Acecream

I hope it's fine that I'm adding an answer, as an queersensual aroace I'm aroace, so I can't speak for alloaros, but as an aroace with strong sensual attraction I can say that most of the time it's very easy to differ attractions/to tell wich kind of attraction I feel. Like to me it's clear that the attraction I feel towards persons and maybe persons bodies is sensual and not sexual, even if it might lead to physical intime actions

I'm not in school anymore but yeah, there are so many "ok which side do I want to join" moments in daily life. and it's still hard, bc I always feel to have the choice between a group where I don't feel secure and feel judged or a group where I feel like misgendering myself and being dysphoric :)) public spaces (yeah, not even queer public spaces) are never nonbinary-friendly unless they think EXPLICITLY of nonbinary people – and, sadly, most of them don't @EternallyTDB I hope you'll find a way for your school! maybe you can just switch or ask (a) friend(s) to join you on the boys table to feel more comfortable?

I faked my first crush with 12 and felt very old

Do you think you are good at keeping feelings secret without being „cold“ or hurting yourself? why do you think it would be embarrassing? Do you th8nk, letting them know would change the realationship you both have or could you both get along with it? maybe you could ask them (hypothetically^^) if they would like (in general) to know whether someone of their friends has a crush on them or not? i don‘t know them so I can‘t decide for you. But I guess if your friendship is strong the truth should not destroy it (maybe you should make clear you do not expect anything from them). I mean, I know from my own experience that it’s sometimes hard to hear about (romantic) feelings from friends and I guess it can be very hard to talk to friends about (romantic) feelings. But I‘m not sure if it‘s always the best to keep emotions secret… also, being honest can be very I,portent in a friendship In case you don’t want to tell them (totally fair!): you wrote that you haven‘t been any different. If you are able to stay the same bestie as you‘ve been before and do the same stuff with them etc I think that should work? I myself sometimes notice feelings from other persons in the way they look at me, so maybe you could pay attention if you look at them very different as you look at others?

Also I was thinking about a friend who liked me and talked a lot with me about how (exclusive)relationships could work for aros and was sad/disappointed when I made clear that I’m wasn’t open to any kind of relationship in that moment. for her it would have been better to have a relationship with an aro than being refused by the aro

that you can't be aro if you want a relationship. and that all Aros are happy without a relationship cn aromisia a friend of mine once said to me while I was telling him that some Aros do search for exclusive* relationships: "okay, but why should anyone be willing to be in a relationship with an aromatic person? that's too unfair for the alloromantic person" (it's not. those of you who want to be in a relationship: you have ENOUGH to give) *I use this term to let open if it's an romantic or (queer)platonic or alterous one or something else

yah that's not that easy with my name as there is no good sounding masculine or neutral variation haha and my name doesn't have that much different letters so you can't really create new names out of it I'm tending towards meo right now. talked to a friend who knows me since many years about their opinion which one fits me most haha. well, we'll see thank you all

5 friends of mine were talking about their first crushes and they all had them when they were in kindergarden or in elementary school (so between 3 and 10) and one of them when he was 12 I wish I would just have been perplexed but the way they talked about it made me feel as if I missed out necessary childhood experiences lol

not me asking a friend why people would decide to go out or to be in a romantic relationship when they could be best friends

Allos make me unwilling/uncomfortable to come out as aro or especially ace bc the have weird assumptions of what my orientation(s) mean. not directly after my coming out to them but in little comments they make afterwards in different situations anyway cn arophobia my first (active) coming out as aro was kinda bad. I told one of my best friends and they were like: "nah I don't believe you bc you have just a loving and caring personality! therefore you can't be aromantic" (they learned a lot since I came out to them but I felt really bad afterwards. it's literally the "Aros are not human/aros are heartless"-trope, just in a "nicer" way) I say it's my first active coming out bc I kinda came out earlier to the same person, but I was totally drunk and just crying that I think that I would never be able to love and I don't think they took me seriously that time I had a very nice coming out talk (as aroace) with a flatmate, we just talked more than a hour so I was able to make thinks clear and it was really cool! My sister was very curious (in a positive way) about my aspec identities but cried a lot when I came out to her as enby Best "reaction" to an outing as aro was a friend who didn't really comment it at all, but she made it really clear that she understood and supports me through many little actions/comments/presents since then <3 <3 <3 I'm out as trans enby to all the people I interact with in my daily life and to my closer family but I'm only out as aro and ace(spec?) to my closest family and a few friends. My sensual attraction (something on the m-spec, I don't really know how to label it. it's kinda every gender but more likely towards girls or nonbinary and/or agender people) is something I spoke only to like 3 or 4 people. that's mainly bc I'm afraid people would either not understand what for me the difference between sensual attraction and being physically close to friends/people is (bc for me it's a HUGE difference) or that people would use my sensual attraction to question my asexuality

someone: "does your arm also gets numb when someone is laying on it all night?" me: "actually no, this never happened to me" friend, who knows I'm aroace gives me a weird look like this can't happen to you, you are aro well seems like allo people never hug their friends/other people than their partners at night

Heyyy I read somewhere that it's planned to make another aro census for 2022... does someone know when it will come?

