arotr

Hello everyone, long time, no see. Bear with me here as I get a little overly personal, lol. I've been aware of ace/aro stuff for over a decade at this point and previously identified as aroace at one point before abandoning that label at age 17. I had a very complicated relationship with my sexuality and gender due to various reasons, and I unfortunately fell into the reactionary "exclu" camp for years, something I do regret a lot now that I am almost 25. I came back to ace/aro spaces last year when some problems emerged between my boyfriend and I. My boyfriend is very strongly romantically-inclined, and he desires this emotional intimacy with me that I, at the time, felt incapable of providing, and I turned to here for help. I talked to him about my activities online, so he knew about it and was willing to work with me. At the end of the summer the emotional impasse finally ended, and we are still together and in a much better place than we ever have been. I stopped frequenting these forums because I decided I wasn't ace/aro after all and that our difficulties were the result of other emotional factors, but I still really appreciated the warmth and perspectives I encountered as I struggled through that. However, I am back, this time in a much better mental space. I saw a silly prompt on Twitter about the longest crush you've ever had on somebody, and once again just found myself very outside of the norm. I was finally able to articulate my issues, which is that I do sometimes feel attracted to people, but the attraction is basically exclusively sexual in nature. The idea of a romantic relationship does not particularly thrill me or disgust me. I'd say I feel neutral about it for sure. However, I'd also feel that after having the relationship I've had with my boyfriend, I would definitely crave that level of intimacy again if I didn't have him. But is that interest linked to romantic attraction, or lack thereof? I've always felt confused about romantic attraction as a separate category of attraction, especially when you start digging into the concept of romance and realize that it is a pretty new concept in the grand scheme of things. Not that people have never felt romantically drawn to people before a certain point in time, but that the societal obsession with it is newer. When I initially called myself aro, I felt that it was silly to even dictate romantic attraction as a thing separate from sexual or platonic attraction. I recognize now there is an emotional element to romantic attraction that is absent in other kinds of attraction, but what I've realized is that I am incapable of feeling it independently of sex. I don't even mean that in a way where I'm an allosexual alloromantic, but in the sense where I just genuinely do not feel this infatuation with people where I want to engage with them "romantically." All romantic feelings I've ever had with my boyfriend happen almost exclusively within the context of having sex with him, although more recently they do occur outside of that. But even with that, I only feel it after literal years of being with him. Does anyone feel anything similar to this? Or is their a word for such a thing, if such a word is even necessary? Is this "aromantic" (or "grayromantic")? Is it just the consequence of my own personality + life experiences? It doesn't really matter much to me if I'm aro or not so I'm not asking for validation or reassurance. It's more that the aro crowd has a certain kind of intellectual nuance about romantic attraction and relationships that provides interesting insights not found elsewhere. I don't know if this is just the way alloromantic allosexuals feel and I'm overthinking it or if my sensation that I differ from most people is based in a real observation and worth discussing.

Al Pacino-lookalikes

I've been in a relationship for 2 1/2 years and recently told him I think I might be aromantic -- not because I was hiding it, but because it had just occurred to me. It's really up to you on how transparent you want to be. There are all kind of options for this, ranging from something as basic as "find someone who is okay with having a romantic relationship with someone who might not feel romantically back" to queerplatonic relationships to consensual nonmonogamy. If you haven't looked into relationship anarchy, that might be interesting to you. I think it's good to be honest, but, at the same time, don't let that discourage you from seeking out relationships. I don't really think I'm in love with my boyfriend per se, but I do feel deeply attached to him regardless. Relationships are possible.

Yep, I'm the same way. I call myself cupioromantic.

