Validation

[AroThroughMyHeart]

There are few things as validating to me, as a young aro, then learning about older relatives/ mutuals who are happily single and still enjoying life. The world is so romance driven that I just love hearing about people who are happy in the future I'll most likely have

[Oatpunk]

God, yes!!! I know this middle aged lady who is living single with her dogs, just doing fun things and living her best life without showing any interest whatsoever in finding a partner and it gives me life! 

I think this is partially why my whole entire heart is filled with Anne with an E. It has such a heavy focus on found family and specifically has an episode where her dad turns down the romantic advancements of a lady he seems to like a lot because the greatest love in his life is his family and he will never let anything get in the way of that. I cri. 

[AroThroughMyHeart]

2 minutes ago, Oatpunk said:

God, yes!!! I know this middle aged lady who is living single with her dogs, just doing fun things and living her best life without showing any interest whatsoever in finding a partner and it gives me life! 

I think this is partially why my whole entire heart is filled with Anne with an E. It has such a heavy focus on found family and specifically has an episode where her dad turns down the romantic advancements of a lady he seems to like a lot because the greatest love in his life is his family and he will never let anything get in the way of that. I cri. 

That lady sounds so lovely! My older brother has a friend who has never been into anybody sexually and romantically but he's "dating" this girl simply because they love each other so strongly platonically. Idk it's just sweet the way they worked something out. It also shows that Aros can thrive with or without partners.

I've heard so many good things about Anne with an e! I'm honestly not sure why I haven't started watching it yet lol but I read the books (Anne of Green Gables) and I'd probably enjoy the show too :D

[nonmerci]

16 hours ago, AroThroughMyHeart said:

I've heard so many good things about Anne with an e! I'm honestly not sure why I haven't started watching it yet lol but I read the books (Anne of Green Gables) and I'd probably enjoy the show too

I heard the books are a but different (I haven't read them though), but I can tell you tell he show is amazing.

I see what scene @Oatpunk is talking about and yes, that's amazing. All the fandom is all about Anne and Gilbert, but what the show os really about is family and friendship. Anne and Diana's friendship is amazing too. And what about Bash and Gilbert, who are like brothers to each other? I love that show.

[Jedi]

Yes! I love stories like that. I shall copy over a thing I posted on AVEN once, which is about this:

I was hanging out with my grandmother the other day, and she mentioned how her father-in-law was widowed relatively early, with a lot of children, and that he had a lot of help from his sister at this time. The sister, she described, had no family of her own, never married and lived with another unmarried brother. They had a nice garden, apparently. She was talking about this as if she did not think it was strange at all, even though she also likes to make "you just haven't met the right person" speeches when I suggest something like that might be relevant for me.

So when I showed interest in this apparently being a valid option, even back in the day, she also told me about one of her own aunts, who worked at a hotel. She described her as, "very beautiful with dark hair and large brown eyes, but never married and liked it that way". The implication being that the aunt was hot enough she absolutely could have had any man she wanted. She just didn't want one x)

I also have an uncle, who lives in an apartment with a good friends of his. They play a lot of D&D together, it sounds like a pretty good situation to me.

Now, I don't have grounds to say that any of these people are or were ace/aro. In fact, I am pretty sure my uncle is straight, and all I know about my grandmother's relatives is that they chose to remain unmarried. There could have been all kinds of other reasons for that (I mean, if you were gay in that era, marrying your preferred partner was obviously off the table). But I sometimes see aromantics be worried about if they will be forever alone if they don't couple-up with someone, so I wanted to share some stories about non-coupled people who still seemed to have good, successful lives and not be considered strange.  And that even in my great-grandparents generation, there were options. I just had that revelation, and I wanted to share it.