NullVector

Not that you need to 'sell' your aromanticism to them, but maybe you could try making an anaology with sexual orientation? I've not been sexually attracted to a man so far, but I suppose I cannot absolutely rule out that my heterosexuality is "just a phase" (i.e. who's to say I don't see a man tomorrow and feel sexual attraction towards them). And yet, most people don't talk about sexual orientation in this way. So, why do it with romantic orientation? (or maybe your friends think that everyone is actually latently bisexual to some degree? at least that would be consistent of them!)

That's interesting. Do you have any links to example posts where this topic gets discussed?

Would it though? I mean, you aren't 'chosen representatives' (there hasn't been an election or something) so it may make sense to establish that context explicitly? I'm fine with you representing yourselves and your own opinions and experiences online - and your understanding of these as aros - but why seek to imply that non-aro people not implicitly universalising your understanding to all aros would 'undermine the website'? This I don't understand.

Should this be www.alexandraroca.com ?

In case this helps, I've taken to asking myself the question: do I think about this person I barely know outside of two very specific contexts? Either, 1: they are right in front of me, or, 2: during (or immediately preceeding) certain 'self-stimulatory' behaviours (apologies for crudeness!). My answer is basically always 'no', so I've come to conclude that my past 'crushes' were of a purely sexual (rather than partially romantic) nature. I get the impression that romantic crushes are characterised more by thinking about the person all-the-damn-time (this 'can't get them out of my head' phenomena is a level of commitment I simply cannot achieve! not when there are so many other interesting things to be thinking about in any given moment!). Also, fantasising about your future together. I don't think I've ever done this. Rather, being honest, I've only fantasized about moment-to-moment sexual stuff we'd do together ? (or maybe having interesting conversations before/after the sex; but it is rather stretching the definition of 'romantic' IMO to call this that!) I'm curious, given what else you wrote, about what are the specific aspects that you would think about as being 'nice'?

Hello @hUllO! Short answer: it depends what you mean by commitment. I've done things that require commitment (example: writing a thesis). It just so happens that, in my case, a romantic relationship is not one of those things. Longer answer: most people seem to take 'commitment' in this context to mean things like: monogamy, exclusivity, co-habitation, etc., done in the context of a romantic relationship which is 'acted-out' according to socially conventional behavioural markers, rites and rituals. Most of us on here would probably regard that as an overly prescriptive and restrictive way of viewing commitment. Also, aromantic sexual is an internal orientation, not an external behaviour. I'm basically 'functionally' asexual; I'd prefer to be having sex, but I don't want to do it in the context of a romantic relationship. But I'd also want a level of caring relationship with the person (or persons) I'm doing the sex with, including some level of 'commitment' that we can negotiate mutually, but outside of some pre-defined social script (assumed to desirably 'escalate' according to some standardised timeline) and/or assumed romantic-sexual 'package-deal'. That's a weird concept for most people (including myself!) and it's not a conversation I've figured out how to have yet. Plus, until fairly recently, I didn't even perceive this as an option. So, I've been celibate on that (semi-voluntary) basis thus far. P.S. personally, I'm not offended. I do regard your mum's response as a lazy, reflexive over-generalization of her own limited experiences and orientation towards relationships; but if I became offended every time a fellow human did this, I would find life absolutely exhausting! ?

Couples

In general I'd say some probable candidates would be: avoidant personality disorder schizoid personality disorder social anxiety (severe) autism asperger syndrome But don't we have to make a distinction here between, on the one hand, lack of intrinsic desire to make efforts to enter into romantic relationships (i.e. aromanticism) and, on the other hand, a lack of success at actually entering into them - despite making efforts to? For example, someone on the autism spectrum might struggle with the sort of social protocols that are typically followed to realise romantic relationships. But, I've heard of examples where such people were strongly motivated to get into romantic relationships and so invested a lot of time into trying to learn these sorts of protocols - to the extent that they eventually succeeded romantically. Me, on the other hand (possible mild aspergers): I realised at some point that I just don't care enough to learn and practice these things So, I don't think anything in your list could create aromanticism (aside from the first two, arguably), as I think the base desire to get into romantic relationships is completely logically separate from any psychological hurdles that would make this more difficult. But all of them could probably be mistaken for it, yes (as per the title of the thread).

