Themathlover

The topic is dated, but I'm going to answer. I've newly came in as quoiromantic, but I've always been certain to be heterosexual. I've never questioned my sexuality, because I've known the word "heterosexual" since I entered teenage and it suits me perfectly. But I discovered romantic attraction, the aromantic spectrum and all of the things related to it just 2 years ago thanks to a video on Youtube, and began to interest myself to it a couple of days ago only. I've never really doubted of who I am, it's something I've been aware of since I'm old enough to think of it that romance was a weird thing to me and it didn't appeal to me, but, unconsciously, maybe did I try to fit in the small boxes of amatonormativity. Moreover, everytime I read a book containing romantic passages, or watch a movie with explicitely romantic scenes and a description of the characters' feelings for each other, except when it can be interpretated as sexual, I feel queasy. I feel sometimes even sick, like a discomfort in my stomach. Since it's considered abnormal to be repulsed by romance, I tried to forget it, but denying this part of me led to internal conflict. I thought I had a problem. Why would I be repulsed by something everyone loves, talks about and looks for ? It's still uneasy to explain my repulsion to others, as I don't really understand myself the reason.s why I experience this, the only thing I can say is that it makes me queasy when one of the main characters of a book/movie starts describing their own romantic feelings towards another character. I don't rely on it, and as I'm trying to look for identification in most books I get and read, I feel a disconnection, a huge gap between me and the character I had been identifying with. It's really strange. However, I'm not romance-repulsed when I see a couple hugging or kissing, or even when I read romantic scenes in books which do not involve a personal description of one's feelings, but exterior acts seen as "romantic" by alloromantic people, without any subjectivity of the characters concerning these acts, because I feel them more like sexual things. Perhaps is my post confusing, and I apologize for this, but, at least, it translates my own confusion. So, to answer the question, I've always been both sure of my sexuality and romantic orientation, but this last one is inherently complicated.

So, everyone is talking about chocolate and discount, but... Do you just not care about Valentine's Day ?

Everything is in the title 🙂.

I remember randomly watching a French video about it someday when I was 13. It was an interview of three aro persons. If you understand French, I'm putting the link to it down here : Before I came across this video, I was watching another one concerning people who had never fallen in love but didn't say to be aro, as it's a really marginalized concept. The title, Nous sommes aromantiques, means "We are aromantic" in French, and so, it intriguated me. I clicked on it and watched untill the end. It related to me in a way I couldn't explain, and I could feel like it made a bit of sense, but tried to forget it, probably confused... However, it was still at the back of my mind for maybe a few weeks, and I sometimes happened to think of it. A few days ago, I was thinking of how different I was from other teenagers (I'm 15). I just have one friend, she settled down on July 2022 in a French overseas departement, The Reunion, which is located far from my location in metropolitan France. I'm still in touch with her but it's currently a long-distance relationship. Also, I've never had any "crush", any real romantic love towards anyone, and it neither appeals to me nor feels sensical to me nor do I feel a lack of it. I was lounging on my couch and suddenly remembered this video. So, I grabbed my phone and watched it back. It still made sense to me, still related to me, but it was too vague. I began doing in depth researches about aromanticism. Videos, articles and testimonials. I discovered it was a spectrum including many orientations, such as demiromanticism, cupioromanticism, lithromanticism, frayromanticism... and quoiromanticism. What I identify with now is this last one, quoiromanticism. I found out that, yes, romance was nonsensical to me. I'm not able to understand it as a concept or a feeling, nor to distinguish it from friendship/platonicism. To alloromantics, it is a unique thing, to me, an alloaro, it is just friendship if it's disconnected from sex. It's also the reason why I've always struggled with differentiating friends with benefits from romantic and sexual relationships, and also the reason why I've never been capable to understand why certain people felt so "heartbroken" if a person they used to have sex with didn't want to go any further (dating). My conception of sex has just never been linked with any other type of attraction. I'm not telling it's bad to feel heartbroken if someone you hook up with doesn't want to date you, it's just how you are, but, to me, it's a non-sense. Sex and romance are two separate things, and romance is something hard to catch for me, so much that I feel like it's not even applicable to me, it's nothing, like something from another universe XD. Everything began to be clearer in my mind. Everything I had struggled with for years began to make sense, or, at least, I could put words on this confusion I had. I'm quoiromantic and heterosexual. In addition to this, I had a phase back when I was 10-11 where I wanted everyone to know I didn't want to have a boyfriend. 4 years after, some aspects of this phase were for sure just a phase, but some others... They were clues I was aro-spec.

