What made you question(?) if you were aromantic?

[Bumble_Bee_]

So, for me it was a toxic relationship, and after that, romance just didn't appeal to me.

I'm not asking you to share if you aren't comfortable telling, but if you are, I'd love to hear(technically read) it!

 

(i kept seeing this and entirely forgot i made it-)

Edited January 7, 2022 by Bumble_Bee-

[nisse]

no one specific thing. i always had it tickling in the back of my mind: from making up crushes and sincerely believing that's what all my peers did, to saying yes to any old date bc i didn't realise most people are at the very least somewhat interested before agreeing to a date.

i kept a diary as a teen, and when i learnt of the term aromantic there's tons of entries of me desperately hoping i wasn't, but i kind of knew as soon as i read about it. (i'm very happy now, thankfully! but those first few years were rough)

[Samu]

I actually grew up knowing nothing about the lgbtq community, so I have always thought of me as a cishet romantic girl/woman until I was 18. The last time I "fell in love" was in 2017. I liked a boy that was from the same school as me, tho I'm not sure if I just felt a strong aesthetic attraction or something. Anyway, after him, I wanted to have a partner and fall in love again. I just could never click with anyone and I'd never fall in love no matter what. 

Last year is when I started reading about the community. I suddenly found the aromantic label and started to read a lot about it. While going deeper and deeper, it all made sense. Why can't I fall in love? Why am I not feeling romantic love? Why do I want to do "romantic" stuff with some people when I don't like them romantically? And some other questions. That's when it all made sense. 

Honestly, learning about this and questioning the beliefs I grew up with (plus my identity) kind of saved me. I would wait all the time for the "prince" that would make my life better, but now I just want friends and a very strong connection with them. I don't care about romantic relationships, my family and friends are enough. I don't feel like I'm missing anything either, besides, the love I feel towards others is just as special.

[Collie]

I was wondering for a long ass time if I fit into the grey area. Then someone asked me out and my brain went...... nah. I'm in the grey area for sure, but I identify much more strongly with being basically aro now.

[Pyr]

I'm still questioning right now, though I think I'm arospec and ace.

When I was in thrid grade, people kept talking about having crushes on eachother. Neither of my friends had crushes, and I THOUGHT I had a crush but it was really a squish, thinking back. (At the time I thought that crushes were things people chose to have.) To be honest, I knew little about the lgbtq+ community and was not a supporter at the time. (I wasn't lgbtphobic either, though.) Later in 4th grade, a girl had a crush on me. When she told me, my thoughts were, "huh, I didn't know people could have crushes on the same gender!" Again, I thought crushes were platonic and didn't realise she was queer until a few years later.


I suppose in middle school people were talking about crushes and I never related. (I sat at a table with some girls in math class and helped them through the work, and they always talked about dating and boys which confused me.) Lots of people had crushes on me,which made me very paranoid and nervous. When people were dating each other, I was shocked ad thought we were too young to start dating.


Only a few years ago I e started learning about the community and terminology. When I saw the terms aromantic and asexual, nothing really clicked with me. Just recently I decided that I may actually be aro, but I want to give it time and see if I'm comfy with the label. I'm still rather young, so idk if I'm a late bloomer or something.

Sorry if theres any typos, I'm doing this on mobile. Hope I didn't write too much XD

[Arsenic]

It came just after discovering myself as ace. I was reading about asexuality and the I found the term aroace. I knew about aromanticism but I didn't even think about the option of not being allo until that moment, and then I started thinking about what does romantic attraction feels like, and questioning whether I had feel it before. It was very hard for me to finally set myself as aro because:

1- There is no accurate definition of romantic attraction and the "wanting to be in a romantic relationship with someone" didn't make sense to me.

2- I am dating the girl who has been my best friend for six years (but I don't see our relationship as romantic).

3- I thought that wanting emotional closeness with someone was the same thing as being romantically attracted to someone.

After some time of investigating, reading other aro's experiences, and listening to the feelings of some allos, I finally came to the conclusion that I am aro.

[MaxIsCosmic]

for me it was also a toxic relationship. 

[Guest ??????? ????]

i actually had off and on realizations that i'm not alloromantic through the years. the first time though, was when i realized that my first kiss was never special for me, or felt special. 

my reasoning for me denying it actually was "but i went through with it".

[a star]

I started questioning if I was aromantic at the same time I started questioning if I was asexual around the time I started seeing some people talking about asexuality and how it was different to not-asexuality. At first I was like 'this maybe seems like it a little bit could be me, but I don't think so.' Just familiar enough to keep poking at it, not enough for anything else. 

At the time, I'd developed really strong feelings for someone I'd met in person after having been friends with them on livejournal for a couple of months, and I had no kind of real idea or conception that allosexual feelings could be different from alloromantic ones, so I was like 'this can't be me, because I had these feelings for this person', so I wasn't getting anywhere for a while. And then I found the concept of demisexuality. I had, in fact, developed feelings offline after meeting and talking to them in person, so that was it! yay!

And then I figured out that I didn't, in fact, have sexual attraction. And then later decided that, because I had only experienced demiromantic attraction once and because I had found the experience overwhelming enough that I felt it negatively affected the actual relationship and didn't want to feel it again, I decided that I may as well id as aro.

In hindsight part of the reason nothing seemed significantly off when I was in high school was that I was also an undiagnosed autistic, so Everything felt kind of off to the extent that it was perfectly normal for things to feel off - or things didn't feel off, because it was so normal for me to be somewhat out of step with others that being aroace may as well have been an extension of it.

