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With regard to aromanticism, what are your regenerations?


Philbo Wiseroot

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We all have the time where we figured out we were part of the aro spectrum, and there are likely differences from before that time to as you are now. I once saw it written on the Doctor Who subreddit, /r/Gallifrey, as "what are your regenerations?"

 

So, with regard to aromanticism, what are your regenerations?

 


For me, not really much has changed. I grew up in a small town with not many people, so not many opportunities for romantic stuff. Before I figured myself out, I didn't feel like anything was missing, other than in small doses. But after, it was like I found my place in the world: a name to call myself.

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I no longer feel like I'm "supposed" to enter a big, scary, dysfunctional romantic relationship! For an embarrassingly long time, I thought that lust + possessiveness = a crush or romance, leading to outcomes about as nice as you'd expect. I've only come to terms with my aromanticism recently (which is funny because I've been trans and involved in the queer community for a few years), but in a word, I'd describe my latest feeling as RELIEF. 

 

I've also had to come to terms that I'm not going to get laid for a while because apparently sex is a dirty thing that requires romance to be fulfilling/meaningful. 

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3 hours ago, Pufflehugs04 said:

I still have no idea where this idea comes from.

Unless I'm mistaken I think that the whole "sex is gross" comes from Plato who wanted humans to abandon their more "animalistic" desires in favor of more "human" behaviors.

 

Romance becoming the gateway to acceptable sex continues to baffle me just because of the varying complexity and depth between sexual relationships and romantic relationships: it's like saying you can only have a platonic relationship with members of your family.

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I feel like my life has been pretty different since realising I'm aromantic. People who have known me for a long time say I'm a completely different person to what I was a year ago, but that I've developed into a well rounded adult haha

 

In extension to realising I'm not straight, I've become a lot more comfortable with being myself, and this has solidified my relationships with others. People who I had been friends with for a long time either became closer or more distant, with my closest friend telling me that some of these people have said some nasty things about me. I'm actually kind of glad because my suspicions about them (based off intuition) were proven right and I could let go of any delusions that they were good people.

 

I've also made really good friends at uni this year who are just as weird as I am and for the first time in a long time I don't feel alone. Having Arocalypse and tumblr has been a huge part of that, as well as developing some self confidence.

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I think the biggest thing for me is I find it easier to accept people who are not like me (ie: everyone else). I always used to think everyone else was weird/broken/stupid for their obsession with romantic relationship stuff, and their general inability to take friendship as seriously as I do. Now, I realize it's not that they're somehow deliberately being bad friends, they're just behaving in a way that seems normal to them, even if it seems wrong to me.

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36 minutes ago, SoulWolf said:

 

I think the biggest thing for me is I find it easier to accept people who are not like me (ie: everyone else).

 

That's a good point: I find that LGBTQ people tend to be more open minded when it comes to accepting others who are different from themselves, compared to the general population.

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I don't know if this is just because I got older or because I discovered aromanticism, but when I was younger I was sooo worried about not having any relationship experience. I thought there was something wrong with me and I felt like some kind of loser. Luckily I don't care anymore. I don't need to experience something just to fit in, I've accepted myself :)

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In the past 5 years or so, I've totally embraced my asexuality, aromanticism, and rare Myers-Briggs personality/gender combination (I'm an INTJ female).

I feel like the Truck of Regenerations hit me and I'm still picking myself up off the ground and putting them all in my wallet where they belong.

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20 minutes ago, AroArtisan said:

In the past 5 years or so, I've totally embraced my asexuality, aromanticism, and rare Myers-Briggs personality/gender combination (I'm an INTJ female).

I feel like the Truck of Regenerations hit me and I'm still picking myself up off the ground and putting them all in my wallet where they belong.

I've mostly (and basically invisibly) embraced my aroaceness. And I'm an ISFJ.

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"Invisibly" is definitely the right word.  But even though I've embraced all that it is still a constant struggle to keep all that in the forefront of my mind when dealing with other people in order to be more patient with myself and with others (and I work with the public so I deal with SO MANY people all the time I'm exhausted most of the day anyway).

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Before, I always had this odd sense of dread that one day I would have to enter a relationship to become truly happy. I also had a lack of confidence, thinking there was something wrong with me for not having a romantic partner or desire to find one.

