Stop.

Holy crap I just placed bids for #pascon meet and greets for jensen and jared. I shall now start freaking out for the next 18 hours until the auction closes

always difficult for me

i wonder how aromantic people deal with loneliness

not just, you know, the standard loneliness where you feel like you need someone’s company

but the inherent “emptiness” associated with not being understood by a lot of people, or always never being first in your friends’ minds because they don’t see your friendship as better than their romantic relationships.

the loneliness associated with the general stigma against “not being able to feel anything”, not being able to fall in love and get married, not really, not like how others would want to experience some day.

of wanting people to just understand and acknowledge that you exist, that how you think and feel is valid, and you’re not any less of a person and should not be valued less just because you can’t feel the same way most people do.

that you need relationships too, and companionship, and to be loved. just not in the way most people feel, but that doesn’t make it any less of a need.

i wonder how aromantics are supposed to deal with all of this, honestly.

Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!

my neighbourhood has never had an ice cream truck. in the summer, we have the knife sharpening truck. it slowly circles the block and rings its ominous bell. i have never seen someone interact with it. it may be that only those marked by death can see it

youtube.com/watch?v=tc-jMrxgPsw&t=47s

Some people just never get how imprudent l important this is.

i really wish platonic relationships were more important. i’m tired of losing friendships because i’m less important than their significant other. i hate that i’m automatically not as close to my friends because i’m not the person they’re dating/sleeping with. and i hate how whenever i complain about it the response is “you’ll find someone too someday!” like no I shouldn’t have to “find someone” to feel loved and important, maybe we should stop promoting investing all your time and effort and physical and emotional intimacy into one romantic/sexual partner idk

Agreed. I’m the first one they call after a break-up and the first one they ditch when they hook-up. Then they don’t want to hang because it can’t/won’t be a double date.

Honestly my biggest problem with being ace is not being anybody’s bae. Like, everybody seems to have that one person they always call first. And who is the first to get their claim on free time. I’m not even jealous, I mean, good for them, but it’s really fucking lonely being the only person who’s been single for 25 years.

Being an Aromantic Asexual is Weird

Being an aromantic asexual is weird. We defy not one, not two, but three societal norms; heteronormativity, compulsory sexuality, and amatonormativity. It gets even weirder when you’re indifferent (even favourable!) when it comes to sex and romance because you think your experience is universal, that everyone feels the way you do. It’s not feeling wrong and broken and out of place. It’s feeling normal, and then realizing that you aren’t.

Thinking (read: assuming) that you’re straight for most of your life and then finding out you’re not is weird. Mostly because once you realize you’re not straight, it dawns on you that you feel the same way about boys that you do about girls and non-binary people. And then you wonder if you’re pansexual because they’re attracted to all genders, and you have to be attracted to someone, right? And then that thought is immediately dismissed because you don’t feel attraction, at all. But it doesn’t stop you from contemplating every other sexuality and romantic orientation, because you’ve been taught that everyone wants sex and romance.

And then you remember: you like sex and romance in fiction. You like seeing your friends in happy, healthy, consenting relationships, and you’d always assumed that one day, you’d be in one too. But you’ve never pursued one. You never had more than a fleeting interest in boys, and lingering but still platonic affection for your female and non-binary friends. Those “crushes” that you had in elementary school? Maybe not crushes after all, because God knows you haven’t had one in nearly eight years. The most powerful feelings you’ve had for another person have been squishes so intense that you had to look back and question if it was actually romantic attraction (spoiler: it wasn’t).

And then there’s that epiphanic moment when things start to fall into place. Why you were always so vehement that soulmates could be platonic too. Why the idea of loving someone more than your best friend is incomprehensible (because romantic love is always shown as being more. Hello amatonormativity). Why when you ship fictional pairings, there are people you want to get together romantically, people you want to be friends so bad, and the ships that you like the most are the ones that could go either way. Why you desire emotional closeness and intimacy with the people in your life, but that had always been conflated with sex and romance so you wondered if what you wanted was more than friendship. Why you want to take the expression “more than friends”and burn it to the ground because there is no vocabulary for friendship that exceeds “best friend” without crossing over into romantic and/or sexual territory.

You realize that your ideal relationship isn’t necessarily romantic. It’s best friends who cohabitate and snuggle and hold hands and go on adventures to the library together. Kissing and sex? Well, that’s more of an afterthought. A “yeah, that’ll probably happen somewhere in there.” An assumption, because you’ve been taught that primary, monogamous relationships are always romantic and sexual. You reflect and see that there are very few things that you see and inherently romantic, and that there is a lot of cross-over between things you consider platonic, sensual, and romantic. A grey area that you can’t define.

Being an aromantic asexual is weird, because while I’ve always said that you don’t need romance and sex to be happy, I now realize that it applies to me too.

______________________

Note from mod fitz: This has to be one of the most moving descriptions of this I have ever read. This exactly describes how I felt coming to the realization that I was not straight, and I think had I read this when I first began questioning it would have made things go a lot smoother for me. Thanks so much for submitting!

Social events with friends are slowly turning into a study in frustration and loneliness. An evening with friends now include their partners. Don't get me wrong they are great people (the partners); but a girl can only accept witnessing so many public displays of affection before she feels really uncomfortable and fairly ignored. I've even been skipped on the invitation list because I would arrive unattached. Worse, friends have canceled plans with me because their partner has suddenly become available. I thought I felt loneliness before but this is a whole new level.