aro_elise

ooh can't relate.  i'm ridiculously picky.  attraction or lack thereof completely overrides my sex favourability.  i'm continually shocked by how many people are apparently either attracted to a substantial percentage of people or willing to have sex with them even if they're not.  and of course i would never expect someone to be attracted to me, even though i think i'm very pretty, everyone has different tastes--rejection doesn't offend me whatsoever.  don't get me wrong, sexual attraction is frustrating...like, i love watching the partridge family except for the thorough regret that i can't go back in time and fuck david cassidy.  also i'll only enjoy porn if i'm attracted to both guys.

2 hours ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

I would also say that the majority of the allo aro community, at least, views sexual attraction as being dependent on specific targets rather than just the desire to have sex in general tbh

yeah i definitely agree that sexual orientation is defined by attraction.  

that's hard to answer as it's a gradual thing.  i found boys cute by like, 7, but i'm not sure when exactly it became sexual attraction, as such...i guess i started having sexual thoughts around 13-15, but i wasn't considering actually having sex then.  around 16 began my excitement at the idea of two attractive guys together sexually, which i mention because it's still a significant part of my sexuality.  like my sexual fantasies would be about that rather than something involving me, and i started watching gay porn at 18.  for a while i wasn't in any rush to have sex, and what i had--and still have--is rather a lack of opportunity, due partly to my being very particular in terms of who i'm sexually attracted to and partly to my not dating.  eventually i wanted to enough that i began to pursue it (but still not enough that i'd choose to have sex with someone i wasn't substantially attracted to).  i guess that brings us up to now.  i'm 24.  btw i tried to phrase this somewhat delicately but if you have any follow-up questions, however personal, i'd be glad to answer.

well sure, as a kid i guess i figured i'd date and get married.  i'd say learning about aromanticism made me realize i didn't experience romantic attraction (though i didn't quite accept it then), and being in a romantic relationship (not long after) made me realize i didn't want that.  and i began to see that i could be single forever and still have close relationships in the form of friendships, and still have sex.  it was kind of several separate-but-interconnected, gradual realizations.

6 hours ago, Nix said:

'Love' in tennis means 'nothing'

i have a little decoration which says 'never date a tennis player.  to them, love means nothing.'  me being an aro tennis player, it's a many-layered joke.

yeah i've also thought about the fact that it doesn't include queer sexual attraction (even of alloromantics), like the message is that love can't be wrong--well what if it's not love?  some people aren't even ok with straight casual dating/sex so it wouldn't be a big leap for a queer person to feel especially that acceptance depends on them being in a loving relationship.  i suppose "attraction is attraction" doesn't sound as good.

feel like i had a stroke.  couldn't be less relatable.

9 hours ago, raye said:

I think I kinda just meant what the attraction feels like I guess? How do you know you're attracted to them?

oh well basically you have sexual thoughts.  and you want to stare at them and it can be distracting, like if you're watching a show or something with a hot person in it.  i've also heard people compare sexual attraction to a craving, which i think is pretty accurate, like imagine there's a spread of food but only certain things really appeal to you.  some may be aesthetically appealing but that doesn't necessarily mean you want to eat it.  you can draw the comparisons to people.  i guess.  

yeah, pretty boys, you know, like twinks (who like girls).  i'm attracted to a very small percentage of guys but the attraction can be very strong.  i'm not sure how to answer "what it means" but if you have any other questions i'll do my best!

(me just reading these out of curiosity...some interesting/funny ones)

truly baffling.  i feel like i realized i'm poly (and i use that as an antonym for mono, rather than something i feel really applies to me) just after i realized i'm aro, because it's all part of amatonormativity, right, so it was like, well i don't understand romantic attraction at all, but especially not to just one person at a time.  yeah, that whole picture--monogamous marriage with kids--when i think about the fact that most people want/have that, i'm genuinely shocked.  

champagne.

also like iced oat lattes

On 12/27/2021 at 3:37 AM, aro_elise said:

but i would also love to live with my best friend at some point.  she's actually looking for an apartment and invited me to live with her and i sadly had to decline because i can't pass up living rent-free.  but sometime.

update: we got an apartment!  changed my mind, i really miss the city and i want to live with her and decided it was worth the extortionate amount of money.  our move-in date is august 16th and we're so happy.

no but i have a t-shirt with a heart with the flag stripes

7 hours ago, root22 said:

it's this state of "could happen but i won't know if it can til it does" but this, in my experience is a good sign in the direction of "yeah it probably won't tho to be fair".

that was how coming to identify as aro went for me too.  like yeah, to address which is more "certain", you could argue, well, wanting to bang dudes is something i do actually experience, whereas wanting to date them is not...so far.  but let's be real, only aphobic people argue that.  i don't see people saying i can't be sure of my disinterest in getting stabbed.  

definitely not.  i don't like that it's a romantic thing even if not in my case, like i wouldn't like saying i'm married because people would assume, you know.  idk who i'd marry anyway, like i guess my best friend but she's probably going to marry a romantic partner someday.  but no, i wouldn't in any case.

i have to say both, i'm equally aggressively aro and heterosexual.  when i think of, like, sexual attraction to a woman, romantic attraction to a woman, romantic attraction to a man--i really can't imagine any of them as more likely than any other. 

actually no, it's just uncomfortable for me.  i want people's attraction to me to be the same as mine toward them, whether platonic, sexual, or none.  (oh except i'd like if anyone found me aesthetically attractive.)  in an ideal world, of course; i don't expect it to work out that way. 

