aesthetic mess

BIG MOOD OP!!!! i've also been looking for loveless aro spaces, but everywhere i search it mostly just comes up with that book :/ just-aro on tumblr might be a good place to start? i also found this aro poetry collection (i haven't read all the poems, but it looks promising): https://aroworlds.com/2019/08/12/poetry-collection-aro-and-loveless/ 

idk of any other blogs off the top of my head, but i know that there must be some... maybe looking with different keywords? aplatonic or non-sam aro might yield similar content/experiences? but yeah it does kinda suck that there isn't really a loveless aro community. i guess the term is new enough and the community for it small enough that they don't really have anywhere to be yet :(

(i've had this typed up in my drafts for a while and just wanted to post it somewhere. maybe it'll help someone else? idk.)

I've seen people talk about quoi being all about refusing a false dichotomy, saying “this category is not applicable to me, it is not useful to me, so I am not going to use it,” and the more I think about it (and I’ve been thinking about it a lot) the more I agree. 

I think about the categories of romantic vs. platonic, friends vs. dating, sexual vs. sensual, and it just doesn’t make sense to me. It makes more sense to think about attraction as “how much” rather than simply “how.”

It feels silly to say I realized this because of shipping, but I kind of did? In the fandom I’m in, there’s a core close friend group that many people ship as an OT4. I was reading a bunch of fics of them, some of them shippy, some of them platonic, and I thought, “What’s the point of even having this distinction? They act mostly the same in both scenarios except in one they get to kiss and one they don’t. But they still cuddle and hang out and love each other. It’s just a slightly different set of behaviors. What’s the difference?”

Because for me, there functionally is no difference. I think about my attraction as more on a scale of how much I like you (from, say, “stranger” to “acquaintance” to “best friend”) rather than trying to quantify it into an arbitrary category like “romantic.” It just isn’t useful to me to try and do that, not least because I don’t know how to tell the difference, but also because I feel like it doesn’t really matter. I mean, if I like someone and care about them a lot, why does it matter what kind of liking it is? As long as we both have agreed upon behaviors that we both like to do and we both know that we care about each other, then what’s the issue? (I realize this is a very relationship anarchist way to come at it, but it kind of comes with the territory lmao.)

Like when people talk about “blurring the lines between ‘just friends’ and ‘romance.’” I’m just like blurring the lines? There are no lines. It’s a perfect gradient and it’s also all the same color. Like yes I can understand on an intellectual level what you’re talking about (and also bc i’ve been bombarded with that narrative my whole life) but  w h a t  are you talking about there is no difference!!!! It’s just how much you care about people!!!!

Like if you are my very close good friend there is a good chance I have thought about cuddling you, or being in a qpr, or maybe even kissing. It's just different ways to show affection. There definitely is a demi aspect to it for me, but the label I feel closest to is quoi. I don't know shit about my attraction but also it doesn't matter, you know?

here's the obligatory "how do you know if you have a crush" post lol

okay so i have these two friends that i like very much. i've known both of them since the start of this past school year, and over this past semester we've been hanging out a lot more and getting closer. a few months ago, we started cuddling regularly. (we all lived in the same dorm, so we did that pretty often.) since school's gone online, we've been keeping in touch -- they've actually been the only ones that i've regularly talked to from school -- and we all met up a few weeks ago for the first time since march. over that weekend, we all started dating. sort of. i'm aro, and i've talked w them about wanting a qpr before, so it's a qpr on my side and romantic on their side i think, i'm realizing as i'm writing this that i'm actually not sure. so i should ask about that instead of assuming. but i'm pretty sure i saw them kissing? i don't know. when they asked me to date them it was pretty lowkey. she just said "hey remember when we were talking about doing a poly qpr thing wanna do that?" and i said "hell yeah" bc of course i want to. and then we said that we can all call each other girlfriends. (i'm fine with that even tho it's a qpr bc explaining to ppl is annoying and also words mean what we say they do.) also we're moving in together in like a week.

