An important tenet of aro activism is–or should be–dismantling the idea that any type of relationship or attraction (romantic, platonic, queerplatonic, sexual, etc.) is inherently deeper, more meaningful, or more valuable than any other. The axis on which someone’s feelings or interpersonal relationships operate should not determine their value. All of these things are self-definable, and the depth and meaningfulness of anyone’s individual experiences ought to be determined by that individual, not by classifications constructed by others.
Sexual Attraction: “I want to do the sex with you.” Romantic Attraction: “I want to date you and be cute and maybe cuddle and kiss you.” Aesthetic Attraction: “You look hella great and I appreciate your face.”
Shoutout to, like, 14 year old me who thought he was bi cause he felt 0 attraction to men and 0 attraction to women and 0=0 which is equal attraction THEREFORE I was surely equally attracted to both men and women and, thus, bisexual, thank you for coming to my tedtalk
This is why i IDed as pansexual when i was younger, cuz I felt the same attraction towards all genders, I just failed to realise that said attraction was completely platonic.
Your friendly neighborhood alloromantic (aka someone who experiences romantic attraction, aka the opposite of aromantic) is here to tell you how I feel romantic attraction! Of course, this is just my personal experience, but most of these things are common among people who have crushes. If you’re questioning if you’re aro, I hope this helps clear some things up for you!
For those of you who don’t know, I’m an ace lesbian, meaning I don’t feel sexual attraction, and I’m only romantically attracted to other girls. Today I’m going to talk about the girl I currently like. Please brace yourself for an intoxicating amount of sapphic energy.
I think about her all the time. That’s hardly an exaggeration. She’s the last thing I think about before I fall asleep, and the first thing I think about when I wake up. I haven’t seen her in a few months, but when I saw her every day at school, I would get nervous talking to her, practically physically shaking, even though she’s one of my best friends. I have to consciously limit the amount of times I text her, because everything reminds me of her.
Thinking about her always makes me smile, but at the same time, there’s pain, because I know she doesn’t feel the same way. I haven’t told her I like her, but it’s just a gut feeling. There’s constantly a voice in my head saying She doesn’t like you, Alcyone. You need to stop. You’re just going to get hurt. But at the same time, I can’t help but have the tiniest bit of hope: But what if? The constant tension of simultaneous hope and despair is exhausting. I try so hard to get it off my mind, but most of the time, I can’t.
Whenever I watch movies or TV shows with romantic plot lines, I imagine myself with her. She’s who comes to mind when I daydream about a future with my wife. I know how stupid it is, but I just have this stubborn certainty that I would give up so much to be with her.
I spend far too much time daydreaming about a possible future together. No matter how impossible it is, thinking about her just makes me happy. I imagine various date scenarios of us whenever I see a nice spot for a picnic or a cute little cafe. Being physically close to her makes my heart literally beat faster, and I tend to stumble over my words even more than I normally do.
People often talk about how crushes “hurt.” For me, the pain comes from the struggle of knowing she doesn’t reciprocate, yet not being able to let go. I will never confess how I feel, because I don’t want to ruin our friendship. I know that. But I just. can’t. stop. thinking. about. her.
I don’t know if this was at all helpful, but I hope any questioning folks got some insight into what romantic attraction feels like (for me at least). Please continue this post if my fellow alloromantics have anything to add!
“So, I’m grey-aromantic and demisexual. That means that I only rarely feel romantic attraction to people, and I only feel sexual attraction to someone after I form an emotional connection with them, and even then, it’s pretty rare.”
“But that’s just how everyone is. It’s totally normal to not get crushes on people that often, and I like to get to know people before I want to have sex with them, too.”
“Okay, you’ve brought up a couple different things here. First, there’s a difference between feeling sexual attraction and wanting to have sex with someone. You can feel attraction to a person and decide not to have sex with them until you get to know them. But I don’t feel that sexual attraction at all when I meet someone. Second, sure, it’s normal for me to not get crushes on people that often, and maybe it’s normal for you, too, but it’s not normal for everyone. Just look at all the movies that are about love at first sight.”
“That’s just fiction. That doesn’t really happen to real people.”
“Fiction can be sensational, but it’s inspired by reality. If it had nothing to do with reality, then people wouldn’t be interested, and it wouldn’t sell, and they’d stop making it. But, okay, let’s focus on reality. Real people talk about their crushes all the time. It’s basically all anyone wanted to talk about at my high school – who liked who, who was dating who, how much they loved this celebrity or that celebrity. Was it like that with the people you went to school with, too?”
“Yeah! It could get really annoying. But they were just exaggerating. Teenagers make such a big deal out of everything.”
“Ha! They do. I know I did. So maybe they were exaggerating about how strong their crushes were. But when someone tells me what they’re experiencing, I think it’s important to believe them. And if they’re describing something that doesn’t line up with my own experience, then it’s even more important to believe them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Okay, so, did you know that I don’t have a sense of smell?”
“Really?”
“Really. Born without. Never had it. You could fart right now, and if I didn’t hear it, then I wouldn’t know.”
“That sounds super convenient, actually.”
“It can be. The thing is, I have no idea what it’s like to smell. That’s not a part of my experience at all. So, like, you’re telling me that it’s possible for you to just walk into a room and know what’s for dinner? Without seeing it? You just know? From the air? Like magic?”
“It does sound like magic, when you put it like that.”
“I know, right? Sounds pretty sus! But if I’d gone my whole life saying that smell wasn’t real, if I told everyone that they were lying or delusional because they said they could smell… what would that make me?”
“A jerk.”
