NullVector

Pretty much this. I wonder: have you also found it a lonely and isolating experience sometimes, having these sorts of "dark" thoughts about our likely future? I read your fellow Australian Clive Hamilton's book Requiem For A Species a few years back and found it enormously helpful, particularly this paragraph from the final chapter: Context: the "loss" he's referring to us "mourning" above is the loss of the kind of future we've been culturally conditioned to expect; for ourselves and for our descendants. I see a lot of environmentalists patting themselves on the back for not being stuck in the "denial" stages of climate-change grief, but, to me, they look like they're just stuck in the "bargaining" stages instead! Too much of the discussion is focused around how to avert catastrophe, whereas catastrophe is probably already upon us now, IMO, and so the the discussion should shift to how we go on living through it. "The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!" (from this poem)

Hi Chloe, welcome to arocaylpse You'll learn more as you get older, of course - but that applies to all of us, however old we get Too young to know anything is a bit nonsensical to me, like saying you've learned nothing in 14 years! (has somebody actually said this to you?) They might be right. Then again, they might not! For example, by way of analogy, I've read things written by people who've said from quite a young age that they didn't ever want kids. Everyone told them they'd change their minds once they got older. Then, at some point, they became adults who'd never had kids. So it's probably possible to have ideas about this sort of thing from a young age (see this thread for some aro-specific examples). Just remain open to both possibilities, I guess (and hopefully your family can do the same). Is there anyone more neutral/nonjudgmental that you can talk to, that will give you more space to talk about your feelings? Like a close friend that you trust, for example? If not, you're welcome to continue talking to us here as well, of course. Hmm. I can see how a comment like that could be hurtful for you (I hope for your sake that she didn't mean it that way). The human experience is pretty broad. Some humans experience romantic love, some don't. They're both equally human; their humanity just gets expressed in different ways. At least, that's how I look at it. A great scientist or spiritual leader, for example, might not 'love' in a traditional 'romantic' sense, but they can give love back in other ways, like to humanity as a whole (their kind of love can be more general, rather than being directed towards a specific person). I think I can relate here and recall feelings like this when I was your age. Although, unlike you, I would never have identified as asexual, I would become very anxious in situations where there was the slightest hint of 'romantic intent! (in my case, whenever I was with a girl I was attracted to, I both wanted something to happen and didn't want it to happen, at the same time - but since I'd never heard of sexual vs. romantic orientations, I was very confused for a long time!) So, even if it doesn't feel like it right now, I think you're lucky to have found some words and concepts to help understand some of these feelings, at a reasonably young age still. You can try explaining and communicating your experience of being human to them , but really it's outside of your control whether they listen or try to understand - so don't beat yourself up if/when they don't make much effort to do so! Some people are just a bit closed-minded, unfortunately, or tend to over-generalize their own very specific ideas about what it is that makes people happy. Maybe they'll change their minds when they're older, eh? Like I said, you can always carry on talking to us on here, if you're short on 'real life' people and you find it helps to have some people to bounce ideas off?

There's this cute scene in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (a romantic movie that I actually liked, lol) which is just Joel telling Clem over and over again that she's pretty as they have sex (helping her to overcome some childhood complex she had about it, IIRC). Your comment above reminded me of that a bit, anyway.

What did you try? Just forcing yourself to interact, or more exreme measures?! I did try out some salsa and life drawing classes recently - both uncharacteristic activities for me, but you get to touch girls and see them naked, respectively. Which is nice I haven't seen the show. So, does she have bounty-hunter-specific reasons for taking that approach, or is it just a personality makeup thing?

Haha, that's exactly what I did Not sure about the "especially nice to each other" part though. Sure, sometimes. But sometimes a fair amount of manipulation and deception can also be involved, it seems to me (plus incentives to exaggerate positives and downplay negatives, with respect to both subject and object of romantic infatuation)

Yep. I think that second one can be especially insidious for aros, as its connected with a lot of cultural messaging we tend to get whilst growing up about how to treat partners "right". This was the part that didn't make sense to me

Same actually. Took me forever to figure out why, as I experience sexual attraction all the time Eventually I figured out that my lack of motivation to act on sexual desires was probably due to all the romantic 'hoops' one typically has to jump through to realise them. I find it pretty easy to ignore things that seem like way too much hassle

In that case, I think you might enjoy this animation

Ugh. Yeah, that. I hate that that's a thing. Seems to lead to young guys putting a ton of pressure on themselves to 'lose it' - and subsequetly passing a lot of that pressure on to girls to sleep with them (and to weirdos like me percieving that pressure, but resenting the social coercion so much that we 'veto' the whole situation - also not great). Trouble is, like with procrastination in general, the longer you delay starting the 'work', the more work there might be to 'catch up' on! Having said that, I still haven't reach a tipping point where I care enough to actually start the 'work'! Maybe tomorrow .

