Rackson

Probably not being able to tell when people are acting romantic or in a relationship because I couldn't relate. That for sure made me seem pretty dumb a couple of times lol

Soooo true, whoever decided that guy clothes should be "rough and tough" has a special place in hell. I have only recently been finding my style, but during the summer Its Hawaiian shirts that I got at goodwill, matching color running shorts, white t-shirt under the Hawaiian shirt, and old running shoes that I should have gotten rid of a long time ago. Maybe I will wear knock off aviators if im feelin cool that day :) During the school year, I don't have much brain power to think about style or fashion, but when I do I usually go as "casual hiker", I wear baggy green outdoor hiking/"tactical" pants with a green matching hoodie or flannel w/ white undershirt. I even have a hiking bag that I use for my school bag (green of course) One thing I love to do is put carabiners on things that shouldn't have them: hiking pants, backpacks, water bottles, lanyards, car keys, etc. I think it comes from living in an outdoorsy part of Oregon where that style common. Long story short, my style can be boiled down to "Woke up naked in an REI and had to find clothes" or "casual outdoorsy"

Hello! I cannot and have not come out to my family yet, but I would still like some aromantic merch that Is subtlety aromantic. I am looking for stuff that the average person doesn't know is aromantic. I am looking specifically for pins, stickers, shirts, bracelets, rings, etc. Does anyone know anything that matches what i'm looking for? This is a good example of what I am talking about:

Which one of those would you most recommend?

I cannot believe that worked. IT WORKED GUYS, ITS RENAMED TO ARO-CADE NOW, LETS GOOOOOO!!!

Nah, shit wasn’t funny. You have every right to be hung up on it. The sad part is that I love low quality memes, but it wasn’t a meme, it was just a picture with no punchline. No joke could be found anywhere, I am not sure who stole this guys sense of humor, but they should give it back, its clear that he needs it. Barbie or not, a movie is a movie, and it’s not okay to shit on something dumb like this. But for real? I am not sure what @SwiftySpeedy expected us to say here, “omg you are sooooooo right Swifty, guardians of the galaxy three was soooooo much better than this stupid pink movie, I hate pink, it’s for stinky girls, pee yew!” Like no, bro wtf, use critical thinking skills. It may seem like we are over reacting, but we cannot have a community where shaming people’s interests is okay in any regard, and if we don’t snip this in the bud here then we have opened the floodgates for stuff like this in the future. Its okay to fuck up on the internet, that’s the lovely part about it, we are not mad at you (at least not me) but know that shaming ANYONE on here is not acceptable. We can pretend like this never happened, K?

Dnd 5ed, pathfinder, I am looking for a group for monster of the week. You? Yeah, that is the same exact issue I had with 7cups, and exactly why I stay away from trevorspace. I don't need more issues to worry about. And every time I go on a platform like that I feel like my issue is worthless because people will always have worse issues than me.

Hey :D Welcome to Arocalypse. First of all, you don't need to be full aro to be on here, we welcome you anyway you are! Also I think that it is really cool that you have ADHD and play ttrpgs becuase I am the same way. :) Long story short, welcome. I hope your experience here is positive.

I mean, people will enjoy what they want to enjoy, and I don't like to trash on peoples opinions. I listen to AJR, and many people hate AJR, doesn't mean that I don't like it still. Other people may just not like the same things as me. I think that we should give people a bit of leeway about the things that they enjoy.

Its all good man, some days I just hate my neurodivergency more than others. You are all good 🤎

Lol sorry, I wasn't trying to mean anything by "dude" other than the general public. Sorry.

I just got a meta quest 2 vr headset and got the game Pavlov Shack, a vr shooter with realistic gun physics. I was wondering who on here has a quest 2 and if anyone would want to play sometime! :D

Yeah I kinda thought the same way. My experience was less obsession and more "we are really good friends and we never want to leave each other" @HelloThere Thanks for reading my thing tho! :)

Hi! :D

If anyone has had a similar experience or has any thoughts or comments. Or even if you can think of a micro-label that would fit me. I would love to hear them!

Dude, I have diagnosed combined type ADHD and that sh!t affects almost every aspect of my life. I am happy to be a neurodivergent, but ADHD isn't all fun and jokes. The fun part is when my pills kick in and I act like a normal person.

