roboticanary

fair play, honestly no point regretting it. if it works out fine great choice. if there are any problems then that was likely to happen anyway, as you said they are in the spaces you are in, this was likely to come to them anyway. you got the message to them in your own time and they can reply or not when they please.

hi there, welcome

sounds great, cheers for putting the questions to consider up as well. it makes it much less stressful to have a decent idea of something to prepare rather than going in blind

That sounds aro to me. not experiencing romantic feelings is about as clear aro as you can get. maybe to help you pin down how you feel it might be worth expanding on that 'I believe I have had crushes' bit and wanting to be with someone. ask yourself what you actually want to experience with that person, that might help you pin down what you are actually feeling. The way I see it there are a couple of things which might help you. 1. have a look at how other people describe 'squishes', and 'queerplatonic relationships' and see how these ideas fit in to what you want. it could be that the reason the feeling dissapeared was that you didnt actually want to go romantic in the way that the other people looked for. That is just a general thing as well, you will likely become more confident exploring an identity when you work through what you are interested in. 2. Unfortunately i cannot find much on it at the moment but there are some people that have romantic attraction which fades when the other person becomes interested. A similar concept is frayromantic, where romantic attraction fades as you get to know people more. something like this might be a different explanation for why that crush feeling disappeared.

hi, welcome cool that you are here, hope you find something of use here. If you are not sure about your aro identity feel free to describe what you feel, people here tend to be quite good at guiding people to identities or ideas they might find useful.

Not sure about whether you should tell your ex, I don't have any exes to tell. My advice to that is to think about what terms you are on with your ex beforehand. If you are barely on speaking terms and you turn up and say 'hey, I think i worked out why our relationship fucked up' that probably wont work. also listen to your gut, if you arent ok doing it you are under no obligation to and to be honest there will be people who are far easier to come out to than an ex. anyway, welcome to the forum, enjoy being here.

it would be nice to understand it.however I know enough to know how to deal with other people being romantic to get by. if I was regularly surprised by how people in relationships treated me I would have more interest in understanding it.

mid twenties now and discovered it a few months ago. I feel a bit old now.

yes, definitely. I still get that fear and am still not comfortable saying my identity. as for what I have tried. whispering it just to yourself might help, get used to the words before you have to talk to other people. Or perhaps describing your feelings out loud to yourself if you are not comfortable initially with the words. as @Kallie says, there are other ways to express yourself. one thing that helped me was finding an old green t shirt I had, some black trousers, boom I'm dressing aro and no-one needs to notice. get used to making small signs of your identity and slowly you might find it easier to say it.

aaah, not sure. Not all the books are one offs in the same universe, in the sense that there are various threads of stories where one sort of follows another. if you are interested in working out what follows what I am sure someone on the internet will have wrote a guide which books follow which broad threads so here are three suggestions if you want to start reading a series of similar books: Guards! Guards! - start of the city watch group of books Equal Rites - start of the books about the witches Mort - start of the books about death If you would rather have a story which is pretty much a one off and is good fun I would recommend Small Gods.

this seems like a good idea, weekends would be preferable for me for something like this, I am far more likely to be around. Agreed with @Erederyn, some form of introduction, what you identify as. not sure I would be comfortable talking about someone important in my life on a first meeting but some sort of chat just to say who we are and what interests us would probably be a good way to start.

welcome this seems like a familiar story on here, person has some form of attraction, doesnt really know if it is romantic or not. I'm sure there will be plenty here to help you understand what you are feeling.

Welcome As far as 6am decisions go joining this forum seems to be a fairly sane one. My 6am decisions tend to involve starting a wonderful friendship between a statue and a traffic cone, though I suspect that may be because alcohol impulses are dumber than sugar impulses. Anyhow, welcome to arocalypse, hope you find some answers to your confusions.

no idea what to do about it, but this does hit me as well. It sometimes helps just to know that other aros are feeling the same struggle. It is frustrating, it seems like a point of doom and gloom, but there are at least people who can hear my complaints and sympathise with how I feel.

@~Aurora~ , sure, go ahead

damn thats scary, stalking, murder but no, how romantic. it makes me kind of worried that these people might end up in a relationship with someone even half as wierd as that.

honestly I usually don't mind that much, but there is a bit of me which is constantly thinking 'what am I supposed to be doing' so I very quickly feel awkward.

I mean, its your experience. It isn't wrong. I think this is similar to what i have thought in the past, thinking someone is cool and wanting to spend time with them. caring for them. a whole lot of things which are sort of what I want in a friend but more intense.

hi, this seems cool stuff, did you get a video out of this. If so it would be awesome if you could put in a link, sounds like something I would be interested in seeing.

nice find Holmbo relationship anarchy seems like a useful idea in general for an aro, it links in really well with figuring out what parts of romance in particular makes me uncomfortable.

still wanting to be with someone but not getting dating and being close bothering you, that seems to come up a lot around here. However there are ways to work with that. What I would suggest is working out what in particular you would or would not be comfortble with if you were to get in to some form of relationship. This could at least give you some idea of how to get closer to what you want. Maybe look at what other people's ideas for a qpr are and how they sort out some form of relationship which they are comfortable with. The other thing is to ask yourself why it is you scared about never dating or getting together with someone. For example if the fear is to do with loneliness how can you adjust your friend groups to make that seem less of a worry. maybe it turns out never getting together isnt that worrying.

Wow, that is a great description of what I would accept for a romance. Yeah, looking back that sounds about right for what really puts me off, the romance taking over must be a big part of it.

It is a pain, i think in my case I am slightly annoyed that being 'normal' is something I am supposed to do not for a general benefit to humanity or some moral argument, or even for my own benefit, but simply for the sole benefit of the person asking me to act normal. If it was followed up by some appeal to ethics or sense that would give me a reason to behave normally that would be fine, but usually it is just someone thinking of their own comfort.

This is I guess directed at the subset of aros who are ok with reading fiction that involves romance. I have this swinging between one story with some romantic subplot being fine for me, but then the next story I read I get really frustrated or feel awful trying to slog through it. I am guessing that there are some things within those fictions that I can tolerate and some things I just can't but I am not sure i can describe exactly what it is that turns me away. does anyone else experience anything similar, and do any of you have specific things about a romantic part of a story that would put you off reading it?