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Things you've never understood about romance


Sooty Owl

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So at school A and B are dating ( same class) and I kinda got to see the whole process of them meeting, being friends, flirting???being friendly?? Idk, and being in a relationship.

Their relationship is really cute but the thing that confuses me is when did the romantic feelings happen??? I thought they were good friends???? How?? What??

Same with romantic stories too

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I mostly don't understand how do people realise that they're in love. Doesn't matter whether it's somone they already knew or not. I just don't get how! Like, what do you mean that you're in love with your bestfriend you have known for years?  What do you mean that you're getting butterflies in your stomach when you're with them? How are you sure, that "feeling different around them", doesn't mean that you just started to trust them more? Or what do you mean when you say "I want to date them" about a person you've met for the first time in your life? I really don't get it! What is the difference between platonic & romantic feelings?!?

Edited by Keith
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  • 2 months later...

Someone i know got a tattoo after a year living with his girlfriend, who he was convinced was the one for life. then within the next year they split up.

Got another one when he got married to a different woman. Now divorced and in another relationship.

I guess I admire the optimism but I'm not sure I understand this behaviour.  There seem to be a lot of romantic gestures that just don't make sense to me.

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My definition of insanity is falling in love over and over again and expecting a different result. And expecting to walk out while still affluent for that matter.

Edited by SkyTuneRein
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10 hours ago, roboticanary said:

Someone i know got a tattoo after a year living with his girlfriend, who he was convinced was the one for life. then within the next year they split up.

Got another one when he got married to a different woman. Now divorced and in another relationship.

I guess I admire the optimism but I'm not sure I understand this behaviour.  There seem to be a lot of romantic gestures that just don't make sense to me.

Didn't understand this even when I experienced romantic attraction! Even less so when someone gets a whole portrait of another person tattooed on them. It's just.... Not for me.

.

Myself, I never understood the emphasis on anniversaries. Especially people who did several monthiversaries. Especially people who kept track of first date, first kiss, first time having sex, etc. So many dates to keep track of! I'm just not really a time-oriented person. Wasn't important to me even when I was dating.

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I never understood why someone entering a relationship means their friendships will change. 
I never understood why a new girlfriend someone has known for two weeks is more important to them than their friend of several years. 

I also cannot understand changing your looks just for your partner. Some people won't cut their hair if their partner doesn't like it. Why? It's your hair. 

Edited by Procrastinating
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This is very specific to hetero-monogamy but I see so many social media posts where people are like 'I would NEVER let my spouse have a close friend of the opposite sex' and I'm like why???? Do you not trust your partner???

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2 hours ago, Harvest said:

This is very specific to hetero-monogamy but I see so many social media posts where people are like 'I would NEVER let my spouse have a close friend of the opposite sex' and I'm like why???? Do you not trust your partner???

That, or they are projecting (so they don’t trust themselves around someone of the opposite sex)

I always get sad when I see posts like that, because it means this person will demand their partner to cut ties with a very good friend. Great.

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  • 1 month later...

I never understood the need to lay out one's romantic problems before a huge audience of strangers. And not even in a "pity me, I'm so miserable" way, but in this brazen "I deserve better" way.

There's an article ‘My husband used to be hot. If I met him now, would I still fancy him?’ in The Times (wasn't this a quality newspaper some time ago?).

It's behind a paywall sadly, but I read the full article since a friend sent it to me. If you think that this is just a clickbait title and the actual content is more self-aware... no, it's not.

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I could endlessly discuss that. Romance is really a non-sense to me.