I'd be interested to see their sources, because as far as I'm aware, I've never heard of this before, and this is very much My Jam. Actually, when it comes to romance, the only real psychological term I can think of is erotomania, which has nothing to do with aromanticism. If I can divulge into some gay history here, our concept of being gay was initially established by sexologists and clinical psychologists. Prior to the 1800s, nobody in European society was categorized based on who they were attracted to, but rather by what kind of sex they were having. For instance, anti-homosexuality laws didn't exist, but anti-sodomy laws did, and even then, sodomy was a vague enough term that it basically referred to anything that wasn't reproductive sex. So although sodomy laws have since become basically associated with punishing gay men for having sex, sodomy laws technically applied to anyone who was having sex in anyway that wasn't vaginal sex, and prostitutes were frequently targets of sodomy laws. Around halfway through the 19th century, a bunch of European guys were like, what if we approached sexuality in a "scientific" way instead of a religious/moral one? and then basically used "science" to justify existing social norms. Specifically, they looked at forms of sex that weren't reproductive in nature and began inventing terms to describe them and explain the motivations behind them. For instance, "heterosexual" was actually initially used to describe bisexual people, and then evolved to mean "person who experiences opposite-sex attraction in some way but wants to have sex in a way that won't result in babies and that's pathologically bad" before turning into what it means now. "Homosexual," then, was a diagnosis that was officially codified in 1952 when the first publication of the DSM listed it as "sociopathic personality disturbance." This is all to say that there was no pathologizing romance at this point in time, largely because romance was not really a concept. From my understanding, romance initially referred to the genre of stories about knights, and then, by the early 20th century, came to refer to what we view it as now. While people certainly acted in ways we would consider romantic nowadays and felt what we might call romantic attraction, the idea that romance could exist as its own thing was not a concept people had in their minds. Marriage, prior to the 19th century, was either just a business transaction or just a way to have sex without the Church coming down hard on you (such as with the sodomy laws). It took until the Enlightenment Era for people to start considering that maybe life could be more than just like, feudal Europe, and then marriage evolved with the establishment of capitalism and the development of the Industrial Revolution. The tl;dr for this is that, with the invention of capitalism, production moved away from families of peasants who farmed and into mechanized factories, which meant that the need for stringent family structures that had a lot of kids to perform a lot of labor waned considerably. The economic structure of society was shifting which meant people now had access to being individuals in place of being stuck in these family structures. Which is then all to say that it took this creation of individualism to promote the idea of romance. If I am now free to live live without the pressure to get married as soon as possible in order to create as many kids as soon as possible so we can all wither away on my landlord's farm for the entirety of our lives, then maybe I can marry for other reasons. Maybe I can marry someone because I feel strongly about them rather than having my marriage planned from birth. So, with that in mind, it becomes literally impossible for romantic attraction to be pathologized before the 1920s at the very earliest, since it, as a concept, just did not exist. Relatedly, the DSM wasn't published until 1952, which only gives us a total of 70 years for such a concept to be officially pathologized, anyway. Since then, I can't think of any mental disorder that specifically lists lack of romantic attraction as its root problem. You could argue that things like depressive disorders and schizoid personality disorder might stigmatize a lack of romantic interest in people as something wrong with a person, but I've looked at all five DSMs (I own the latest one because I'm a social work student) and I've never seen anything that explicitly discusses romance from my memory.

I don't think the "too young" question is exclusive to aroace. Some people know for their whole lives that they're straight or gay or bi or ace (etc), and some people don't know until they're almost 70 years old. It works differently for every person.

Meh. I know I'm attracted to men. How does that manifest? Ambiguously.

I base it on how society would treat you if they saw you in a relationship. If you are perceived as a man and you're with someone who's also perceived as a man, OR if you are perceived as a woman and you're with someone who's also perceived as a woman, that's a gay relationship. Otherwise it's straight. I call myself gay because I'm FTM and interested in intimate relationships with men. I identify as bigender, but when I'm further along in my transition I'll definitely be perceived as male, so I define myself as such.

I don't really identify as asexual, but the aromantic thing came from being in a long-term relationship and realizing he had certain expectations of me and our relationship that I just didn't have and a mismatch in our emotional involvement. We're working through it.

