Neon

When objectively toxic relationships are portrayed as super romantic. I read a book once where the love interest literally committed genocide because he was sad the MC died (it's kinda convoluted, she died and got brought back essentially) and I couldn't finish the series it was so awful.

17 hours ago, DreamSeeker said:

So kind of ironic but romance novels

I play piano and I find it delightfully ironic that my favorite era to play from is the Romantic Era.

2 hours ago, sleepytess said:

i eventually forced myself, rather than life forcing me T-T. in 2020 when i was 15 i picked up loveless by alice oseman (having it had just came out) read about 50 pages, had a breakdown, spiralled... and just tried to ignore the fact i was relating to an aroace character word for word... then i forced myself to pick it back up again almost 2 years later because i decided if i could get through the book... i'd just know... and i knew alright.

What happened with me is that my sibling sent me a fanfiction that causually mentioned aromanticism without defining it and started trying really hard to shove all the thoughts I had since I was 12 and heard about asexuality (thinking it included romantic attraction). That lasted until my mom had a surgery (it went very well, she's fine) and I finally looked up aromanticism because that was slightly less stressful. Lots of uncomfortable and scary feelings later, here I am, with my giant aro flag in my room.

3 hours ago, Isa1116 said:

Thanks. The thing is I have not really been doing my work at all? I keep trying but I can't. Multiple people have suggested that I have adhd and when my brother brought it up to my parents they just said I'm being lazy, which I am tbh. And I really shouldn't not be working because I am behind on so many assignments. 🙃

Like @hemogoblin said, you seem burned out and really down on yourself for something that is far from life-or-death, not remotely lazy.

The reason you need a break is to get the stuff done. Take it from someone who's been there, the only way you are going to start doing it again is if you take a real step back, not one where you still peak around the corner at it every 5 minutes.

If we can't convince you that you aren't being lazy (you aren't), then you still deserve a break. Your academics should never come at the expense of your mental health and sense of self worth. No matter what.

You aren't being lazy. And there is nothing wrong with you.

Please remember that school does not define you. It's one aspect of one part of your life. In 10 years anyone asking you how you did in high school or college will be laughed out of the room.

My advice right now is to put down the homework and set aside your worries about it and go do something with the sole intention of relaxing for a couple hours. Whatever that means for you. Go do it. School is not allowed in that time, so you aren't procrastinating. It's not an easy task but it's helped me when I fall into similar ruts.

Finally, a lot of what you said is very concerning. Do you have someone you can talk to about these feelings IRL? If you do, please contact them, I think it's a safe bet they can help more than we can.

34 minutes ago, sleepytess said:

i am aroace, i have known i was aromantic since i was Twelve (i made a post about that alone on AVEN here), denied it for 5 years, gave up trying to lie to myself when i was 17

I did almost the exact same thing lmao. For me it was 16 but that was only because of life essentially forcing me too.

That's so cool! I'm glad you were able to find some that resonate with you!

These are interesting but most of them kind of look very similar to the arospec flag (spoilered due to image size)

I've now come out to pretty much everyone, and it's kind of a mixed bag. Coming out generally means I can be my full self around someone, without them unintentionally invalidating me. But as nice as most of my coming out experiences were, there were absolutely people who just cannot accept it. Those relationships have become strained because it feels like I need to dance around who I am even harder than before.

My advice is to be very deliberate in when, how, and with whom you come out to. Figure out their exact feelings on aspec people before coming out if it's an established relationship. Also, be ready for someone to accept aspec people without accepting you are aspec. And after you come out, there will probably be an adjustment period for a lot of people as they try to understand if there are new boundaries/taboo topics.

I don't want to scare you, like I said, coming out was almost always excellent for me. But there were points where I didn't think it all through and those really hurt.

21 hours ago, Helion said:

Another aspect of it is that I know that cheating is an awful thing to do and if I had a partner I would NOT do it simply because I wouldn't want to hurt a person this gravely, but on a very honest mental level I have honestly no idea why having sex with someone but your partner is bad. If no one told me that I'd literally never even have the idea that it's something bad and I wouldn't mind if my partner did it. I seriously don't get the issue with it, like darn, why is it such an awful immediately relationship-ending thing?

this confused me forever too! I thought it was a jealousy thing lmao. People eventually explained that it's a betrayal of trust with your partner. You are going behind your partner's back, and violating one of the essential rules of the relationship.

