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The New Aromantic Thread (v.1.5)


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Girl Hypnotist Rei

Hey, since valentine's day is coming up... would any of you be interested in doing an Aro-day type thing? I don't know exactly what we could do, but I think it would be nice to celebrate being aromantic spectrum with all this romance that's going to be shoved down our throats. Maybe we can write bad puns and send nice messages to each other? I unno.

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Lambda Corvus

Hey, since valentine's day is coming up... would any of you be interested in doing an Aro-day type thing? I don't know exactly what we could do, but I think it would be nice to celebrate being aromantic spectrum with all this romance that's going to be shoved down our throats. Maybe we can write bad puns and send nice messages to each other? I unno.

That sounds like a fun idea. Can't say I would participate, unless people wanted to see how terrible my puns really are. If one sends me a hypothetical message of said description, be warned...

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That sounds like a fun idea. Can't say I would participate, unless people wanted to see how terrible my puns really are. If one sends me a hypothetical message of said description, be warned...

They mean it, don't test them!

(I might be willing to participate, depending on what would be involved.)

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Girl Hypnotist Rei

I'm having a really hard time thinking of anything I can actually do. Like, I might be able to do drawings, but they'd be really really late. College is kicking my butt. :C

Maybe we can play some kind of word games or riddles or something?

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words are futile devices

I'm going to quietly slip into this thread now. *waves shyly*

Sooo, for a long time I considered myself lithromantic, but it somehow hasn't felt exactly right. I'm always questioning whether the attraction I've felt would actually be considered "romantic." Still pretty clueless about what romance is supposed to entail, to be honest. I have fantasized about kissing and holding hands with specific people before, but that's about it. And in reality, when faced with those possibilities, no way would I actually go through with them. When a situation feels as if it's turning romantic for real, I'm getting the heck out of there and never looking back.

I'm beginning to think the only sorts of attraction I've truly experienced are of emotional, aesthetic, and/or sensual origins. Usually outward appearance doesn't even register with me until after I've gotten to know someone better, at which point they might become attractive due to their overall nature. I fall in love with people's personalities, with their minds. Some I've desired a close bond with, a special and intimate connection. A friendship that's "more than" friendship, but not crossing the borders into the romantic. That area is so foreign, and makes no sense as being "the next step" in a relationship to me. Yet that's how so many see it. I can't imagine I'll ever find someone else who feels the same way about relationships as I do (besides a lot of you wonderful people, of course).

That's enough about me. I've decided, though, to go ahead and identify as aromantic, unless proven otherwise somewhere down the line (very unlikely). :)

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*waves*

May as well join in. Aromantic accounts for about 90-95% of how I feel about things.

I *do* experience something vaguely like romantic attraction, kind of. Even it is very grey in just about every definition of the word though. About 5-6 times in my life I've developed "feelings" beyond "super awesome friendship feelings" for some guy friends (that I've already been friends with for a good long time, so...even *that* is demi). Essentially though, the biggest thing that's significantly different from a very close friendship is a warm fuzzy feeling that it *could* be nice to cuddle on the couch with them *sometimes* or hold them as they were dropping off to sleep. And...that feeling is very easily dismissible (if the guy in question wouldn't be comfortable with it, it wouldn't bother me at all).

I *do* kinda wish I could bring myself to tell the guy I'm "squish-crushing" on (especially my current one) that I really do care about him, but the chances of everything being misunderstood makes it not worth the risk. And - I have *almost everything I want* from the friendship as it is anyway - I'm not going to risk making him uncomfortable over the idea of cuddles that aren't *that* important to me anyway.

So, yeah. Hi I guess...though many of you have probably heard from me by now anyway. ^_^

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Lambda Corvus

So, today my university was doing some ridiculous "send a bunch of people Valentine's day" thing in the student union building. Yep! I am totally going to pay you to distribute a dozen cards with undisclosed sender to random people. It was in that moment, as I strolled by like a bad-ass, that I again reveled in being aromantic.

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VindicatorPhoenix

I want to tell people at my university that I'm celebrating Aro-day instead of Valentine's Day. :P I wonder what they'll say...

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VindicatorPhoenix

If anyone asks me for a date, I'll respond: "The date is February 14th, for your information."

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My parents always get me and my sister a little something for Valentine's Day and that's all I need! Other than that it'll just be same ol', same ol' for me. I'm more excited about having a week off next week.

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Lambda Corvus

I do not really see this day as Valentine's day. Honestly, I didn't even know it was today, just that it was "happening sometime soon". In my mind, today is simply the precursor to a weekend, wherein I get more work done than during the weekdays, and am free to play Pokémon and Left 4 Dead. Classes and offices are closed on Monday, too!