First of all: this thread doesn't have to be about me personally, I'd like to have it as an open space for people who want to try out names, but– HOW DO YOU ALL FIND YOUR NAMES?????? It seems to be a pretty impossible thing. yeah, so... I'm an trans non-binary person trying to find out it's name. Actually I'd say I'm quite out of the closet for a while now... I mean: People I interact with do know my right pronouns and I'm currently doing hormone therapy^^ But somehow I still didn't really change my birth name (no trans* person has to do so of course!!!) and it starts to feel kinda weird (in the beginning I was like, cool, you don't have a deadname, that's actually amazing). Also because in my head I don't refer to myself with this name anymore so it doesn't seem to fit (I still want to keep it as 2nd name I guess) I spent a few months elsewhere and people there do know me with another name that my (not yet) deadname. So I already practiced and it felt... good? normal? but even if I like the name and I like when people use it I don't FEEL that it's MY name. So, yeah, how did you all find your names? Cause I need one. And I want to be sure. Also I want to have this fancy trans* identity card that exists in my country as long as I can't legally change my registered sex and I need to decide which name I want to put on haha Of course I have people I could ask to use different names for me – but I don't want to tell people another name when I might change it in a few weeks again. I have the urge to be sure myself, so I don't want to tell it everyone (I'm sure close friends wouldn't mind to try different names). But I don't want to use I name for just a few people – elsewhere different groups of people (who all knew I'm an enby) knew me under different names and it stressed me a lot whenever there was the possibility that those groups might interact in a certain way. So, does anyone here have tips how I can find out BY MY OWN which names fit? Lol How did you know? Did you change it more often? Did it feels "special" or did it just feel "normal"? Also, if you want to feel free to try those names to refer to me/talk about me, I'd love it :):)you could try out neo/meo (both variants!), mati and mio (but I already experienced this name in use so that's less urgent)

well, I first wanted to answer "be an asshole" too unfortunately there are also people who are attracted to assholes. and there are people who start relationships while knowing that the other person is toxic. so yeah. I don't think this works.

oh, what just came in my mind; i've seen a lot of alloaces saying they'd wish they were aroace instead of alloace. i f**king hate this. they have no clue what it means to be aromantic and they just think it's an easy way to go lol

being aromantic feels so f***ing queer and as I love my queerness (bad days apart haha) I love how my aroness is a huge part of it

I saw an aroring in a documentary for like 2 seconds and I‘m not even sure that it was an aroring but hell it almost made me cry (in a positive way) representation is so so so important need more aro culture out there :D

i was so much afraid of „having to start to date“. I didn’t want to get older as I thought this meant I would have to. But I was getting older and older and felt like the time was coming to start, and than I was ashamed of the thought to date in my hometown, bc hell, there were people who knew me and they would see I’m trying to date… so I decided to wait until I leave the town. In a new town nobody would know me so it would be a good possibility to start. Well, but I didn‘t want to start and also, why should I directly start… and then I knew some people so it would be the same as before and people would recognise me and would start to talk to me about my dating life or about dating in general… hell was I relieved when I discovered that I don‘t have to date and that that‘s totally fine haha That I always thought, when someone had a crush on me that I should automatically have a crush on them too bc you‘ll all know, that’s how love works. You immediately have to like people back bc otherwise you‘ll break their hearts and I wanted to be a nice person

More sure in my romantic orientation. Like, absolutely sure. sexual orientation confuses me. Like, I’m clearly on the ace spectrum but sometimes I’m not sure about where at the spectrum. Also, i have a very strong sensual attraction and even if I’d say, I’m quite good in taking it apart from the sexual one, it confuses me in relationship woth my sexuality

Hello Mike welcome to this forum! Glad that you found your way to us and still happy birthday!

Well, if you are cis and allo hetero, people never say, you are „too young“. They start to put their own cis allo heteronormative expectations on toddlers already people who grow up queer are almost always told they are „too young“. and, yeah, it may seem that aromanticism is a Orientation you can‘t figure out at a young age bc „you haven‘t met the right one“ in this age and „nobody is interested in romance in that age“. But that’s amatonormative bullshit. people can know very young that they are gay, or hetero, or trans. So people clearly CAN know very young that they are aro. (But you have to remember that most kids with no interest in romance may still be alloromantic) i mean, I knew at a very young age (looking back). I just didn‘t have the words. And I (wanted to) believe(d) when adults told me that „the one will come“. I’m an aromantic adult now. And I was a aromantic kid. So, yeah, there ARE kids who are aro. And some of them know. The „only“ problem is, that nobody would listen to them nor take them serious

e: so my quote didn’t work I wanted to quote this: “And while the aroallo community also emphasizes that they are not asexual, the rhetoric is totally different. It focuses more on how aroallo people aren't talked about enough, and how not all aros are ace. Aroace's existence isn't treated as inconvenient or ignored like we often are in ace spaces.” That’s so much true!!! That’s why I feel so much more comfortable in the aro communities and also with saying “I ’m aro” instead of “I’m ace” and much more connected to alloaros than to alloaces anyway, alloaros are so cool!