 

I think I've gained a lot more confidence in the year since I've discovered all of this about myself. Plus, I feel a lot more free to just be myself.

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40 minutes ago, AroArtisan said:

"Invisibly" is definitely the right word.  But even though I've embraced all that it is still a constant struggle to keep all that in the forefront of my mind when dealing with other people in order to be more patient with myself and with others (and I work with the public so I deal with SO MANY people all the time I'm exhausted most of the day anyway).

What do you mean?

39 minutes ago, Blue Phoenix Ace said:

Before, I always had this odd sense of dread that one day I would have to enter a relationship to become truly happy. I also had a lack of confidence, thinking there was something wrong with me for not having a romantic partner or desire to find one.

 

I think I've gained a lot more confidence in the year since I've discovered all of this about myself. Plus, I feel a lot more free to just be myself.

Confidence is definitely one thing I've gained since I realised myself. I feel as though it's not wrong to be myself.

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I don't really know how the divisions would be made--I've always been pretty much the most flamboyantly aro person in existence, since long before I knew that aromanticism existed, so it's not really a matter of discovering something new about myself as much as discovering that there was a name for something that I'd already known about all along. 

 

I will say that it's definitely caused a shift in how I view relationships, however--it went from this adrenaline-inducing concept that was both terrifying and compelling in a negative way (pro tip to past Dodec: feeling sick to your stomach when you think about someone in that way does not, in fact, mean that you have a crush on them...), to something that was just naturally a nonissue, to "oh wait whoops I'm accidentally in a QPR with my best friend now", to the more nebulous sort of hypothetical relationship anarchy thing I kind of have going on now. This is going to sound either hyperbolic or sad, but for someone who was as antisocial as I was for a good portion of their life, the revelation that it is indeed possible to have consistent positive interactions with other human beings, and to even want those interactions to be a consistent and significant part of your life, is a pretty big deal, but also puts you in kind of a weird and uncertain place.

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  • 8 months later...

before i realized i was aro, i had been reading the selection series by kiera cass, and the entire plot basically runs on romance. i was midway through the second book and i literally could not finish it. i walked into the school library for the first time since realizing my aro-ness and it was like a switch had been flipped. every book i picked up had romance in it and i couldn't stand it. i used to be a big fan of ya novels; i would read any and all that crossed my path. now, i don't read them so much anymore because 90% of the time when i pick them up, i read the first paragraph, think "oh that sounds kinda interesting," and then see "and then she meets [insert boy's name here]" and i immediately put it down. literally the only time i'll read something with romance if it's gay or fanfiction. i'm just so tired of them shoving the same cis straight white tropes down our throats. they all have the same plot. i want some new, i want something different, i want something i can relate to.

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6 hours ago, aroacethetic-shitpost said:

before i realized i was aro, i had been reading the selection series by kiera cass, and the entire plot basically runs on romance. i was midway through the second book and i literally could not finish it

Ha.  Same, although it was a few years ago...  and same for ya novels...  If you have any interest in fantasy, I'd recommend Thorn by Intisar Khanani as something with zero romance (really, I promise... and her other books too!  They were so refreshing to find).  I could come up with a few others (mostly fantasy...sci-fi, maybe) if you're interested.

 

Anyway, with regards to the topic... discovering I was aro meant I went from trying to avoid being caught up in conversations about relationships to not minding it so much because I am very openly aro and take advantage of the opportunity to try to understand how other people feel, which usually means they end up being more in depth than "who do you like" (although to be fair to my friends, I don't think they would be that shallow anyway.)  It also means that I don't have to hide that I find some of my friends a little ridiculous with their romantic relationships.  (My experience with friends in relationships is probably different from most though, because I go to a women's college so my straight friends boyfriends' are all long distance.)

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On 15/09/2016 at 0:47 AM, April May March said:

I no longer feel like I'm "supposed" to enter a big, scary, dysfunctional romantic relationship! For an embarrassingly long time, I thought that lust + possessiveness = a crush or romance, leading to outcomes about as nice as you'd expect. I've only come to terms with my aromanticism recently (which is funny because I've been trans and involved in the queer community for a few years), but in a word, I'd describe my latest feeling as RELIEF. 

Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame

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