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I want to tell people at my university that I'm celebrating Aro-day instead of Valentine's Day. :P I wonder what they'll say...

They will probably think it is some obscure pun on Cupid's arrow.

If anyone asks me for a date, I'll respond: "The date is February 14th, for your information."

My response for "Would you like to have dinner tonight?" is "I like to have dinner every night. With you? No." But, it rarely comes to that because I have been transmitting "DO NOT WANT!" signals for a while before then. And if it is the where someone just blurted it out awkwardly, I would let them down a bit more gently.

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I've been wishing people "Happy Single's Awareness Day!" today. I've gotten some really funny looks. But, I've been calling it this for years now...and most of the people who actually *know* me appreciate the greeting for what it is.

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the bumbling rotifer

I've been wishing people "happy creepy obsession with another human being day" :D

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Valentines day is pointless and a joke in my opinion, all that staring into each others eyes and loving cuddles erghhhh

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Manic Pixie Dream Nerd

I've been wishing people "Happy Single's Awareness Day!" today. I've gotten some really funny looks. But, I've been calling it this for years now...and most of the people who actually *know* me appreciate the greeting for what it is.

Oh my gosh! Most of my friends (including me) were saying that today! It's true, that really is what Valentine's day is, when you think about it a little.

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byanyotherusername

Sometimes I refer to it as Candy Day, but mostly I have just been saying Happy Valentine's Day to people. I do not see it as a predominantly romantic holiday. I mean, obviously it is, but back in grade school everyone used to exchange cards and candy with everyone else, and I've just kept exchanging chocolates and such with my friends ever since. I never thought of it as something that only in-love people can celebrate. If anything, the in-love people who are all serious about it seem to be having the least fun, it's a lot of pressure. Have any of you been shopping today? Stores are filled with people (mostly men) awkwardly examining lovey flower and chocolate displays and looking very uncomfortable. XD

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Girl Hypnotist Rei

Ah, I am sorry I did not plan for Aro-day better, but things have been kinda... busy lately. I did get chocolate from my dad today, so yay~!

Also, I hate the whole Single's Awareness Day thing. I don't know what reality you just stepped out of, but I'm pretty sure most people are aware single people exist. Plus, the acronym for Single's Awareness Day would be S.A.D. It just gives off a "pity those poor singles" vibe to me. I much fonder of having an Aro-day.

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My mom got me a ball of yarn so I can arm-knit a scarf! Successful Valentine's day!

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Ah, I am sorry I did not plan for Aro-day better, but things have been kinda... busy lately. I did get chocolate from my dad today, so yay~!

Also, I hate the whole Single's Awareness Day thing. I don't know what reality you just stepped out of, but I'm pretty sure most people are aware single people exist. Plus, the acronym for Single's Awareness Day would be S.A.D. It just gives off a "pity those poor singles" vibe to me. I much fonder of having an Aro-day.

While I wouldn't mind an Aro-day, Single's Awareness Day can be said with enough honest cheer to completely throw people. One way or another, most people who are Single on Valentines Day are made more aware of it than they would usually be (especially when everyone else is asking what your plans are for the evening), so it's a fitting alternative to calling it Valentines day. And - being celebratory *about* it makes the point that one doesn't *HAVE* to be self-pitying about it. I know I'm not. I'm celebrating the day the same as everyone else is, I'm just celebrating that I'm *not* in a relationship.

And - it has an obvious enough name that pretty much everyone in the general population understands what I'm celebrating. And it's not so much celebrating that Singles Exist, but...that being in a relationship isn't the only thing to celebrate. It's kind of poking fun at the whole "Valentines Day" expectation in my own way.

So, there we are. An Aro-day would have it's place (and would probably be more of a "true" awareness day) and I would definitely be behind one, but most people wouldn't recognize what it was even celebrating.

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Notte stellata

If anyone asks me for a date, I'll respond: "The date is February 14th, for your information."

Or like what Sheldon said: "Are we talking 'date', the social interaction or 'date' the dried fruit?" :P

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It'd be fun to have some sort of aro-day, maybe celebrating friendship or our non-romantic passions.

I've been meaning to get myself composing more, so maybe if someone was interested in writing some sort of aro-themed text, I could try setting it to music in the spirit of such a holiday. If I did that, I definitely wouldn't be the one performing/recording the vocal part (trust me, you don't want to hear my screeching voice), but if I wrote the accompaniment for marimba or vibraphone, I could make a simple recording of that part (otherwise, I'll write for piano and just let people use the midi.) I can't say I have much experience writing tonal music, and the only piece I've written for voice so far was polytonal, but I've really enjoyed writing music set to text, and if someone were to provide the text, that'd probably be enough bait to recruit me into something like that.