I was that person who insisted it was all "personality" then refused to elaborate lmao.

I'm not playing it yet, but I'm super excited for this december bc I'm going to get the remastered Submachine game!

tween

Moonlight Sonata

You really shouldn't be trying to "blend in". It may be nice in the short term, but in the long term, your mental health and sense of self will suffer.

Instead, just keep talking about their relationships. Hype them up. Tease them if everyone is comfortable with it. They are your friends - take an interest in their lives. You don't have to relate or talk about yourself to be happy and engaged with a conversation.

Think about like a friend talking about a movie you didn't watch and have no interest in watching. You aren't interested in the movie, but you are interested in them and their happiness.

I'm offended at your lack of specificity!

1 hour ago, ozymandias said:

even though I can imagine myself with "them" (it literally can be anyone), it is never "me". It is just a story, a work of fiction. I don't know how to explain it in the most tactful way, it just feels wrong.

This sounds just like me lmao. Before I accepted I was aromantic, whenever I imagined my future, I would picture a faceless woman married to a faceless man. If I tried to put my face onto the woman, I couldn't get it to look like me. If I tried to put someone I knew's face onto the man, it would look like him. I literally cannot conceptualize a future in which I am in a romantic relationship.

1 hour ago, ozymandias said:

Maybe I am just shutting down emotions, even though none have been for a real person in a while.

I thought I was doing that for a really long time. So I started writing down every time I felt what I considered the feeling associated with romantic attraction and how it felt. I felt the same thing singing in the car with my mom, petting my dog, looking at flowers, seeing someone's coloring of a mandala, and more. If I didn't have literal written records, I probably would have gaslit myself into believing it didn't happen, so I highly recommend doing the same if you want to start to parse that out.

1 hour ago, ozymandias said:

maybe what I am craving is just a person I can trust with anything.

This is me again! I had to force myself to share more of myself with the people I wanted to know me. It's a very slow process but my close friends were never surprised and never left me. After I started doing that, the craving for someone I could trust went away - I already have that person now.

1 hour ago, ozymandias said:

I feel like a fraud, truly

When I was first trying to accept myself as aromantic, I felt this all the time. It gets better. What helped me was avoiding all "am I aro" posts, quizzes, etc. like the plague, keeping track of my thoughts and feelings, and just using arospec and acespec instead of aromantic and asexual.

It also helped me to know that it's okay if you are wrong about this. Use the label now, and for however long it feels right. You aren't hurting anybody by doing so. In fact, there is a net benefit for using a label that you want to use: it hurts no one and HELPS YOU. So use it.

Also, there is no set way to be aromantic. There is no symptom list, no diagnostic criteria. The only thing you need to do to call yourself aromantic is find the label personally useful to describe your experiences. And based on what you described, the label aromantic seems to describe your experiences.

1 hour ago, ozymandias said:

I probably am having trouble differentiating between romantic and platonic attraction. In all honesty, I don't think I could, my idea of romance has been twisted to the point of unrecognition. I don't really know what romantic attraction really feels like anymore.

I don't have personal experience with this, but it may help to look into the microlabel quoiromantic (aka WTFromantic). The hallmark of it is that you cannot conceptualize romantic attraction/cannot tell the difference between romantic and platonic attraction. That being said, microlabels are not for everyone and I strongly advise against just scrolling through lists of them (I did that and it just made my self-invalidation so much worse).

1 hour ago, ozymandias said:

This all probably seems very melodramatic, but I am just trying to be as logical and pragmatic as I can in this situation.

It doesn't seem melodramatic at all! A lot of what you've said has rung very true to me. Don't feel bad about being upset or confused. It's brave to be so vulnerable with complete strangers, and I commend you.

Also, attraction isn't logical or easy to nail down. I know it's so much easier said than done, but don't stress this.