I posted something closely related to what you're pointing out yesterday (French hour), but it's more specific to women and the sexism they can face both when coming out as aro-spec and without coming out, when they simply do not match with certain misconceptions society has carved in our brains when it comes to love / intimacy / sexuality. Here is the link to it : I will try to clear it up here. I think that most of us, even within the LGBTQ+ community, have been conditioned to assume women were all, or almost, a certain way, instead of all different since they're humans and gender is a social construct. Among these stereotypes towards (against is more appropriate) women, there's this common one which is assuming that women are more emotional "by nature", and therefore, that they need a strong emotional connection with a guy to feel romantically/sexually attracted to him, especially sexually. First, it's heteronormative and amatonormative, secondly, they assume women are mostly demiromantic/demisexual, even though they're not aware of these terms, this is what it means, and as an aro-spec but not demiromantic woman, it is a powerfully destructive form of discrimination, and sometimes even hate/phobia, against every other women in the aromantic spectrum. I personally identify with quoiromanticism, I've recently come in, and before I found out about the aromantic community, aromantic spectrum and all this stuff, I didn't have any word to describe what I felt, except maybe unprecise ones, and I didn't fit in these stereotypes I had been constantly forced to submit myself to, which caused an identity crisis, anger, sadness, depression, uncomprehension... Add to this my young age, I'm just 15 and questioning myself a lot, and this is incredibly exhausting and demoralizing. Discovering this community helped me breaking away from these normative, exclusive and oppressive systems and feel free. I can now say that I was, and am still, a victim of arophobia because I'm a woman. So, perhaps is it sexist arophobia. Putting words on it feels like a liberation. Of course, this is my personal experience as a quoiromantic heterosexual girl, but there are plenty of other forms of arophobias / acephobias as there are many types of aromantic / asexual orientations. But I hope this short testimonial can help at least one person realizing that they're going through something similar, and realize it's not normal to be victim of that because you're valid as you are. Don't let others define who you are, nor let them brainwash you to stupidly agree with the stereotypes they want to put you in. But on the other hand, be careful not to stereotype human behaviours in reaction to your rebeling against arophobia/acephobia/sexism, because this is something many do. I've seen a lot of persons saying things like "I'm a lesbian because men are useless / trash.", this is discriminatory, wrong, stereotyped and even nonsensical, since those who say and believe in this kind of things are often also those who defend the idea that homosexuality isn't the outcome of repulsion against the other sex / not having found the right man or woman yet, but not a choice. They pretend that homosexual people were born this way, which is true, but spread misconceptions about homosexuality, sexism and hate... It just doesn't make sense. Be rational, not emotional, use your loaf and do not just think that others are responsible for your problems, they can be, but question yourself as well, you could discover that you have certain sexist / stereotyped conceptions. You can go through feelings, and you should not throw them away, nor should you puke them on others. Instead, take them and analyze them. What do they say about you ? Are you sure they're valid or are they resulting of our sexist societies ? Why do they impact you so much ? Do they mean you're aro, ace or something else ? Building an inclusive world won't be possible unless everyone accepts the idea they might be sexist themselves, even queer people, and work on it.

Thank you @hemogoblinfor answering again (I created an account) ! So, if hypersexuality means compulsive sexual behaviour negatively impacting your life, then, I'm not, I'm probably just high sex-drived. There's still a question left, about what you wrote down here : I understand it's normal, but is there any specific term within the aromantic spectrum to describe this ? Thank you again !