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I'm not exactly aro (gray-ro here), but I wanted to share this.

Can someone make that real?

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Lambda Corvus

I'm not exactly aro (gray-ro here), but I wanted to share this.

Can someone make that real?

Obviously, they didn't have aromantics in mind when designing such button. Or, perhaps, they are part of the secretive world takeover that we are plotting...

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I realize this is asexuality.org but I realized earlier this evening that I'm (sexual, yet) aromantic, and always have been. It describes everything perfectly.

I experience sexual, aesthetic, sensual attractions. When my sensory stimulation overload (for me this stems from being an ADHDer and and aspie) isn't kicked into high drive I like to cuddle, touch, be physically intimate/close with those I have strong emotional connections with (this is different from sexual.)

I don't have full-on OCD but I have three mental health diagnoses that lend themselves to obsessive thought patterns exceedingly well and I realized earlier this evening that I've become obsessive over certain people I was formerly in relationships with but I wasn't ever, ah, "in love." I appear to have definite lines of definition along sexual attraction, but emotional attraction fits on some kind of blob where I either feel emotionally that this person is in my queerplatonic/close friendship/chosen family/community or else I don't.

I think I've been long-time stumped by a society that expects and socially trains people to expect to be romantically attracted to others.

I've been contemplating my utter lack of intense "romantic relationships" for the past few years, though I have... almost ten emotionally intimate relationships, about five or six of those are also sexual in some manner. And how I used to hit this point and feel that expectation and so would form intense relationships -- not out of a "omg can't be alone can't stand being alone" thing, you understand, but rather I'd take one of those close emotional/potential and/or actual sexual attractions and then purposefully attempt to construct what would outwardly look like a romantic relationship. Except I don't get romantic relationships at all and they all seem to have formed because the other person carried us the rest of the way -- helped along somewhat if I developed something of an obsessive mindset (not crush/romantic/love based, you understand. This is the EXACT SAME type of obsessive mindset I've developed for fictional characters, fictional series, musical groups, friends, actual people I don't know, non-fictional areas of interest such as mental health, etc.) Any of the physical sensations and thought patterns I've thought of as being indicative of "love" I've come to realize are intense stimmy-feelings/obsessive interests (aspie style) of glee/joy/bestest thing/good/happy/yes more pls/etc. Again, something I feel exactly the same about over, say, the three days I spent researching different types of snakes in detail, or the few weeks I have recently spent researching Russian naming conventions/Russian names/Russian Cyrillic (I can both print and write it in cursive now.)

And I've been contemplating how I'm very content where I am and I don't want or need to push myself into that sort of expectation, and I never wanted to. I've just run with obsessions and societal expectations. And I'm so very, very done with that.

So even though I'm (very very very) sexual I'm also very very very glad this site exists 'cause it's given me the most and best information about aromanticism that I've found so far, I just feel like this great weight has been lifted, weight of expectations I didn't know I was carrying around. I feel lighter and happier because of it.

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Lambda Corvus

Welcome to the aro thread, Marevo. It is good to hear that this site has given you useful information on being aromantic. Asexual or not, you are welcome here.

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Girl Hypnotist Rei

So... story time today. When I first discovered Lithromantic, I went through the tag on tumblr, and a lot of the posts were hate. Despite my better judgement, I tracked the tag, and started seeing some really positive posts in there. It got to the point were I really enjoyed reading new posts. Naturally I was excited to see a post in the tag today... yeah well it turned out to be a post making fun of identities. :C I was sad before, now I'm disappointed too.

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The Not So Impossible Girl

So... story time today. When I first discovered Lithromantic, I went through the tag on tumblr, and a lot of the posts were hate. Despite my better judgement, I tracked the tag, and started seeing some really positive posts in there. It got to the point were I really enjoyed reading new posts. Naturally I was excited to see a post in the tag today... yeah well it turned out to be a post making fun of identities. :C I was sad before, now I'm disappointed too.

Yeah, this is why I'd never get involved with tumblr. While theoretically it's supposed to be a sight for inclusiveness of many different fandoms and groups etc... it's just not most of the time. It's just not.

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Manic Pixie Dream Nerd

I'm not exactly aro (gray-ro here), but I wanted to share this.

Can someone make that real?

Boy, I wonder what it's like actually having to DECIDE whether or not you should press that button... :P

(I can just picture my friends shaking their heads at me now and saying, "CAC, you will get married some day, believe me." Yeaaaaaaaahhhhhhh-no. :D)

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