1 hour ago, ozymandias said:

a lot of what I have seen on this site is the first.

Trust me, that's probably a solid 95% of us here. It's genuinely one of the best resources I had when I was questioning/struggling to accept myself and I've learned a lot from the community here. I've completely revised my idea of aromanticism, romance, and love in general MANY times over the last few years lmao.

1 hour ago, ozymandias said:

I think I am aro, in some way or another, but I don't know how comfortable I would be using that outside of my own head.

Again, I relate so hard to this. It took a very long time for me to get fully comfortable admitting to anyone outside my head that I was aromantic. Hell, it took an extremely long time to get comfortable admitting I was aromantic INSIDE my head. Like I said before, it take time, but it gets easier, and then it gets effortless.

I really hope this helped, because I've been there myself. It's scary and confusing and overwhelming. I hope I payed forward what the people on this site did for me a little bit. I hope that you can find some solace in the fact that people here relate to your experiences. I also hope I was mostly coherent in this (it's 12:15am and I am tired). Please feel free to ask me any questions about my experiences.

On 10/4/2023 at 7:35 PM, mordo said:

no hate to aros who do feel strong forms of attraction

I feel strong familial/platonic love and the whole "aros can still feel love" thing pisses me off to no end. It feels like I'm being used as a shield against criticism of loveless antagonism (I'm curious if anyone else feels this way and/or aros who feel romantic love sense that with "aro people can still date"? or if it's more a me thing). And it feels like I'm expected to make up for my romantic attraction with it. AND it feels like alloros expect me to express platonic love the way they express romantic love even though it's not anywhere near similar to romantic love.

I'm offended that you think that multiple people can't be offended by the same thing!

For a while I was "Neon Green Packing Peanut"  (hence my icon) because I thought it was fun and silly. Then someone on AVEN called me Neon and I really liked it, so I changed my username to be simpler.

I'm offended because you are subverting the rules of the game

chess is not a balanced game because the pawns are worth less to the player than the rest of the pieces so the world implied by chess has no equality, and thus no balance

You need to drink water every day

None of this is normal at all. I've had friends who have had intense crushes on people and nothing they did/said came remotely close to anything you've just described.

I don't know any alloro people who have ever chosen their crushes. Heck, I've even seen my alloro friends desperately want to date people they otherwise hate. If people could just choose to have/not have a crush on someone, there goes most relationship drama, which clearly is not the case. I'm not sure quite what your mom means, but if I had to guess I would say the same as everyone else here.

4 hours ago, castletalk said:

I'm pretty much up for anything sci fi or fantasy, especially if there's well-written/interesting platonic relationships! Bonus points if there's queer people. Or robots. Or monsters.

Starting with fantasy recs:

Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson, features an aro main character (confirmed out of canon as the author decided to not write a sequel), and it's really good!

The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is excellent. Every book is a stand-alone so you can read whatever you are in the mood for. (Here's the list for reference https://www.discworldemporium.com/reading-order/).

The Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull remains one of my favorite of all time. The romance is minimal and it focuses heavily on the sibling relationship between the main characters.

The Market of Monsters series by Rebecca Schaeffer is an urban fantasy with two aroace leads!

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill is also one of my favorite fantasy books, I don't remember if there's any romance.

The Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard is a dystopian fantasy and the main romance is one of the only YA romances I like. It also has multiple queer couples.

The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini is also excellent, especially if you are like me and like the concept of Tolkien's worldbuilding but finding Tolkien's writing insufferable.

For sci-fi:

Recursion by Blake Crouch is excellent and I read it in one sitting, but it does have a main romance and iirc a sex scene

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao is similarly amazing, but also has a lot of romance and I also think there is sex in it. The main trio are polyam and they have robots!

The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag is a post-apocalyptic story with amazing illustrations to go with it. The main character is gay as well!

On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden is a graphic novel and the main character is gay

The Illuminae Files (series) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff is a "compiled documents" space opera and is really good. However, there is a lot of romance

Bonus:

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is realistic fiction but it features one of the best platonic relationships I've read