The other reason I didn't know what that I hadn't even heard about asexuality until I was in my mid or late twenties. I was so angry.

[alto]

I started questioning when I found out about squishes and QPRs at 17.

When I learned about squishes, I thought, this describes my feelings for guys perfectly!  And everything made much more sense.  When I learned about QPRs, I thought, oh cool!  I want one!

[Samantha Kaut]

 I think what made me question was a lot of things lol!

- The first guy I ever really had a "thing" with, I talked to him because I felt like I should? More than I wanted to. I felt like I was holding some big secret from him and I at the time didn't understand how I felt, but I knew I wasn't attracted to him and I had to break things off before things went further.

- All of my "crushes" have been mainly aesthetic and more of me fantasizing about a relationship, rather than actually being attracted to them

- I really don't care about not talking to anyone. I don't feel the need to be in a relationship with someone.

- I've had so many celebrity/tv/movie crushes because it's 1) aesthetic 2) just the idea

- Omg lmao. i remember in middle school I went to the movie theater, I think I was with someone? But for the moment I was alone. Someone came up to me and asked me if i believed in love at first sight and I was just in shock LMAO and was like yoooo buddy I have no clue

 

[Georgi]

First I've figured out I'm ace. After that, I kind of observed that, maybe I'm not that much of a romantic person, but in the beginning I didn't think I could be aro, because I told a guy a like him and I thought what I've felt for other guys was also romantic stuff. But then I've started seeing more aro content, reading aro books or even posts here or on AVEN and stuff like this. I was in denial for the longest with my romantic identity because of that happened in the past until I've started understanding that what I've felt was similar to what I've felt for my close girl friends and also to what lesbians describe as compulsory heterosexuality. Then also some feelings I had back then, when I thought I'm heterosexual, that didn't seem to make sense (like the fact that I have decided oh, it looks like I'm quite old, I should be searching for a romantic relationship; that I was as excited to meet my close friend back then as I was with this guy; that I was relieved when he rejected me, and that I really couldn't picture myself in a romantic relationship or I was thinking what the hell I would be doing if he felt the same; and the fact that I wasn't much affected by his rejection), started making actual sense. Sometimes I still question myself, as sometimes my feelings for some people are quite strong and don't know what to make out of them, but the moment I try to switch to romantic, things feel weird.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Georgi

[Just a Bear]

It was hearing about alterous attraction and wondering how that was different from romantic attraction. turns out, I feel alterous attraction, and not romantic attraction.

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Burgundy Ashe

[Sam Spade]

I figured out I was ace first, then saw someone on Aven mention aromantics and Apocalypse. I denied it for about a week before I admitted to myself that rolling dice to pick a person to have a crush on isn't exactly alloromantic. 

This whole journey started when I was reading random articles online to pass the time. Until then, I always figured I was the normal one and everyone else was just pretending romantic love was a real thing. 

[boba]

I was 17 and never ever had experienced a semblance of romantic emotion, yet there were incredible people surrounding me, and all of my closest friends were falling in love with each other or others. and I thought, oh I could be a late bloomer. But I couldn't help but wonder....what if I never developed romantic feelings at all?  

[FragileDear]

I started questing if I was aromantic shortly after discovering I was asexual (it took months later to be more accepting of my aromanticism). I started questioning if I was asexual when I was prompted in therapy. 

Edited January 12, 2022 by FragileDear

[Atlamillia Pixie]

The thing that made me question whether or not I was aromantic was trying to dating. Amatonormativity told me I should date, so tried dating in college. But trying to date  with A.) my aversion/ repulsion of being the center of romantic attention, B.) not understanding why I was expected to participate in social dating norms (e.g. holding hands, cuddling, etc.) and begrudging participating in them to make my partner happy, and C.) an inability to understand that a romantic relationship was not in fact a platonic friendship with sex was not a recipe for success nor happiness.  I am so, so much happier now.

[dewy]

i knew what aromanticism was for a while but never really questioned it. when i did i found i didnt really understand what romantic attraction was. from there i found out i probably haven't really experienced romantic attraction in the first place though i cant exactly go back and ask my past self who wasn't even considering the possibility of being aro.

learning about other identities besides just alloro and aro helped as well. i considered myself gray aro for a little while.

[Bumble_Bee_]

It's awesome hearing about all of your experiences! 

[roboticanary]

For me a big part of it was that I had always put romance off as something I would settle into when I was older.

I then had a rather terrifying realisation that I was older.

I still had no interest and started to realise something was up.

[Game]

I just thought "Am i aromantic?" one time lol, still kinda questioning ig.

[Bumble_Bee_]

17 hours ago, roboticanary said:

I then had a rather terrifying realisation that I was older.

I still had no interest and started to realise something was up.

This is by far the best realization I've seen

[SirBeastling]

For me, I went through high school and now most of college without being interested. I understood romance in movies and tv shows better than in real life because there was at least some formula or plot development that I could track and it would make some sort of sense. In real life, the idea of the strenuous labor of a relationship didn't seem worth it. I may have had some draw to people, but I have started calling them squishes because I thought of it as being a desire for a close friendship rather than something more.

[Bumble_Bee_]

Again, it's awesome hearing all of your stories!

[espop]

Literally never had a crush on anyone and the idea of dating and getting married always made me anxious