Galactic Turtle

Yes I agree with all of this! That's probably a big contributing factor to why I find it all so uncomfortable.

Yeah, I prefer just close friend. Feelings around friendship in modern culture seem to have been dulled down by the concept of "facebook friend" or "twitter follower" or whatever. There's lots of levels to friendship and I'm fine with there only being one word to encompass it all to avoid all the extra terminology that all seem to have romantic equivalents. I just get annoyed by the looks people give me when I say I'm happiest with friends and family only and they just say "why would you just want to have friends?" Like, excuse you, what is so trivial about friendship? Even if it's odd to verbally express affection for one's friends, I am fine keeping it to myself. I believe they feel it in my actions which is enough.

When I think about gender preference I can only think of the fact that I desire friendship exclusively with other women. I don't know how I feel about calling that platonic attraction though but since I'm aro ace this is the only aspect of myself that feels oriented at all.

If their romantic and sexual orientations are not aligned, people typically use it. Or if we're in an aro/ace community where discussing split attraction is more common, people default to listing their romantic and sexual orientations separately. To me it's just a tool. If they use it I think it means they recognize that romantic/sexual attraction are separate things. If someone says they don't use it I assume it doesn't matter to them because their attractions are readily recognized and also aligned. I guess it could? I have not looked. This is just a quick response so I did not read through all of this. Sorry!

I'd like to know more about this. I've been uncomfortable with many of the terms used in the aro community. Typically I frequent asexual spaces where aromantic conversation seems to center around the "search for a QPP" and issues along the lines of "my spouse is viewing me too romantically, what do I do?" Often when I try to explain the feelings I have for my two closest friends people jump on me saying I obviously have a squish or that I should ask them to be my partner and the very thought of any of that sounds bizarre to say the least. What I did happen upon about a year or so ago were some things in reference to Plato that in summary were describing how friendship in that time period wasn't viewed as casually as it is today. I'd only seen an excerpt of it (I can't remember the title of the book) but it was a book essentially about same sex relationships throughout history. I only thought about it again because only a few days ago I came across Aristotle's "three types of friendship" being: - Friendships of utility - Friendships of pleasure - Friendships virtue In reading about this I quickly discovered that my two closest friends I definitely think of as "friendships of virtue." I think in general people recognize that these types of friendships are a thing but they're often dismissed because I don't think they're all that common.

A person with standards. :P

Hmm... well... I guess one thing is I always try to think about the purpose of a romantic relationship and I do that by looking at my friends who are mostly all in one or have been in one before. My friend right now is very worried that when her boyfriend moves to Japan for a year, he won't be able to support her "emotional needs." Right now they still live in separate time zones (Chicago vs. New York) but apparently Japan makes this different. So that got me thinking about who supports my "emotional needs" I suppose. I ask my parents for advice on things and sometimes I also ask my friends for advice and appreciate candid responses. I rant sometimes and appreciate someone listening. I don't see why someone being in Japan (one of my best friends has lived in Taiwan for quite some time now and we talk daily) would prevent them from giving advice or listening to rants. She later specified that she likes to be doted on and "feel loved" which is something I can't relate to and have difficulty understanding. I "feel loved" by my friend in Taiwan and my parents in Philadelphia. Distance doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.