Since amatonormativity is embedded in most cultures but my aromanticism has always been a part of me nonetheless, I suppose that I didn't escape this normative structure, instead, I ineluctably shaped it in an aromantic way, from my personal divergent perspective. When I was just a child, nothing was wrong with this, I wasn't aware of my noncomformity yet, I simply adapted my personality to my observation of common standards, but growing up made me realize this. Actually, aromantics claim to be because they define themselves in opposition to this "norm", and it's possible because of their different interpretations of/feelings about it. For example, I assumed for a long time (I've just lived for 15 years but don't mind) that romance was good friendship and sex. I did great with that, but then heard about "friends with benefits" and wasn't able to figure out the difference from romance. Also, when I entered teenage and most of my fellows began to be obsessed with "crushes", I was something like 12 or 13, but I immediately assumed crushes were persons you craved having sex with. In fact, I couldn't assume anything else, what else would make people so crazy about someone they don't know anything of except the way they look ? I started to be confused at that time. It was so ridiculous and uncomprehensible that you could feel a "romantic" connection with a complete stranger, especially celebrities. They've never ever met them ! What makes them special in these person's eyes ? Even now, this remains a mystery... Personally, I'm a teen but have never experienced crushing on someone. I did experience crushing on someone in the way I thought crushing was at first, but that's another thing. It doesn't mean I've never bonded with someone I wanted to know more about, but this was for a reason : this person shares my opinions, they're calm, they're not too excentric... Inversely, when my classmates had crushes, it was never the result of an attraction towards one or several of their qualities, but entirely random, based on nothing but "just a feeling". Once I started to look into aromanticism, I discovered "demiromanticism", which basically means "feeling a romantic attraction towards someone only after developing a significant bond with them", I believed it to be the norm for literally 15 years !  

Edited by Themathlover
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  • 3 weeks later...

How can people in a romantic relationship go from utterly adoring each other to loathing each other's guts so quickly? I get that they don't want to be around each other after a break up, but it's like every merit they ever saw in the other disappeared the moment they broke up. Of course, sometimes the other person really was pretty nasty, but most of the time they're both good people who just stopped being compatible or weren't in a good state for a romantic relationship. 

Maybe it's just my particular group of friends, but the way they talk about their exes, you'd think they dated the devil himself. Why it so hard for them to say that things just didn't work out and leave it at that? 

 

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18 hours ago, Rather be Reading said:

How can people in a romantic relationship go from utterly adoring each other to loathing each other's guts so quickly? I get that they don't want to be around each other after a break up, but it's like every merit they ever saw in the other disappeared the moment they broke up. Of course, sometimes the other person really was pretty nasty, but most of the time they're both good people who just stopped being compatible or weren't in a good state for a romantic relationship. 

Maybe it's just my particular group of friends, but the way they talk about their exes, you'd think they dated the devil himself. Why it so hard for them to say that things just didn't work out and leave it at that? 

 

Psychologists call this "splitting". It's when one can't understand or tolerate the complexities or uncertainties of complex beings, a bout of cognitive dissonance causes mental upset. I think it's also when one is addicted to somebody, as in lust, but otherwise can't deal well with them in other social situations. Lastly, there is personal or emotional insecurity, maybe jealousy, where one feels vulnerable or their relationship is in jeopardy or they see a threat to their wellbeing, with their partner at the centre of it. Frustrating...for us too.

Edited by SkyTuneRein
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1 hour ago, SkyTuneRein said:

Psychologists call this "splitting". It's when one can't understand or tolerate the complexities or uncertainties of complex beings, a bout of cognitive dissonance causes mental upset. I think it's also when one is addicted to somebody, as in lust, but otherwise can't deal well with them in other social situations. Lastly, there is personal or emotional insecurity, maybe jealousy, where one feels vulnerable or their relationship is in jeopardy or they see a threat to their wellbeing, with their partner at the centre of it. Frustrating...for us too.

That's very interesting, and definitely clarifies some things. Thanks for the explanation! 

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The need to be constantly joined at the hip. Talking every day. Always knowing where the other person is, with who and what they are doing. Spending every waking hour together, it just seems so exhausting

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28 minutes ago, rob said:

The need to be constantly joined at the hip. Talking every day. Always knowing where the other person is, with who and what they are doing. Spending every waking hour together, it just seems so exhausting

100% it is.

