The New Aromantic Thread (v.1.5)

[azhdarchidaen]

I'm still just a student, trying to figure out what I'm going to do. Looking at zoology/paleontology research work, primarily, but I'd love to stay in academia and work on grad degrees.

[Kellam]

I'm studying Electrical Engineering, currently in 2nd year at college. It isn't what I love, but I don't completely hate it either, so I guess it isn't a total loss...if I did only what I wanted, I'd be studying arabic history, chess and abstract maths, but I don't think there's any course or college that'd allow for such a weird combination of subjects ! Going back to the main topic of the thread, I've never wanted any romantic relationship. What I really wanted (and still want) is just a single best friend whom I can simply hang out with, discuss anything and everything with and fully trust, and yet not have to make any grandiose declarations of "love" to. All the clingy-ness and urgh..cuddling inherent to a romantic relationship seems just too unnecessary and off-putting. Platonicity is the best !

One of my fellow Art Handlers studied Electrical Enginering at school. He is also a performance artist and noise musician. One of the sweetest tempered and funniest guys I know. And yeah, friendship is great. Why would anyone want to ruin it with exclusivity?

[Lonewolf27]

Hello from Georgia! I'm an aromantic asexual curious to see how many asexuals on the site are in Georgia? In a sexually driven world encountering others like myself are very slim to none but I'm hoping to make some friends here who can relate with asexuality. Feel free to drop me a line anytime:-)

[Lambda Corvus]

Hello from Georgia! I'm an aromantic asexual curious to see how many asexuals on the site are in Georgia? In a sexually driven world encountering others like myself are very slim to none but I'm hoping to make some friends here who can relate with asexuality. Feel free to drop me a line anytime:-)

Which Georgia?

You also may be interested in the Meetup Mart.

[Lonewolf27]

Thank you for the link & the state of Georgia, Southeastern US.

[Zash]

I remember the Twitter/Facebook storm when the news said Russia invaded Georgia. Americans thought the news meant the state. So there were Americans calling to arms to defend American soil against the Russian invaders. My thought was "If the Russians are invading, why only Georgia? It is probably not America's Georgia."

[Guest]

I remember the Twitter/Facebook storm when the news said Russia invaded Georgia. Americans thought the news meant the state. So there were Americans calling to arms to defend American soil against the Russian invaders. My thought was "If the Russians are invading, why only Georgia? It is probably not America's Georgia."

Jeez....would the sky really fall if people would learn at least a little geography or common sense?

[Mezzo Forte]

I remember the Twitter/Facebook storm when the news said Russia invaded Georgia. Americans thought the news meant the state. So there were Americans calling to arms to defend American soil against the Russian invaders. My thought was "If the Russians are invading, why only Georgia? It is probably not America's Georgia."

Jeez....would the sky really fall if people would learn at least a little geography or common sense?

Well, I am now mildly embarrassed for my country. Only mildly because we already have such a bad rep when it comes to basic geography and am not shocked at all.

[Piotrek]

Yeah, the Georgia thing is bound to be confusing, if you didn't like geography at school :)

Anyway, another aromantic here. I've never been interested in romance. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that I have always been introverted and asocial or is it a different phenomenon entirely. I mean even if I go to a concert or take a course together with a group of people I don't socialise beyond the barest minimum and once the course/school/etc. is over I'm not likely to continue socialising with a person I happened to get a bit closer to. That definitely makes it harder to start any sort of romantic relationship, no? Still, I have no problem with my aromanticism and it actually doesn't really occupy my thoughs, unless I happen to be here or on Aroplane (forum for aromantics).

[Lambda Corvus]

I remember the Twitter/Facebook storm when the news said Russia invaded Georgia. Americans thought the news meant the state. So there were Americans calling to arms to defend American soil against the Russian invaders. My thought was "If the Russians are invading, why only Georgia? It is probably not America's Georgia."

Jeez....would the sky really fall if people would learn at least a little geography or common sense?

