Love without attraction

[nonmerci]

That something tthztt was in my mind lately.

I am what I call "anattractional", which you can understand as : I don't feel any kind of attraction. I am even more positive about it cause I think I've felt romantic attraction once, platonic attraction once, so I can absolutely tell tthe difference between this and no attraction (just saying for people who are like "but you say this which means you feel attraction even if you don't call it that"... I don't see people say that here, but I've seen elsewhere).

 

However, though I feel no attraction, my feelings towards being loveless fluctuate. Some day I want to label my feelings towards my closed friends as love, sometimes I want to label it as not love. Let's say I am fluid in being a loveless aro lol (though not really as I still coonsider love is not necessary to be good and happy, so I still fit one of the loveless aro definition).

That makes me wonder : in the aspec community, we tend to link all to attraction, but is there love without attraction? Personally I think that yes : as I say, I am 100% anattractional, thatt doesn't fluctuate, contrary to my relation to love. But I was curious to see other opinions, and also what are your opinions about how love without attraction would fit in the aspec discourse.

 

[Neon]

I absolutely do not need any kind of attraction to feel non-romantic love. IDK about romantic love, as I have never personally felt that.

I feel quite a bit of non-romantic attractions (too complicated and messy to try to neatly label everything so I just call it non-romantic lol). But I don't have to feel those to feel love, and vice versa.

As for fitting into the discourse, I have a feeling people wouldn't like me to say that when talking about aromanticism. But it's my experience, and I think it's related to me being aromantic. My experiences are my own and I'm not going to shy away from being honest about them just to make people more comfortable.

Edited March 31, 2023 by Neon

[Atypique]

I don't really know what you say by no attraction, because I've kind of always defined love through attraction (it's quite an "easy" way to define and organize things).

However, I think I understand it in some way, I just never thought about it before. Tell me if I get things wrong.

I thought that we got friends through platonic attraction, but with your experience it seems like it's not the case. As for me, I do feel platonic attraction at the beginning, with some people in particular, but there is also this thing like family and long time friends when it's not attraction because it's not a will to know the person better it's just "oh wow I love that person I would be sad if they died". 

So yeah, love without attraction exists for me in cases like that.

[Keith]

Considering how many types of love are there, I think that love without attraction is definitely possible. 

Also I think, that it might be something I have already felt before, but I didn't know how to name it.

[nonmerci]

9 hours ago, Atypique said:

I thought that we got friends through platonic attraction, but with your experience it seems like it's not the case.

I'd say it's like being ace and has sex, or being aro and romantically dates : it is not the most common but nothing stops it from happening. Attraction is a feeling and friendship a relationship. Usually they go hand in hand, but it is not a necessity.

 

Personally, I don't feel platonic attraction cause I don't met people and think "wow I want to be their friends", and because I don't have anything that pushes me to continue a friendship with a specific person, in the sense that I don't miss them when they are not there. That makes it more difficult to pursue friendship cause I can stay weeks without thinking about my friends, so harder to keep contact. A common experience of aplatonic people in friendships is being told that we don't initiate enough. I know that so I try to initiate, as I still enjoy my friends company, but it is not something that comes naturally as it did when you feel attraction, if that lakes sense.

 

At least that's how I understood it after talking with both alloplatonic and aplatonic people, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Anyway tuanks you all for your answers, very interesting!

[Queerdo]

If I had to describe my long-term relationship in one word, it's "cozy." It helps that they're easy on the eyes (and ears, and nose, and brain for that matter) but attraction isn't really what our relationship is based on.

Love and attraction are both ambiguous words. I'm firmly in the "love is a verb" camp as I experience it. I choose to make commitments of care to people I consider family. Attraction isn't a verb, and the "I want..." interpretation freaks me out. I'm starting to wonder if my skepticism there has something to do with the way my brain is bent. I have intrusive thoughts and feelings all the time, not all of them are worth chasing.

[Atypique]

2 hours ago, nonmerci said:

 

Personally, I don't feel platonic attraction cause I don't met people and think "wow I want to be their friends", and because I don't have anything that pushes me to continue a friendship with a specific person

I know that I feel this kind of attraction from time to time, but it's quite rare. Thank you for the new introspection !

2 hours ago, nonmerci said:

That makes it more difficult to pursue friendship cause I can stay weeks without thinking about my friends, so harder to keep contact

I see what you mean here. I'm not aplatonic, but I did exactly this when I went out with someone. It's cool when you see the person, we can appreciate that, but it's also cool without and thinking about them and texting them all the time is a bit of a burden

[Fox]

On 4/1/2023 at 1:47 AM, nonmerci said:

Personally, I don't feel platonic attraction cause I don't met people and think "wow I want to be their friends", and because I don't have anything that pushes me to continue a friendship with a specific person, in the sense that I don't miss them when they are not there. That makes it more difficult to pursue friendship cause I can stay weeks without thinking about my friends, so harder to keep contact. A common experience of aplatonic people in friendships is being told that we don't initiate enough. I know that so I try to initiate, as I still enjoy my friends company, but it is not something that comes naturally as it did when you feel attraction, if that lakes sense.

I related to several parts of what you said here, I think I'll look into the term aplatonic. Thank you ^^

To answer your question, I think it is possible to feel love without attraction. This is just a budding idea, but I'll put it out there. Maybe attraction is a subset of love? Like love can be a deep connection between two individuals, and attraction is just a particular form of that. I do think it often does lead to love, but I wouldn't say it's impossible for love to form without, especially with how varied people's experiences are, in, well, basically anything. I think this fits into the aromantic discourse by challenging our society's definition of love and expanding the ways people do, or don't, experience it. I think that it also aligns with the idea that one can enjoy romance while being aromantic, as in attraction isn't inherent in enjoying something. So, attraction isn't inherent in enjoying the deep connection of love.