Hello everyone ! I'm writing today as a recently come in quoiromantic heterosexual cis girl. I'm just 15 yo but this is what I fit in at the moment. I'm gonna shortly clear up what it encompasses for me so that you better understand my problem. I think you all know that quoiromantic is an umbrella term referring to a vast range of feelings concerning romantic/aromantic attraction, including : -Having difficulty distinguishing romantic interest from other types of interest, such as platonic or sexual -Questioning romanticism and not understanding how it's supposed to feel, to the point that the process of questioning feels more "right" than any specific romantic/aromantic orientation -Finding the idea of romance inaccessible, complicated or nonsensical -Not being sure whether or not you experience romantic attraction -Being unable to comprehend romantic attraction as a feeling or a concept All of these definitions of quoiromanticism describe me perfectly, and after a few days of introspection and questioning, If can now say I identify with it. I you want to learn more about my thoughts on it, right there is a link to another discussion I had when I didn't have this account yet : Now, let's dive in my issue. As you've probably guessed from the title, it's about sexism and stereotypes, a very common thing, right =) ? The thing is I've been struggling with my identity for a long time, because I didn't rely on what was considered universal about boys and girls, and finding, or at least, better comprehending my identity, especially when I came in as quoiromantic, made me entirely break away from this and feel incredibly free and most importantly me, regardless of the normative expectations others have. I have to emphasize that discovering a whole organized community of persons who experience similar feelings as me is reassuring and comforting. I'm feeling valid, normal and human. I typed "human" in bold because it's completely genderless, and you'll understand later in my post this choice. A few months ago, I began to reflect on sexism and stereotypes. The process had started before, around 12, but wasn't really effective until 13 and a half-14. I realized at this period that there were forms of sexism among my peers. It was hard to cope with it, and I decided to try having conversations with them about it as I felt too neglected and affected by it. To be more precise, it was mainly about sexuality / asexuality and romance / aromanticism. I must warn you that I have NOTHING, but absolutely nothing, against ace-spec people, but I consider that assuming that someone is asexual, exactly like assuming that someone is on the sexual spectrum, heterosexual or anything else normative and stereotyped, can be very painful to this person. I lived it myself, and still do, so I do know how challenging it can be to have to put up with such situations. It's important to say this before I explain my problem, since certain ace-spec people could feel offended / left out with what I'm going to write. With that said, my parents assumed that all women were less sexual beings "by nature", that they were more emotional and therefore, that women lacking emotional connections to others and/or being confident with their sexual desires were "sick". As a quoiromantic and alloheterosexual girl, of course, seeing my own family, my friends, the Internet and the whole world agreeing on this and even providing "scientific evidences" to prove it mentally impacted me. I think it's particularly discriminatory against loveless aro women, but every other aro-spec women as well. I fortunately changed my parents' minds, and now, they accept me and everyone as different, even though I've not explicitely come out as quoiromantic yet for personal reasons. It was tough because I had to confess some things about my identity I didn't want them to know, or at least, felt compelled to do so, but this makes me feel way better within my family now. Being honest with them and talking about what bothers me with them makes the relation more authentic. However, I didn't change the mind of every other persons, we're 8 billion across the Earth and, according to my estimations, I wouldn't have time in my life to go turning all of these humans into less sexist creatures. Additionally, nowadays, the Internet is a requirement for school and most jobs, therefore, while using it, even for educative purpose, I frequently come across depressing contents about what has messed my life up : sexism, stereotypes, neurosexism, hate... Even though I try to avoid them. I've never cried as much as I do now before. I switch from an emotion to another simply by hearing someone telling something sexist, thinking of how many sexist things I've seen/heard/faced, I am also incredibly angry, I've never happened to be like this before. I used to be such a calm and maybe a bit cold person, stable in my emotions, but now, there's a constant rush of feelings in me. Most of the time, it's just sadness, hopelessness and depression, like a void, but anger tends to increase. I just can't stand this stuff anymore. All I want is to be recognized as a human, a whole particular person, with its own life, own orientations, own desires, and not put down and endlessly labeled with contradictory sexist ideas by others just because I was born in a woman's body. Nothing more. Why is it so hard to certain people to be like this ? Does anyone else feel the same as me ? Thank you for your responses !