candlewax

Yeah, I can relate to this a lot actually. I don't have a clear answer for what that all means, I really wish I did. I had similar experiences with thinking you had crushes and then being confused when other people actually dated, and realizing that wanting to get to know someone was actually entirely different from having a crush. As well as liking romance in media and trying to convince myself that I'm attracted to people. I don't totally resonate with all the common experiences of aro people either, but when it comes down to it I fit the definition of aromantic or at least I'm pretty sure I do. I don't think these are entirely uncommon experiences though, and often I realize that the reason I don't resonate with a lot of aromantic experiences is because I don't let myself. Perhaps you're feeling the same? If anything I've learned in the past year that the pervasiveness of amatonormativity has influenced me and many other people in extreme ways. I don't know what you're feeling, but I just hope that you can find comfort and maybe even freedom in the aromantic label if you choose to use it.

I'm sorry I don't have any advice, but I just hope knowing someone feels similarly provides an ounce of comfort.

I'm not quite sure. I spend a lot of my time writing and I've been wanting to write about my experiences questioning and being on the aro spectrum for awhile so this might be the perfect time to do it.

I'm not from Colorado but this year my state recognized Asexual Awareness Week and basically all it means is that it's a week that's recognized by the state. It doesn't change much but it definitely does spread awareness by making it something that's recognized beyond the internet and few groups of people outside the internet. I'm not very well informed about how this stuff works or how it even becomes recognized by the state. It's great though because if there is more awareness by states about aromantic people it could be a gateway to better legal protection in the future just through awareness. That's very unlikely though because no other states have recognized the week or aro people in general as a group and I doubt many people in Colorado even heard about it. Still exciting though! 

6 hours ago, aro_elise said:

immediately i thought to myself that the answer to whether you felt any sort of affection/attraction to people would be a pretty good indicator, and as you said you had "strong feelings" and "a lot of love" for your friends, it's clear that your mental health issues aren't affecting that, so why would they impair your romantic attraction specifically?  as to your not being sure whether certain feelings you had were romantic, i think that in itself is a good indicator--how many alloromantics (people who do experience romantic attraction) struggle with such an uncertainty or seriously consider that they might be aro?  a year is a long time to have these thoughts--it was as long for me as well, before i started to actually identify as aro, and longer before i came out to anyone (or was truly at peace with it).  i also had the same thoughts when i was questioning: "i don't know whether i've ever experienced romantic attraction because i don't quite understand what it is."  well, in retrospect that's a very aro sentiment.  an experience plenty of aros have formerly mistaken for a crush is called a squish--basically the platonic equivalent.  i've had lots of them.  i also have depression and am introverted, but i've actually never felt that either of those could be related to my aromanticism, i suppose because again, i feel so many other emotions, including types of love.  even without being as social as other people, we've lived long enough to have unavoidably met a ton of people, and not having been romantically attracted to any of them indicates an orientation on the aromantic spectrum--i think it's hard to argue with that, though people will certainly try, for some inexplicable reason (what's it to them?)  if you're not too young to know you're straight, gay, or whatever, you're not too young to know you're aro.  and i don't think internalized homophobia is any more likely than internalized amatonormativity--the concept that the highest form of love/relationships is romantic, and no one can be happy without this.  in fact i'd argue that we're all more susceptible to being fooled into this belief because it's more pervasive--it's shared by almost all alloromantics, including lgbt+ ones, whether consciously or not, and perpetuated in virtually every aspect of society.  heteronormativity is a smaller concept within amatonormativity.  for example, observers are likely to assume a close relationship is romantic, especially but not only if it is between a man and a woman.  of course you know whether or not you're gay better than i do, but whatever you are, it's good to be aware of amatonormativity.  and finally i'll comment on these statements:

that's what matters, really--not what you call yourself but that you're happy.  regardless of your orientation, if you don't want a romantic relationship you certainly don't have to enter one.  i, too, feel so free knowing that i can do whatever i want with my life, unrestrained by a partner or kids.  by the way, the fact that you, like many people, didn't even consider for a long time such a possibility is a prime example of harmful amatonormativity.  

even if it did have something to do with that (i'm not inclined to believe it does), what of it?  if you want to spend your life alone, that's what you should do.

if you have any more questions or thoughts, i'd be glad to offer some insight.