when i think about them, when i'm reminded that i'm dating two whole people, even when i'm writing this post, my heart is beating faster and i feel more jittery and full of adrenaline. i think about them pretty much all the time, and recently they've been in some of my dreams too. since i started dating them i've been questioning my orientation again. i settled on quoiro bc who the fuck knows how to tell what attraction feels like amirite?? but i don't know man. especially with it being pride month. i feel suddenly uncomfortable being loud and proud abt aromanticism, i think bc of a mixture of questioning and feeling invalid bc i have two gfs. i'm waiting until we move in and we're all together to ask about the physical boundary stuff bc i want to do that face to face but do i have a crush? how do i tell? what even is attraction yall??? is my heart beating faster bc i'm nervous about them?? am i nervous about them bc of anxiety or bc i have a crush??? any help would be appreciated, i don't know wtf i'm doing lol (also if this is in the wrong forum lmk it's been a while since i've been on here)

recently, my friend has gotten a girlfriend, and i'm happy for them and i want to meet her and from what i've heard she's very nice and my friend loves her a lot, but that's the thing. anytime i see them, half the time they're just talking about their girlfriend, which i totally get that they love their girlfriend and they have every reason to let the world know, but do they have to say it every five minutes? and then i feel like a dick for thinking that but i can't help it. every time they talk about how much they love their girlfriend it's a reminder that i'm not their First Person, i'm not anyone's First Person, and they'll probably end up distancing themself from me in favor of their girlfriend. and that's fine, they deserve to be happy, but a big part of me wants them to make me their first priority because i just want to feel important and loved and needed. but that's selfish and the chances that i'm going to get that without a romantic relationship are low, so wow i'm loving how my future's looking.

and i have a different friend who is amazing and i've been friends with her much longer than the first friend, almost ten years i think? and she's amazing and i love her but she's in the grade below me, so when i go off to college there's no guarantee that we'll keep talking. and even though for most of our friendship, we haven't been going to the same school, i'm still scared.

(also wow i'm reviving this thread sorry yall i just needed to vent, and, well, it's appropriately labeled.)

just an update if anyone was wondering (which you probably weren't): i currently identify as gray/quoigender, which i interpret to mean "i don't know what the heck gender is and i don't know if i feel or not but if i do, it's probably less than other people do," or something like that. basically i feel a connection to the term quoigender and i feel a connection to the term graygender, so i decided to combine them. i think i'm lunarian (woman-aligned) but i'm not sure if that's because i am or if i'm used to thinking and presenting like i am. i don't really know about pronouns either, mostly because i don't really have friends irl that will help me try them out, but i'm been thinking a lot about they and ze pronouns, so that's what i'm putting on the internet. i'm going to get my hair cut pretty short in a few weeks and i am so ready. you have no idea how ready i am. every time i look in the mirror i can't wait to get my hair cut. i've also been experimenting with binding with sports bras, as my chest is small enough that if i wear a sports bra and a baggy t-shirt i look pretty flat. i've sort of been fantasizing about going out once i get my hair cut and binding and presenting more masculinely for a bit where no one knows me, just to see if i can "pass" as a guy. 

i think that's about it for now. if anyone cares i'll keep you guys updated. two weeks until winter break!!!  (for me, at least)

thanks for all the replies. i was thinking it over, and i realized that i feel like a demigirl, but with the amount of "girl" changing (i think). is there a word for that?

I've been thinking lately that I'm a demigirl or maybe graygender, but recently I've been feeling more "girly". It could just be because I'm actually cis and just want to be "cool", but it could also be because I might be genderflux? The thing is, I don't know if my gender is fluctuating or if I'm just having doubts. I know that I'm really the only one who can determine my gender, but. Advice?

Most of my headcanons can be summarized as aro until proven arospec. Also this thread is gold. ???

Simon Lewis from TMI is demiromantic and y'all can fight me

5 hours ago, Spud said:

I think I might have to steal this for future use 

Go ahead. That pun is amazing and everyone should use it at least once.

me and my bff are writing a story together, and in the story "my" character is gay, so i texted her and said "hey, my character should come out with this pun: I"m a pretty good archer. I guess you could say I'm an ... AR(R)O(W) ACE" and then she was like "no, this character's aro, not that one," to which i replied "no you don't understand this is me coming out to you with a pun" at which point she died of laughter. that was a mess of a sentence and also that is my favorite pun ever. i come out to people with that pun. it has been by my side through thick and thin. i love puns

me and my friend have declared each other parabatai (platonic soul bond thing, google it) and when we leave home we want to live live together, but i know that one day she'll want to be with her romantic partner rather than me, and although we'll still be best friends, i won't be her First Person. i want to be someone's First Person so bad, i want a qpr, i want a qpr with her maybe in the future. i can't imagine that level of friendship with someone else. i also have no idea what i'm going to do with my life in general. i'm a  m e s s

I thought I was straight because that's the "default" and I've never had any crushes, although whenever someone asked what my sexuality was, I would usually reply with "straight, probably," because I guess I could tell that I wasn't quite. I think if I had really started to investigate that before I realized I was aro I would have thought that I was pan, because I generally experience the same level of aesthetic attraction to all genders.