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I am not very sure what you are actually questioning about yourself, but in case you are wondering whether you must be romantically/sexually attracted to girls because you prefer girls over guys for creating strong bonds or your aesthetic taste, no, this is not necessarily romantic/sexual attraction. Many people also have a gender preference for friendships, although this is much less talked about than sexual orientation. So if you feel like you make better female friends, that's just it. The only question you might want to ask yourself whether you want to be in a romantic relationship with them (that is distinct from friendship) or if you want to have sex with them.

I have not talked to alloromantic people about platonic crushes/squishes yet because I think they would not understand anyway, but I am glad you did and it went so nice for you.

That sounds like a desirable situation for me, too. Actually, sometimes I am asking myself how aromantic I truly am because of this. Nevertheless, being interested in something that resembles a romantic relationship does not make someone romantic. I also agree with @Sili that when you are wondering what makes a relationship a romantic one, it is a strong indication that you are aromantic. Most alloromantic people say they just know, so yeah. Besides, I have been in situations where a person has shown interest in me and I could imagine having such a relationship with them, but apparently they were not quite satisfied without an evident reason. Presumably, they were missing the romantic attraction from my side. I also want to add that romantic is a rather vague term, so what is romantic and what a romantic relationship is should be defined by the people involved. There might as well be people considering themselves alloromantic for whom what you describe is a romantic relationship, while for others it is not. In my opinion you may very well identify as aromantic if you think that fits you, but may still be open to a romantic relationship with someone identifying as alloromantic.

It is pretty obvious she finds you interesting in some way, but other than that it is unclear to me what she actually expects out of it. She might have a romantic interest, she might see you completely platonic, or she might not even be entirely sure yet. In any case, if you actually want to hang out with her, I would recommend to accept her invitation without worrying too much about hypothetical untold interests. In order to avoid a potential awkward situation because of different expectations, I suggest you text her before and express your view on the situation. You do not have to explicitly say you are aroace, but you should make it clear that you will not reciprocate romantic feelings. Perhaps you could write a message where you say you are open to going to the movie this Friday and will be happy to do so, but you feel unsure what exactly she is expecting out of this. Maybe you can say you do not want this to be a date or something like that because this comes with expectations you might not be able to fulfil. I would advise against directly confronting her in the way of asking her if she has romantic intentions or was asking for a date. This just corners her or makes her feel caught. Simply let her know about your interests and what you want from her. If she finds your interests agree with her intentions, she will be happy about that, and if she realizes there are different intentions, you will find that out from her reaction. I think there is little for you at stake and much to gain, so just give it a chance.

This is a valid point, and considering the interviewees gave surprisingly similar answers, it seems reasonable to suspect everything that did not fit the narrative was cut out. However, even with the raw material I would not take this too seriously. All interviews took place at the same university library, perhaps on the same day, with all interviewees from the same age group. This is definitely not representative. With such a small and specific sample size, you can get basically any outcome you want, based on how you recruit the interviewees. My personal experience is that it is not so much attraction that impedes friendships between men and women, but more so amatonormativity and in particular monogamy. I have and have had friendships with members of the opposite sex without complications, however, all of my closer opposite sex friendships were nonmonogamous or single. I have not had a closer friendship with a woman in a monogamous romantic/sexual relationship with another man yet. Those friendships always remained relatively surface-level as otherwise her partner had a problem with it, or it became clear to me she was motivated by intentions that were conflicting with the relationship with her partner. There is a second part of this video that has the same limitations regarding representativeness, but I still recommend to watch it as well since it shows the problematic thinking: Basically, many of the interviewees say it is fine to have opposite sex friends while being in a relationship. However, when asked specifically about their partners having opposite sex friendships, all of them clearly say it would bother them. Even if they just said they themselves hang out with members of the opposite sex outside of the relationship one-on-one.

I was walking on the street, right behind a romantic couple, holding hands. I couldn't help but wonder how they truly feel about their relationship. And then I somehow got an image like this in my head …

As a kid, I was travelling with my parents (big surprise). Since I am an adult, I am travelling mostly either with friends or alone. Both options have their merits. With friends, you can share experiences, some things are more interesting with others, and often you can split costs. However, alone you can can always decide yourself what you are doing with nobody asking questions, which can be a great experience when you are away. I think having something like a queerplatonic travel partner could also be nice. Sometimes I also combine a trip with meeting up with an aroace friend living further away, which can be a very rewarding experience as well.

