DeltaAro

"Return of investment" is tricky. You save effort by communicating faster but everyone involved has to invest into learning the vocabulary first. If you're not in aro circles and want to talk a lot about feelings, it's like learning Emacs for writing a birthday letter to your Mom.

I thought that "platonic attraction" : "squish" ~ "romantic attraction" : "crush". "the attraction" : "a strong but temporary peak of this attraction" I guess few people have a crush on their spouse of ten years, but romantic attraction sure.

Since aromanticism feels so normal to me, aro women on average don't stick out compared to other women in any way. I mean, if I hear "X is aromantic" I don't get* an instinctive reaction of "Whaaat?" when it's revealed that X is a woman. Never imagined that someone would identify as agender because of aromanticism. But yes, online you often see those two together...

Bad if those two meanings get confused: That word is a minefield.

I don't really like the concept of romantic love overall. The only aspect which I like in isolation is it being romantic as in "the romantic era", i.e. placing intense emotion above rationality. To name only the most off-putting thing about romantic love: it's usually gendered (the attraction is restricted to people of the "right gender") and then ON TOP OF THIS it is experienced and conceptualized as the most wonderful and loftiest feeling of all to the point of giving it a spiritual dimension.

Difficult to say. The man had the choice between subjecting somebody to an evil act or being punished by an even greater evil act. Yes, yes, I meant he died two years after she became queen, which was 1504. You are right, they were married 8 years before - she couldn't have that half a dozen children in that short time, of course. It was arranged, but her father didn't have to do be pushy here. It's really rare in high nobility for such feelings be present right at the start. The question is what should motivate people to marry if not romantic love or outside pressure? And sure, compatibility can happen even in arranged, even in downright forced marriages. It does probably not get any worse than the Khmer Rouge marriages. Still even in this case a lot of those couples happily lived together and did not split after the regime was toppled. It's one of the most baffling things to me, that being assigned to marry a random stranger under threats of extreme violence and death can have a better end result as marriage out of romantic love. Some did get a real marriage ceremony after that, a voluntary one. But obviously, regardless of how happy the couple lived together afterwards it does not excuse what they had been subjected to in the beginning.

Theologians of the middle ages could write a big tome on marriage and not mention love once. It was all about sex and children. The problem I have with this argument though is that marriages not based on romantic love were bad practices. They shouldn't be seen with rose tinted aro glasses. Not because of the lack of romantic love but because there was coercion involved to different degrees. They exist on a continuum of harm. Usually harm for the woman or more so for her. The most "egalitarian" practice is also the worst and modern: The forced marriages of the Khmer Rouge. People were assigned to marry random strangers without having any choice in it. If the woman refused to have sex with her "husband", she was raped. If the man refused to rape his "wife", he was killed. For traditional arranged marriages we often think just of family pressure. But e.g. the "free women" in Ancient Athens didn't get an education and were married at a very young age to a man 15 years older or so. That's again a much more sinister practice. When a 30 year old man has a subservient uneducated teenager as his wife (he probably held her in contempt). To put it very mildly... So I simply don't know historical marriage practices which are 100% benign (no coercion) and do not involve romance. For children it's different. We know cultures where it's normal that children are born and raised with no romance involved and there still isn't something bad going on. Before the last two centuries or so depictions of anything which could be "romance" were rare in literature and seen as universally tragic when they did show up. With motion pictures being too recent an invention to have existed in pre-romantic societies. I find the story of Joanna of Castile one of the most absurd ones. Historically proven is that she managed to get into a marriage based on passionate romantic love; with Philip the Handsome. That was quite rare for high nobility. Sadly he died only two years later. There are accounts (since it's not Halloween, I keep it short) that she couldn't accept this loss; exhumed her dead husband's corpse and even traveled around with his coffin and let it open from time to time, to kiss him etc. She was called Juana la Loca and declared insane, unable to govern and put into the care of nuns. Probably nothing of that Halloween story ever happened and it's just propaganda for political reasons. The point is, at those times people generally accepted this to be highly pathological behavior (if it was propaganda, it was done for exactly this reason). Nowadays you can't even be sure of that! If you tell this story, there are always some people who are like: "But.... noooo she wasn't insane!!! *sigh* ? She was just too struck by grief and mourning her husband. If that's insane then love is a mental illness!!!"

