Gender spesific squish? or crush (or something else)??

[amoose]

I am a 16 y/o guy and recently discovered this community as well as AVEN, and am fairly sure i'm ace. I also think i'm aro, everything points towards that for me, but one thing kinda confuses me.

 

Most of my friends (although i'm not really close with anyone) are guys, and I certainly feel platonic attraction towards all genders. However, i've never had a squish on a guy. I have had (what i think are) squishes and plushes (and swishes and lushes) on girls. But not guys.

So i'm not hetero-platonic or anything like that, and i think i'm aro, but there seems to be some gender specificity somewhere.

Are these actually crushes and i'm hetero-romantic, or is there some other explanation?

I've considered that it might just be because i'm already friends with the guys i would have a squish on, but i'm not really friends with many girls. Also considered that it might be societal expectations affecting my own interpretation of my feelings?

Has anyone else had a similar experience or some understanding of what might be going on?

[DaviM703]

You can have a gender preference and still be aro. I tend to be more interested in making friends with girls and I don't want to be romantic with anyone. This may help understand the difference between preferring a certain gender and romantic feelings: maybe you are more interested in having a cat than a dog, and that probably doesn't mean you are romantically interested in cats. Or maybe you are more interested in having a dog than a cat, and that probably doesn't mean you are romantically interested in dogs. So it's basically the same way with being more interested in developing a platonic relationship with one gender than with the other and it doesn't mean you can't be aro.

[amoose]

Thanks for the reply - that make sense, but i don't think that's it with me. I don't think i have a preference in friends (i like my male friends just as much as my female friends), but i only have the strong desires (squishes) towards girls.

I've been giving it lots of thought, and i think i've mostly figured it out and understand, though i'm not sure i could explain it.

[aro_elise]

Yeah, it could totally still be squishes.  I get them on all genders and I still know I’m aro as opposed to panromantic, I just know.  I do get a similar kind of doubt when I have a squish on a guy I’m also sexually attracted to—is it a “normal” crush?—but that’s just the amatonormativity and stuff.  Whatever you really feel describes it, it does.  You chose to identify as aro for a reason, and that’s not to say that can’t change, but, you know, trust yourself. 

[Apathetic Echidna]

I think gender specificity can pop up for different attractions interdependent of all the other attractions. It could have to do with how you relate to the other person, which could be influenced by outside cultural expectations, but the core of the feelings would be coming from within (otherwise you wouldn't be having squishes or lushes at all). 

I recently had a torch shone on a lot of dodgy stuff I have internalised, so I guess it is possible for this you have been influenced by the society you grew up in and so are experiencing a 'heightened reaction' to girls or something. However if you don't find it a problem in day to day life and really, forcing yourself to react in a different way is stressful and probably futile, I think just let things happen and be yourself

[eatingcroutons]

On 5/18/2018 at 10:13 PM, amoose said:

I've considered that it might just be because i'm already friends with the guys i would have a squish on, but i'm not really friends with many girls. Also considered that it might be societal expectations affecting my own interpretation of my feelings?

I think it's definitely possible that since you have a lot of male friends but not many female friends, that could influence how you see guys and girls differently. Part of that could be societal, part of it could be personal.

 

I'm using the word "relationship" here to mean any kind of personal connection, including friendship: You say you've got lots of experience in your life of relationships with guys, but not much experience of relationships with girls. If you don't have a lot of experience of how relationships with girls actually work, you could be projecting ideas or expectations about how they might work, including the possibility that they would be somehow different in some unknown way to relationships with guys.

 

The simplest way to rule that out as a possible source of confusion would be, well, try to make more friendships with girls, and see if that changes your perspectives any?

[amoose]

Yeah, that basically what I figured out, although you articulated it much better than I could have.

I've been trying to become closer friends with some girls, but the environment I'm in makes that a little difficult unfortunately.