aussiekirkland

Thanks for the mention @paporomantic I've been playing alto and tenor saxophone for 9 years now ?? I mostly play ?Jazz? Im studying a Diploma of Jazz at WAAPA right now and once it's over (it's a one year course) I'm hoping to apply for the navy as a musician. If I get into navy band I'll probably get to learn some other instruments over time since they have their own collection of instruments you can take out and learn. I'd love to learn Bari sax and French horn.

Couldn't agree more

Kind of like how people get so caught up over one night stands. How hard is it to not fall in love with someone you just had sex with? Haha Anyway I've said this before and I'll say it again but "emotional cheating" is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. If you're being affectionate with someone else in a non romantic/sexual context then how is it cheating!? Like if you're cuddling your friend and neither of you have feelings for each other then how is that cheating? Also this weird desire to have all of your needs met by one person. It seems really unhealthy to me to just drop everyone else in your life to have all of your emotional needs met by this person you barely even know. Do people not need their friends for that sort of thing? Also also why do couples spend so much time together? I remember being in relationships and feeling suffocated because of how much time they expected me to spend with them. Cause I was at school they expected me to spend all of my recess and lunch breaks with them instead of my friends and to me that was just baffling because we already had dates and Friday night dinners for that? Why do you need to spend hours everyday with me!? Speaking of couples having to do everything together: hobbies? For example my sister is your average vanilla girl (too harsh?) whereas her boyfriend is a huge nerd. She doesn't really tolerate it so sometimes I talk to him about video games and he took me to a store opening last month. Apparently this is a crime? If anything I'm helping their relationship because she won't entertain his interests and he doesn't seem to have any friends outside the relationship, and since none of my friends are nerds I thought we had a good dynamic. My sister gets very sensitive about us spending time together despite the fact that 1) I'm extremely aro ace 2) he's like 7 years older than me 3) we only do stuff like once every couple of months if even that If it weren't for the edit button this would've ended two paragraphs ago haha

It's interesting to talk about my experiences of platonic attraction since it's the only attraction I do feel; however, I wouldn't talk about it in an orientation context. Firstly it seems impractical since when I get a squish I'm usually already in the kind of relationship that I want with them, so there's no end goal in mind, which I feel like is different with romantic and sexual attraction. Secondly I feel like using bi or pan as a label for platonic feelings is sort of appropriating? I don't know, but the thought makes me uncomfortable cause I don't think it's my place to use those identifiers. Anywho I think my squishes have less to do with gender and more to do with personality. I'm drawn to people with a similar sense of humour as me, usually a mix of sarcasm and Internet humour. This is way more common in guys in my experience, and is probably why I've only ever had a squish on one girl. Ideally if I were to ever get in a qpr it'd be with a girl because I feel like navigating that blurry territory would be easier with someone who's a good communicator. Oops, I rambled again

I gave it a go https://imgflip.com/i/182fws

I told my squish I had a squish on her and I had sobered up too #aromoments #awkward

I guess I'm the only INFJ here? Figures, as it is the rarest type. I'm a fan of MBTI, it has the fun of astrology but with accuracy. I've done the test a couple of times over the years and have gotten the same result every time so I'm pretty confident with it (the analysis are also very accurate, since my I and N bars are very strong in the test results)

I also feel like Katniss could be aro ace. The way she suffers through the "starstruck lovers" plot line feels like such a common aromantic experience, also the way she constantly gave into societal pressure (granted, it was for her survival). I know in the books she described having to act out a romantic plot and that is so incredibly relatable to my romantic experience. Though I feel like she did have feelings for Gale for a little while. Maybe she's demiromantic? She's definitely on the spectrum though. Luna Lovegood is 150% aro ace and no one can convince me otherwise. Merida is the best aromantic icon ever.

I came out to my mum as ace over a year ago and she was super cool and understanding, in fact she wasn't at all surprised. My sister was definitely confused so I dropped the subject. Then when I found out I was aro I thought it was important to mention, but I didn't want to use the label as my family is often very against identity labels. I started to be more vocal about not wanting to date, marry or have kids (the kids part I had been vocal about for a long time) which my mum was seemingly fine with but my sister seemed to think I was putting myself in a box and holding myself back from "possibilities" lmao. Once I started introducing the idea that I'm not attracted to people in any way, my mum continued to be fine with it (and very understanding) and something must've clicked for my sister cause she finally respected my decision(?) and my reason for not dating. I'm not sure about the grandkids thing because my sister has also mentioned not wanting kids (though raves about her dream wedding) so while my mum seems fine with it, I can't help feeling like she got scunted in the grandkids department and feel kind of bad. Though my sister may change her mind eventually, if I'm lucky.

Lmao you poor thing

I think ideally aro/ace awareness would help a lot of people. Aro and ace people would realise they have another option, some allos would realise it's okay to not be in a romantic relationship sometimes and that it doesn't define you or make you sad and they wouldn't put so much pressure on themselves. Other allos would realise it's okay to be close with your friends and might drop the "no homo" crap. Maybe they might find comfort in a QPR. Really I think awareness would just broaden people's perception of human relationships and allow them to be themselves and not feel like they have to follow social scripts to a t.

