Jump to content

What made you question(?) if you were aromantic?


Bumble_Bee_

Recommended Posts

reading a book called loveless because my school librarian recommended it(she was cool aF), and there was this page where the word aromantic was used. asexual was used too, but that one was something I knew about, so I skimmed it. But Aromantic, I had never heard that word. well, as the book went on it explained the word more. and I just felt so...in place with this word. Also with the book in general, but that word just felt right, and I couldn't explain it. and now, a year later, I'm here. still thinking about it and reading that book over and over again, and still not sure, but feeling better when I use that word for myself.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I realized I was asexual in the beginning of middle school I remember seeing aromantic and thinking that it was absolutely not me. I didn't have a reason to think I wasn't, I just irrationally disliked the idea (probably some underlying issues with amatonormativity honestly). I thought that my having always picked out a crush was a sign of being asexual and didn't question it further.

When a friend had a crush on me in middle school I felt extremely panicked and didn't know why, but I never really questioned why I was freaked out at the time either. Later, in junior year of high school I started going out with a guy I really did not want to go out with because I thought I had to give dating a try, and that's when I really started considering that maybe I am actually aromantic. I didn't get why I was so freaked out by him having a crush on me and I finally started researching and gradually accepted it. Within the year I grew to love the identity wholly.

Edited by who_knocks
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

When my friends were all talking about crushes and I said I'd never had a crush in my life (and wasn't interested in having one), then one of my friends said "maybe you're aromantic". A few internet searches later, I realised I fit exactly into the descriptions of aromanticism. It felt like I'd unlocked a whole other part of me I had no idea about lol, it just felt so right.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I have never needed to "be in love" or "be in relationship". But sometimes I was like *Why not?*. When somebody asked me about future, I imagined myself alone in my own flat/house with cat/dog. And it came true, I live alone with a cat😀

I don't like romantic movies/stories because it's boring for me.

I was in relationship but I didn't need to do "romantic things" and I said "I love you" to him just because he wanted to hear it😄

I love and enjoy being single.

That's why I'm asking if I'm aro or not🫠

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

1) When I connected emotionally to people (which was already an strange occurrence) I didn't feel any of the physical things people associate with romantic attraction.

I do like romantic things. But when I form a bond with someone and wanna have something that from the outside may seem romantic, it's never accompanied by the physical manifestations of romantic love/attraction.  But, at the same time, those feelings still seem closer to the romantic than to the platonic, thus calling them queerromantic/pseudoromantic. But the typical  "butterflies in your stomach", "heart skipping a beat", "feeling nervous when you're around your crush", etc? That I never felt.

In general, I connected to people intellectually rather than emotionally.

2) I couldn't understand what my "friends" meant when they said they "loved"/"were in love" a person they barely have met.  To me love of any kind needed deep intellectual connection and knowledge of the person.

I remember ones when a girl I went to school with and was close to told me about this guy she "met" at the gym. He was, in her own words, the "the man of her life/dreams". When I asked her what was his name she told me she didn't ask him. So I asked her why didn't she ask his name when they talk. Her answer: "I never talked to him, but seeing him help the people at the gym (he was a personal trainer) made me fall in love".

It was as if she was speaking some undeciphered language. How was it possible for her to have a crush on someone she hadn't even once converse with?

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

My whole introducing me post has my story in full basically realizing that all infatuation is not romantic and finding the microlable idemromantic.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

What made me question my own identity was a friend coming out as aromantic. Tbh I feel like I have surpressed the thought of being aromantic because I did have a crush in early puberty (Which means nothing btw people, romantic or sexual attraction can very much change, ESPECIALLY during puberty), but when this close friend openly talked about his feelings it made me think about it and yup. Finally arrived at that conclusion.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

This is a long story!

It was a lot of things that made me consider I might be on a spectrum. As early as high school, I had a hard time relating to my peers who were hypersexualized and very much into personal dramas motivated by romance and sex. People didn't seem to differentiate between sexual and romantic attraction and the exposure I had to media and popular culture only served to reinforce the false narrative that the two are meant to go hand in hand as a pair. I was quite confused in the fog of hormones during puberty and all the changes my body was going through. 

The biggest hurdle in the college years after high school was trying to make sense about whether I actually wanted romance and be romantic with another person or was I conditioned through my environment to believe that's what I was meant to pursue in life. I never dated or tried to date, and never experimented with sex-exclusive relationships mostly because I could never see myself sharing my body with someone I had no emotional attachment to. So I thought, OK, maybe I would like romance but only with a person I like. However, I ran into another conflict years down the line because I felt almost a complete lack of interest in meeting potential partners and/or talking to people who could be a potential partner. After that I went through back and forth of misery wondering if there was something innately wrong with me for not desiring marriage and children like most people do, or at least wanting to be with someone exclusively and build a future with them. 

