SpectralWizard

my romantic relationships were all pretty short-lived. Almost invariably my partners felt that I didn't feel the same way about them as they felt about me or that I "couldn't meet their needs". Around the time my last such relationship ended i became acquainted with aro/ace spaces and found that a lot of the pieces fit. Part of me questioned whether this was simply bitterness over the breakup but after 5 years i'm quite sure its not.

it sounds like you love her a lot and want to be with her but that some of the things she likes doing with you aren't things you like doing. Thats a problem that occurs in any close interpersonal relationship, aro or otherwise. If you think you might have a natural aversion to "romantic"-feeling things then your intuition is probably right. It sounds like your partner was pretty much the opposite, so its natural that would cause stress for you, especially if there was some sort of expectation that you should be doing those kinds of things as a couple. If you wanted to make it work its possible that you could set boundaries and talk about what you both wanted to do with each other, although it might just be more stress. One of the things that was most eye-opening about the aromantic identity to me was that people in relationships have the ability to decide what they do and don't want out of the relationship. In every romantic relationship I'd been in there had been this constant shadow of what I was supposed to do and I didn't even realize it was there until i figured out i was aro. I think this is probably the sort of realization that even a lot of allo people could benefit from.

I've been there. Its a tough situation to be in. When I was with my partner they didn't like being touched at all and that was very difficult for me. I felt like it shouldn't be difficult because i should be happy just being with it and that i shouldn't want to be physically intimate with it if it didn't want that and that made me feel pretty guilty, weak, and gross as a result. These weren't healthy feelings to harbor and the one or two times we ended up talking about it probably just made us both feel worse, because it probably both felt uncomfortable about the way i felt towards it and like it was failing me on some level or that me feeling bad was its fault, which made me feel guilty too, for making it feel that way. We weren't the healthiest people in a lot of ways, clearly, and i hope that if you do decide to talk to your partner that it goes better. I shouldn't have felt guilty and neither should my partner have. Neither of us were responsible for feeling the way we did, and we both would have been better off if we accepted that. Despite that particularly hangup our relationship was still very good for me and i enjoyed being with it. I believe it felt the same way about me. No relationship is perfect. You know your partner and we don't, so I'd trust your own instincts as to whether or not communicating about your issue with them will be productive for either of you.

tyty

it has been a while since i have interacted with strangers i hope this place is useful to me and you can ask me anything if you want to but it is ok if you do not have anything that you want to ask me and i hope you have a wonderful rest of your life and beyond (if you are into that)