Fear of losing friendships with allos

[TheSpaceArrow]

Does anyone else get extreme feelings of loneliness and dread at the idea that your allo friends might drift away when they get a romantic partner? Especially if they're straight and the opposite gender? Of course, opposite gender might not be a thing if you're nonbinary. I'm agender but everyone sees me as female and it gets annoying to always specify so I don't bother. I've got a straight male friend, whom I've known since childhood but haven't seen him in around ten years, and he's actually really nice and fun to talk to. Unfortunately, my aroace ass has a giant platonic crush on him. I get filled with dread that he's going to fall in love with a girl, she's going to be really cool and they'll be perfect together, and he's going to prioritize her and I'll just become some girl he knows.

Ugh, this sounds so selfish of me. I feel bad because of course people deserve to fall in love and be happy. It's selfish of me to want them for myself and I can't even give them what they want.

And this happens with so many people. When one friend-crush ends and I think to myself, "Well, that was irrational of me. Glad that's over", it happens all over again. I feel so strongly that I question if I'm really aromantic, but once it's over I realize it's always been platonic, but then it happens again with a new person and I go through the same existential crisis. Like leave me alone, wtf!

Feelings, I swear. So inconvenient.

How do y'all cope with it?

[MondoBilby]

I don't really have platonic crushes, but I still relate to this a lot. I've often had the same feeling of dread you describe at the thought of my friends slowly drifting away into their own lives with their partners. I of course support them all the way, but I don't have too many friends to begin with and the ones I do have mean the world to me, so I naturally worry about that. It's not selfish, it's just feelings.

My best friend actually does have a partner right now, and that's what caused my worrying in the first place, but I'm lucky that he's an amazing friend and always puts effort into including me and making time for me. It makes me feel a lot better and more confident in him to know that even if he did end up moving away or something, he'll always make time to talk to me.

I just try to stay hopeful in my friends, and tell myself that even if it seems like they're changing or moving on, we'll never forget all the good times we had together, and deep down we'll always be grateful for our friendships with each other.

 

[.CORALINE.]

Omg I swear I felt your words deep in my bones, I obviously want my friends to be happy and sometimes I even ship them with their crushes/partners, but I see how things go when someone starts dating, I see they naturally distance themselves to their friends because they're so involved in the love story and eventually they ignore/disregard anyone else. Anothwr thing that scares me is their partner's jealousy, I fear my friends "get rid of me" because their partner don't want me around or so cose, they won't probably understand I'm harmless and I don't have any intention to "steal" their partner, even if I hug my friends or like to spend time with them I can only feel platonic love but it's hard to explain it, not everyone would believe it...

[MulticulturalFarmer]

On 1/2/2025 at 6:15 AM, .CORALINE. said:

Omg I swear I felt your words deep in my bones, I obviously want my friends to be happy and sometimes I even ship them with their crushes/partners, but I see how things go when someone starts dating, I see they naturally distance themselves to their friends because they're so involved in the love story and eventually they ignore/disregard anyone else. Anothwr thing that scares me is their partner's jealousy, I fear my friends "get rid of me" because their partner don't want me around or so cose, they won't probably understand I'm harmless and I don't have any intention to "steal" their partner, even if I hug my friends or like to spend time with them I can only feel platonic love but it's hard to explain it, not everyone would believe it...

Yeah I've dealt with that and I'm not sure what to do, or even how to "fix" such problems, as there's many angles to approach these issues, and even if I could provide one it may not work for you. For me, I have never really clicked with straight people because of how i see relationships (though some gay people are pretty heteronormative still) but with my gay friends who are in relationships I don't have to worry about being a third wheel or in second place, or sometimes poly people but in my experience finding a poly person who isn't super into partying and drugs is quite hard, perhaps because of my age lol.

 

I also have "dated" because my level of commitment is seen as a romantic and sexual type of deal for a great majority of non-LGBTQ folks lol. Granted i also sometimes want to try out relationships just to make sure i'm not actually into dating relationships, but that's more of a me thing not that i need it to prove that i can be aro.

 

Edited 6 hours ago by MulticulturalFarmer
Added some words

[tiger_hoods12]

It’s always scary making friends who are allo knowing inevitably most, if not all, will find relationships. Especially when you get really close to them. I used to feel this way all the time even before I realized I was ace aro. I didn’t really cope to be honest, I just would accept the reality that they were going to spend less time with me. If anything, no time with me. Which was always scary and sad. I know balancing romantic relationships and friendships are hard but I was it was ten times easier. I always got jealous or annoyed when the romantic interest comes to get my friend back.

I don’t know, I always try communicating with them when I feel like I miss them and usually, they try to set more time with me. It’s a hard adjustment. In my experience, eventually it gets better and you see them more again, but sometimes you’re a third wheel. To be honest, the way I really cope with it is knowing I’m okay being alone. I’ve always been okay being alone so when friends hang out with their significant other more, now I’m more like “Welp, we’ve been here before.” Like I’m alright with it now.