About 2 years ago I started a new job that allowed me greater mobility in being around coworkers, some of whom who identify as queer, non-binary, and/or trans. I was pretty much a recluse and had gone through years of untreated clinical depression prior to getting this job, so to make the leap into the workforce and becoming more social was a huge step for me. I never consciously thought of the LGBTQIA+ community whenever I interacted with them and I saw it as more of a gift that, for the first time in my life, it felt like I was building friendships and getting to know people. 

Up until last year, I was still in the firm self assured boat of thinking I never pursued a romantic relationship anywhere with anyone because I simply did not want to and hated the fuss of romantic activities and behaviors between couples. Many times I experienced attraction towards several coworkers, but very often it left me confused as half the time I couldn't tell if what I was feeling was platonic, sexual or romantic attraction.

Only when I started reading All About Love by Bell Hooks, I began a semblance of understanding there are different types of love in the world and romantic love is only one of them. I had a vague remembrance that asexuality is on the spectrum but it was from googling the term I found aromanticism. After that I found the book Ace and Aro Journeys and reading it was like pieces coming into place. To me this isn't a "coming out". I've always been the same person, except before all this I didn't have the vocabulary to properly articulate in specifical terms what the hell I was feeling.

Edited by Raininspring
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

It was the fact that I have always had commitment issues and that I never had crushes. (Or really was into anybody romantically.)

I sort of just passively engaged in relationships, and lost interest really early on, just cuz I wasn’t really into anybody.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I got really confused thinking I had crushes on all my friends at the same time and then googled "what does a crush feel like" because I wasn't really sure what I was feeling. Turns out I just really like my friends in a platonic way and I'm aro.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I started questioning that I was aromantic while I was in what I thought to be my first romantic relationship. I didn't realize until 7 months in why I was unhappy with the relationship, and it made me question a lot of things especially when I was discussing what was romantic with my partner. It was my first relationship and I had previously considered myself a romantic in my head but when I actually did the romantic things I didn't like it at all or I felt indifferent towards the situation and my partner at the time, and that was a big part of why I started researching about aromantics. I have realized now that my definition of a relationship is similar to a QRP. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I started questioning after getting my first squish on a girl (I’m also a girl). I thought it was a crush, which was a big deal because that would’ve made me identify as bi.
However I wasn’t sure if it was a crush because I thought it felt different from my previous crush (squish?) on a guy. Something seemed to be missing, i didn’t actually want to date her, etc etc. So I started looking into types of attractions and one day I discovered AVEN. 
The research/questioning process went on for a few years and during that time I had many more tertiary crushes. Once it became clear to me that all of them were tertiary, (and that i have very rarely, if ever, experienced romantic attraction,) I identified as aro. 

Edited by algebraicresc
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

i thought i was a lesbian because all the girls in my class just talked about boys and i didnt care. then i got some guy friends and they talked about girls. i still did not care

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I think I've always known it, basically since I was in middle school... At that time I used to think it was normal to want and desire romantic relationships, I was curious but also too scared, and when I had some crushes they were always platonic and went away so easily.

Then at 15 I started actually rejecting everything romance-related, I ran away from anyone flirting with me and even the will to try (I think it was socially induced) faded away, since then I just want them to leave me alone 😅 I still like to have deep deep bonds and even cuddles but I refuse romance.

I actually found out about a romanticism only in 2022 and it fits me so well!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I've always known it, basically since I was in middle school... At that time I used to think it was normal to want and desire romantic relationships, I was curious but also too scared, and when I had some crushes they were always platonic and went away so easily.

Then at 15 I started actually rejecting everything romance-related, I ran away from anyone flirting with me and even the will to try (I think it was socially induced) faded away, since then I just want them to leave me alone 😅 I still like to have deep deep bonds and even cuddles but I refuse romance.

I actually found out about a romanticism only in 2022 and it fits me so well!

Edited by CORALINE
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

When peers back in school were pairing up, I just didn’t.

Then I felt liking one person, but didn’t want to do anything with them, it’s only that anything to do with them made me euphoric and it stops there.

Someone else in this forum said this is desinoromantic, and I wouldn’t even count it as romantic attraction because it’s just nothing like the typical romantic attraction allos feel, only the butterflies in stomach about some person part.

And I don’t even seek anything to do with them because I just don’t want to, not even if the stimulus of their name being mentioned or seeing them or a lookalike is something I seek out. Back in those years classmates/family members teased me about it and it just triggered my euphoria, but I don’t even care that the person made me euphoric, I got more worthwhile stuff to care about than just baseless euphoria.