No. It would, however, cause a catastrophic expansion of world view, tragically resulting in the need to consider the fact that World =/= America.

[Lonewolf27]

Thanks for responding Piotrek. I'm also introverted & asocial, I also prefer when going anywhere that it not be a crowded place or where I have to be relatively close to others that I don't know. I also don't have any issues with being aromantic I'm very content not to have the worries/ drama of a romantic relationship just wish I had figured out my orientation earlier on in my life lol.

[Piotrek]

Thanks for responding Piotrek. I'm also introverted & asocial, I also prefer when going anywhere that it not be a crowded place or where I have to be relatively close to others that I don't know. I also don't have any issues with being aromantic I'm very content not to have the worries/ drama of a romantic relationship just wish I had figured out my orientation earlier on in my life lol.

Actually, I don't mind visiting crowded places- it's just that even when I'm in a crowd I don't interact with people. What's more depressing is that even when I'm on a meetup with a group of "net-friends" (i.e. people I met on the internet and share a forum with) I'm not social. I just sit and listen unless someone asks me something or decides to involve me in whatever is happening. This part is depressing and frustrating- I've been to a few forum meetups (not AVEN obviously, a Polish music forum where I post) and I met the same people during a few shows (we sometimes arrange meetups after shows by artists which we like and decide to go and see live) and the frustrating thing was that I was still just an observer :( That's one of the reasons why, when there is a new meetup planned, I sit and think twice instead of just plunging in.

[Lonewolf27]

I too tend to sit & listen but just can't see myself meeting with anyone that I don't know so an impressive effort as well as a feeling of comfort would have to be met via chatting before I would even consider meeting anyone out of my comfort realm. As you can probably guess I don't get out much lol! but I'm ok with that as I'm very comfortable at home with good books/movies or visiting family & select friends:-)

[Kellam]

I too tend not to talk when in groups. I prefer to listen and let the whole vibe wash over me. If someone does include me though I can blab away like an extrovert, especially if I dig the subject matter. I have trouble wanting to hang out with people after the fact though, I'd much rather move on and decompress. Whenever I contact a friend it is usually out of guilt. I have a couple friends who call or email me regularly just to see how I'm doing. They seem to need to know and they want me to be there for them. To me its a bit odd. People have always liked telling me their problems, they say that I'm a good listener and I always come to the table free of judgements. I always prefer to go visit people because I get to leave when I want. If someone comes to visit me I can't shake them until they're ready to go. I recently purchased a boat to live on and the thing that is giving me the most pause about my decision is how many people have started asking to come visit. The damn thing aint even in the water yet!

[Lonewolf27]

Ha ha ha! Yea I can imagine the boat would draw friends you didn't even know you had, good luck with that & the adventure of living on a boat. You may just want to keep your location a secret lol!...I have a friend that lives on a boat in the harbor of Juneau Alaska full time & he loves it..I too have been described as being a good listener with objective views which others find themselves very comfortable with sharing their deepest feelings & issues with me:/. I can also be a gabby baby when around close family & friends but outside that I'm very quiet...

[Piotrek]

If someone does include me though I can blab away like an extrovert, especially if I dig the subject matter.

Same here, as long as I don't have to shout to be heard. That's one of the reasons why I prefer meeting 1-on1 or in groups where I won't feel excluded.

Whenever I contact a friend it is usually out of guilt.

I can't exactly say that I contact people out of guilt, but it is in fact out of sense of some sort of obligation rather than because of anything else.

[Mezzo Forte]

I can relate with some of the sentiments mentioned here. I think that I am at my best socially when I am speaking one-on-one. I'm much more passive in groups and find myself simply listening for most of those times. (I don't think that's a bad thing though because I too can blab like an extrovert if you get me talking about something I really like. I joke that I'm "talkative when provoked.") I don't contact a lot of people out of guilt, but I have contacted one or two people with the mentality of "I'm their best friend/twin/family, I should probably just say hi since I haven't talked to them in weeks/months." I really love my alone time though, so it's tough to balance out even minimal interactions sometimes.

