Split Attraction Model as an Aro/Ace

[HazyShadeofFall]

Despite doing my best to specify that I'm both aromantic and asexual and talk about them separately in ace & aro spectrum communities, on a personal level I don't really separate them, I just call myself asexual. The split attraction model really confused me when I started learning about it, and honestly I still feel like I don't quite "get" it. It's like people asking me to describe the difference between the taste of flour and the taste of sugar in cake. Sure, they may be different ingredients, but with the way I experience them I can never really separate them. Anyone else feel the same way?

[SithLord]

I can definitely say it took me a while to get the split attraction model, and I'm one of the reasons for it as a hetero-ro ace. Basically, I think of it as what draws you to a person and how far you want to take it.

Asethetic attraction is their appearance making you interested in them, even if you observe it from afar like a painting.

Platonic attraction is their personality or something about them as a person making you interested in them, and wanting to be friends or companions.

Sensual attraction is wanting to touch someone. This can be platonic, like hugging or holding hands with friends, or romantic like kissing or cuddling, or sexual. And not to say the things listed are only platonic/romantic/sexual, but that they're generally perceived as such in the society I come from.

Romanctic attraction I don't experience without a combination of the first two. But it's when I want to continue my friendship farther, want to monopolize that person, don't get tired with their presence even after hours of spending time with them. It's hard to quantify. Basically, I want to do romantic things with them, and share my romanticism. 

Sexual attraction is often combined with some of the above. It's wanting to share your sexuality with someone (or something). 

 

My boyfriend who is straight, has these things quite linked. He is attracted to me on all of these levels and can understand asthetic attaction in theory, but I don't think romantic, sensual, or sexual attraction will ever be separate for him.

For me, I can appreciate the appearances of everyone on an aesthetic level, tend to be drawn towards different kinds of people platonically (mostly nerds), but link sensual attraction and romantic attraction. I can hold hands with or hug my friends, but I don't desire it with anyone except my boyfriend (though sometimes a hug from a family member is just what I need when I'm feeling down). And sexual attraction I don't experience at all. 

 

I think we can train ourselves to recognize the difference and possibly detect them in ourselves or others. Keeping with your comparison, a chef can train themselves to tell is something is too salty, not salty enough, is made of a different fish/meat/whatever, etc. They learn to detect the differences, and I think so can we. 

[Snao Cone]

5 hours ago, HazyShadeofFall said:

Despite doing my best to specify that I'm both aromantic and asexual and talk about them separately in ace & aro spectrum communities, on a personal level I don't really separate them, I just call myself asexual. The split attraction model really confused me when I started learning about it, and honestly I still feel like I don't quite "get" it. It's like people asking me to describe the difference between the taste of flour and the taste of sugar in cake. Sure, they may be different ingredients, but with the way I experience them I can never really separate them. Anyone else feel the same way?

I get where you're coming from, as for me it's all bundled up in the same thing that is my emotional needs and desires. It's a pain to have to explain both to people who have the benefit of being another orientation where sexual and romantic are implicitly bundled. Awareness being spread rightfully acknowledges that many asexual people want romantic relationships, but if people have an incomplete understanding of it mixed in with that kind of attitude where everyone needs a partner, saying I'm asexual will just lead to "Well that's no excuse to not find a husband!" Explaining aromanticism takes extra effort and it's hard to keep people's attention for that long. Personal questions exhaust me, generally, so it's just a hassle to have to use so many words to explain myself in a way that feels like I'm trying to justify my happiness. 

[Philip027]

Can't help but feel like you're overthinking it.  Some people get attracted to others, and people want different things from/with the people they are attracted to.  That's really all that needs to be understood regarding (split) attraction.

 

Even aro+ace people understand that people have different likes and preferences, yes?  That includes both preferences in what they like in other people, and preferences in what they like to do with the people they like.  If you can understand that, you pretty much have understood the split attraction thing without even trying.

[Guest]

If you're both aro and ace, you come from a position of privilege in regards to the question... just like everyone else whose orientations align in the different sub-aspects.

[Galactic Turtle]

I think if you don't experience split attraction, it makes sense you wouldn't divide up the various types of attraction when thinking of yourself. I'm aro ace and the only reason I even put aro there is because I'm on an asexual website where most people experience split attraction of some sort. Conceptually I find it easy to understand though.

[GlamRocker]

Being a romantic asexual who experiences aesthetic, sensual and romantic attraction made it harder to accept my asexuality. For one, I thought I had all the right components, so I just kept waiting for sexual attraction to happen... finally, at 32 I decided I'd waited long enough and knew it wasn't coming. Secondly, I felt it was unacceptable to want all of the things that go into a traditional romantic relationship, minus sexual activity... as it was unfair to the other person, as they were fulfilling all of my desires... but I was ignoring a rather important one of theirs that is a responsibility implied in such relationships, and, therefore, a just expectation. 

 

Lucky for me I tried my best to explain what I was like to my future husband from the start, and he turned out to not need sex from me.

 

Point is, the split attraction model is a very real way that many people experience attraction... not just asexuals. Sexual people experience all of these things, too, sometimes exactly as asexuals do... meaning I expect a sexual person could feel EXACTLY as I do towards a certain person. A person they find lovely, want to cuddle and would love to share the rest of their life with even though they aren't sexually attracted to them. The only difference is, a sexual person might not be entirely satisfied by this kind of arrangement, because they have the capacity for sexual attraction and want to find someone they share THAT with, as well.

[sunbrella]

No. But I think you are the norm, or at least the assumption when people hear "ace".

 

I am demiro and ace. For me romantic attraction means I never get tired of thinking about that person. They're suddenly my whole world. I love watching them do frankly anything. I want to sit by the water and talk with them, I want to tell them I like them, etc.

