An Aro's Blog

solidarity

10 Dads Who Didn’t Want A Cat 

Sometimes I realize how amatonormativity is dangerous and toxic for everyone, and it’s scary.

Let me explain: I’m romance-repulse, and I don’t give a fuck about any kind of relationship. My romance-repulse affect even my friends and family since if they try to hug me I’ll escape from them and you can’t imagine how disgusted I can be from a kiss on the cheek. And I’m happy how I’m since nobody ever complain about it, maybe my family but every family complain about everything.

But sometimes even I wonder how is it to be in a relationship with someone and how’s to not be a romance-repulse, how’s to be…“normal”?

I see everywhere I go and in everything I watch how romance is important in our life and how people is happy with it, even with the problems it can create and with its unhappiness like…I dunno…someone who’s not loved back, some crush who treat you like a object, some infidelity and ect.

And I really wonder how can it be to feel romance and understand why is it so important? Obviously I always say everything you do with a lover you can do it with a friend (after all exist even the “friendship with benefits”) and that’s why I don’t understand why I ask myself what could happen if I’m not neither aro neither romance-repulse, I mean why I’m “intoxicated” with this thoughts if I’m perfectly fine how I am?

Simply because I live with amatonormativity every single day and instinctively I wonder if I’ll be like my family expect me to be, with some “I love”, with a family, with children (actually I really hate them, don’t wanna have them) and to stop to act like I don’t care about nothing besides my cat and my things, what could happen? I’ll be really…“happy”?

I was babysitting my eight years old cousin and they were trying to steal one of my plushies, when I decided to hide it my mom told them it was a birthday's present from "my best friend" (this is even a lie, they are not my best friend but a classmate and I neither think of them as a friend but as a taxi) and then, of course, my cousin thought my mom was referring to a "lover" and not a friend.

[id: the good place meme with the cactus, you know the one. michael is labeled “me” and is asking for “good aro representation” instead of “asexual representation”. janet is labeled “ “progressive” writers” and is holding a cactus labeled “asexual representation” behind her back. after a back-and-forth, “ “progressive” writers” give “me” “asexual representation” instead of “good aro representation”, which is what I asked for. I am tired of this but not surprised. end id.]

i gotta do everything my own damn self (both making this meme and making my own aro rep…)

all of the aro-spec positivity is lumped in with ace-spec positivity. all of it. i haven’t found anything more than an occasional post that is solely aro-spec. hell, sometimes things that are tagged aro/aromantic/aro-spec are only abt asexuality!

don’t get me wrong, i love ace-spec humans and y’all are wonderful but like. i honestly think people don’t understand that aromanticism can exist separately from asexuality. lumping them together constantly makes confused humans (such as myself) doubt their aro-ness because we like sex but may or may not want love.

You see others in romantic relationships & it’s beautiful. You’re happy for them. Sometimes it makes you sad because it’s not something you want, but you want to want it, because that would mean you’re a normal person.

You notice people, that they’re attractive, & maybe your eyes linger, but they are just aesthetically pleasing to you. Nothing else. Men & women affect you equally.

Maybe you have a desire to have kids, like I do. I want to adopt.

But then you can’t help but think, what if it’s too hard on your own? How will I find a platonic, life partner?

You enjoy reading & watching stories that feature romantic relationships & interesting dynamics, but if you ever think of yourself in that situation, it’s disturbing. You don’t want it.

So you don’t. You don’t want it. You admire, & appreciate, & daydream about being a normal person who wants a romantic connection, who wants sex, but you just don’t.

Some of you aro people who’s aplatonic can explain to me what actually means be aplatonic?

Like…you can have friend but don’t see them in the way “I want to be with someone neither with some platonic love”? Something near to single forever in my life and it’s awesome?

‘Cause I think I can be apl but I need more information and the people that say “I’m aplatonic so I don’t have friends” confuses me really hard. I’ll be grateful at who’s can explain to me better what’s means be apl.

At its core aplatonic is the difficulty or inability to make platonic connections. This inability to form these connections is more easily summarized by saying ‘I don’t experience platonic attraction’. For me I describe it as feeling no ‘pull’ towards other people. I can have the time of my life with someone but there will never (and has never) been a thought of ‘ya, you know, I would like to do that again/see that person again’ my thoughts always go in the ‘that was fun. Hope that person has a good life.’

The ‘pull’ or ‘want’ to get to know a person better just isn’t there. It doesn’t exist. In that was I don’t experience ‘platonic attraction’.

Which is not to say I don’t have friends, but all of my friends are people that have been in my life so long they are essentially family. It’s the situation of ‘circumstances put us together (school) for extended periods of time over years and years and years to the extent that our families have become intermingled and my mom messages me to remind me about your birthday.

There is also a strong connection between aplatonic and mental health/abuse that I always try to emphasize because the original coiner (over on AVEN) mentioned that their could be a connection between the two for them (though they did leave the term open to all aros).

A lot of people also confuse aplatonic with nonamory (not wanting QPRs) but that’s a different topic.

I appreciate this addition because it’s one I haven’t come across before but I can see how it could easily go hand-in-hand with the definition of aplatonic that I was introduced to/used. Especially since my own touch-aversion extends to everyone, no matter the ‘status’ of our relationship. I think it is very easy to see how these two uses of aplatonic could go together/support one another. (Which is not to say that to use aplatonic you must experience both definitions, just that they are two definitions with an easy and understandable overlap)

I have no idea if that made sense

(I can especially see how romance-repulsed/touch-adverse could be inadequate since most people only associate that with romance and never think to extend it to friends or family…you won’t believe how many roommates I’ve had that thought my touch-adversion didn’t apply to them because they were ‘familiar’ with me. One such incident leaving me completely traumatized given that I was high on pain-meds at the time and had no way to get them to stop touching me)

Also, I hope you don’t mind me adding your tags to my reblog but I thought they were important. I had the exact same reaction when the discourse started, especially when being aplatonic was used as a means to ‘nullify’ my arguments as a trans/nonbinary person. The thing that drove me back to talking about it was seeing so many aro/ace blogs (and almost always non-apl) trying to defend the term using the wrong/inaccurate/partial definition of the term and my overwhelming need to correct them/make sure the term was being used/defined accurately. It can be very frustrating to see aplatonic used to mean ‘not wanting a QPR’ without also defining the nuances of the term that made its creation necessary. It becomes even more frustrating when it is further expanded to ‘it just means not wanting QPRs! It has nothing to do with not having friends’. While aplatonic can be used to say you don’t want QPRs, by ignoring the intrinsic part of the definition of aplatonic as a difficulty/inability to form platonic relationships (which, again, I can easily see touch-adversion falling into the ‘difficulty’ part) these people were essentially turning this aromantic term into the QPR equivalent of AlloAce’s going “but we can still have romantic relationships!” Which, ughhhhh.