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The idea that you should change in order to be in a relationship. There's a difference between repressing your personality and making reasonable compromises. Luckily I've seen a shift from this recently, but I've also seen it re-surging in the alpha male type stuff.

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On 2/25/2023 at 1:28 PM, DeltaAro said:

There's an article ‘My husband used to be hot. If I met him now, would I still fancy him?’ in The Times (wasn't this a quality newspaper some time ago?).

ah, the british press. to be honest by their standards this is quite good, i mean, she doesnt seem to accuse her husband of being a communist or imply he is some violent threat to civil society.

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  • 3 months later...
On 3/19/2023 at 8:46 PM, roboticanary said:

ah, the british press. to be honest by their standards this is quite good, i mean, she doesnt seem to accuse her husband of being a communist or imply he is some violent threat to civil society.

Yes, the entire idea of articles that worry about personal relationships just make me think “don’t they have more important crap going on?”

On 1/13/2023 at 2:54 AM, Procrastinating said:

I never understood why someone entering a relationship means their friendships will change. 
I never understood why a new girlfriend someone has known for two weeks is more important to them than their friend of several years. 

I also cannot understand changing your looks just for your partner. Some people won't cut their hair if their partner doesn't like it. Why? It's your hair. 

Exactly! Like the whole “relationship” tbh inf just sounds like a label you slap on with no noticeable changes. Generally I wonder like at what point that becomes a “relationship”, is that when they consider it one, or when they hold hands and crap? One the second one I couldn’t agree more, that just sounds like a jerk move. And honestly who cares what your partner thinks of your looks? Id keep what’s comfortable and say “screw you” to anyone that disagrees.

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Before I knew about asexuality or aromanticism, let alone that I was AroAce myself, I thought a romantic relationship was about being emotionally intimate with someone. I wanted to understand and be understood by someone else, for them to care about me and for me to be allowed to care about them.

All the other stuff, such as romantic gestures and possessiveness and having sex, I assumed were things one needed to do as part of being in such a relationship.

Now that I know emotional intimacy can be completely separate from a romantic relationship, my understanding is that romantic relationships *include* emotional intimacy but then *also* the romantic and sexual stuff in addition.

As for "exchanging spit", the idea never appealed to me before I kissed someone, and doesn't appeal to me in the abstract now either. However, when I was in a relationship and did kiss my partner, it felt completely different from how I had imagined before. I felt very close to that person, and so it somehow felt warm and comforting. But so never with tongue, I didn't like that 😜

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8 minutes ago, SimonB said:

Before I knew about asexuality or aromanticism, let alone that I was AroAce myself, I thought a romantic relationship was about being emotionally intimate with someone. I wanted to understand and be understood by someone else, for them to care about me and for me to be allowed to care about them.

All the other stuff, such as romantic gestures and possessiveness and having sex, I assumed were things one needed to do as part of being in such a relationship.

Now that I know emotional intimacy can be completely separate from a romantic relationship, my understanding is that romantic relationships *include* emotional intimacy but then *also* the romantic and sexual stuff in addition.

As for "exchanging spit", the idea never appealed to me before I kissed someone, and doesn't appeal to me in the abstract now either. However, when I was in a relationship and did kiss my partner, it felt completely different from how I had imagined before. I felt very close to that person, and so it somehow felt warm and comforting. But so never with tongue, I didn't like that 😜

I mean the whole thing was always just what I considered to be a bunch of weird and dramatic additions to a friendship. Those partners kiss, get possessive, and more emotionally close. I just don’t like the idea of a lot of that. Like when I imagine a friendship between people and then I add in all the stuff for a romantic relationship, it just looks more restrictive than before, because now they’re nuance and drama and other bull crap. 
Oh yeah, and kissing sounds disgusting, I’ve never looked at someone with the sole intention to kiss, that’s just so weird. I mean I’d possibly be okay with cuddling with friends but like they’re family in a way, nothing more. 

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