Oh and Kellam, I know that you've mentioned it multiple times, but it's really awesome that you have a sailboat to live on! I have good memories of sailing with my father whenever we would visit Massachusetts especially, and I'm sure sailing while alone is a fantastic experience!

[Kellam]

Sorry I keep bringing my boat up, it's the main thing on my mind at the moment. I'll try to tone it down and go back to going on and on about long distance walking! :) . As far as the guilt thing goes I totally identify with the other reasons y'all have enumerated for contacting loved ones. I know that I harbor an overdeveloped sense of guilt and perhaps I use the word too often. I guess a good synonym from my perspective would be moral obligation. For instance one of my best friends has MS and can't get around very much. He's fairly social and gets quite lonely so with that in mind I tend to visit him every week when I'm in town. The friends that I see or speak to regularly seem to need me. The ones that I hardly ever have contact with anymore (outside of chance meetings and facebook) are no less my friends. I'm the kind of person who treats everything as a moral quandary and I live by "do unto others as you would have done unto you" although I don't believe in anyone's gods. What I mean by "do unto others.." is that I try and consider how I would want to be treated if I were that other person with their unique drives and feelings. I sometimes think of myself as a very selfish person but I also work very hard at balancing that with the concern for others that a moral society is dependent upon.

[Mezzo Forte]

Kellam, I guess I worded that poorly. I was mostly bringing it up in the sense that I was kinda late to comment on the sailboat but still did. It's hard not to keep bringing up something that you are excited about or really enjoy, so I have no problems hearing sailboat stories! (Long distance walking sounds like fun though! I did some hiking in Austria while studying abroad and also came close to doing a long distance biking trip, but the weather didn't hold out and we changed our route to prevent getting caught in the rain. That's as close as I've really gotten to long distance walking though.)

Moral obligation sounds like a good word to describe the experiences you have (and my own sometimes feel like moral obligation if I go out of my way to talk to someone just because I haven't done so in a long time and not because I'm explicitly in the mood to chat). I never really associated the philosophy of "do unto others..." very heavily with religion, and I think it's for the most part a good philosophy to follow. (My only addendum is that I take into consideration the feelings of the people involved in case the way I would want to be treated isn't in their best interests.) Sometimes I consider myself a tad on the selfish side too, which I think some people in my life would find bizarre because I act often selflessly before even thinking of all the potential ramifications, but I guess it's just that I consider my life decisions a tad self indulgent, pursuing music more for the sake of my own happiness than for others (though I still do hope to have a positive impact on other musicians, be they future students of mine or performers of my compositions should I go that route).

Sometimes, I think that my dedication to my music is an even bigger reason than my own aromanticsm as to why I prefer not to have romantic relationships :lol:

[killerbee13]

While we're on a philosophical bent, I feel the need to interject with my own semi-structured ramblings. My motto is "My only desire is that I leave so deep an impression on you as you have left on me.", which follows the other in spirit, combined with the one about not giving people the satisfaction or something. I also consider myself to be selfish, but I differ from you in my evaluation of it. To me, making other people happy orconversing with them is also enjoyable. Rephrased, I derive pleasure from helping others, therefore, I can selfishly act in other peoples' benefit. I believe that everybody is selfish, else we'd all have died out millenia ago, but the reason we form large groups or societies is because we enjoy doing so, selfishly. Of course, this is all based on a slight redefinition of the word 'selfish', but when is any philosophy not dependent on the definitions of the words used to convey it?

Also, to continue what was being talked about with living on boats and such, while I am somewhat of an introvert, I don't know how much I value alone time, I think I more value free time and privacy. I spend much of my free time alone, but I also initiate most of my conversations, except in the case of the one friend who was bored and spam-called me just before I was writing this. Personally, I don't think aromanticism implies (although it may be correlated with) not liking to be around people a lot, I personally find it more appropriate to take the definition at face value. Since I've never felt anything I could call attraction of any sort, I am aromantic (As well as asexual and possibly aplatonic, if that's a thing. Aesthetics are kinda weird, I feel it, but it's still not attraction.) even though I feel the need to form friendships and have what could loosely be called a sexuality.

