Jump to content

Looking for words to describe my experiences


Biblioromantic

Recommended Posts

Biblioromantic

Hi there, friends,

 

I was quite active on this site for a while, but I grew comfortable with my identity as asexual. Discovering that term ("asexual") was a major lightbulb in my life, and it's changed my perception of pretty much everything before and since. I find myself back here to fling my next identity crisis into the void and see if you lovely people can help me find more words that will be lightbulbs for me in understanding my romantic orientation.

 

I had one boyfriend in high school and college; let's call him M. When I look back on that time, I remember feeling intense feelings of unworthiness, fear, and shame. I know the reason for those feelings too: my boyfriend was a manipulative asshole that treated me very poorly, and I regret that I allowed him to do that. I loved him--or I thought I loved him, at least. But what I really felt was desperation to have someone--*anyone*--to love me, to be with me, to hold me as special and wanted above all others. M's version of loving me was to betray me, to manipulate me, and to tell me I was lucky to have him to take care of me and that no one would ever want me. If I did anything to displease him, he would refuse to acknowledge me, knowing that my desperation for his attention would turn to self-hatred for having displeased him. Aside from one or two pecks on the cheek and some awkward handholding, we never did anything physical. I am grateful for that. I would have given myself to him in that way if he had pressured me into it, but we were both very religious at the time and I was, unbeknownst to me, asexual. Our relationship ended when he moved away for two years to serve a religious mission. Shortly after he left, I learned he had plagiarized my work for a class we'd been in together. When he refused to confess to the professor, I turned him in. He failed the class, lost his four-year academic scholarship, and was put on academic probation effective when he returned. I only saw him briefly once after that several years later when we ran into each other at the university and he happily told me he was getting married. My first thought was "Oh, that poor girl!"

 

There have been a couple of other times I felt a desire for a deeper relationship than friendship with a specific person, and that's what I would say is my understanding of romantic attraction. However, in the back of my mind each time, I still hear the echoes of the emotional pain and desperation I suffered from that first boyfriend. One time was with another guy at college, a friend that had witnessed the pain, sorrow, and loneliness of my relationship with M. He was kind to me, a genuinely compassionate person, and someone who had similar views to me on a number of topics. He was easy to talk to and I knew he would never treat me like M had. But I was scared, and I told him no when he asked to date me. Another time was with a good girlfriend several years later. She lived with me as a roommate, and we had the best times talking and doing things together. She was bubbly and outgoing, had a lot of friends, and knew a lot of my secrets. I think she understood me more than anyone else to that point in my life, and for the most part, she didn't judge me. I wanted something more with her. Not sex, but a durable kind of connection, a commitment, I guess. But she moved away, met a guy, got married, and we lost touch. Losing that friendship was perhaps the second most painful experience in my life.

 

I would love to have a *person.* Someone to trust, to cuddle, to hang out with, to travel with, to share secrets with, to cook for, to come home to, to be there for when they need someone to share life's joys and sorrows and adventures. I've never had that except with my former friend, and it didn't last. I'm not sure how to verbalize what I want, though. I feel the need to have a label for this part of me. I don't know that I'm aromantic necessarily. Some things I've read and understand as being part of aromanticism don't necessarily seem to fit with what I've experienced. I don't mean to be offensive, but I've found aromantics online to be pretty militant and easily offended, and that doesn't jive with what I'm looking for at all. I don't know that demiromantic is necessarily the word I'm looking for either as my feelings don't evolve to romance as the emotional connection deepens. Maybe grayromantic? It's such a broad term though. I'd welcome any ideas you think I should consider.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm also not sure about these kind of things. What is it that makes you think that you are _not_ romantic? That one time where you said no to a date?

Link to post
Share on other sites
Biblioromantic
13 minutes ago, elisabeth_II said:

What is it that makes you think that you are _not_ romantic? That one time where you said no to a date?

No, that's not really the reason. I've had other times I've said no to dates. Lots of other times, in fact. And, to be fair, lots of times I said yes to dates, but that was back in my 20's. Around 28 or so, I stopped dating altogether since I had basically learned that what I wanted was different from what every other person I'd met on a dating site or in real life seemed to want.

 

I guess I'm not feeling like romance is much of a factor for me in my life. I don't decide things based on if/when/whether I'll meet someone and fall in love. I used to when I was younger, but I think that was more amatonormativity at work than a sincere desire for a romantic relationship. I don't look at someone and say, "Wow! I want to date him/her/them!" much like I don't say, "Wow! I want to bang him/her/them!" It's just not something I experience. I've experienced platonic squishes of "Wow! I want to be friends with him/her/them!" but nothing beyond that. So my desire for romance is to be in a significant, committed relationship in general, not to be in a significant, committed relationship with a particular person.

Link to post
Share on other sites
23 minutes ago, Biblioromantic said:

There have been a couple of other times I felt a desire for a deeper relationship than friendship with a specific person, and that's what I would say is my understanding of romantic attraction.