Ok, the difficulties start with the basic statistic: the birth rate, which you cite. It is the easiest measure to define and calculate. The number of live births per thousand of population per year. It has a long lag. If in the recent past women didn't have a lot of children, it will still be low regardless if the birth rate in younger women has increased. There are fewer women in childbearing age that even can be mothers, yet, to put a not too fine point on it, all those middle aged and old people are still around. So if a country has a low birth rate and you look at explanations in the present, that will be misleading. As you say, regarding Japan we think of "Marriage to Hatsune Miku", but seriously – for the actual reasons you must also include at least the 90s. A woman which was 45 in 2000 is 65 now and likely still alive. So what did she do in 1975 - 2000? The same is roughly true for men. There's theoretically a lot of more leeway here, but in practice when people marry their ages are not thaaat far apart. And in the 80s or 90s there wasn't a Hatsune Miku. I'm not knowledgeable enough regarding Japan to do more than speculation. So are the stories about "salarymen" exaggerated? Like the insane shifts, sometimes with up to 40 hours overtime a week? If they're more or less true, I wonder how they even manage to date at all. it would be interesting to know more about the blue-collar workers in Japan, if it's different for them. One would assume, because for physical labor the negative effects of such overwork are much more serious. What's about the birth rate dependent on socioeconomic group?

I don't think that all hope is lost; maybe it might happen that you convert such a friendship to a romantic relationship. I'm rather clueless about alloromantics but I think that they have difficulties with that, though. Still it's not impossible. Not to be disrespectful but I always wonder what that phrase means. If it just means to be alone in the last final hours, I don't know what's so bad about it. This can often not be avoided, like in the case of accidents. If it's about loneliness in late-life going on for years, that's something different.

simple gray is for gray(a)sexuality. The next natural choice, green just with less saturation, gives it the "light" feeling. If darkness is increased, it's getting close to "military" green. imho if you play around with only desaturated green shades, and black/white/gray, it's difficult to make it not look dull or washed-out. (not to be meant as a flag!! Yes, there is a tiny amount of red in the last stripe to make it a bit move lively)

It's probably easier to pronounce if the L comes first: Ellgeebeetee, better than Geebee-elltee for example, right? Lebanese? Lesbian derives from the Greek island Lesbos where the poet Sappho came from, whose poetry is regarded to be about erotic feelings towards women.

Sociopathy entails a pattern of behavior of actively harming others. So no, it's not sociopathic. If aplatonicism is just about not having “obsessive thoughts and fantasies and a desire to maintain a relationship”, there's nothing negative about it. I'm afraid, I don't know what aplatonicism is about. The other way around (from the perspective of the parent), if aplatonicism would entail that someone is incapable of fulfilling more than the bare legal requirement towards their children – that is providing and minimally caring for them – isn't it negative in this situation? Any random adult OTOH can just walk away if they don't get what they desire from a relationship – that happens all the time for millions of reasons. It doesn't make aplatonicism sociopathic – just negative in this situation. And sure, there are worse parents around. Who do not even meet the minimal legal requirements or actively harm their children. –– Now regarding “emotionally loving” … in Star Trek, Mr. Spock rarely displays emotions. He usually just makes value judgements and those values drive his actions. Would a relationship purely based on values and no emotions lack something? It's so alien to me, I can barely imagine it… but I tend to "no". Still an argument could be made that it is impoverished. That's getting very subtle and complex again like with all issues raised here… Values are bound by logic, they are part of cognition. If Alice values X, she cannot logically consistently value not-X. The same does not apply to emotions. Say, Alice and her friend take part in a contest and Alice's friend wins. Alice is happy about that – but not happy that she lost. Perfectly normal. So emotions are very different from cognitions. Would it be bad for a child with usual human psychology to be raised by Mr. Spock? If every action is motivated only by values and never emotions (e.g. Mr. Spock values the child's well-being etc. – but does not experience emotions like love), does that lead to behavior which is overly rigid (because it is based purely on cognition) and most humans have serious problems with? IDK…