Sure, I agree. I was just acknowleging (by putting "sense" in quotes) that there is a certain amount of internal consistency to their nonsense Yeah, sounds right. I could've written something pretty similar to the article you linked. I can empathise with the not feeling like a 'proper adult' aspects of late virginity. Plus it would be a nice self-esteem boost to get that explicit confirmation that at least somebody out there had desired you in 'that way'. But, have I actually seriously tried to do something about it? Not really. The blogger mentions a grand total of 3 'dates' and I'm on even fewer than that, lol. Always found other things to prioritise: first academic work, now career. Relationships were something I'd deal with later, after that other stuff was sorted out. That's not 'normal' prioritisation! 'Lack of intrinsic motivation' seems to about cover it

This makes "sense" to me, actually. That is, if the base working assumption here is: if you've had opportunities to have sex, but haven't acted on them, or haven't been able to act on them (often assumed to be the same thing?), then there must be something seriously "off" about you. Prison time guy is excused, in this sense, because prison = no opportunities for interaction with the opposite sex. It probably wouldn't even enter most people's heads that aromanticism (i.e. romance being a major obstacle to sex rather than an enabler of it) could serve as a "valid excuse" here (who doesn't want to pursue romantic relationships?) People might even see lack of intrinsic desire to pursue romantic relationships as something "seriously off" in and of itself, regardless of whether that person was also a virgin?

I thought of one. Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy came out back when I was still a kid. I really liked the idea of having a daemon (that was female if you were male and male if you were female). The implication being that you weren't missing some essential part of yourself, in search of your 'other half' to 'complete' you; you were already whole in and of yourself. You could be your own 'soulmate'. I really liked that idea. (when I was much older I also read Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which has a similar idea)

Is this skepticism or a request for clarification? Right, yeah, I should've used more words . I was after some clarification about what sort of 'serious suspicions' you had in mind when you wrote that.

Suspicions?

I'd like to communicate something similar, I think ('life-combining' *shudders*) How successful have your communications been in the past? (or is this post more hypothetical? all of mine are, lol). Is it something that partners struggle to "get" in your experience? Or have you had some positive experiences with being communicative like this?

I think there is. To me, saying "I'm in love with you" is you describing your internal psychological state / feelings to the person you are "in love" with (that person may or may not also be "in love" with you). Wheras saying "I love you" is you affirming that you truly act with that person's best interests in mind. I think that oftentimes people will experience stong internal feelings of being "in love", but will act in ways that aren't in the best interests of the person they are "in love" with. In which case, they aren't ultimately being truthful, IMO, when they say "I love you"; because true love needs to be externally demonstrated through positive affirmative actions.

I'd like it if there were more options to take part in raising children outside of work life too. I don't work with children, but I did my high school work experience at a primary school and it was fun. Younger kids can actually be pretty interesting to talk to: they haven't already made up their minds about a bunch of stuff (in the way that most adults have) and can be more open to questioning things. But I basically don't interact with kids at all now as part of my day-to-day work and/or social life (which I think is actually a bit weird for a human and would have been pretty atypical throughout human history). I'm not really aware of any socially acceptable avenues for doing so though - other than waiting for some of my friends and family to start having their own kids (which should be fun Although I also worry that I will see them less...).

Of course, I don't see this movie as some great work of art, or the definitive exploration of male virginity, or anything like that And yeah, a lot of it is pretty dumb. Like how 'achieving' a romantic-sexual relationship is basically portrayed as the royal road to fixing all of his life issues. But part of it I could sort of relate to (and which also accounts, to a large extent, for his loneliness at the start of movie?) is how he has built his virgin status up inside his head as this massive issue, this "dark secret", that nobody can possibly find out about or his life will be over. I think this is something I did for a while, albeit to a much milder extent. Well, when there are a lot of social cues suggesting something might be a major issue, it's easy to pick up the idea that it might be a major issue, even if it isn't really a major issue (long-story-short: I now don't think it's a major issue, lol). And even "normal" people can be victims of this sort of thinking - e.g. see the self-reported studies on the average number of sexual partners for hetereosexual men vs. women, where men artificially inflate their "numbers".

