Aromantic Or Not Good At Opening Up?

[SHOOOKOH]

Hey all.

 

I'm starting to feel like I might be a flavor of aromantic if not the whole package. I mean I do experience a little romantic attraction but kissing gets old for me after a while. Plus I notice I tend to have more aesthetic attraction towards others more than romantic. Back in 6th grade all of my peers had crushes on people but me and when I do get a crush it's more of a surface obsession (oxymoron?) like one for a video game or gambling. As the cliche goes, "You like the idea of them; not the actual person."

 

I know being grey-aromantic is a thing, but I don't know where to begin since I feel equally blah about romantic relationships no matter guy, girl, or otherwise specified. I'd be pan-romantic--definitely bi-romantic hence why I have it in my bio--but when it comes to romance in general I'm just meh. It just gets old and I'm a shy person as it is but even after I open up it still doesn't feel completely right to get lovey-dovey at all...not even a little. After I get to know someone it's partly like: okay we know each other deeply now so we don't have to touch as much now.  I always notice myself when I get overtly in the romantic territory and I don't like romance that much. I do like to cuddle and some kissing but mostly like I said I'm just meh. So I might be grey aro but at the same time I don't know I might just be full aro but not fully against the idea of romance. To me romance can muddle the mind a bit too much but my experiences in the past haven't really been great in the field, if you know what I mean. That's why I'm like: am I just hard at opening up? I mean I do have mental illnesses--not to say aromanticism is a mental illness of course--that make it hard for me to function normally a lot so maybe it's a tangent of that??? I just don't know. 

 

All I do know is that I'm not really a romantic person. Every time I'm in that metaphorical suit it feels itchy and forced...like a rented tuxedo for prom or something lol

 

Any aros willing to point me in the right direction? I can explain things a bit more if need be. I just feel like I'm more aromantic than I was willing to credit myself with. 

[Platonic Underdog]

It's does sound like like you could be in the aromantic area, to me at least. For me, the idea of any kind of relationship feels icky. I don't see the point of it. Have you looked into squishes or queer platonic relationships? Do you feel like you're forcing yourself to have romantic feelings? If you feel like you might be on the aro spectrum then you can certainly find information on it and see if it fits. Feel free to ask any questions you have.

[SHOOOKOH]

Now that I think about it, I do feel like I am rather aromantic. I changed my label on here just to try it out and damn it feels like a better fit. I noticed I only had platonic crushes on people--squishes--that mocked crushes because I have a tendency to get obsessive. 

 

I'm gonna keep myself in the grey area of both aromance and asexuality since I'm still figuring myself out. The thing is though that I've always felt this way even as a little girl so maybe it isn't grey but like I said I'm not sure just yet. 

 

I wish I wasn't really like this though. As much as romance and sex are dumb and annoying they do seem nice in certain contexts....

 

I think as soon as I made that first post I felt how aromantic I really am. Now I just have to learn to accept myself more fully because my hiding is probably why I've always felt unsatisfied...

[TheAP]

Moved from Questions about Asexuality to Romantic and Aromantic Orientations.

 

TheAP

Questions about Asexuality co-mod

[Platonic Underdog]

Well, just remember to take your time with it and go at your own pace. There's no rush. And it's  perfectly natural to experience a dislike for it at times. If you need to chat, ask questions or even just vent, feel free to do so. 

[Orianaro]

You certainly seem like you have some touch of aromanticism and if the change on your bio helped, that's a pretty good indication. I myself am aromantic and I've spent a lot of time looking into the different types. An annoying thing you should be aware of: more so than any other orientation, anything with a- (aromantic, asexual, etc) have a huge layer of uncertainty. Because you could wake up one day and feel a very knew type of feeling and suddenly you find yourself altering a label you no longer seem to fit. I like to be very over-organized, so its been a bit of a struggle to temper that and allow myself to go with the flow, and if I feel romantic feelings someday, then I'll just label myself as I like, when it happens. Anyways, have some quick-fire definitions that you might find match aspects of you:

 

Grey-romantic: Have rare or infrequent romantic feelings.

 

Demi-romantic: Develops romantic feelings after a long period of knowing a person or once a deeper platonic relationship is already in place.

 

Cupio-romantic: Aromantic, but likes the idea of romance or romantic relationships, possibly a kind of fascination with them. (I would consider myself slightly cupio, but I like aromantic better as a label. I appreciate well-written romance in books and theoretically like those kinds of relationships, but when it comes down to it, I don't have that type of attraction.)

 

There's also a bunch of different types of attractions that it can be really hard to differentiate between, which your crushes could have been some combination of.

 

Sexual: An attraction to someone based on how much you might like to do sexual things with them (this is technically different from sexual desire, which would be more libido kind of thing. An interesting thing is sexuals who are dating asexuals will sometimes seem to have more sexual desire than they really do because they're trying to compensate or incite the attraction that their partner appears to be missing.)

 

Romantic: I have no flipping clue. One of the main reasons why I'm aromantic: my response to the first person to confess a crush to me was just "what do you like about me?" and then I proclaimed them a fake because they apparently didn't find that an easy question. 

 

Sensual: Basically how much you like hugging and cuddling and maybe playing with someone's hair, holding hands, back massages. Non-sexual touch, can include kissing. This is a more gender-neutral attraction, like platonic.

 

Platonic: I wanna be your friend! And hang around you, and talk to you, and learn stuff about you. Sometimes expressed in squishes, which can be confused with crushes if you're like me and don't know any better. Also pretty gender neutral.

 

Aesthetic: That person has cool glasses, or a nice style, or just like, the perfect jaw. Appreciating outward beauty without really wanting to do anything about that, but it can lead to a sort of fascination with the person anyways. I would tentatively say that this can be expressed by infatuations, though sometimes those are romantic and sometimes just strong admiration for something about them. (This is my best guess for what you might be feeling, just strong aesthetic attraction.)

 

I find if you're missing what a lot of people would consider to be the most intense/easily recognizable emotions here, romantic and sexual, I like to think of it that we stretch the other three to fill those missing scales and suddenly platonic squishes for the opposite gender are crushes and sensual attraction is sexual and its all kind of mashed together and thrown off. We're expected to experience those things, so we just take the next closest thing and go "this is it, right?" If none of your crushes have seemed particularly more like a real crush than anything else and they all seem kind of on par, then you might just be lower on the aromantic scale and get frequent combinations of other types of attractions. But your label could be "rainbow-sparkle-corn" for how unique it is to you, no one can really tell you what you are, so I hope that was helpful in giving a quick look at the types out there  There are tons and tons of other things, but this is a summary of what I found most helpful when defining myself.