 

For me, since my romantic attraction seems to be mutually exclusive from my aesthetic attraction, I have no clue who I'll fall in love with next. Love is quite literally blind. Which is not a good thing, it sucks for dating, but it is what it is...

[squishward]

4 hours ago, GlamRocker said:

 

Point is, the split attraction model is a very real way that many people experience attraction... not just asexuals. Sexual people experience all of these things, too, sometimes exactly as asexuals do... meaning I expect a sexual person could feel EXACTLY as I do towards a certain person. A person they find lovely, want to cuddle and would love to share the rest of their life with even though they aren't sexually attracted to them. 

This. I am capable of sexual attraction (though I lean more to the gray-sexual end of things) to men only so far in my experiences, however, I have a split, mismatched attraction where I am more sensually attracted to women. There are certain feelings I get from touch like hugs and arm or waist touches that I seem incapable of getting from men, even though I can be sexually attracted to them. I also have had men I’ve been sexually attracted to who I have not been initially aesthetically attracted to, because the way I experience sexual attraction is based on an innate “electricity” I feel around them that doesn’t have all that much to do with looks and more about a natural connection. So, weirdly enough, it was because of my sexuality that made me able to understand the split-attraction model, even though some other sexuals may have all of those other attractions lumped in when they experience sexual attraction. 

 

So, I just don’t think orientation is necessarily indicative of understanding and/or experiencing split-attraction.

 

Humans. We be weird and varied. 

[thyristor]

When I first learnt about ace/aro, I immediately asked myself what the definition of romantic would be. My confusion was this:

 

I can fall in love with people, have a crush on someone, and that feeling regularly leads me into trouble, like I'm not able to focus on stuff, I get depressed if the person doesn't answer my messages fast enough, or doesn't answer them in the right way, I tell them things that I know are not ready to be told at the time... teenage mistakes really.

 

But I can't see myself caring for a person, loving them as in calling them every day for the rest of our relationship, buying their medicine on my way home, visiting their relatives without having the feeling of wasting my time, respecting their food allergies and all that stuff.

 

So, in my world, I'd need one more distinction, not only sexual/asexual and romantic/aromantic. I'm not sure how to lable this. A try would be to split romantic/aromantic into: desiring/non-desiring (that would be "content") and caring/non-caring (which could be, but also maybe not "needing"; actually "needing" is more like "desiring").

 

I was thinking that the 'desiring'-scale also fits with the sexual/asexual scale. And then I thought of this kind of quadrant-model which can be applied to the sexual or to the romantic dimension.

 

sexual:

y-axis: + 'desiring', 0 'non-desiring', - 'repelling';

x-axis: + 'caring' (or 'satisfying' if you want), 0 'non-caring', - 'abusive';

 

romantic:

y-axis: + 'desiring', 0 'desiring', - 'bored';

x-axis: + 'caring', 0 'non-caring', - 'asshole' (sort of; 'pain in the ass'? erm... 'spoiled'?)

 

You can make a similar quadrant-pair with 'physical' and 'social' for non-gendered relationships. Can I call it 'nongendered'? I mean that, with sexual and romantic interaction, people both identify as and target a certain (combination of) gender(s) (like a love-partner sort of), whereas in physical and social interaction the actor does not reflect upon the other persons gender (like a friend).

 

Does this make sense? I have a feeling there must be language and/or psychology enthusiast who have been discussing this.

[Firefly8]

I understood the split attraction model right away and wondered why anyone questioned it. Your flour/sugar analogy is very good. I think it's because I experience aesthetic and sensual attraction without the romantic or sexual desire/attraction, so I feel how the distinctions could be separate. I'm also not sex or romance averse, so I can see how preferences can be made differently for each. It's just a guess; I'm not totally sure.

[DryRain]

6 minutes ago, Firefly8 said:

I understood the split attraction model right away and wondered why anyone questioned it. Your flour/sugar analogy is very good. I think it's because I experience aesthetic and sensual attraction without the romantic or sexual desire/attraction, so I feel how the distinctions could be separate. I'm also not sex or romance averse, so I can see how preferences can be made differently for each. It's just a guess; I'm not totally sure.

Like Firefly said, it's really on an individual basis. If your "tongue" is primed to taste the different ingredients in a cake, then you'll taste them right away, but if you have a tongue that bundles up all the individual flavours into one big (maybe delicious, who knows?) flavour, then it'll be harder to understand. Of course, just like your taste, your awareness of the different "tastes" can be trained. It's effort and not necessarily useful depending on your orientation (a straight person might not need to learn the difference, merely knowing that it exists so not to infringe on someone's experience is enough). In my personal experience, I wasn't completely getting it when I first learned about it, but I slowly learned to frame my feelings and experience through the model, and it started making sense to me.

[maybeimamazed]

I only specify that I'm aromantic for people on the internet, where there's at least a little bit of knowledge about the split attraction model. In real life, I say that I'm asexual and everyone pretty much understands that I'm not interested in romantic relationships.

[Yarenios20]

On 11/11/2019 at 11:18 AM, maybeimamazed said:

I only specify that I'm aromantic for people on the internet, where there's at least a little bit of knowledge about the split attraction model. In real life, I say that I'm asexual and everyone pretty much understands that I'm not interested in romantic relationships.

I do the same, although I identify much more with the aromantic label than the asexual one. One of my friends is a heteromantic asexual who is extremely straight-passing, while I have no desire for a romantic relationship and am very clearly not straight. You could know someone for decades and never suspect that they are asexual, while for the majority of aromantic people I think this is more difficult. 

 

Either way, simply calling myself ace is easier to explain but I mostly mean aromantic when I say that.