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Since I've realized I'm Aro I feel so much happiness and affection for this piece of me and I hope others here feel the same! So please comment why you love being aro or what makes you love your Aroness! I'll go first! I love the way I love unromantically. I feel like I get to experience more varieties of affection and intimacy that alloros may miss. That makes me really excited. It feels like more colors were added to my life! I hope this will spread some aro self love as well! So please go wild and let me know all the good feels!

I can assume we all feel a disconnection from the way people around us do interpersonal relations. I have realized something that feels profound to me and I want to share it. I have realized I cannot do romance (that's a given) but more importantly I also cannot do friendship. What I mean by that, is that in the way in which alloro's experience their intimacy esculator from acquaintance to friend to romance to family etc. I would say that in comparison to alloros, I treat my aquaintances more like friends and my friends more like romantic partners. I have noticed this ends up disappointing many of my aquainatances who believe we are friends until they realize thats how I treat everyone. It also leaves me vunerable to my friends who treats me more like I would an acquaintance. Which in turn leaves me upset, disappointed, and isolated. This disconnection has made me realize I simply cannot do interpersonal relations the same way as my peers in my environment. So I have since thrown out this model (or at least revised it to the point its unrecognizable). I have decided to tell the next person who wants to come into my personal life exactly what I want and need in order to communicate past the disconnection. I don't know if alloros will be able to grasp what I say but the most I can do is speak and wait for someone to listen.

Trigger Warning: Mental Illness, Childhood Trauma Three years ago I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I went through two years of therapy with some short term dialectal behaviour therapy. I worked really hard to learn skills to become more emotionally stable and to have healthier interpersonal relationships. There is stigma about people who have bpd being manipulative and toxic. I had really horrible friends before I started therapy that pushed all the responsibility of our (interpersonal) problems onto me. So in the beginning of treatment I isolated for a good six months in order not to hurt anyone and work on myself. I felt that I had "fully" recovered a year ago and since have no longer been in therapy and would consider myself emotionally healthy. Since learning I am aromantic it has made me question my experience with bpd. First, from my understanding and personal opinion I look at bpd as an extension of childhood neglect (or abuse). This meaning that what a child had to learn or use to cope and survive with neglect (or abuse) has not been unlearned, let go, and healed as an adult. There are two criteria that revolve around interpersonal relationships. 1. Paranoia of abandonment and debilitating action to stop it from happening 2. Patterns of intense and unstable interpersonal relationships that lead to idealization and devaluation. Since recovering I no longer consider having these symptoms BUT I can say my interpersonal relationships have continued to be intense and unstable. I truly believe this is because I am aromantic and have always been. I would get too emotionally close for society (others and even sometimes myself) to consider my friendship "nonromantic." There were long periods of time I learned pacing in which I took a very long and steady time to get to know someone to avoid the concept of ideation and devaluation and would still get "too close" with a friend that I positively knew I was not romantically attracted too but it would ruin our friendship nonetheless. (We can consider being young and not knowing how to effectively communicate another big problem here.) There have been times where I thought with the emotional intimacy celing that I was falling in love with my friends even though I never wanted to date them. There were times my affection for them were "too intense." Many times my friendships have ended due to neglect or abandonment when a romantic partner comes along or when my own friends would get romantic with me and I felt the need to detach from them by ending it. All I know is that these patterns keep happening no matter what I do or try. So for a long time, I have been extracausious. I been trying to have healthy long term committed friendships with no avail. I am now at a moment in my life where now I know that I am aro and I know my own interpersonal needs. So hopefully I can break these patterns now and I feel relieved in many ways that it is not my bpd that has kept me in the pattern like I once believed. I'm sorry this is so long! It's just been something I been processing and hopefully it can give someone another perspective.

One of the flags that I was aro was the "excuses" I kept making for myself (and others) that I wasn't interested in dating. I kept saying "oh I'll look for someone when I've transitioned further" and "I'm giving my 20s to myself, I'll give dating attention when I'm 30." (I'm 21 lmao) People would look at me like, "I believe you but I don't because that's a long time." I think theres a possibility people don't ask me as much like they use to because of sexism like I'm a cis passing man now but pretransition I remember people trying to make romance my entire life or identity. (I hope this didn't get to off topic, it's just an afterthought.)

After much consideration I came to the conclusion that I am not technically romance repulsed (unless directed towards me, then I have a tendency to detach and dip rip) but rather many romantic relationships around me tend to have codependent tendencies. A lot of couples around me believe in merging, lack of space and boundaries, loss of individuality, etc. Codependency does run in my family so romance alligning with my experiences I was 100% turned off by the romantic relationships I have seen and experienced in real life. That being said, I would consider myself more romance positive due to genuinely enjoying seeing, hearing, reading romantic affection. I have felt joy from seeing people express being romantically in love. Oh, in reply to unhealthy relationships happening in nonromantic relationships as well. I do agree, it's just that I tend to see it more in romantic ones probably because of Anatonormativity and the Sex-Romance Based Hierarchy? Anyways, thank you to those who answered for helping me out!

I recently realized I am aro and am now taking my time to conceptualize what this means to me and for me. I am someone who has a hard time connecting to my feelings in general so I pay more attention to my behavior for indicators of what I'm feeling. I realized recently that I am very judgmental about peoples relationships. I really tend to judge people who tell me about their romantic relationships and sometimes even romantic relationships in movies, tv, books, etc. I typically do feel grossed out or disgusted but I always thought it was because I found their relationships unhealthy and not the romance itself. I really enjoy seeing what I would define as "healthy" romance, though I think I have only met one couple in real life I genuinely admired or was pleased seeing, I find most of the "healthy" romance I enjoy in fiction. Slow burn, yearning, patient, individualistic type stuff (this may be a projection of my experiences with friendship). So the question I am posing is am I actually romance repulsed by modern romance or is most modern romance unhealthy? The second question is what does the experience of romance repulsion feel like for you?