SAME! I'm still coming to terms with it I reckon . And yeah, as @ApeironStella put it, it's largely because I didn't want to be: Which I guess was also me partially buying into a harmful narrative that girls don't really enjoy sex for it's own sake and, as such, as a male wanting sex, you've got to barter with them for it by offering romantic gestures? Yeah, I think we all came to that conclusion in this thread! Yeah. That's a really interesting observation IMO. Like, the implication is very much that you should be having sex, but only in the right way! i.e. two people, long-term, monogamous, ideally married (and formerly only with specific genders related to your own; but that one has relaxed somewhat in recent decades). Anything else is still seen as a bit beyond the pale! Allo Aros are often very much wanting sex in the wrong way from this perspective! And I very much suspect that, in this hierarchy of wrong-ness I'm constructing, wanting sex in the wrong way is seen as more wrong than not wanting it at all! I've never been much of a daring rule-breaker, unfortunately for me.

Yeah, totally And pretty much non existent in life in general? Casual sex might get looked down on in popular culture, but at least it's out there as an option that we're aware of. With sexual relationships that aren't your traditional, monogamous romantic dyad, but also aren't casual sex, I dunno, it's like a language hasn't been invented yet to enable us to frame and conceptualize them as feasible options we could actually pursue and live out (or maybe it has somewhere and I just don't belong to the right sub-culture(s)?). Like I was never taught to speak aro

@eatingcroutons what was the 'context' you were referring to? I reckon most people (i.e allo-romantics) would find the statement that personal happiness derives exclusively from a romantic relationship to be a bit extreme. But, at the same time, I think they would also find it difficult to envision themselves living a fulfilling life without a romantic relationship being incorporated as a key component of that vision. This is where I think you and I (and others on these forums) are quite different from most people: it's not a key component for us. Thinking in terms of Maslov's hierarchy of needs: I suspect many allo-romantics see romantic relationships as a non-negotiable requirement for meeting their 'belonging/love' related needs adequately. Whereas an aromantic could meet those same needs just fine with friendships and family relationships only.

Been watching a lot of Natalie Wynn a.k.a. Contrapoints recently (thanks YouTube algorithm! ). Her videos are smart, funny and have great production values, IMO. She doesn't talk about aro/ace though (at least, not so far)

I think the issue with 'cheating' is that there has been an (implicit or explicit) agreement made to have a monogamous relationship. So it's a breach of trust if one of the partners breaks that agreement. An open relationship is completely different to 'cheating' IMO. If it has been discussed and agreed that those are the terms of the relationship then 'seeing other people' isn't 'cheating' i.e. breaking the rules of an agreement. It's playing by those rules - by definition it's playing fairly and not cheating! I agree that monogamy is essentially arbitrary and don't see why something true of friendship (you can have more than one friend at once) shouldn't be true of sexual relationships more often. People should feel more free to discuss and adopt the type of relationship they actually want and not just assume a standard template. Tangentially, it's interesting to speculate on what the reasons for the 'standard template' could be. I was doing that here a while ago.

Can you elaborate? What is it that you hate about it?

Interesting... I guess @Tagor's 'theory' about how people discover marginalised identities would predict it. I'm not familiar with the Aven site at all - anyone here know of any data on male:female membership ratio for it?

Yeah, I think you're probably right @Tagor. Also, women talk a lot more about their emotions than men in general, I reckon; romance being just one aspect of that. Conversely, a man might get the idea that he is unusually romantic and none of his friends are particularly romantic, as they hardly ever talk about their romantic feelings (even if they have them). Similarly, if he isn't particularly romantic himself, he may grow up thinking that he is perfectly normal in this regard i.e. think that his male friends don't talk about romantic feelings because they also don't have them (rather than because of make socialization and gendered expectations, which strikes me as a much more likely explanation). So it might take him far longer to come to the conclusion that he is unusual in some way and explore aromanticism. I actually don't think men are inherently any less romantic than women. Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if they were inherently more romantic! And if women were instead evolutionarily biased to take more 'pragmatic' factors into consideration when selecting mates (with pregnancy being a short-term survival risk, it could be comparatively more important for women to (probably sub-consciously) take such 'un-romantic' factors as men's social status into account when selecting sexual partners?)