“Exactly! I’d be a real jerk. Stuck in my own head, unable to imagine that other people might experience the world differently. So, instead, when someone tells me that they feel something that I don’t feel, or that they feel it more often than I feel it, or more strongly, I believe them. And I hope that they extend me the same courtesy – that they believe me, too, when I tell them that my experience is different from what they experience.”
“But what you described before, how you experience attraction, that didn’t sound different than what I experience.”
“Well, being able to talk about this stuff means that it’s possible to find people who experience the world the same way that you do, or at least in a similar way. That’s why I like these labels so much. They help me find other aro-ace people to talk to.”
“Are you saying I’m aro-ace?”
“I’m not going to try to say what you are. I’m not inside your head. You get to describe your experience the way you want to. But if you find that these labels are useful to you like they’re useful to me, I’d be happy to talk with you about it, as much or as little as you want.”
I wish attraction and wanting to have a significant relationship weren’t so inextricably linked together, and the latter wasn’t assumed to fail without the presence of the former.
If you’re tired of explaining your sexual/romantic attraction to others clap your hands
If you’re tired of explaining your sexual/romantic attraction to others clap your hands!
If you’re tired of explaining your sexual/romantic attractions to others when it’s really a topic that should be taught at a young age instead of being swept under the rug and made into this weird subculture that’s ridiculed and shamed by ignorant jackasses who don’t want to put in the effort to understand because deep down change scares them clap your hands!!
a question for my fellow demiromantics and demisexuals!
when you’ve developed an emotional bond with someone and the famous ✨attractions✨ are experienced: which comes first for you? romantic or sexual? both at the same time? Or has it happened that you only feel one and not the other with different people? Tell me all about your demirose experiences!!
Alloros and alloces can also reply too! As a demiromantic, do you experience sexual attraction first? And as a demisexual do you experience romantic attraction first? Tell me about it too!
Way too often I see people wondering if they’re feeling romantic attraction or something else. So I decided to make a checklist based off my own experiences.
For the average person, aesthetic, sensual, and/or sexual attraction are intertwined with romantic, but I left out all the parts that could fall under other forms of attraction. (Example: many people feel urges to cuddle their crush. But cuddling falls under sensual attraction, so you can want to cuddle someone without being romantically attracted to them.) Hopefully leaving stuff like that out will help distinguish romantic from something else. But I don’t think I’ve ever experienced platonic attraction so there’s a slight possibility some of these could fall under that too and I just don’t know it.
Like I said, this is based off my own experiences as a heteroromantic, ace woman. Others may experience differently. This is only a guide.
That aside…
You might be romantically attracted to that person if…
- You think about them often. (If it’s major, you may even lose sleep.)
- Whenever you hear a love song, your mind jumps straight to them.
- When consuming romantic media, you imagine the couple as you and that person without meaning to.
- You “yearn” for them. Imagine something you’ve always wanted, but weren’t able to get. Maybe it was a video game, or a trip to Hawaii, or a dog or whatever. You really really really wanted it, but couldn’t have it for whatever reason. Or maybe someone was eating your favorite food while you’re starving, but there wasn’t any for you so you had to sit there and watch. Multiply that “want” feeling by 3. That’s how you feel about them.
- You feel nervous interacting with them. The same sort of nervousness you’d feel at a job interview, except you don’t need to feign enthusiasm when talking to them. (If anything, you need to stifle that enthusiasm.)
- You get self conscious of everything from your appearance to the way you say “hello.” If you’re more anxiety-prone like I am, you’ll spend a good amount of time worrying that you said something weird and now they probably think you’re a weirdo which is just, BAD!
- You lose your breath when you see them unexpectedly. You may even have to fight back an excitable gasp. Imagine someone surprises you with something you’ve always wanted. It’s like that, though you may also notice your pupils dilating like when you leave a movie theater. This will improve your mood. Doubly so if they acknowledge your existence.
- Your knees get weak. You feel a pull in your chest (again, yearning). You have to force back a goofy smile around them to not appear “obvious.” (If this is happening during COVID times, you will be very grateful for mask mandates, let me tell you.)
- You feel this strange… tension in the air when you interact with them. It’s not a bad kind of tension, but it’s there. You wonder if they feel it too.
- You know how in Disney Channel sitcoms or whatever, where the girl has a crush on a boy, and she and her friends get all jumpy and screamy whenever the boy so much as smiles at her? That’s a big Mood whenever I have a major crush.
- That dopey look cartoon characters get whenever they see the object of their affection? Also a big Mood for me.
- You’re willing to do almost anything (within reason) for them. You’ll go out of your way to help them. If they ask you for a favor, you’ll do it, even if it’s something you normally wouldn’t do for someone.
- Hell, you’ll go out of your way just to look at them!
- You think about a future with them, mainly as a married couple. You might even wonder what kind of parent they would be. What your children will look like. Even if you don’t want to get married or have kids irl, the thoughts may plague your mind anyway. You wonder what your family will think of them. You wonder what their family is like as well.
- If you’re blessed enough to find their social media profile(s), you’ll find yourself scrolling through posts from 3 years ago. Accidentally clicking “like” on one of them is the stuff of nightmares.
- You have fantasies where they rescue you from perilous situations and/or vice versa. This can range from giving them a ride home after their car breaks down to the full blown “princess locked in a tower guarded by dragons” trope.
- Speaking of tropes, I want you to think about every romance trope you can. If it’s romantic attraction, you will find some of those to be good fantasy material. You will naturally imagine you two in many of the scenarios, no forcing required.
- If you have to force any ~romantic~ fantasies, it’s probably not romantic attraction. The fantasies will come to you whether you want them or not. But you don’t mind all that much because, free dopamine. (Might be different if you’re romance-repulsed/averse.)
