell is always insufficient, that people always expect and deserve more than I can fell for them.?

I'm sorry you feel that way. I don't want to give any unsollicited advice/comments so apologies if I overstep here and you can just ignore me if so ? It's totally valid to feel that way (I also used to feel like this), but you also don't owe people anything just because they feel something for you that you can't reciprocate. While it may not be what they want, it doesn't mean it's insufficient. Your feelings and your way of caring can be just as meaningful. You're not responsible for how they react and if they can't accept that you would prefer to be friends with them, then that's on them as well. You alone are not at fault here. And this isn't only for aro people, this is for everyone. It can be hard to accept this, and I also felt for a for some time that people "deserved more from me" but I now realize that that's not so and that I'm giving them as much as I can and that is still beautiful and enough. 

17 hours ago, Black Sesame said:

What is important is probably making sure that the other person also interprets the action the same way, otherwise it may become awkward. For example, I once met a  foreign guy on the train. He was really nice and as a student in cultural studies I'm always interested in getting to know people in terms of their dispositions and cultural experiences etc. So we decided to meet each other again in an Ice-cream Café. Aro-me thought we would be meeting as friends, but he gave me a self-made bracelet as a gift and he paid for the ice cream (which I still interpreted as him just being really nice ?). Afterwards we went for a walk and he always wanted to hold my hand. That's when it finally dawned on me that he actually viewed this as a date...And here probably comes the aversion to romance into play. From the perspective of a date, this made me feel very repulsed and I'm still getting a chill down the spine just thinking about it. All the things he did might look sweet in the eyes of a romantic person, but to me it just makes me feel weirded out. Its the same situation, but in different context it yields different results. We might have become friends, but with the "romantic-coding" in it, I could only take flight and make sure to never meet again... This experience has made me more cautious, because my actions might get misunderstood.

For sure, there can be so much misunderstanding! Unless people know I'm aromantic, I can feel very uncomfortable being affectionate with people or doing things like going on nice dinners one-on-one with them because I'm afraid they might get the wrong idea. I get that feeling of "yikes" when someone misconstrues something I did as romantic and they try to reciprocate. So it's definitely important that people are on the same page to avoid any awkwardness. Funny how we can be so bad at something so important as clear communication sometimes ? But cultural differences certainly adds a layer of complication! 

Welcome! This is definitely a good place for shared aro experiences, I hope you can glean some more insight into your aromanticism here. Totally agree with roboticanary that "a love life as colourful as a blank sheet of paper" is a great description, love it. 

On 12/16/2020 at 9:30 AM, Black Sesame said:

 I've been wondering about how I want my life to be like (probably 'cause I'm about to graduate) and there comes the question: how do you fill this part your life or do you even need to fill it in the first place? How about you guys?

Well, this can be very personal, of course, and can differ per person. You don't need to fill this part of your life if you don't want to. I think many people are quick to say "oh aros can still love their friends/family/pets/etc" but you don't need to do that either. Some aros find that they woud like to have some sort of partnership, often (queer)platonic. Others want to have a found family built on friendships. Some like to fill their life by focusing on hobbies, clubs, or activities. But if you don't feel any of these are necessary, then there is no need to force it. It's really up to you! Perhaps with time you'll figure out what works best for you ?

This is the Google Doc link, people should be able to edit/comment. Feel free to add your ideas/suggestions! 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fMNyUtLrL1YJx24nH1AYUoPdxsRcgWKiqcktcQ7ea-g/edit?usp=sharing

21 hours ago, Guest Guest said:

How would you describe your romance repulsion? I don't know if I'm romance repulsed or not. 

My romance repulsion tends to be triggered. So my base "setting" is romance indifference, but if someone pushes me into romantic situations or if someone is being blatantly amatonormative, for example, I can become romance repulsed. Depending on how strong it is, I can feel annoyance/irritation, cringe, disgust or even anger. I can sometimes even become romance-negative/anti-romance. I won't stand seeing or hearing about romance, which means I'll avoid any romance in media and I'd avoid listening to my friends talk about their romantic relationships. 

10 hours ago, Rony said:

...if someone would have an intention to place romantic feelings while hugging or kissing me, I wouldn’t like it, I think it’d be uncomfortable to me.

6 hours ago, aro_elise said:

... but if the other person considered it romantic/was romantically attracted to me, i'd be super uncomfortable..

I feel the same way about the intention, Rony and aro_elise. Intention behind the actions can definitely influence how comfortable I am with something, and if someone is doing it with romantic feelings, I also feel super uncomfortable. I could hold hands with a friend totally fine, for example, but if they do it in a romantic way, I c a n n o t stand it.

21 hours ago, El011 said:

I don't see any reason why things like chocolates and flowers and candlelit dinners have to always be romantic, but I can understand why some people consider them that way. 

I agree! I see those as ways to express my care or even celebrate a friendship, and why shouldn't we do that? I do get that not everyone would be comfortable with that, but I think there could be some more normalization of doing these nice things with/for friends.

An allo friend was trying to explain to me what romantic attraction is and she was mostly just listing a bunch of things she considers romantic, which I found very entertaining because many of those things I consider potentially platonic (or at least not exclusively romantic). 

I personally enjoy many activities that are typically deemed "romantically-coded" even though I'm romance-indifferent/repulsed, but I also don't necessarily consider them "romantically-coded" in the first place. I think what is considered romantically-coded or not can also just be personal and vary per individual, and for me, it's also about the intention behind it. Of course, at the society level, there are things that people typically consider romantic. So I was curious about other aros. Do you enjoy any typically romantically-coded activities? Do you even consider them romantically-coded yourself? Do you find that your view on romance (romance-favorable, indifferent, repulsed) plays a factor into whether you enjoy romantically-coded activities or not? 

Some things my friend considered romantic were holdings hands, dancing together (as in closer, slow dancing), extended periods of physical contact (sitting in each other's laps or cuddling in bed), tight full-bodied embraces, celebrating anniversaries, going on dates... This link also lists some typically romantically-coded activities/behaviors: https://arospecawarenessweek.tumblr.com/post/112348254497/a-previous-anon-thanks-for-the-comic-but-ok

Some things that are typically considered romance-coded (or so I've been told) that I enjoy: I personally can be quite physically affectionate (so I like hugging/full embraces, dancing, cuddling, holdings hands), I like to "display" my care and love for people (telling them regularly that I love them, having a trinket/object that symbolizes our friendship), and I find it important to have one-on-one/alone time with a close friend (including going on a holiday together or weekend away). I'd also plan my schedule and life around/with a close friend if we're committed to each other to that degree.

5 hours ago, DogObsessedLianne said:

I was thinking Sunday 13th December, 7PM (UK time)

Sounds good, thank you for organizing this!

Looking forward to it