Yeah, definitely semi-structured.

[Kellam]

Musette, sorry if I came across harsh there. You didn't word it wrong. I have what has been called a "snarky, jerky or sassy" sense of humor. We all have our failings, a rude sense of humor is one of mine.

[The Not So Impossible Girl]

I too love to hear about the sailboat. :P

[AnomalyEternal]

Good whatever-time-of-day-it-is-where-you-are-in-my-case-afternoon fellow aromantics :D

[Mezzo Forte]

Musette, sorry if I came across harsh there. You didn't word it wrong. I have what has been called a "snarky, jerky or sassy" sense of humor. We all have our failings, a rude sense of humor is one of mine.

Whoops, I guess I missed the context, since tone can be misinterpreted so easily in text. I'm usually one to appreciate a snarky sense of humor truth be told (I often have to stop myself because I often find myself wanting to make jokes for the sake of a joke, but I risk coming off like I made an accidental stab at someone, and I can only do that with friends who have known me well enough). Go figure that when the humor is turned around on me, it end up going over my head :lol:

Also, expanding on the idea that killerbee was discussing, I agree that aromantics don't necessarily always dislike being around others a ton. Truth be told, I often find myself split in a bizarre internal dichotomy between my social and antisocial self because when I'm around my twin who handles my social life, I enjoy the group gatherings that she organizes, regardless of size. I'm also super sappy about the beauty of powerful friendship and familial bonds and I also get a thrill out of making others happy or seeing a sparkle in their eyes as I ask them about something they are passionate about. At the same time though, I'm really not very good at micromanaging the earliest stages of a friendship and found myself alone pretty quickly in college, and I think that the more I adjusted to that, the more pronounced the loner side of me became (it was always there, but I still had my social spells thanks to my twin.) My obsession with my music works well with solitude too, even if I really like performing for a crowd on occasion, so that probably made my loner side more pronounced as well. I guess that the more I adjusted to having time to be just with myself, the more I began to rely on it. Yet, I still can often enjoy social gatherings, especially when I'm reunited with my twin the same way that I always did.

I'm considered a pretty decent conversationalist though from I've been told, and I even had a colleague try to talk me into an ambassador position for my university partially because of that. People often don't believe me when I say that I used to be kinda quiet and a bit on the shy side too, and I don't know how many people would believe me when I say that I'm introverted unless they really knew me on a deeper level.

[Kellam]

My life could be described as a careful balance of solitude and socializing but the primary drive for me would be the pursuit of solitude and solitary experiences. My primary example is my love of walking. Now, I'm not actually talking about hiking or being in the woods, I am not very interested in the whole communing with nature thing. Most hiking trails are crowded places with unspoken social expectations. When you cross paths with a stranger it is not un common to have to chat with that person. I honestly prefer city streets, bike paths and long country roads. In a city, even though I am surrounded by strangers I am also invisible to them, only occasional smiles and glances are shared. For a truly solitary experience I head out into the suburbs and farmland, fifteen miles or more out. That is where I can be truly alone. I am often the only person on foot and I see no one for hours. I don't count people in cars as they become part of the landscape. Just hurtling boulders on the rivers that are streets. On a thirty mile walk I often spend 7 of the 9 or so hours lost in my own mind and body. Magical and rapturous are the best descriptors I can think of to define the experience. And of course the endorphins that come with such exertions amp those feelings up.

Now, as has been said, I can be quite social as well. I have been met with incredulity when I have said to co workers that I'm a quiet or shy person. There is definitely that outgoing show off side to me too. I have a life long love of performing and experience a nervous joy when the eyes of 20 strangers are focussed on me and I know I hold the attentions of the minds behind those eyes. Its not a power trip, just flattering and affirming. The last several years have been odd for me as I haven't been near a stage but I was working on accepting who I was. I am just now experiencing the rebirth of the drive to get paintings on walls, do readings and book shows to perform my music. I also love getting a breakroom full of coworkers to laugh at, ponder or question something I have said. There is a gratifying challenge to socializing.

