Advice...? :(

[Guest puppetland]

hi...

i've been trying to figure out if i am aromantic for a few years now...wondering if anyone has had any similar experience or has any thoughts or advice they can offer me. 

so...! yes. i am unsure if i am aromantic or just afraid or dense. my first ever relationship was abusive and intense and i was forced into doing a lot of things i wasn't comfortable with. i was discarded and left alone to slowly realize how poorly i had been treated. i was in two other relationships after that. the second was with a friend (still friends with them) and as soon as we made it official any feelings that i thought were romantic attraction vanished. same with the third, although this time i panicked shortly after we got together and i had to cut this person off and no longer am in contact with them. i've confessed to someone and then immediately after realized i didn't like them that way. i'm not sure i was ever romantically attracted to any of them in the first place.

in addition, i am autistic and i feel this heavily impacts my relationships and experiences in general, but particularly complicates this issue for me.

it is confusing. i don't feel as though i fully understand love or romance so how can i know for sure i don't experience that kind of love? i've felt strong feelings for people and greatly admired them and desired being close to them. i thought about them frequently and wanted to spend a lot of time with them. even flirted back when they flirted with me. but the thought of being in a romantic relationship terrifies me and can even make me feel sick. i do want close relationships badly, though. i like to be close to people and do things for them and devote myself to them. i am very affectionate with my friends and enjoy being physical with them. people often assume that my best friend and i are dating. in middle school (i am in college now) i honestly had someone come up to me and a friend and tell us they "shipped" us. that remark made me uncomfortable but i think it illustrates my point. sometimes the love i feel for them feels too strong to just be friendship but i don't consider it to be romantic love, thinking of it that way just isn't right and doesn't fit. if i was in a relationship with them i don't think anything would change. i feel like i want to spend the rest of my life with these people and they've told me they return those feelings. i don't know how well i'm explaining this.

i know platonic love can be just as intense as romantic love, and aromantic people can be in relationships, and recently learning more about it i've been relating to that label more. i'm curious to know if you think i've been experiencing infatuation (maybe not the right word but it's the closest i can find) or generally intense feelings for people and very strong platonic love or if i just can't recognize a crush/romantic love? my apologies if this is not very clear.

 

[DivineCyst]

Well, I will tell you that I am new here but sometimes before I realized I was aroflux, I felt the same way when I was in a relationship and when i had confessed to somebody. I am still in school but I do often get "shipped" with my best friend and that made me really uncomfortable, but we both just talked about it for a minute and now we laugh it off whenever somebody says something. 

I would say you're aromantic, not sure where on the spectrum(aro spectrum) but I would say. Of course don't take everything I said to heart because, I did say I was new here though haha.. 

I hope that helped ^^