#aro thoughts
alloaro actually means hot as hell thx for asking <3
as an aroace I agree. alloaros are hot asf imo
Time for another aro positivity post because we all need and deserve it!
- Shoutout to aros who experience some level of romantic attraction, shoutout to aros who feel zero romantic attraction
- Shoutout to aros who feel deep love for their friends, shoutout to aros who don’t put emphasis on platonic relationships
- Shoutout to aros who partner up, shoutout to aros who don’t partner up
- Shoutout to aros who want to reclaim the word “love”, shoutout to aros who want to reject the word “love”
- Shoutout to aros who are also ace, shoutout to aros who aren’t ace
- Shoutout to aros who are out, shoutout to aros who are closeted
- Shoutout to aros who are accepted for their identity, shoutout to aros who receive hate for their identity
- Shoutout to aros who feel like they belong in queer spaces, shoutout to aros who feel rejected in queer spaces
- Shoutout to aros who feel included in aspec spaces, shoutout to aros who feel disconnected to the aspec community
- Shoutout to aros love being aro, shoutout to aros who hate being aro
- Shoutout to aros who love romantic content, shoutout to aros who hate romantic content
- Shoutout to aros who use microlabels to define their orientation, shoutout to aros who just use the word aro
- Shoutout to aros who have known they’re aro all their life, shoutout to aros who found out later on in life
Shoutout to aros
“Being aro is not inherently a tragedy, and we should stop portraying it as such” and “amatonormativity can make being aro an incredibly isolating experience, and we should talk about that more” are statements that can and should coexist.
I had this thought today: if someone where to ask me out, like a random person I barely knew, I would most probably feel very uncomfortable about it, even if they were the coolest or prettiest person in the room (no matter their gender). I would politely say no and excuse myself but this got me thinking…
What if someone that’s close to me where to ask me out on a date? Like one of my friends… would I agree? Would the thought of it being romantic make uncomfortable but us going on a date PLATONICALLY make me feel more at ease? Yeah, probably… has anyone else felt this? Is this a thing? When you like going on dates but not when it is in a romantic way?
you know what’s better than being told you’re pretty and beautiful? someone telling you they love your brain and admire your intellect. you’ve bought me. I’m all yours now
but how could i not love you when you turned my whole life around, make me feel alive and spark something inside of me i have never felt before?
this but make it ✨ demiromantic ✨ for me
tbh as an aro I feel like the best kind of ships are the ones that you can look at from a platonic angle. As in if these characters were strictly friends with nothing romantic going on between them, would their dynamic still hold up and be enjoyable? if the answers yes then that’s probably why the ship works and is fun but if the answers no like whats the point.
honestly some of y’all want a significant other so badly and can’t understand why you can’t find one, but have no sense of boundaries or healthy expectations of what a relationship is like. in a committed long-term partnership you get left on read, you wait for texts back, and you can forget about each other when you’re busy. sometimes you fall asleep without saying goodnight and sometimes you’re too caught up to text each other before 6pm. that’s how it is. thinking that you can’t be deeply, beautifully in love and still wait more than “1.75 hours” for a text back is such an unhealthy and unreasonable expectation of what love is, and you shouldn’t be in a relationship if you can’t allow the other person to exist on their own apart from you. if you’re projecting your anxieties and insecurities onto a partner who doesn’t even exist yet, then you aren’t ready for one.
YES! omg someone finally put it into words. I was literally talking about this with my friend yesterday and we agreed that the over-romantization of romance has made people have a very poor and toxic idea of what a romantic relationship actually is. glad to know more people agrees
i think being in love w your friends is such a overlooked aspect of true friendship like wow i would actually lay my life down for you. i feel no romantic feelings for you but i would actually hold you forever and i would die with you if i needed to. anyway
talking to a friend today I realized that the reason I haven’t dated anyone yet (despite enjoying romance) is literally bc I haven’t liked anyone that way. And I’m not one for blind dates or dating apps or any other express way to find a partner . The only time I have liked someone that way, in the past, it wasn’t reciprocated and I haven’t experienced those kind of romantic feelings in years. So yeah… the demiromantic struggle ✨
romance is a social construct.
for real tho. romance is something humans have created with its standards and expectations. hence a social construct.