Indeed! That's why I was speculating here that the % of aros, particularly heterosexual aros, could be much higher than what is typically believed to be the case. Due to poor partner communication and/or being unaware of aromantic identities in general as a 'valid' choice. Which is where detailed lists like this one can be very useful.

Aromanticism is not an easy thing to try and "explain", IME. You're a) trying to articulate that you don't experience something - but since you don't experience said thing, you're not really sure what that thing you don't experience even is and thus how to clearly describe the absence of it! And b) most people haven't spent much time thinking about what "romantic" actually means and may be confused by your even attempting to define or question it. Well, that's my experience. And when I push people to give me a "definition" of "romantic" they typically can't. As in, they still think it's definitely a thing - and moreover a thing that they experience - but they can't clearly atriculate what it actually IS. I guess that makes sense if it's a purely experiential thing. Like how you probably couldn't describe the experience of seeing colours to a blind person. Although you could give an abstract definition of colour in terms of different wavelengths of light perceived by your eyes and brain as the phenomena of colour; but romantic people can't seen to manage even this much when it comes to romance But probably they just haven't ever been pushed to think about it seriously and could offer something similar if they were?

I do wonder to what extent romantic and/or sexual partners just have really poor communication in general. What you wrote could also apply to romantic behaviours. Makes me wonder how many aro-spec people are in convential romantic relationships solely due to poor / lack of communication. Imagine this conversation: "I don't really like all that romance crap!" "Oh, really? Me neither! I just went along with it cos I thought you liked it!" "Really?! Me too! Shall we stop it now?" "Yeah, let's stop!" Maybe a lot of conventional couples (not all, by any means, or even a majority, but some non-trivial percentage?) could benefit from having that sort of conversation, but never do. People seem often afraid to communicate any desires to their partners that deviate too much from societal norms/expectations? Maybe due to lacking confidence in themselves and the 'validity' of their own needs/desires?

Ooh, I am liking this one

Good shout! I missed that one, but definitely agree here. Betrand Russell was hella snarky about this tendency: Hella. Snarky.

I actually feel sorry for a lot of parents, despite what that 'snarky' first post might have implied! It seems to me like way too much of the financial and emotional burdens of raising children falls solely on the parents these days (especially if they are single parents). Children should be raised by a wider family/comminuty/tribal network to a much greater extent than they currently are, IMO. I think this would also result in happier, less stressed-out parents who would be able to love and support their kids more effectively. Being an unwanted kid (and knowing it) must really, really suck. I mentioned on @ApeironStella's anime/manga thread that I've been watching the anime Mushi-Shi. There is an episode of that called Lightning's End that is actually about this. It's an INTENSE episode, but a very good one, IMO.

To me, this is just the most bizzare, logic-breaking opinion ever. And it just baffles me how apparently widely held it is! I presume that people have children because THEY like children and THEY want to have said children? In principle their decision cannot take into account the feelings of their children - as they don't yet exist! So, again, it seems to me that in principle the ONLY reason somebody has children is because THEY want to . Well, how selfish of them! Also, it would be the height of irresponsibility to have children if you weren't pretty sure you wanted them. As you'd be bringing a potentially unwanted child into the world, which would be a lot for that child to have to deal with psychologically growing up. So, again, child-free / childless-by-choice people are actually being very responsible by not having children they aren't sure they would want. This doesn't surprise me. You can potentially put a lot of it down to cognitive dissonance. Most people might find it rather difficult to reconcile the belief "I love my kids" with the belief "gosh, having kids is really tough, there are often days I wish I hadn't bothered!" Easier to just shrug and go "of course I wanted kids REALLY" (even if I complain about it to you literally all the time ). I guess it's basically impossible to openly admit that you regret having kids once you've had them. It'd be like admitting to them that you don't love them and you wish they'd never been born. A bit of an ethical taboo, and for some good reasons I suppose. There is also (and I hope you'll forgive me being a bit snarky here!) the flipside of the saying "misery loves company". Which is "misery resents hold-outs" Could that also go some way towards explaining some of that hostility towards the "child-free" from people stressed-out by their own child-rearing responsibilities?