I agree you can go for it and see how things develop from there. You have already told her the situation and it seems she understands you, so if she accepts that, there is nothing wrong with trying it. It might also be a good opportunity for both of you to figure out what you are actually interested in and what you are looking for in a relationship. Also, you might want to talk with her about your concerns of breaking up before getting stuck in a relationship. There is one other thing you may want to be aware of: If it does not go well and you still have to break up, it might impact your friendship, because the situation might be awkward later, or someone feels the other one was not sufficiently invested or treated them inappropriately. You might want to also express that you see this as a trial with uncertain outcome but wish to keep her friendship in any case. It seems you are communicating well, so this should be doable. Bottom line: If I were in your situation, I would do the same and give it a try.

This is pretty much how I experience my gender. I am AMAB and I am fine with being perceived as male. However, I do not really identify with that, neither conform to masculine gender stereotypes. Neither do I have a desire to change something about my biological sex or gender appearance. (Well, sometimes I think it would be awesome if I could swap between sexes from one day to another. 😆) Also, if I were AFAB, I believe I would be equally happy with that. I now identify mainly as agender or cis-genderless.

I would not use the term afamilial for myself, but I can relate very well to this situation. I felt quite similar during my adolescence when I was sort of forced to stay with my family and only wanted to get out. When I grew older I managed to keep a healthy distance without actually breaking off all contact and today I think I have a decent relationship with my family. It is not very happy, but not strenuous either. Even though friendships and relationships are often more fun and enjoyable, there is one thing to consider you only have with your family: Friends or a partner might eventually drift away and your relationship might end, but your family will always be your family, no matter what kind of relationship you have with them. You may even lose contact with your family, but technically they are still your family. If you lose contact with a friend, however, your friendship is over. Therefore, I prefer to keep the contact with my family at a low level such that we do not become entirely estranged, yet I do not need to see them regularly.

I do not participate in conventional dating; I do not even completely understand the concept. To my best knowledge, I have not been on an official date, but I believe I have been on a few dates by accident because I was thinking we were meeting as friends yet the other party had different expectations. By now I have learned my part to speak directly in order to avoid awkward situations. 😅 Nevertheless, I still very much enjoy doing date-like activities with a friend. By that I mean activities that could be considered romantic (especially when there are two people of the opposite sex involved in heteronormative thinking), but where we both know we are doing this for fun and not with romantic expectations. Unfortunately, not so easy to do with alloromantic people or someone in a romantic relationship because it requires a decent amount of clarification that ruins almost all the fun of it.

I cannot speak from personal experience since I am usually not talking about aromanticism outside the aromantic (or asexual) community, but I believe I have some ideas what is going on. It seems to me when you tell them being aromantic, they think it is not only about lacking romantic attraction, but also implying having little to no understanding of romance. So in their minds they are the experts on romance but you as an aromantic have no idea, and whenever you make some remarks about romance, that seems silly to them. This may seem immature to you, but with someone having little knowledge about aromanticism, the association being aromantic means not understanding romance is made pretty quickly. Perhaps a metaphor can help here. Let's say you are in a group of scuba divers and there is one guest who has no experience in that at all. When this guest is telling you about their ideas of scuba diving, you probably find that silly. I imagine what happens when you are saying something about a romantic thing to those people is similar. So, when you tell someone you are aromantic, they will probably not only think you lack romantic attraction, but also that you are not interested in anything romantic and have no idea what romance is. I am afraid there is not much you can do about it unless you make them understand the mechanisms of aromanticism, which they probably do not find particularly exciting.

I am technically Gen Y and align pretty well with it, yet I also feel quite intrigued with members of (early) Gen Z.

I am aroace (mostly) and INTJ every time I took the test, with very clear I and J components.

I enjoy the sensation of physical closeness to a person I am comfortable with, though I believe it is not the actual skin contact that I like about it. Just being very close face-to-face would also be nice. I do not have any romantic or sexual associations with it, only some kind of fondness and appreciation. I would definitely enjoy to sometimes kiss my (closer) friends, but most people are not up to it because they consider it romantic or think that it leads to sex. 🙄 About open mouth kissing, I am fine with it, although it does not give me anything more than closed mouth kissing. I would just prefer not to involve too much tongue. 😅