I’m gonna make something REAL CLEAR.
As an aro, I often preach that we need to be working together, (as the aspec community and as a society in general,) to dismantle the norms that say every person wants/needs a partner, that everyone needs to get married, and that those things are requirements for happiness. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, especially because these norms harm many different groups of people, not only aspecs.
What I’m really tired of, is allos automatically assuming that because I preach these things, that I hate marriage, romance and love, that I have a vendetta towards people who engage in those things, and that I want to make alloromantic people feel guilty for being alloromantic.
It’s another classic case of “it’s not about you, it’s about the systemic norms we all live with and experience in day-to-day life.”
I hold no hate or dislike towards anyone who is in a romantic relationship, married, or engaging in other romantic activities with a partner or partners. Really. I have two parents and many family members and friends that are happily married and in love.
That being said, I don’t want to engage in romance and I am not alloromantic, so these norms impact me in a profound way that’s sometimes hard to describe. I want to dismantle the norms because it will make my life and many other’s lives a lot easier. This does not mean, however, that I support the absolute collapse of the components of these norms.
If some people’s thoughts didn’t always jump straight to “this person’s views and opinions are attacking me and my lifestyle,” when engaging in conversations about amatonormativity and the norms that come with it, then they would recognize that most aromantic people actually support romance-favourability.
Know the difference between dismantling the systemic romantic normsandabolishing the entire system of romantic components and ideas whichencompass said norms.
The former is an effective way to make many groups of people feel more comfortable and less alienated, and the latter is just as ineffective and discriminatory as pushing for romantic norms to be continued they are now. As aros, most of us just want to feel like we belong in a society that constantly reminds us that we don’t. It is not our goal to make allos feel guilty, or to radically change society’s ideals to fit an inherently romance-negative narrative.
We just want to dismantle amatonormativity in society, by changing the mindset and narrative to a way of thinking that does not discriminate between alloromantic and aromantic people. That’s all.
Here’s your friendly reminder for the day that each aro falls somewhere on on the romance favourable/neutral/repulsed scale, and that it’s different for everyone. No aro deserves to be shamed for wanting to engage in romantic relationships despite the absence of attraction. That being said, there is also nothing wrong with never wanting to be in a romantic relationship and being repulsed by the idea. For those in the middle and those who fluctuate; that’s super awesome and valid as heck. Let me repeat: everyone is different in relation to that scale. Don’t judge others because you may not understand or relate to their unique position. Period.
Imagine telling a sixth grader to take a twelfth grade math test and then saying, “well, everyone passes it eventually, you just haven’t found the right calculator for the job yet,” after they fail. Doesn’t that sound stupid? Putting a person in a situation they obviously don’t want to be in and forcing them to do something that they don’t understand?
It does sound stupid, doesn’t it. But that’s exactly what happens to every aromantic person who gets “you should at least try dating, you probably just haven’t found the right person,” as a response to their aromanticism. STOP SAYING THAT. It doesn’t make any sense and makes aros feel so isolated. Romantic love isn’t necessary for happiness.
one of the things that makes me dislike romance is the exclusivity of monoamory, not that polyamory can’t be closed relationships as well but at least those can be open. prefer the idea of people being in open relationships, makes me calmer.. can’t explain why but yeah. it’s more similar to platonic relationships i guess, which make sense to me. i don’t like or need this other type of relationship to exist where it can be exclusive. idk if exclusivity is a thing that can exist in platonic relationships but i wouldn’t like it. it’s less anxiety inducing to think of people not caring who else people they interact with (partners, friends, etc) are involved with, the idea of exclusivity is just weird and alien and uncomfortable to me.