21 hours ago, RepublicServicesVolunteer said:

Even then, I think it's too young for sex. I think people should at least wait until they're out of high school to experiment with that, but, ultimately, if it doesn't affect me, I don't care.

i tend to agree; we only did some stuff.  though it's hard to say how much my feelings about romance were influencing my feelings about sex, you know, the whole situation was just...tricky.  but even after i accepted that i wanted one and not the other i wasn't in a rush.  

21 hours ago, RepublicServicesVolunteer said:

I think the closest experience I had to amatonormativity was when some friends tried to pressure me into going to senior prom (I ended up not going, so they failed miserably!).

i went to prom, it was fun.  again, among my friends, it wasn't like that--only one had a date.  i made my dress, there was a pre-party with drinking, a party bus, then there it was just a nice social event, then i went home.

yeah i'm gifted so my high school experience was not like in shows/movies haha i was literally going to class and hanging out with my friends, it was a good time.  some of us dated, not many of us had sex, tbh i wasn't really thinking about either (i mean i found guys cute but that's it) until the whole fiasco in grades 11-12 when i was questioning about being aro and i got into a relationship.  i actually think younger than that is too young, at least for sex.  i know some of the non-gifties were/are up to some crazy stuff but 🤷‍♀️

7 hours ago, Jackson_Glass said:

Well I do have a question what is bondage and sadism I think I know the rest but I don’t know those two if it’s to weird fee free not to answer.

bondage is restricting your partner's movement, like tying them up.  sadism--the opposite of masochism--is when you get pleasure from causing pain/suffering (physical or emotional).  here we're talking about sexual sadism, which entails sexual pleasure, not to be confused with "everyday" sadism, which is emotional satisfaction, like you enjoy when bad things happen to people.  this is considered a mental disorder, as is sexual sadism when it extends to enjoying the non-consent of a victim.  in bdsm, some people like to engage in "consensual non-consent": like a negotiated roleplay where one partner pretends to resist/not enjoy it.  not me, i like when he eagerly submits, expresses his enjoyment, begs for more.

i've had squishes as long as i can remember, like grade 1.

yeah it's mostly about power dynamics, consensual of course, could be sexual, non-sexual, or both--some people have a "24/7" bdsm relationship.  for me, as you might guess, it's strictly sexual.  i'm glad to answer any questions :)

interesting, i just stumbled upon this and i see the conversation isn't active but i'm contributing anyway.  basically i don't relate, i am the stereotypical allo aro in this case, like almost fraysexual but not exactly.  because it doesn't matter what sort of relationship, if any, is preexisting, but if there is an emotional one, i turn that off at that point.  and i know this sounds bad but i just see my partner as an object.  please don't misunderstand--i very much care about enthusiastic consent.  like that's actually what i find so cool about casual sex, that it's just about this experience between two or more people who want the same things in that moment and communicate in order to make it a positive one.  i can kiss them without love and hurt them without hate--just lust--and after we can return to what we were before--strangers or friends.  i think that's so cool; i don't see any contradiction there.  

On 9/4/2018 at 3:38 PM, ahsoka723 said:

With hook ups and new people, you can only really do the generic stuff unless you've talked about what you want to do and limits etc. extensively beforehand, and while non-kinky/BDSM sex can be good when done right, it often just bores me.

to some extent i agree, but if you do talk about it and you happen to be very compatible, that one experience can absolutely be the best.  but if you're looking at probability, yeah, great vanilla sex is still a better-than-average outcome.  being aro, kinky, and very picky when it comes to sexual attraction, well, at least for me it means i don't often have sex at all, but that's just the way it is.  

not at all, i don't notice gender when it comes to platonic stuff.  i mean, in the same way people say "i don't see race"; obviously you notice--what you mean is it has no effect on how you feel about someone.  there's never been a noticeably more prevalent gender in my friends or squishes, except maybe in like primary school when it was more common to socialize with your own gender outside of class, but that's a societal thing.  my best friend is a woman but there was a 50% chance of that, again probably more since we met when we were very young.   i don't get the whole, like, "girls' night" thing, i don't get why bachelor/bachelorette parties/showers are gender-specific (obviously i won't be having one but hypothetically i'd invite all my friends...i guess the thing is straight people don't want to see strippers of their own gender lol but anyway).  i don't talk about different things with women, except maybe feminism, just as i talk to you guys about aromanticism, or any number of other examples; there are certain people you can have more galaxy brain discussions with.  but the only way i'm drawn to a certain gender is sexually, and that's inconsequential to how i feel about them as a person.

15 hours ago, Jackson_Glass said:

Ok I've been wondering this what dose BDSM stand for 

it's actually 3 initialisms:

bondage & discipline

dominance & submission

sadism & masochism

so any of that stuff falls under it--of course they often overlap.