I have been meaning write this all down for a long time. Mostly for my own sake. *I might add on to this post on a later date with things that I maybe missed or forgot to say* My relationship with aromance is a tricky one, It's like when someone tells you to remember to breath, you used to not even notice when you do it, but now every breath is a conscious thought. It all started for me around second grade when I lived in a neighborhood with several other kids my age. And in that neighborhood, I had a friend who was a blond girl (my age), we will call her Jessica for the sake of her privacy (if you are wondering if Jessica was you, she's not). Anyway, I had a crush on Jessica, every time she would ask to hang out I be filled with joy and a warm feeling. Many kids in our grade knew that I had a crush on Jessica because I was very vocal about my feelings. I am still not sure if these were romantic feelings or close friendship feelings. And after about a year of living close to Jessica, she moved across the state. I was so disappointing as a child, and talked about Jessica for many years following. But right after Jessica left, I told myself that "I have to have a crush on a girl to be normal and happy". So one snow-day in our neighborhood I picked a random girl and told myself that I WOULD like this girl, and I WOULD have a crush on her, I promptly forgot about the girl the next day. But this started a long line of times in my life where I tell myself that I need to love someone, unless I won't "fit in" or "be happy" The next example of this happened in middle school, I understood that one of my closest friends (we will call him James) that I looked up to and admired had feelings for a girl at school. So me being me, decided that I had to have a crush to be "cool" like my friend James was. So I scanned the small school body for a girl that I was going to have a crush on. I quickly (after not much thought) decided that I was going to tell everyone that I had a crush on the most popular and pretty girl in school. I mean, in the movies the nerd always loved the popular girl, so it would surely work for me right? The answer to that question is no, telling all my friends that I had a crush on the popular girl did not work. In fact, it just made my life harder because having to act like that was just one more thing I had to keep track of. Middle school ended with me never asking her out, never talking to her directly, and never feeling anything more than awkward around her. I then left middle school, and started on the scary path of high school. Freshman year passed with me not ever thinking about the girl that I supposedly had a crush on in middle school. I had made a new friend freshman year who we will call Larry. Larry and I spent most of our free time together that year, playing video games and talking about dnd. Sophomore year rolled around and Larry and I had both grown as people during the summer. The first half of the year sucked and went by as normal (as normal highschool can be). But around halfway through the year I didn't see Larry for the majority of a month, Larry was known for not coming to school for short periods of time (for boy scout events, family events, etc) but this was a strange amount of time for him to be gone. I couldn't call him because he didn't have a phone. And shortly after I saw him at school again. He told me that he had been visiting his grandparents, and that he had gotten a girlfriend. Larry and I were both nerds, and both not super jacked or good at sports (larry was like 6'4" tho). So learning that Larry had gotten a girl friend surprised me. Larry told me that things were back to normal and he was not leaving for a while. The following week Larry stopped hanging out with me at school. I quickly went from a kid who has friends and has fun at lunch, to that one weird kid who doesn't have friends to hang out with. Larry was spending so much time with his girlfriend that he stopped being friends with me. In response to this, I decided that I needed to have a crush again. I mean, if Larry had a girlfriend, I should have one too. So I scanned the large student body of my high school and picked the one girl that actually talks to me, we will call her Evie for privacy purposes. I had known Evie my entire life, I went to church and youth group with her every week, and we had several classes together. So I told myself that I should like her. I then started to talk to her more and be better friends. I didn't know if the friendship I was experiencing was me having a crush so I spent several weeks looking up articles like "How to tell if you have a crush on someone" and "How to tell if you are just telling yourself that you love someone but you really don't" And yes those are both very real things I looked up. *writers note: this is one of the biggest "how tf are you this obviously clearly aromantic" moments I can think of* I learned what you should do if you have a crush on someone, and started to act this way around Evie. That got real exhausting real quick, so I just made crazy jokes to get her to laugh. When I wasn't around Evie, I didn't think about her at all. And I didn't even have any physical attraction to her as well, which is saying something when you are in the middle of high school and young. One day near the end of the school year, my sister had mentioned something about Evie's girlfriend and how they make out. And suddenly some switch flipped in my brain. Evie had a girlfriend and I had missed every single clearly obvious sign. People who were lgbtq had even told me that she had a "girlfriend" and I had just assumed that girlfriend meant like "close friend who is a girl". During the car ride with my sister to school that day I was silent, I was thinking "why am I not dissapointed or sad about this?" I felt nothing, maybe some slight embarrassment that I had missed every single sign, but I felt no disappointment at all. A couple weeks later I watched Jaiden animation's video about aromanticsm and It freaked me the f#@% out. Jaiden was describing almost exactly what I had felt for a long long time. But I come from a very heavy traditional christian household, where lgbtq was shamed in our family and discouraged. Needless to say, I was scared. How could I be lgbtq? I don't even like guys or stuff like that? *writers note: this is does not reflect my current idea and knowledge of lgbtq, I was just scared* What if someone finds out?? I spent a lot of time searching about micro-labels for aromanticism, and settled on Pseudo-romance. It seemed to somewhat fit what I felt and provided me a break from having to search through my own brain and a sea of microlabels and meanings. But very recently I realized that I fit under several parts of other micro labels as well, which was confusing. I asked someone on the lgbtqia+ fandom forum and was advised to just go by aro-spec. So I do now, to make it easier for me. Thanks for reading this, it feels good to have it in writing. Or I guess, words. :) -Confused as ever, Racksonjoss101