You could look into grey-romantic

 

1 minute ago, Biblioromantic said:

So my desire for romance is to be in a significant, committed relationship in general, not to be in a significant, committed relationship with a particular person.

Or cupioromantic

 

24 minutes ago, Biblioromantic said:

I would love to have a *person.* Someone to trust, to cuddle, to hang out with, to travel with, to share secrets with, to cook for, to come home to, to be there for when they need someone to share life's joys and sorrows and adventures. I've never had that except with my former friend, and it didn't last.

And maybe what you want is a queerplatonic partner?

Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm sorry about your negative experiences :(

 

You don't strike me as someone who's aromantic, just someone who's been hurt, and that part is likely affecting your subsequent relationship feels/prospects.  That's just my best guess, though.

 

The gray spectrum is broad, yes, but that's kind of the point of it; it's for people who don't feel like they can cleanly fit on one side of the fence or the other (for one reason or another).  It doesn't mean you can't more cleanly redefine your label later down the line.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Biblioromantic
7 minutes ago, Philip027 said:

You don't strike me as someone who's aromantic, just someone who's been hurt, and that part is likely affecting your subsequent relationship feels/prospects.

I know that's likely very true. Both what I've stated in the OP above and elsewhere in other threads...yeah. I've had trauma and drama, and I know that's affecting me and my experiences.

 

11 minutes ago, Philip027 said:

The gray spectrum is broad, yes, but that's kind of the point of it; it's for people who don't feel like they can cleanly fit on one side of the fence or the other (for one reason or another).

This is also very true. Thank you for your thoughts!

Link to post
Share on other sites
Biblioromantic
19 minutes ago, Laurann said:

maybe what you want is a queerplatonic partner?

Yeppers peppers. That's exactly the word for what I want. It seems like when I use that term with romantically-inclined people though, they either look at me like I have a screw loose or they have zero concept of what it even means. It gets tiring to explain all the time, you know?

Link to post
Share on other sites
28 minutes ago, Biblioromantic said:

So my desire for romance is to be in a significant, committed relationship in general, not to be in a significant, committed relationship with a particular person.

Wouldn't that need another pair/spectrum of lables?

 

Wanting a steady relationship with commitments at one end, regardless whether the partners get along with eachother permanently due to romantic, sexual or platonic attraction and regardless of the degree of attraction. But the realisation of the commitments would also be on an endless fan of aspects, like, commit to help eachother economically, comit to hold each other company after workhours, commit to help eachother with the household, commit to raising each other's children, you could vary that endlessly, with people sharing their bedroom, or just household, or just living in the same city or having a long distance yet somehow commited relationship.

 

At the other end there are those people that don't care too much about the exact type of relationship, but that get attracted to a specific person and then long for that person, be it sexually, romantically or platonic. When the attraction to one person fades or is suppressed for some reason (for example rejected), then they would try to move on to their next occurence of attraction. And the degree of attraction matters.

 

For sexual and mainly even romantic relationships, the historic norm has been that they imply exclusiveness, which is historically not necessary with platonic relationships, simply because deseases do not spread by people being friends. I've also been wondering about this for some time. Why do I from time to time feel sort of jealous when a friend choses to hang with someone else and that someone gets more attention than me? How would you make a friendship exclusive? I'm not done with shaping all my questions here, when I am, I'll start a new thread, instead of kidnapping yours 😃

Link to post
Share on other sites
Biblioromantic
36 minutes ago, elisabeth_II said:

Wouldn't that need another pair/spectrum of lables?

I understand what you're saying to some degree. I totally understand and agree that the ideas of what constitutes one frame of ideas intersects and shares aspects with another frame of ideas for what I'm trying to discuss and, in some ways, define. In other ways, those frames of ideas contradict each other. Understanding demands context, I guess.

 

The idea of amatonormativity was a lightbulb for me, the idea that a central, monogamous, romantic/sexual relationship is the universal goal and the pinnacle relationship type for humankind. There are so many ways that idea turns out to be false for so many people, but society at large still buys in, and it shapes even those of us that don't experience relationships that way. Polyamory, for instance. Aromantics fly in the face of the theory, certainly. And those of us who are or would like to be in a QPR of some kind. There isn't a place for us except as outliers in that frame.

 

The split attraction model so popular on AVEN intersects some other things. Separating attraction into types for sexual vs romantic seems to work for most AVENites, at least. For me, types of relationships with non-family members are on a spectrum with sexual behavior at one end and the most distant of platonic acquaintanceships on the other (think of that coworker you hate and try to avoid, that's the type I mean by acquaintanceship). Everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum, and no one falls (or has ever fallen, in my experience) in the sexual area. I'm trying to figure out if my spectrum should have part of it labeled as "romantic," but I think my spectrum's just different from everyone else's.

 

There are others, like your theory, that I'm less versed in.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...