Years passed and there’s not even any 2nd person that made me feel the same as that one person. And I can care less.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was after I found I was asexual. And as soon as I found out that part of my identity, the voice in my back of my head goes, “So romantic orientation?” I ignored it for a month or so, just identifying as ace, but then a video on YouTube popped up with one of the people there explaining how they were both asexual and aromantic. I just felt drawn to what she was saying and quickly looked up the term for the full definition. I felt very drawn to many qualities of this term and just kind of knew. I started to identify as ace/aro, but to be honest there was some sort of itch I had that made second guess that label. And I was right, not even a week later I developed feelings for this boy and it took like three years to redefine my orientation. (It took so long because we continued to go to school together, and I was conflicted between wanting to be in a relationship with him and not wanting to be in a relationship with him.) I later settled with the term greyromantic, and even though that is technically what I am, I still say I’m aromantic because it’s easier for me and easier to explain how I really feel about that kind of stuff most of the time.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

it took... 3 relationships to figure this out the first two I was in a polyamorous? one but I was asked to join, so it turned into a bonding thing. So it never felt like romantic nature. the third one felt like a real "relationship" that wasn't toxic I was high in hopes that I would be in my first ever healthy relationship little did I know I confused platonic with romantic I didn't know until it was almost 2024, I was always venting to him about how I didn't feel a connection, a spark but my other friends did with their partners. So that made me upset, and it made me question it a lot. sooner after the breakup because I wasn't happy and it wasn't going well for both ends. I did my own personal research and I started to realize how much I resonated with aromanticism I was sad for a while because I felt like I wouldn't ever love again but then I found out about queerplatonics and that... that really made me happy, it gave me hope. It actually gave me a whole new perspective to "love". And I started to want  more friends and form deep level connections with. I also remembered I never really missed that person, I was only reminded of our relationship when I was on tiktok scrolling through my fyp  looking at couple related posts, so that made a lot of sense.. I still felt guilty though for not knowing all those years But I'm finally happy that I found out who I really am.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think feeling deep and intense feelings for someone and getting sad that they didn't quite the way I liked even though it was clear that there was at least some level of sexual and intellectual attraction. I think I was distraught for months over it because it turned out to kind of an unhealthy relationship dynamic because their impression of people (not just me) could just switch on a dime, out of nowhere, it seemed like, along with shifting moods and a lot of other stuff related to negative mental health, not to mention seeing things in black and white. But with things not working out, and me obsessing over this man I knew for several months,  for roughly 2-3 years made me wonder if I did in fact feel romantic attraction, not to mention coming close to kissing this person as well. Nah, I realized I just most likely wanted someone  who could stay with me in the long term I was attracted to sexually, intellectually, and had a moral compass and psychological coping skills I agreed with. I did think of this person but not obsessively like I needed them all to myself or that I needed a certain label to feel secure with them, but I did of course, want them to be honest about certain things that affected our relationship.

Edited by MulticulturalFarmer
added words
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • telling myself that maybe i would actually want a romantic relationship, even though i didn’t.
  • i used to be a people pleaser (not anymore).
  • thinking i was maybe a lesbian.
  • “you’re too young to know.”
  • ”you just haven’t found the right person yet.”
  • “sexual and romantic relationships are a good thing that god gave us and are nothing to be ashamed of under the right circumstances.”
  • several fictional characters i found extremely cool, didn’t kin, and wouldn’t mind being in a relationship with.
  • being jealous of people in relationships.
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I started questioning a month after I came out as asexual. I came across the term and really resonated with a lot of it represented. I briefly identified as ace aro for a couple weeks, but then actually developed a crush. It took me a while to figure out my orientation again. Switching from terms like demiromantic to greyromantic to aroflux to even biromantic which I knew I wasn’t. Eventually I just started identifying with ace aro again. I realized the crush I had, I didn’t experience romantic attraction towards. Therefore still technically making me aromantic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

About 2020 early lockdown, I ended up reconnecting to my ex (yeah yeah I know) as friends during a facebook conversation, where he admitted that he "still thought about [me]" and still "kinda wanted [me]", and basically we agreed to be friends since why not; I had little to no uni mates to properly chat too thanks to the lockdown and I felt like I had nothing to lose.

When it reached a point where we could meet up, I believe before we did meet again face-to-face, I was chatting with my mum about how I didn't plan to date him again anyways because I couldn't understand why he'd "still" like me after not interacting for so long.
She asked me if, realistically, I really liked people like that. And I pondered on that, realizing that I don't think I ever had felt romantically for someone ever, if I even needed to ever. If I even liked my ex romantically during the time we were previously 'together'. It clicked a lil from that.
Later in another convo with my mum, I came out as a "questioning but fairly certain aromantic", which wasn't surprising to her or my sister.

It took some weeks to realize that I was aroallo specifically, but it had fully clicked for me, and I've been pretty much at peace with it since.

(Also, no I'm not friends with him anymore thank goodness, I won't go into detail but I'm glad I eventually ended that friendship with him.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...