roboticanary

I reckon alone I am open to living with someone so maybe I will be swayed in future. But I am not going to go out of my way to make that happen myself, which would mean the only way I would end up living together is if someone else put in a lot of work to make it happen while still being chill with me being aro. I'm not going to rule it out but if I was a betting man I wouldn't put anything serious on it. Alone seems like a good option, I have a good life and can have a house with everything as I want it. Try to keep good friends but still have a place of my own go to if I want.

That sounds very familiar, I have the same worries as well. Not sure if I have had much success in solving that but one thing I did find is that throwing myself into organiations or societies really helps with the feeling of loneliness. Try something that works for you but in my case I got involved in scouting and joined a local astronomy club (both free in my case which was useful). People seem far more receptive to the idea of spending time with friends when that time is organised for some reason. Even when I had few close friends around there were always a couple of days a week where I was talking to people I liked which helped keep off the loneliness.

Recenty I told my younger cousin a joke a friend of mine told me, when my cousin retold it at dinner it had apparently became my girlfriend who told that story. like no, how did that happen? I was genuinely confused how my description had given the impression of romance to him.

Theres some really good ideas on here that I never thought of, just to add some thoughts of my own. It could be that asexuality turns out to be more common. boring answer I know but if that were true it would in particular mean more people to push for media representation, more people organising events, more people asking artists to include ace rep. the other idea I was thinking is that romance seems more nebulous to describe than sex. defining sexual attraction is not that easy but I would wager it is less of a confused mess than romantic attraction. Even asking someone who experiences romance to describe what it means is like trying to get blood out of a stone. It could be that less people realise they are aro than ace because of that. hence less people to push for representation.

OK I reckon this is a tough one to give a clear answer to but here is my attempt. words become used by being used, if you want to go about getting something 'officially named' as you put it then pretty much what you do is put that term out there in the world and try to find people who will use it. If people start picking the term up and spreading it around the aro world someone who curates a list like that is going to pick it up eventually. Now I don't know for sure how it started, I wasn't there but if you are referring to the AUREA glossary or a list based from that this info might help. AUREA takes volunteers, see this page for details https://www.aromanticism.org/en/volunteer in particular under contributor 'As a contributor, you would be assigned to a certain project, alongside the people already working on it to help out with creating and/or maintaining it' 'Our resources and glossary need to be maintained less often and require thoroughness and attention to detail. ' So that is roughly how that happens, they get volunteers to work on the glossary, those volunteers decide on what words to include and update/work on definitions. Beyond that or how they go about choosing terms, I am not sure. To get a word on there, I have no idea, however under the glossary is a list of uncommon or emerging words: https://www.aromanticism.org/en/uncommon-and-newly-emerging-terms Some of these words have links to the people who coined them, might be worth getting in touch with one of them if you are serious. asking if they know anything about how their term got on there might be an idea.

you put it better than I did, agreed on that. although I do wonder what an aromantic apocalypse would be and why we would want that

Ay-rock-uh-lips

maybe for marriage, although this is less about what I want and more about law. There are some differences in terms of law between being married and living with a good friend and I would rather talk it through. The idea of marriage makes me uncomfortable, and feels like a sort of betrayal to who I am, but I can be old and cynical enough to realise that marriage has advantages that are not going to be extended to good friendships any time soon. my discomfort is not of a level that I wouldn't suck it up and deal with it if I thought marriage would be useful. As for kids, probably not and no desire for it at the moment but it is not an idea I have put enough thought in to rule out.

I am an agnostic and have been for quite a while, however I was raised christian (salvation army by family and a catholic school). I suppose the big thing for me was that long before I knew the term allo aro I looked at less romantically serious sexual relations in a favourable light. I saw the idea of a friends with benefits style arrangement as something that sounded acceptable, and I began to think of prostitution as something that could be a sensible transaction, rather than seeing it as bad. I also became very aware of the difference between considered, thought out though non romantic relationships and casual sex as thought of by those religious leaders who had the platform to preach to me. This was not a smooth ride.

gallium doorknobs individually packaged rice grains

As you say at the start, maybe it is up to you. I would say it is, you define what best fits you. One important thing, You can be on the aromantic spectrum. It is, after all, a spectrum. your romantic attraction, even if it is sometimes there that does not prevent you from taking your place here. Alloromantic people do not tend to describe their romantic feelings as weak, confusing, muddled, fade very quickly or refer to them as BS pseudo feelings. Since grey aro is by design an area somewhere between aromantic and romantic it sounds like a good fit. I won't tell you that it is you, that is up to you to figure out, but it seems a reasonable label given what you have described. As an aside you say: What I would suggest is having a look at the idea of frayromantic, that has some connection with romantic relationships that fade after getting to know people so maybe an identity similar to that is something to consider. There is another term which is about feelings that dissapear as the initial joy/excitement goes, I think it was 'post rubor', something like that, probably on a list of romantic types. They might not be an exact fit but maybe one of these terms might help put your relation to romance into words.

Welcome, hope you enjoy being here. from the short time I have been on this place has been nothing but welcoming so I am sure you will be able to make friends here. Oh yes, that sounds familiar. surely, surely... wait, hang on do I?

wonderful, sounds like your questioning has done you well.

Yes, absolutely. Coming to terms with not caring for romance has massively changed the demographic of my friends. I am one of two men at my workplace who gets along with most of the women who work here, and given the other guy is gay I think that it has to do with me not making unwanted advances. The lack of romantic expectation frees me to be genuine, to talk openly. I suppose the other difference is that I place a high value on relying on friends, as in if someone was worried about a something, or someone was dealing with a difficult event in their life I have no expectation of having a partner to comfort me, so I see that as something that a friend just does. I would jump up at two in the morning and travel to the other side of the country to be with a friend in need. I would drop my plans and take care of a friend's child if I knew they were stuck for options. Some alloromantic people do have this idea, and two of the people I am good friends with have a miltary background and are very thorough about doing right by their friends, but I don't think that is a common thing because of the expectation that someone should have a partner to help them with those things. One last thing for me is realising that my level of comfort around the idea of sex free of romantic expectations, which is an idea I was open with before I came to terms with the words allo aro, made a fair few people see me as a bad influence. Especially people I got to know from church in my early teens, I was already on shaky terms through leaving the religion but there was definitely the perception that what was really bad was interacting with someone who felt comfortable living what they saw as a life of sin. I drifted away from people I would have been very happy to be friends with due to that. (sidenote, I was quite happy to not talk about it and for most of those people I never told them those views, it was the fact it was generally known what I felt which was enough for them to push away)

I like this, such a wholesome idea. One thing I like about myself is that I am a keen reader