@roboticanary So what do you think?

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This is how I feel as well. This is the exact reason I go by aro-spec rather than 50 seperate micro-labels. I wish I could be fully aromantic as well, that would make my life so much easier.

Yeah, my parents are the exact same way. That is why I haven't told them :/

This sounds a bit like psuedo-romance, I would at least check this out to see if it fits your feelings. https://www.lgbtqia.wiki/wiki/Pseudoromantic#:~:text=Pseudoromantic is an aromantic spectrum,or borders on romantic attraction.

This entire post can be condensed at the bottom in case you don't want to read this entire thing. Hey, I understand the situation you are in pretty well because I am in a very similar situation. I am a junior in high school as well and I keep being told that "I will change once I meet the right person", and that makes constantly worry that all I don't know who I am. So first of all, you are not alone in thinking/worrying about this. We are different in one regard, that being that I have only ever had one romantic interest in my entire life, and it was over 10 years ago. All other people that I had a crush on have been psuedo-romantic crushes, where I put up an act to fit in with society. But in reality I don't want to date those people one bit. I used to go by psuedo-romantic but realized that I fit into several more micro-labels for aromanticism. Though our experience of aromanticism may be different, we are still both experiencing it. And no-one should be able to tell you what you are feeling, because they are not you. You are you, and you know you better than anyone else. A wise teacher of mine told our class one day about the circle of control. The circle of control is used to help people realize what they can and can't control, and I think that it applies to this post. Circle of influence: As you can see here on the image there are two circles, the outer one being things you CANNOT control, the inner circle is things you CAN control. In your case, your emotions, thoughts, identities, and actions are the only thing that you can control. And the outer circle is literally everything else, this includes: other peoples opinions (your parent's), other peoples actions towards you or others, and other people's personal beliefs. And when I am in a situation like yours, I try and remind myself about this circle. I try and tell myself that "Your feelings and thoughts are your own, you can't control what others think and believe, and they cannot control your thoughts". But this doesn't always work, there will always be times where someone will say something like "Oh you will just love someone when you are older" or "You are just lying to yourself" and those thoughts sneak their way into my brain and make me question the many months of thought and self reflection I have put into this. I am also scared that other people's input will change the countless hours of self reflection that I have done. This happens with me as well, going back to what I said before, all the times that I have supposedly had "romantic feelings" for a person, it comes from the idea and pressure that says "Well, all my other guy friends have girl crushes. So I better get one." and that is not a healthy thing to think. This is a classic case of overthinking things, overthinking is a habit that everyone does, and almost always results in you mentally beating yourself up more than helping you solve a problem or question. It's not a flaw in your personality, but makes people think or do flawed things. Sorry for making this post so long and essay sounding, I still have school brain lol. But this entire post can be condensed to two sentences: It's scary trying to figure out who you are, and other people's opinions make it worse. And you know you best, if you know something about your personality, you are most likely right.🤎

Same :( :O even in Oregon! 🤎

Yeah my friend had a similar girl like that. She was almost in the exact same situation. She would follow him to class, pop up randomly around us at lunch, and hand him creepy letters. Idk what her deal was, but it was pretty funny.