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

[Jeeperz_]

when i found myself thinking, 'maybe if i try hard enough, i can make myself fall in love with her.'

[Gray_acie]

reading a book called loveless because my school librarian recommended it(she was cool aF), and there was this page where the word aromantic was used. asexual was used too, but that one was something I knew about, so I skimmed it. But Aromantic, I had never heard that word. well, as the book went on it explained the word more. and I just felt so...in place with this word. Also with the book in general, but that word just felt right, and I couldn't explain it. and now, a year later, I'm here. still thinking about it and reading that book over and over again, and still not sure, but feeling better when I use that word for myself.

[who_knocks]

When I realized I was asexual in the beginning of middle school I remember seeing aromantic and thinking that it was absolutely not me. I didn't have a reason to think I wasn't, I just irrationally disliked the idea (probably some underlying issues with amatonormativity honestly). I thought that my having always picked out a crush was a sign of being asexual and didn't question it further.

When a friend had a crush on me in middle school I felt extremely panicked and didn't know why, but I never really questioned why I was freaked out at the time either. Later, in junior year of high school I started going out with a guy I really did not want to go out with because I thought I had to give dating a try, and that's when I really started considering that maybe I am actually aromantic. I didn't get why I was so freaked out by him having a crush on me and I finally started researching and gradually accepted it. Within the year I grew to love the identity wholly.

Edited October 17, 2023 by who_knocks

[MondoBilby]

When my friends were all talking about crushes and I said I'd never had a crush in my life (and wasn't interested in having one), then one of my friends said "maybe you're aromantic". A few internet searches later, I realised I fit exactly into the descriptions of aromanticism. It felt like I'd unlocked a whole other part of me I had no idea about lol, it just felt so right.

[opal]

when my father told me it was just a phase and I would get over it. 

 

[Oko]

I have never needed to "be in love" or "be in relationship". But sometimes I was like *Why not?*. When somebody asked me about future, I imagined myself alone in my own flat/house with cat/dog. And it came true, I live alone with a cat😀

I don't like romantic movies/stories because it's boring for me.

I was in relationship but I didn't need to do "romantic things" and I said "I love you" to him just because he wanted to hear it😄

I love and enjoy being single.

That's why I'm asking if I'm aro or not🫠

[retrobeetism]

1) When I connected emotionally to people (which was already an strange occurrence) I didn't feel any of the physical things people associate with romantic attraction.

I do like romantic things. But when I form a bond with someone and wanna have something that from the outside may seem romantic, it's never accompanied by the physical manifestations of romantic love/attraction.  But, at the same time, those feelings still seem closer to the romantic than to the platonic, thus calling them queerromantic/pseudoromantic. But the typical  "butterflies in your stomach", "heart skipping a beat", "feeling nervous when you're around your crush", etc? That I never felt.

In general, I connected to people intellectually rather than emotionally.

2) I couldn't understand what my "friends" meant when they said they "loved"/"were in love" a person they barely have met.  To me love of any kind needed deep intellectual connection and knowledge of the person.

I remember ones when a girl I went to school with and was close to told me about this guy she "met" at the gym. He was, in her own words, the "the man of her life/dreams". When I asked her what was his name she told me she didn't ask him. So I asked her why didn't she ask his name when they talk. Her answer: "I never talked to him, but seeing him help the people at the gym (he was a personal trainer) made me fall in love".

It was as if she was speaking some undeciphered language. How was it possible for her to have a crush on someone she hadn't even once converse with?

[CoolK]

My whole introducing me post has my story in full basically realizing that all infatuation is not romantic and finding the microlable idemromantic.

[Helion]

What made me question my own identity was a friend coming out as aromantic. Tbh I feel like I have surpressed the thought of being aromantic because I did have a crush in early puberty (Which means nothing btw people, romantic or sexual attraction can very much change, ESPECIALLY during puberty), but when this close friend openly talked about his feelings it made me think about it and yup. Finally arrived at that conclusion.

[Raininspring]

This is a long story!