Of course, association with sociopathy* isn't a reason for it to be negative. As said before: a few relationships are "compulsory". Obviously parent-children. To a minor degree siblings you grow up with. If aplatonicism even extends to those, I'd regard it as negative. * interesting that aromantics are the "psychopaths" here, not sociopaths (who are overt). It's like aros are the sneaky ones who put up a facade of a normal life, but all their relationships are shallow, because they don't involve romantic feelings.

don't you think you mean they are "orthogonal"?

Applied mathematician.

It seems that you equate 'aplatonic' and 'asocial'. But aren't they something different if 'aplatonic' is analogous to 'aromantic'... describing a "lack" in the capacity/desire to have friendships? Could the 'wolf pack' not just simply be about social interaction rather than friendship? As an extreme example: ex-mafiosis confirmed that the cliche "it is often your best friend in the Mafia who kills you" is true -- which certainly does not fit my definition of a "friend". So though those in criminal groups spend a lot of time together and make exaggerated displays of friendship, there is always strong distrust. It's like they lead a highly social life in that group but with no real friends there. --- Asociality/'aplatonicity' differ from aromanticism and asexuality (and 'agender') that they are far less likely regarded as neutral traits. So many aromantics and asexuals may not want to include them in the a-spectrum. I mean... I have difficulties finding anything about 'aplatonic' which isn't (a) making fun of the term or (b) calling them sociopaths. Though I don't see how having no desire for friendships or social interaction is in itself negative... (and historically there were religious or mystical traditions where it was regarded as desirable). BUT: only few people (orphans, abandoned children) lack first-degree relatives for all of their lives. So the bare minimum society expects us is to develop a bond to our loving mother, loving father... if someone fails at that, I understand that it is regarded as negative trait. But sure there are worse things, like being anti-social.

If just the mangers wouldn't suddenly be so suspicious... Because of Corona I now feel like a very overworked hikikomori. At least I can sleep longer, because no commuting. yeah, well... In professionally very ambitious people I sometimes notice a strange contrast between their intelligence and their shallowness. ? I can't complain about interesting new projects. But at some point you start to pine after specialization. After all, it's not just for insects. Human malemployment is possible, too! I know it!

Dutch: eekhoorn (= squirrel), English: cauldron, French: noir (this is very unoriginal), langoureuse (= languishing, languid), German: Nebel (= fog, nebula), Greek: ψυχή (psyche, but I like that in Greek it's a four letter word), Russian: мир (= peace, world), that's a great one!

There exists a little bit of non-fiction about aromanticism... But it sounds you want rather "primary sources" (like autobiographical) or literary non-fiction, right? Probably very difficult to find if it's supposed to be more than a blog post or article.

Split Attraction Model. Now, different types of attraction have always been differentiated (stock example: Aphrodite Pandemos vs. Urania). But still, the idea that sexual attraction is necessary, though not sufficient for romantic attraction, is and was extremely popular. Which is a connection. From the pure wording, calling it a model makes it very ambitious. And using split hints at the claim that they simply are split, as a matter of fact. We don't just differentiate, we observe that they are objectively split. Any connection is just a contingent, statistical thing. So it could perhaps be understood as the claim that humans have two completely separate "brain modules" for romantic attraction and sexual attraction, which some future neuroscientist might discover. I like to compare it to color vision, where our subjective experience leads to wrong assumptions about how our vision is organized. Without any physiological knowledge (that the retina has cone and rod cells) we would assume that we cannot see "Stygian Blue": a color that is black and blue at the same time. Hue and lightness are strongly connected in the sense that for any object we've ever seen being black excludes having a hue - so our eyes' organization should mirror this reality. But with some tricks, we can surprisingly experience such "chimerical colors". So lightness and hue are separate for our eyes. I'm not so optimistic, though, that this is easily translatable to human psychology and the brain. Compared to that the eye is "extremely simple" and research is "extremely straightforward".

