Aromantic allosexuals in traditional cultural/religious background making the two work?

[DogObsessedLi]

I'd particularly like to ask aromantic allosexuals who might be from a traditional cultural or religious background how you "make things work"? I'm starting to think that a lot of my head-spinning has been because, I value the committed sexual encounter due to my traditional cultural/religious leanings, but often the only option this comes with is excessively romantic-orientated as the only "respectable approach". I feel like I have to either sacrifice my aromanticism (which is unlikely to work unless I find a very understanding partner, and trying to find that generally in alloromantics is difficult), or sacrifice my sexual moral convictions that are important to me. So I was just wondering about others on here who might be in a similar boat?

 

Note: This post isn't to discuss sex positivity or to attack anyone not from these traditional backgrounds, you are free to approach life by whatever values you feel deep down.

[roboticanary]

In my case I moved away from those moral convictions, sorry about that I suspect it is not the most helpful answer you could get but that is how things happened for me.

I left my religion, slowly drifted from that culture and changed how I thought about the morality of sex. I now go on the basis that commitment is a preference and if that preference is important to someone I respect it, but commitment itself is not an innately moral thing.

I also value a commited sexual incounter, I find it more enjoyable to have sex with someone I trust from a while of experience. I would much rather be in a long term but casual relationship if I could but to put it simply I sacrificed my sexual moral convictions a little.

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

I mean, the solution is pretty clear, isn't it? If what you're talking about is Christian ideals about sex before marriage, then obviously you're excluded from those values by default. It's not sex "before" marriage if you never get married. 

Though I gotta say I'm a little confused on what you mean by "traditional cultural/religious background". Those can vary quite a bit... In my religion there really isn't anything saying you can't have casual sex.

[DogObsessedLi]

I wasn't specifically talking about the ideals regarding sex before marriage, which obviously isn't specific to christian circles and is just one interpretive way of thinking. What I was specifically talking about is that often it's casual sex on one side, committed sex (be it verbally or marriage) wrapped up in romance on the other. I value sex with a partner who I trust, has built up my respect and I know I have built up their respect. I don't actually believe that the sex before marriage ideal solves anything that it is supposed to because it doesn't equate to this building up of care, trust and respect. I can't build this up in a casual relationship and for that reason see how the traditional opinion has come about however much I see the ideal as simplistic at best. But to have this "care and trust relationship" (which I'm going to call it), it always ends up implying romance or "sexual love" even in non-traditional circles actually. Also, even outside of traditional faith circles, romantic relationships can be very quick to expect sex before care and trust has built up. I remember being on OK Cupid and one of the questions said "how many dates would you need before you have sex?", the answers available where 1 up to 6+, which still isn't a lot in the case of care and trust!

[DeltaAro]

Ok, I’m gonna rewrite this post … try to phrase it a bit nicer / friendlier.

Romantic love is 100% irrelevant in really traditional cultural / religious backgrounds. Sexual commitment is the only thing that matters. If you love and trust your wife / husband that’s nice… but it’s not the deciding factor. We have to remember that marriages were usually arranged in the past, especially for people of higher status (Henry VIII – though certainly a bad man in many ways – his problem was that he was too much of a romantic).

In modern times, since romance has such an exalted, celebrated status, it gets pushed by liberal or LGBT-affirming churches / religious groups. Which you may confuse with the really traditional religious groups.

If you have a broad audience you can preach about love, including romantic love, but you simply cannot preach about sex (in some versions of paganism, esoteric Buddhism, etc. this may be acceptable, but they’re not mainstream).

Now your last post clearly states what you’re looking for. Sadly I don’t have a helpful answer – but still it has nothing to do with a traditional cultural or religious backgrounds.

Edited August 26, 2021 by DeltaV

[roboticanary]

On 8/24/2021 at 11:56 AM, DogObsessedLianne said:

I remember being on OK Cupid and one of the questions said "how many dates would you need before you have sex?", the answers available where 1 up to 6+, which still isn't a lot in the case of care and trust!

To be honest I always thought of dating sites as kind of expected to be used for casual hookups and like, maybe, leading to romance but very rarely.

Another thought with that is that romantic folks seem to have a whole load of wierd and stupid rules about what counts as a date, so 6 dates might end up also being months of communication.