I’m quite young, but personally—I spent most of my childhood thinking a crush was just “friendship I’m embarrassed to want to continue,” so I avoided befriending girls I had “crushes” on just because I thought me doing so would be creepy or clingy. Later on, in high school, I didn’t like that I hardly had friends who weren’t guys, so I was happy to befriend someone who wasn’t, who I’ll call Z, even though being around them made me generally anxious.

When I found out about myself being aro (and ace), it lead to me gaining a furthered interest in LGBTQ politics and being less ashamed in trying to advocate for myself in platonic relationships.

Z also figured out that they were aroace, and we quickly and mostly-accidentally entered an intimate platonic relationship. Which… was a big mistake! I was under the impression that our aroace compatibility made us immune to having a bad relationship, but I ended up really liking their touch and acceptance, and not really liking being around them otherwise. Z wasn’t a bad person, so I didn’t really have a reason to be anxious around them, so I thought it might just go away if I tried hard enough. It didn’t. Just a pretty big personality conflict. Cue several months of feeling bad whenever we did anything non-cuddling, and feeling guilty that I felt bad during those times—which ended up being a lot, because Z stopped enjoying cuddling. I’m grateful to them, though, for being willing to talk to me about it, even if it took us a while to figure out what was wrong.

Since then, I’ve found other cuddle buddies that I feel much more secure around. And it’s still weird and surreal to see people in my friend groups having romantic desires, and dating people. Every time it happens I want to quiz them and be like “are you sure you’re not secretly aromantic and you just haven’t realized??” :P

It’s also probably why I like Lemon Demon and Tally Hall and Will Wood instead of, like, normal music that normal people listen to.

  • Gaywallet (they/it)@beehaw.orgM
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    1 year ago

    I’m aro allo and sometimes I wish I was aro ace instead. People really tie sexuality to romance in a ton of ways they don’t understand, and revealing that I’m aro often doesn’t go well unless the person is well versed in this subset of queer ideology or autistic enough to understand struggling with social concepts. It often makes pursuing sex rather annoying, because I’m kinda picky in who I want to have sex with.

    I’m not sure how to quantify how it’s effected my relationships. As I mentioned it rules me out as a potential partner for many, but so does any other number of factors such as my other queer identities, how I look, where I live, what language I speak and more. I try not to think about it too much because ultimately there’s not really anything I can do about it. I’d rather focus my thoughts and efforts towards what’s under my control and pursuing what makes me happy.