I agree that sexual attraction can easily happen without seeing the genitals. As you point out, when people are not undressed. But I fail to see what all the factors you list ("aesthetics, symmetricality, pheromones/smell, fashion, makeup, hair, style, body type, etc") have to do with gender. Strictly speaking they have nothing to do with it. Only in a loose, indirect sense. With gender we have the situation that it can be a self-identity (self-concept) and a social grouping that is imposed by others - in different ways. Point 1., the self-identity, is most likely completely irrelevant for sexual attraction. Whoever is attracted to, say, Miley Cyrus, it's rarely of any importance here that she identifies as genderfluid. So it must be about point 2., gender as externally-imposed grouping. People think they're straight if they are only attracted to people they themselves categorize as the opposite gender (most likely that equals perceived / assumed biological sex). I reckon that the run-of-the-mill straight man puts Miley Cyrus squarely into the group "women" and doesn't doubt that he is straight if he's attracted to her. Now if he gets the information about her gender-self-id he has two options: either he drops his own attraction-self-id or he thinks "Yeah, fine, but I'm still straight". And he'll likely choose the latter option. So we are in the uncomfortable situation that there is a conflict between gender-self-id and attraction-self-id. This might sound far fetched. But there are more drastic cases, like if said straight man declares: "I'm not attracted to Laverne Cox because I'm not gay!". This results in quite a mess that reminds me of the status of Trent Reznor and fans as "industrial musician" and "fans of industrial music" respectively. Reznor is usually regarded as industrial musician. Indeed as one of the most popular and established ones. Yet he never "identified" with that genre. Still he can't escape this externally imposed grouping. Even Wikipedia lists him under this category. And then there are some people that accuse him of not producing "true industrial music", despite he himself never expressed any intent of doing that. And if you're a fan of Reznor does that make you a fan of industrial music? Are you "allowed" to identify as such? While in the case of "music-associated social groupings" this just leads to relatively harmless bickering, the takeaway from this comparison is: this issue has not been resolved after many, many years of argument --- how could it be? there is no rigorous theory behind it! Gender is taken a bit more seriously than music subcultures. To apply a similar "theory", which is perplexingly vague and most of its fundamental terms are elusive to the point of becoming evanescent, may be a bad idea. I hope that the happiness people get out of this "gender" and "attraction" classification thing outweighs the negative effects. But I wouldn't be surprised if that's not case. Personally, I'd rather opt out of it.

I wonder if sexual attraction as you defined really exists. If it does, it seems to be extremely rare and overall of virtually no importance in motivating sexual behavior for most people.

It's funny how this all makes perfect sense to me, like one of the most commonplace problems you could have. While in reality we're part of the tiniest minority... Now I don't go 4 years without feeling sexual attraction, as you said somewhere else... perhaps 4 days. ? Still the list of my special "demands" and mood killers is sooo long, it does rarely translate into action; sometimes it feels too me like I border on graysexual, too... maybe "light gray" ?‍♂️

Yes, that's a less loaded way to put it. I mean, of course it's bad to break agreements and lie about it. The question still remains why it is taken so seriously in this case compared to other agreements. Also, in some cultures this agreement of monogamy is not made explicitly, just implicitly assumed.

I think it needs four ingredients for allosexuals to regard sex as just some kind of sport (it's never strictly speaking like a sport, it needs a bit more responsibility than... badminton): they see it as disconnected from genuinely loving another person their sex drive isn't high or persistent they have no interest in something beyond vanilla activities (otherwise it can become very complex) it's not something their sense of self-worth depends on So (1) is a typical aromantic thing. (2) and (3) are likely unrelated to aromanticism. And (4) ... I don't know.