Bas

True TPBM likes the color green.

Eeep yeah, I just found a good link of the old site here doing that. You just gotta poke around for a bit to find it (imo looking between 2013-2014 is best, beyond that you're going to mostly get sites that're completely unrelated more often than not): https://web.archive.org/web/20120701210439/http://aroplane.org/

Found out a few months ago (I am 22, going on 23), although I've been very strongly aro for, well, all of my life. Still very much new to the whole thing, but the aro community so far has been super chill and super helpful in my figuring things out. I'm glad this place exists to be honest-- I hope it sticks around for the other aros out there who've yet to find it.

Oh yeah. I think about this all the time. If I knew I was aro to begin with it probably would've saved me a heck of a lot of trouble. My unawareness of my inherent aromanticism contributed to a lot of internalized biphobia as a matter of fact, as, since I didn't have a good way of differentiating my sexuality from romantic attraction, I was constantly sent into a questioning spiral of doom. Do I really like this person? Am I really attracted to them? Am I faking? etc etc etc. Very anxiety inducing to be sure. Knowing ahead of time that aromanticism was a thing, and that it was possible to be both aro & allosexual, might've mitigated this at least a little bit.

dissociated

Hi! It's nice to meet you Marissa! I hope you find what you need here this is a great community to be a part of

Hi! It's nice to meet you Sam! I 100% get you on not being able to be involved with LGBTQ things irl, I live in a conservative area too it's a big rip. That said I hope your writings with aro/ace charas turn out well there's always more of a need for more aro rep! Glad to have ya around in the community ?

Tbh, as an alloaro, this is actually a pretty difficult question to answer, at least for me lol. I legit cannot comprehend romantic attraction- the only way I know it exists is due to romance repulsion on my part more than anything. I've never experienced romantic attraction myself though so I literally can't describe it the way I can describe sexual attraction. In my experience, sexual attraction is all there is for me, so it is quite impossible for me to define the differences specifically, as like. How can I even begin when I don't even know what romance really is. It's like-- there was an non-ace aro youtuber, Nik Hampshire, who described it once along these lines- there's a "folder" in my brain for sexual attraction, but there isn't a "folder" in my brain for romantic attraction. My systems literally Do Not Compute along those terms. Sex is yes, romo is null.

To be perfectly honest, one of the things I love most about being aro is partaking in aro culture & humor & memes. It's the best shit lol, never fails to get me laughing.

2005

There aren't any groups for aros in my local area (at least none that I've seen, anyways), but then again I'm not too active on facebook, so it might be a good idea for me to look there! I've recently tried looking into poly & LGBTQ groups, like you've said, along with kink communities, but I haven' checked out anything about relationship anarchy, so I'll give that a try too. I'm just being real careful with things atm tbh-- I said this before here I think? But I want to lessen the possibility of romo feels as much as possible. I'll keep up with the effort nonetheless. Thank you for the advice I'm in the same situation pretty much lmao. Not out as aromantic or bisexual rip, & seeing as how I have a mostly sapphic lean, & the wlw community is so focused on romance, it's even more of a hassle to find a sexual QPR with a woman on top of the closeted thing hhh. Nonetheless, I wish you luck on the sexual QPR front too! May both of our endeavors be fruitful.

oh! sorry for the long wait on this lol-- thank you so much for the welcome! here's the post btw-- dk whether or not you might've seen it yourself as it's on AUREA: https://www.aromanticism.org/en/news-feed/my-aroallo-journey

This is an absolute mood. That's just the goal, really. It sucks that it's so hard to find something like that without the expectation of romance. All the same I'm glad you've come to an aro realization, & I realize this is late by quite a few months but whatever's going on I hope things have gone well for you in this regard

I've been struggling on this for sometime. I've been thinking of a QPR/sexual relationship of some sort, but it feels super difficult to find one that is amenable to what I want out of a relationship. I don't want to try anything with an alloro person, as frankly the stress of them potentially generating romantic feelings for me would just turn me off of the QPR completely, but it seems as if there's no way to find another aromantic and/or aroallo person easily. As I'm autistic it's double hard for me to form meaningful relationships with people/make friendships with those who aren't neurodiverse, so that also narrows things down by a lot. What is the best way to go searching?

I highly relate to this. I really wish it were easier for people like us to form relationships, or just be tbh, but it's super hard to exist as an aro in this romance saturated world. It is really lonesome and isolating. I still hold out hope that things can get better, though. I hope the same holds true for you, too.

I've had a similar incident come up when I tried to bring up the topic with my mother a few weeks ago. I didn't explicitly state that I was aro, but I told her point blank that I was never going to want or have a romantic relationship, and she was completely dismissive and patronizing to me about it, and tried to change the topic. It's really weird, too, because she herself reads as pretty aro to me in her actions (& she's legit displays the same level of romance repulsion as me on multiple occasions), but I don't know for sure one way or the other. I'm sorry your mom was dismissive of you in regards to your writings for amatonormativity and your thoughts on romance. It really is irritating and disheartening when people who are close to you, especially family, are like that.

For me, with romance repulsion, I don't mind if other people are doing things like PDA or talking about their SOs IRL. It's not in relation to me, so I'm pretty much indifferent, and very much supportive. When romance is directed towards me, can't handle it at all, IRL or online. It makes me super uncomfortable and if it's really up there can even make me panic. I get this mixed feeling of awkwardness & guilt, because I really don't like hurting people and it's stressful af, and an overbearing sense of "RUN". So yeah lol. In fictional media, it's a lot more fluid. Music? Literally don't care. If the music is good, I can ignore the lyrics and just focus on the tempo of it. TV/Movies? I can't do live action/animated romance; that hits the extremes of my repulsion. In writing/fanfic? If the plot is not wholly focused on the romance, and if the relationship makes sense/I like the character dynamics/the setting is interesting to me, I am more favorable. If the plot is nothing but romance and fluff though? I just get a slightly squeamish feel, not as bad as live action or IRL, but it's just irritating. I can get romance tired in writing, too.

When I was a kid I would legit make up crushes because I thought it was just a thing everybody did. I'd make shit up just to have something to talk about with other people, then I'd 100% forget all about it later on. Also; I always cringed at the sight of romantic moments on TV, such as when two characters suddenly have a ~romo mood~ moment & kiss each other and whatnot- that to me was just as uncomfortable as, say, watching someone get attacked by a monster in a horror movie lmao.

Hihi! My name is Bas, I'm 22 (go by she/they), autistic & dyspraxic af, and I am an Aromantic Bisexual, or AlloAro for short. Also ID as nebularomantic as my neurodivergency influences a lot of my aromanticism. I've only recently come to the realization of my aromanticism in the past few months. I've always been very romance repulsed, and was never particularly comfortable with romo things, but I never considered being aro as a thing for me personally, and mostly cycled between various labels. I even thought I was ace for a while, as I'm pretty sex indifferent as well, but I've since become very centered in my bisexuality (which was also a pain to figure out). It's just that the way I experience allosexuality is majorly influenced by my aromanticism, and I didn't realize it until I read up on a post describing it, and 100% related. From there I've slowly become more involved in aro servers on discord (I'm even in the Arocalypse server), but I wanted to check this place out too now that it's open. So... hi, I guess. Glad to be here ???