Also every single ad in between the shows. You're advertising a car... Why is this so heteronormative!?

Me, my sister and her boyfriend were in the car on the way home from the shops today when she started talking about the bachelor/bachelorette. She mentioned a winning couple that didn't work out because he wasn't affectionate enough: Me: why doesn't she just have an affectionate friendship as well as her relationship? Like a cuddle buddy! BF: it doesn't work like that Sis: most people would consider that cheating I just... There's a point where monogamy is taken too far? Needing every single one of your needs met from a single person (particularly non romantic needs) sounds seriously unhealthy to me. I just can't understand it. That ideology (which has come up a few times now) is probably the reason why some romantics are so quick to replace their friends and family with a romantic partner.

I haven't had a squish in quite some time, and I've probably only had a handful though they'd last for a good portion of a year. One of the more noteworthy ones was last year. He had this rock hard shell that no one could seem to crack. No one got past a surface friendship with him, and he often treated me (and others) like shit since I was a bit of a pushover. He was still fun to be around (as a last resort, mind you) but I'd easily tire of the teasing. This was the status quo for about four years until year 12 retreat, just before the year started. He and one of my outer friends (who is now a really good friend) were the only ones in my retreat group who didn't despise my existence and I thought oh boy, just survive the week. I hung out with him out of necessity and we bonded a lot (over our mutual hatred of the retreat program, we were quite bitter together). The moment I remember the most was the final day when we were finally allowed to go to the beach. It was the middle of summer in Australia, and we had just spent a week at a campsite with a couple fans at best. We were all dying to go and I remember us both sprinting into the freezing cold water and just playing for ages. We were splashing and laughing and it was the happiest I had ever seen him, it was like I had managed to barely crack his shell. This lead to a wonderful friendship in our final school year. We were practically joint at the hip, and while we usually had the bitter aesthetic going on I suspect he was happy deep down to have a proper friend (the people at that school were so fake, and no one else tried to break down his walls like I did). I suspect we could've had a really good QPR, and he was my first squish that I had known was a squish (and not a crush). He ended up leaving for another state at the end of the year and it still kills me that I didn't tell him how I felt, or how much I appreciated having him there in such a difficult year. I wish I could fly over and give him a big hug and tell him how much I (platonically) love him also because he told me recently he still hasn't made friends at uni. It's hard because I normally grow out of my feelings in my own time but I felt like our time had been cut short and I haven't completely gotten over it.

I'm either myself in first person or a character in third person. So sometimes it's like my life and other times it's like watching one of my favourite shows/anime except they're almost always in my house haha

This is what happened to me x2 before I realised I might not be straight. The first time I just didn't have feelings for him so the second time I had a squish on the guy and I thought things would be different because I'd found "the right guy" and I couldn't believe it was turning out exactly the same. The problem was our feelings weren't compatible since what I was feeling wasn't romantic or sexual in nature. So yeah even though there was a lot of nasty romance repulsion and also some sex repulsion in there I'm still glad those relationships happened or else I'd still be very confused.

I feel like that's a bit like harem anime. Who cares about the cute girls and their... Bodies... When you've got monsters to fight!!!

I always thought that a crush was a guy I wanted to get to know, because a guy and a girl couldn't possibly be friends, right? This resulted in relationships partially because people told me I couldn't just be friends with my newest guy friend. I remember when I first watched those romcom: wedding edition movies (think 27 Dresses and Bride Wars) and they always played wedding and dreamed about their wedding/the perfect guy when they were little and I thought "do girls really do that? Well, I guess I'll give it a try..." And forgot about it a day later.

It took me until I was 17 to realise the whole thing was pointless. Just before I realised I was aro ace, I had just gotten out of my second relationship and had sort of promised myself to lay off relationships for the foreseeable future, because regardless of what was "wrong with me" I just wanted to be happy and relationships weren't doing that for me. Shortly after that I came across the community and all of the feelings that had been bubbling up in me for the past couple of years had been put into words (such as romance/sex repulsed, sensual attraction, platonic attraction etc) ------ My favourite signs that I was aro were when I was a kid. In kindy (so around 5) I had this "boyfriend", except for some reason I felt uneasy at everyone else calling him that. To me we were just best friends, even though we kissed sometimes. It was definitely a QPR though haha I had another best friend through primary school and this unease of everyone calling us boyfriend and girlfriend had turned into lowkey anger, except it pissed him off too so I didn't think anything of it.

I think that's why it took me so long to realise I was aro, too. I thought that enjoying hugs and cuddling were a part of romantic attraction, until I realised they can be super platonic (but no I hate kissing ugh). Hugs are super great, I'm just really awkward with initiating physical affection but I'll happily take it cuddling would only be with a squish or a pet.