A question for allosexual aromantics (: (as an asexual alloromantic person)

[Guest PurpleCat]

Hi! So I have been thinking about something recently:

I'm asexual and alloromantic, and something that helped me realize my asexuality was that my romantic attraction was "there" in a way any sexual attraction just isn't. Like when it comes to what society says about romance, I just get it (and wishes for the same) in a way I don't get what society says about sex. So I was wondering if any aromantics allosexuals have the same experience just the other way around? Did the attraction you do feel help you figure out what you don't feel?

Btw in thinking this, props to the aroaces for figuring it out without this to help. 🙂

 

 

[Sili]

Basically, yeah. When society talks about sex, I get it, when society talks about romance, I dont. I have spent a fair amount of my life assuming that when a song is talking about how great it is to be in love with someone, or talking about how it feels, they're exaggrerating, because I havent felt that.

Having said that, for me being one and not the other made it more confusing, as I confused sensual/sexual attraction for romantic love. What helped me figure out I was Aro was reading to other peoples experiences and realising I identified with a lot of what they were saying (along with the universe hitting me over the head while shouting this is why you dont want to date you dolt). So props on figuring out you were Ace by examining how you felt.

[Angrboda]

Yes, I can relate to that. It also helped when I saw a list of the types of attraction that a person might feel. Platonic, aesthetic, romantic, sensual, & sexual. Many of these are often bunched up into a single group, since many people feel them all together.

[aro_elise]

yeah kind of.  when i heard of split attraction i was confused because it's like:

-'there's sexual attraction, right?' -'yeah, i'm with you'

-'and romantic attraction' -'uhh you lost me'

so i was like, how can i know whether i feel romantic attraction if i don't understand what it is?  i see now how that should have been the answer right there.  and of course there's the 'maybe i just haven't felt that way yet' (as arophobic people like to insist) but it's like, i've found boys cute since i was like 7, but i've made it this far in life without wanting to date any of them whatsoever?  hmm.  (then i dated someone and found that i really, really didn't want to.)  and like @Sili said, it was helpful to talk with other aros, you know, totally relating to their experiences as i didn't when allos talked about that stuff.  

[roboticanary]

not really.

any advantage made from having sexual attraction to compare with not actually that useful in that I also experience other forms of attraction, the sorts that make me want friendships, or attraction to beauty, aesthetics, that sort of thing. So I could make the same 'this one is here but this one isn't' in a number of ways

If it was of any help that advantage was more than outweighed by the fact that asexuality is so much more well known and I had to find out aromanticism through people I know who are ace. so that slowdown effect meant I took a lot longer than I think i would have done if I was ace.

 

[boba]

same with robo, not really tbh. I realised my lack of romantic attraction first. all of my friends had significant others by junior year of highschool, and I was starting to panic. Because, they all had years of crushes and I had nothing (but lies, technically.) I ended up transferring schools mid highschool, and I thought that this would be my moment. But it wasn't, bc although there were tons of guys some with great appearances and some with great personalities, I felt nothing at all. And then, I started to realise that I may never feel anything at all. 

 

Took a bit to be ok with that, but fast forward for years, and I can use the term pretty comfortably. My sexual realisation came a year after my romantic one, but that was more likely bc of internalised homophobia.

[dewy]

I did not find out exactly that way, as I thought I was aroace at first. But I did start questioning my aroness because I realized that romantic attraction really didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

I knew you could experience sexual attraction without romantic attraction, but it just didn't click, because the "default" was experiencing romantic attraction and I didn't question that for a while.

[Venomist]

For me it was something I started realizing after I entered a relationship and it was so confusing. I liked them as a person a lot, they were attractive to me so I didn't understand what's wrong. Before I just thought that songs and movies were just weird and exaggerated but nope.

[merlindfluorite]

No I didn't figure it out until I stumbled on the definition of aromanticism one day. People can be interesting and sex could be fun. I just figured I hadn't met the 'one' yet. A lot of my ex-partners had complained about my lack of commitment etc.

Then when I found the aro label it really hit me like a bolt.