It was a lot of things that made me consider I might be on a spectrum. As early as high school, I had a hard time relating to my peers who were hypersexualized and very much into personal dramas motivated by romance and sex. People didn't seem to differentiate between sexual and romantic attraction and the exposure I had to media and popular culture only served to reinforce the false narrative that the two are meant to go hand in hand as a pair. I was quite confused in the fog of hormones during puberty and all the changes my body was going through. 

The biggest hurdle in the college years after high school was trying to make sense about whether I actually wanted romance and be romantic with another person or was I conditioned through my environment to believe that's what I was meant to pursue in life. I never dated or tried to date, and never experimented with sex-exclusive relationships mostly because I could never see myself sharing my body with someone I had no emotional attachment to. So I thought, OK, maybe I would like romance but only with a person I like. However, I ran into another conflict years down the line because I felt almost a complete lack of interest in meeting potential partners and/or talking to people who could be a potential partner. After that I went through back and forth of misery wondering if there was something innately wrong with me for not desiring marriage and children like most people do, or at least wanting to be with someone exclusively and build a future with them. 

About 2 years ago I started a new job that allowed me greater mobility in being around coworkers, some of whom who identify as queer, non-binary, and/or trans. I was pretty much a recluse and had gone through years of untreated clinical depression prior to getting this job, so to make the leap into the workforce and becoming more social was a huge step for me. I never consciously thought of the LGBTQIA+ community whenever I interacted with them and I saw it as more of a gift that, for the first time in my life, it felt like I was building friendships and getting to know people. 

Up until last year, I was still in the firm self assured boat of thinking I never pursued a romantic relationship anywhere with anyone because I simply did not want to and hated the fuss of romantic activities and behaviors between couples. Many times I experienced attraction towards several coworkers, but very often it left me confused as half the time I couldn't tell if what I was feeling was platonic, sexual or romantic attraction.

Only when I started reading All About Love by Bell Hooks, I began a semblance of understanding there are different types of love in the world and romantic love is only one of them. I had a vague remembrance that asexuality is on the spectrum but it was from googling the term I found aromanticism. After that I found the book Ace and Aro Journeys and reading it was like pieces coming into place. To me this isn't a "coming out". I've always been the same person, except before all this I didn't have the vocabulary to properly articulate in specifical terms what the hell I was feeling.

Edited February 4 by Raininspring

[eunuch unit]

It was the fact that I have always had commitment issues and that I never had crushes. (Or really was into anybody romantically.)

I sort of just passively engaged in relationships, and lost interest really early on, just cuz I wasn’t really into anybody.

[moopresence]

I got really confused thinking I had crushes on all my friends at the same time and then googled "what does a crush feel like" because I wasn't really sure what I was feeling. Turns out I just really like my friends in a platonic way and I'm aro.

[Ka_tie]

I started questioning that I was aromantic while I was in what I thought to be my first romantic relationship. I didn't realize until 7 months in why I was unhappy with the relationship, and it made me question a lot of things especially when I was discussing what was romantic with my partner. It was my first relationship and I had previously considered myself a romantic in my head but when I actually did the romantic things I didn't like it at all or I felt indifferent towards the situation and my partner at the time, and that was a big part of why I started researching about aromantics. I have realized now that my definition of a relationship is similar to a QRP. 

[algebraicresc]

I started questioning after getting my first squish on a girl (I’m also a girl). I thought it was a crush, which was a big deal because that would’ve made me identify as bi.
However I wasn’t sure if it was a crush because I thought it felt different from my previous crush (squish?) on a guy. Something seemed to be missing, i didn’t actually want to date her, etc etc. So I started looking into types of attractions and one day I discovered AVEN. 
The research/questioning process went on for a few years and during that time I had many more tertiary crushes. Once it became clear to me that all of them were tertiary, (and that i have very rarely, if ever, experienced romantic attraction,) I identified as aro. 

Edited April 5 by algebraicresc

[Xenvi]

i thought i was a lesbian because all the girls in my class just talked about boys and i didnt care. then i got some guy friends and they talked about girls. i still did not care