How to be aromantic and respected for it?

[Guest sky]

I'm struggling tbh man

I tell nearly every. Single. Person I know that I am aro and ace. Hands down, I absolutely hate being confessed to as it brings my stress all the way to the top and causes me to break down. No matter how much I tell them I do not and will not have romantic or physical feelings toward ANYONE they keep on telling me, this has happened a handful of times already so I've been making a point to tell everyone when the topic comes up. 

I've told so many people and within 4 months 2 of my kinda close friends confessed to me with no remorse for how I felt about it. They tell me out of no where and act so chill about it while I am having a mental break down after the smallest inconvenience.

I'm also extremely slow a recognizing people who like me, I tend to want to see everyone as a friend and nothing more and I think that's why some people like me? But I hate it so much afterwards.

I'm at a lost for words and I can't ask some of my friends since they all think it'd be nice to be in a relationship and not take it for granted. I don't think anyone of them really understand how it is not to like anyone. I really need some advice on how to keep people from confessing or liking me.

[HelloThere]

I have really no clue how to help, at that point if you’ve told them that you’re not able to feel that kind of attraction and they still ignore that, then I think you may need to look elsewhere for better friends. Or maybe just confront them, that’s probably a safer idea. I’m not able to help in this because so far I’ve had comparatively little adversity in this area.

[nonmerci]

If you tell them anw they ignore it, it probably means that they don't understand or don't think it is a real thing : a lot of people tend to understand things by comparing them to their own experiences so some allos think aros mean "romantically attracted to people but never been in love, it will change when they meet the one". Depending on how these friendships matter to you, you can try to talk about your experiences in more detailed ways, or send them links, or give th books about your identity (fiction or non-fiction) or other things that can make them understand what aro really means. If you already did things like that and they keep ignoring you though, I would advice to smowly put more distance between you and them, while you look for more accepting friends.

[Holmbo]

You can never make anyone else do anything. It's terrible that people won't believe us when we say we don't feel that kind of attraction, it's happened to me as well. We can try to change that somewhat but it's not gonna be solved any time soon. My advice therefore is to try to figure out why someone elses attraction towards you make you feel so terrible and then address that.