I'm questioning: help!

[Mariyeah]

If every time I get into a relationships with someone I thought I liked I start to feel romance repulsed not because I'm scared of the relationship itself but because I realize I don't like them romantically but prefer them as friends may I be aromantic or on the spectrum?

To give you a context: I thought that my last crush was the biggest I've ever had in the past ten years. From the start I was interested in him but I vividly remember that it became a "real crush" because at some point I thought: "Okay, maybe he can become a crush, maybe I can have a relationship with him, so I need to develop real romantic feelings". And they kinda developed? But even at that point if I imagined me and him in particularly romantic situations I felt kinda repulsed. Then we started dating but we broke up in less than a month because I realized that I didn't like him in that sense and started panicking. None of the romantic moments we had felt real to me, I didn't like them at all. It lasted so much just because I kept lying to myself. This was the last of others events which were all similar to each other.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Mariyeah

[dewy]

You may have confused your feelings for that person with a crush when in actually it was a squish (a desire to have a closer platonic relationship/create a platonic relationship with someone), it's very common with arospec (aromantic spectrum) people.

I would recommend reading up on some arospec identities and seeing if anything fits, as well as general aromantic experiences. This forum is a good place to do that. There is a list of arospec identities here, and the same website has other aromantic terms as well if you would like to look into that.

Good luck figuring out your identity, it can be tough. You don't have to figure everything out right away either, this kind of thing can take time.

Edited February 11, 2022 by crow
fixing link