I always need to get away in the end. I need time to hone the things I create, to polish them and ready them for show, and the same goes for myself. I need to think everything through and consider all potentials. I can be a control freak and I dislike anyone having sway over my life and decisions. The main thing I appreciate about my job is that I often get long stretches when I am not required to be at work. I am at the start of a full month off right now. I could go work for other museums but to me free time is far more valuable than money or prestige. My job is great, I love my work and consider myself lucky to be doing what I do. But my work environment is also very social and contingent on a fair amount of cooperative behavior. I can, in any given week, find myself enlisted as a follower, a teammate or a leader. The atmosphere is so social in fact that at the end of a long stretch of work the last thing I want is to see any of my coworkers. The social world for me is intense, invigorating, necessary but in the end it is draining. Solitude is where I can be me in my purest form, I can re charge and explore my nature. I don't think these tendencies make me aromantic, but they certainly aren't hurt or hindered by the fact either.

[Piotrek]

@Kellam

Now, as has been said, I can be quite social as well. I have been met with incredulity when I have said to co workers that I'm a quiet or shy person.

This reminds me of the moment during my Spanish course, where I said I was introverted. The thing is in order to benefit from a language course you need to be a least somewhat extrovertive, otherwise you're not going to practice much ;) So, as I wanted to learn something, I was willing to talk to people and as a result probably appeared just as extrovertive as the other participants.

[Zash]

@Kellam

Now, as has been said, I can be quite social as well. I have been met with incredulity when I have said to co workers that I'm a quiet or shy person.

This reminds me of the moment during my Spanish course, where I said I was introverted. The thing is in order to benefit from a language course you need to be a least somewhat extrovertive, otherwise you're not going to practice much ;) So, as I wanted to learn something, I was willing to talk to people and as a result probably appeared just as extrovertive as the other participants.

I am quite shy too. What helped me in learning Japanese was I had a friend who was fluent. You don't need to go out in the city and talk to everyone to practice, just a fluent partner who is willing to help you out is enough.

[Fire & Rain]

Hello, everyone!

I'm bad at small talk lol I just wanted to drop by and introduce myself. I feel aromantic most of the time but I'm still quite confused about my romantic orientation. For now I'm fine with not knowing.

[That Kid U Know]

Hello everyone,

I am pretty much aromantic but I guess i'd be labeled as wtfromantic, I enjoy close and strong friendships but nothing more than that, never had a crush or "de butterflies in de stomach" :D

[Piotrek]

@Kellam

Now, as has been said, I can be quite social as well. I have been met with incredulity when I have said to co workers that I'm a quiet or shy person.

This reminds me of the moment during my Spanish course, where I said I was introverted. The thing is in order to benefit from a language course you need to be a least somewhat extrovertive, otherwise you're not going to practice much ;) So, as I wanted to learn something, I was willing to talk to people and as a result probably appeared just as extrovertive as the other participants.

I am quite shy too. What helped me in learning Japanese was I had a friend who was fluent. You don't need to go out in the city and talk to everyone to practice, just a fluent partner who is willing to help you out is enough.

I'm not sure if I could call myself shy. Rather not, I guess. It's just that most of the time I find it hard to relate to people (for example because they're talking about stuff I'm not interested in) or I don't feel inclined to talk to them preferring my own company. Sometimes, I regret it afterwards, like in the case of the meetup I mentioned before.

Anyway, the point of the Spanish course remark was that the teacher was surprised to hear me say that I'm introverted, because most of time I behaved as if I was extroverted for the sake of benefitting from the course. (Incidentally, one of my pet peeves is people telling me: "What do you mean you don't have many opportunities to practice your English? There are lots of people around who speak English. Just talk to them" )