Yeah, this is precisely what makes me think that certain things would be easier for me if I were gay! Two men or two women are effectively forced to negotiate gender roles at the start of a romantic relationship, as there is no obvious 'default' to adopt, which is a good thing, IMO (or, I suppose that as a gay person you can indicate what sort of 'default' you would prefer, by fashion choices and/or mannerisms; point being that biological sex isn't determining any pre-defined gender roles here). Whereas in heterosexual relationships the male-female defaults would tend to get assumed (unless you are constantly actively challenging them, which could get exhausting after a while?). I feel like adopting the default 'female' role would make it easier for me personally (as a male aro) to start a romantic relationship, as I wouldn't be expected to actively initiate romantic gestures (which feels very inauthentic to me); rather it would be acceptable to more passively receive them and identify where my boundaries were, if I were being 'wooed'. But, um, I don't really know, that might have its own challenges (be careful what you wish for, lol). In terms of belonging to a more visible, cohesive community where it was easier to talk about this stuff IRL: yeah, that might be nice

"she just doesn't understand me like you do"

You are given a pan of platecakes instead. It hurts to eat them. I wish to be able to understand and speak in any language.

Oh, you are definitely not the only one. I think close to 100% of the people I've interacted with on these forums feel this way ? It got me thinking: what actually is 'dating' and why is it something that weirds out most of us here? I sort of get the concept of trying to get to know somebody that you are 'interested in' a bit better (perhaps most typically a euphemism for 'interested in having sex with', hah, since as you pointed out @eatingcroutons you know next to nothing else about them at this point!). But isn't 'dating' rather more than that? Well, I just skimmed through the very long Wikipedia article on dating and they say there that and So maybe it's both the ends and the means that we take issue with here? Conventional dating IMO typically assumes you have a particular end goal in mind (finding one central person to spend most of your time with) and want to follow a particular set of prescriptive, culturally ritualized, but often ill-defined and confusing, steps to get there. But when neither of those things are true (as I suspect they aren't for most of us here) then where does that leave us? (in terms of having socially accepted procedures we can follow to establish sexual partnerships, for example). Same. And I also don't know what to do about it. ?

@Thaa Yeah, I think you're onto something I think with strongly 'romantic' types, there is a tendency to want all those 'intimacies' to be present in a single person (or perhaps two or three people, in the case of poly-amorous allo-romantics) want all the intimacies present in that person(s) (a.k.a. romantic partner(s)) to also be at a greater level of intensity than they are for their friends (with whom not all the intimacies would be there at once - and those that were there at all would be expected to be more 'dilute') Whereas a strongly aromantic person wouldn't particularly care how the numbers and intensities of different 'intimacies' were distributed amongst their friends and/or sexual partners. For example, they might have strong sexual intimacy with one person but weak "in the moment" intimacy (outside of the sex act) and weak intellectual intimacy. With another person, they might have far stronger intellectual and "in the moment" intimacy, but no sexual intimacy whatsoever. And so on. And the aromatic person would be totally fine with this, whereas the strongly romantic person might see it as a problematic form of 'emotional cheating' (as they would tend to want all the intimacies to be both present together and strongest with their romantic partner(s)).

Hah, right, it's Tyrion! Some wires got crossed in my brain there!

@Holmbo Ooh, are there prizes of we know who the quotes are by? (no google-ing/cheating allowed of course!) I recognise one from The Dispossessed /Ursula le Guin, one from Douglas Adams / Hitchiker's Guide (I think?), the 'armour yourself' one is Stoic, either Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, but I can't remember which! (I'm gonna say Epictetus, final answer!)

This thread is badass, so please feel no guilt for bringing it back! ? Haha, you have identified my Kryptonite! (well, that and probably some latent shyness/self-esteem issues). But thanks for the insightful advice and I will try to take it!

Hehe, beat you to it