How common/rare is being a late bloomer?

[Guest Aro♠️Ace]

Is being a late bloomer more common than being aromantic? Or is it rarer? I know that asexuality makes up 1% of the population, but what about aromanticism? What if you got a "crush" (but more like an obsession than actual romantic feelings) on fictional characters once or twice, does that mean you'll start getting actual, real world crushes? How rare is suddenly becoming alloromantic (late blooming) when 15 or older? I seriously hope being aro is more likely than late blooming, as suddenly turning allo doesn't sound very fun.

[YokaiDisarray]

Been through super similar. I've always had obsessions with fictional characters, but after like 19 years I realized they were almost all either me being a massive fan of the character, thinking they had a cool design/and or personality, or wanting some kind of queerplatonic thing--or even all of that. For me it wasn't a matter of "suddenly" becoming pure allo, it was a matter of recognizing what my feelings actually were. Even if you do discover you can have romantic feelings once or twice, you can still be aro. Gray-aro and demiromantic are things that are 100% still aro.

[roboticanary]

no idea,

he thing is, a fair few of the people I remember at school seemed to 'get' romance a bit later, e.g. 15 or older, or people I never knew of in a relationship turning up on my social media talking about their marriage. But its hard to tell if that was the desires blooming later than others or a matter of maturity. Some of the lads I knew couldn't hold a pen, let alone hold down a serious relationship. 

If most of those people did 'bloom late' then being a late bloomer would be far more common. But it could be that most of those people actually had some desire for romance before then but just never acted on it. 

As an aside

16 hours ago, Guest Aro♠️Ace said:

suddenly turning allo doesn't sound very fun.

surprises happen. If it does, thats fine, this is something that seems to happen to a large number of people, its probably not that bad. Just relax and deal with life as it comes.

[Guest Lurker]

15 is late blooming now?! Geez, I thought I'd be properly late in a few years or so (am 23 now). Personally, I blame my environment lol. My family is cool, but the rest of my town is too old or too young and have shitty personalities to boot. BUT...I've never had a crush on celebrities either.  I think.  Is that weird? What's it like to have a crush on a celebrity? How'd you know that you have one?

[Guest Lurker]

On 2/25/2024 at 11:00 AM, Guest Lurker said:

15 is late blooming now?! Geez, I thought I'd be properly late in a few years or so (am 23 now). Personally, I blame my environment lol. My family is cool*, but the rest of my town is too old or too young and have shitty personalities to boot. BUT...I've never had a crush on celebrities either.  I think.  Is that weird? What's it like to have a crush on a celebrity? How'd you know that you have one?

*of course being surrounded by geriatrics and people who're far younger doesn't make someone late, but it doesn't help.

 

But seriously am I late now??

[The Newest Fabled Creature]

The thing is, with the concept of a "late bloomer," it's meant to be considered someone being late to something "important," when romantic attraction and relationships aren't the most important things in the world, really (though, I'm not saying that to try to diminish the relationships that minorities have fought for). It can be important to an individual, but for the whole world to experience? No. In my opinion, there is no late bloomer, there's just people who experience romantic love later on, and people who never do experience it later on. You do seem stressed about potentially being a late bloomer right now, and so you need to ask yourself, "Is it important to you for you to experience romantic love? or "Are you afraid of not being aromantic "the whole time""? Because, I can tell you two things: (1) There are arospec people who experience romantic love and relationships rarely, or under certain circumstances. (2) There are people who "faking" being queer in a certain way wouldn't be worried about becoming "un-queer" or "not being queer enough," they would be more concerned about faking it right or enough.

Edited April 13 by The Newest Fabled Creature