I think I technically qualify as graysexual, and I know many people count graysexuality as asexuality, but does anyone else here fall under graysexual and feel much more alloaro than aroace? I feel very in tune with sexuality as a concept -- I'm a writer and essentially all my writing is very sex-focused -- but I very rarely experience sexual attraction irl. However, I do have sex and therefore I feel like there is a substantial rift between myself and aroaces. Anyone else relate?

When you reciprocated a crush, did that crush last for a while? I know recipromantic is a term some people use. Also, have you heard of relationship anarchy before? It might be appealing to you!

Interesting prompt... I'm extremely busy this month but if I find time I'd love to participate.

I think therapy is always worth pursuing. The question, rather, is is it feasible? And in this point in time, I don't know that it is, and I'm very sorry. I grew up with a father who was abusive in every way imaginable on top of my family being conservative Christians, so I was not really able to access any kind of meaningful therapy until I was 19 through my university. So, unfortunately, I think it'll most likely be the waiting game. In the meantime, however, you can still look around for things that will help you. PsychCentral, iirc, has a therapist finder where you can sort people through filters like being LGBTQ-friendly and so on. Additionally, there are plenty of PDFs of books and things floating around online that might be able to help you out. I'm currently getting a Masters in Social Work and I'm going from my clinical licensure eventually, so I know some about psychotherapy and what it entails. Just identify what you think you personally need to work on and what you are currently struggling with the most, and then from there you (or someone else who can help) can identify things like what type of therapy might be beneficial and what resources you need. For instance, if DBT is something that might work for you, there's a DBT workbook you can order on Amazon that is super useful and recommended by therapists all the time.

Communication is probably the best way to go about it. Make sure everyone involved understands it's explicitly platonic.

Sexual attraction, to me, is genuinely having a desire to have sex with someone. Looking at them and watching them move and hearing them speak (etc, etc) physically turns you on. You can't help it; your body craves them. This is different than being aesthetically attracted to someone, I've found. There are many people I find very beautiful to look at, but I have no desire whatsoever to have sex with them. I think aesthetic attraction and sexual attraction can be very closely linked, but finding someone beautiful isn't the same as really wanting to have sex with them. It can be strange to be young and unsure of your orientation. I'm almost 24 and I'm still questioning a lot of aspects of myself. But if, for the moment, you find that aroace works for you, then there's really no harm in saying yeah, this defines me at the moment. I think people are overly cautious of identifying as something and then changing their mind later on, but that's literally fine. We all are constantly learning about ourselves and sometimes we need different terminology at different points to explain how we feel and interact with the world.

YMBAI you've googled "am I in love" multiple times and still have no idea what that actually means

I think this is a mix of things (transness + mental stuff + maybe being aro/aspec) but I remember being 5 years old and already incredibly perplexed at the idea of crushes and romantic relationships (and even forcing myself to crush on a boy I didn't even like). When other kids would play house I was always the dog, lol. In elementary school all these kids would have weddings and I just wanted to be the wedding planner. Never wanted to have a wedding myself. To this day, I have never been able to picture myself having a wedding.

I'm still questioning how ace/aro I really am, but for me it's that I do genuinely like being the object of my boyfriend's romantic preoccupations. I don't think I've ever really felt about him the way he feels about me (e.g., he seems much more like, infatuated with me and traditionally "in love" whereas I tend to kind of view myself as a separate entity who is emotionally close to him when he is around but otherwise just sort of go throughout life by myself), but I do genuinely enjoy when he's physically close to me. I don't really know what else separates "romantic relationship" from "very close platonic relationship" but, at least for me, being in a romantic relationship allows me a certain grace to be vulnerable that other relationships don't allow me. However, I am also a) sexually involved with him which, I think, changes dynamics (e.g., to me sex is romance and romance is sex, but idk how true that really is in the long run), and b) I've always struggled with making friends and so maybe he's simply the first real close friend I've ever had, lol. Whatever it is, though, I truly like being involved with it.

