Let-me-be-ace - The Ace Me

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.

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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!

When it suddenly becomes your business

Things like this make me think sexual attraction is a joke.

i made some patterns to convert 1-tile stone paths to stepping stones!

Thank you beekeepercain for a great scene. It’s a lot like my own experiences. 

                      “So basically you just want me to shut up.”

                   “Basically I just want you to shut up and believe me.”

RIP Vine †

variant of The Path™ that matches the default dirt path 🌳

Yes. I'm horrible with this.

do you ever FEEL yourself being annoying but you CAN’T stop

So I asked my cousin not to out me as asexual, she has already...to her boyfriend without my consent when I was right there, to my family which she has come very to close on several occasions. So instead of acknowledging my request as a normal human being might, she throws it back at me and blames my current depressed mood for being touchy. Bitch you are not helping.

You need to find someone,” they say. “There is someone out there for you to make you happy!” They promise. “Look for your other half,” they chant. Am I half a person? Am I not enough as I am? Can I not depend on myself for my own happiness? I can enjoy music on my own. I can laugh and sing and dance on my own. “Poor thing, still alone?” They murmur. I don’t always want to be alone, you know. But I know I’m not incomplete. I am happy being who I am, and only I drive myself to be a better version of myself. I have found solace in the silence, and peace in my quiet thoughts. I wonder if the ones who beg me to find someone never had that, and I am sorry for them.

finish-the-hat-george (via wnq-writers)