Thank you so much for your response it gave me a lot of peace and clarity. While I wrote that I was having a lot of anxiety because I think in my head I was hung up on labels, and I kind of wish I could just cleanly fit into a single identity or perfectly matched the experiences of people from a specific community. In reality I doubt anybody fits cleanly into any specific label and it's never really that easy, although I often felt a bit dumb because I know people who have known they're gay or bisexual since middle school and I've been in a weird limbo of just thinking I might be gay and attraction was actually just way shallower and way less exciting than people made it out to be and sex and romance are something I have to fulfill to feel good about myself. I thought about what you said with amatonormativity being so pervasive, and I tried to imagine if romance wasn't such a big deal or a coming of age thing and I think I probably would have never considered even having a crush on anybody. I think in a way too I just need to focus less on defining my feelings towards people and just enjoy having them in my life. If I don't fall in love then that's fine, and if I do then that's also fine but I have hard time imagining what that even would be.

I really appreciate everything you told me, it was insanely helpful and provided a lot of reassurance. Other places on the internet gave me the typically speech of "sexuality is fluid, you're young it might change one day" so I appreciated someone telling me to just trust my feelings and do what ultimately makes me happy. I also think I just needed to hear that my mental health doesn't affect my sexuality, because I had people tell me the fact I'm on meds means I can't know for sure even though my libido and love towards my friends and family have been pretty much unaffected. 

Again I appreciate your response a lot, it provided me relief. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with labelling myself just yet or if I even want a label, but it feels good to know there's people who understand.

I'm sorry to come in here with one of the "am I..." posts, but I need to talk about this somewhere because I'm unsure about this and I'm kind of nervous to even post about this anymore.

I've struggled with obsessive compulsive disorder my entire life and I often fall into depressions because of it. I'm also just in general rarely get excited or have super strong emotional responses to a lot of things. I have to wonder if maybe this could be affecting my romantic orientation? I think I might be asexual too, but then again I have to wonder if that might be due to my tendency towards being depressed. 

I've thought I had crushes in the past, but in retrospect I think it was just me confusing love towards friends as romantic feelings or just simply picking crushes to fit in. I never got the butterflies or nervousness that a lot of people describe and even people I thought I had crushes on I often questioned if it was a crush. There was instances where I was asked out by people I thought I liked and wanted to date but every time it came down to it I could never bring myself to actually be in a relationship with them, it just sounded unnecessary and suffocating but I often came up with excuses to never date through high school despite multiple opportunities to. I'm graduating this year and I'm well aware that I'm not straight, for awhile I thought I was gay because everyone I had strong feelings towards were girls, but I think that's just because I was only friends with girls and I generally just feel a lot of love for my friends. It's still really confusing though because I don't know how to measure what romantic attraction is if I don't know if I've ever felt it. The only thing I can say is when I found what aromanticism was about a year ago I felt incredibly happy to realize that not having a relationship was even an option, it was freeing but I didn't necessarily consider the label for myself immediately.

I kind of wonder if maybe this is attributed to the fact that I'm just not a very social person and like I said before I tend to be depressed and unexcited. I wonder maybe if I met more people and was a more emotional person I would have romantic feelings towards other people, and this fall I'll be going away to university. I've kind of always expected that I'd meet "the one" in college, and for some reason that always sounded unexciting to me though. I kind of don't want to fall in love with someone and I'd much rather spend my life alone, but again I can't tell if it's my poor mental health talking sometimes. I also sometimes wonder if maybe I am just gay and I'm experiencing internalized homophobia or something, or maybe I'm just too young to even know or the fact that I've thought I had crushes on my friends when I was really young means I can't be aromantic. I guess I'm just wondering if someone feels the same, or if this is a common thing to experience?