My guess is that it's really rooted in the long history of our anthropological and industrial development, I think. Marriage is really one of the oldest institutions in the world and was initially kind of a business transaction among the wealthier classes and a contractual relationship between lower classes where two people basically worked together to reproduce so they could meet their basic needs. The whole concept of marriage as a romantic thing in Western culture is pretty recent in the grand scheme of things, as it's only been around for 250 or so years, maybe. I also suspect that industrialization leading to increased alienation has created this situation where people are less able to be emotionally intimate with family and friends and are socialized to believe that only their romantic partner can tend to them physically and emotionally. You get this emphasis on a "soul mate" who can satisfy everything you could possibly desire, which would include sexual and romantic needs, and, obviously, everyone has those sexual and romantic needs, duh. Not a well-studied anthropologist or anything but the topic does interest me so that's my kind of whack at it. Spouses are kind of viewed as this end all, be all relationship because of the historical precedent, and as much as capitalist industrialization has deeply upset the social functioning of society, I think we're reaching this strange point of hyper-individualization that it's encouraging people to re-conceptualize relationships and what they mean and whether or not sexual/romantic relationships are the Most Important Thing Ever or not.

I did, finally, tell my boyfriend directly that I think I might be aromantic. More specifically, cupioromantic seems to fit my style the best. It felt bad at first, and then it felt like, yeah, this is a good way of understanding myself. But I wonder how necessary it is to even attach myself to a label like that when I am read largely by society as romantic. I think most people who know me well (like my family) are aware of the fact that I'm not a particularly romantic person or anything, but I've had a boyfriend for 2 1/2 years now. Regardless of what we might struggle with because of my apparent lack of romantic attraction, we still do romantic things together, because I like them. He's polyamorous and I'd like to explore relationship anarchy going into the future, so I'm thinking about the potential of future romantic relationships and how relevant it would be to tell them that I'm cupioromantic. I feel like it is necessary, in a way, because if someone really requires that I love them back in a romantic sense, then it would be unfair to get involved with them. But at the same time it feels entirely silly and I know people aren't very understanding of it at all. I know this because I didn't understand cupioromantic for the years I knew about it until I was like wait, that's me. Additionally, it just seems unfair of me to attach myself to aromanticism as a whole when there are actually aromantic people who aren't in romantic relationships whereas I'm just kind of pursuing the run of the mill expectation. I like being in romantic relationships, I just don't feel romantically drawn to people. But does that necessarily mean I have anything interesting to say about the nature of romantic attraction and relationships? Am I really that different, in the end? I haven't made up my mind on this yet.

Extremely weird question to ask your kids. Like it's not wrong for kids to be thinking about this or anything, but I'm imagining myself in middle or high school and how I would have felt receiving this. I most likely would have been extremely upset by it.

Raised Protestant, currently agnostic, have been interested in converting to Judaism through the conservative branch for 4 years now.

Not as serious as some of the things others have suggested, but the emphasis on romantic relationships leads to many placing all their eggs in one basket. If your romantic partner is supposed to be the only real sense of solid support in your life, then what do you do when you lose them? Are friendships and other emotionally deep connections (like alterous connections, if I understand the term correctly) not permitted to have great importance?

Part of me is okay with ambiguously queer characters because it can be fun to just kind of run with it and not worry about specific labels, but it would be much better in many instances to have explicitly LGBTQ characters. Honestly, it can feel really cowardly for people to just kind of hint and not make it explicit.

This is an interesting question. In your case, I think you can argue that compulsory romanticism, as you're calling it, would simply be an extension of compulsory heterosexuality, since you identify as female and are experiencing it. Adrienne Rich wrote about compulsory hetereosexuality with lesbians in mind but she did also state that it technically affected all women, since relationships under heteronormative patriarchy reduce women to the position of romantic and sexual object and ascribes their worth to them based off such. However, this is still an interesting idea regardless of gender. I'm sure somebody has talked about this before (I'm kind of questioning if I'm cupio myself after previously identifying as aroace years ago, so I've only really seen aro/ace folks talking about stuff related to them in passing over the last 7-ish years) but I don't think you're wrong in your approach or anything. In a society that values romantically and sexually involved monogamous straight couples over everything else, that kind of dynamic frequently spills into how queer people view ourselves.