Aros.. Unite!

People who identify on the Aro-Ace spectrum are wonderful and absolutely fit within the LGBTQ+ community!

You are not broken

You haven’t “just not found the right person”

You are not “in a phase”

Romantic relationships and sex are not mandatory to be  normal or “human”, you are perfect just the way you are

Not being sexually nor romantically attracted to anyone is completely valid, being repulsed towards these concepts isn’t any less valid.

Your sexualities matters within this community and nobody’s opinion can change that

Sexualities from this spectrum deviate from the heterosexual norm, just like any other sexuality in the LGBTQ+ community, and should be just as equally respected.

Demiromantics and Demisexuals are also grand! So are Apothisexuals! ANY sexuality from the Aro/Ace spectrum is wonderful

i know y’all don’t have a lot that isn’t also inherently tied to asexuality, and that has to suck. i’m sorry. please know that you’re not weird for your identity. you’re perfectly okay. 

i feel like people talk about aces and aroaces a lot, but not non-ace aros (i don’t know if there’s a specific term, sorry). 

Them: You don’t know what you’re missing out on!

Me:

Them: You don’t know what you’re missing out on!

Me:

[image description: three sets of two text banners, reading the word “alloaro”, in three different five-stripe pride flags: allo-aro (dark green/light green/white/yellow/gold), allo-aro (dark green/cream/red/brown/black) and aromantic (dark green/light green/white/grey/black . The text is formed by five rows of fifteen crosses in five stripes, shaped to make a block-ish, digital-clock type text mimicking a cross stitch design. The first image in each set has a grey background; the second is transparent.]

Cross Stitch Text Banners: Allo-Aro.

I’m making a set of cross-stitch themed text banners, based on my aromantic cross-stitch patch patterns. The second images in each set are transparent PNGs and can be filled in with background colour or layered on top of other background images.

because i know that one day, my friends will leave me. my friends will find significant others and start dating and will one day get engaged and then married. and then they’ll settle down and have kids and that’ll be their life. working, being parents, and being married. and what does that mean for me?

it means that i’ll be left behind and abandoned. they won’t mean to, of course, but a significant other will always be first priority. they won’t think of planning an outing with a friend when they can plan a date with whoever they’re dating. they won’t think of hanging out with their friend when they have kids to take care of. they won’t think of their friend because i will never be as important to them as they are to me. 

because to me, my friends are everything. my friends are my chosen family, the closest people in my life. there won’t be anyone more important to me than my friends because i don’t feel romantic attraction. but also, there’ll be no one to look at me and love me most of all the way i love my friends, because to everyone around me the highest form of love is romantic and my platonic love will never be enough. 

Anonymous said to aliens-stim-too: could i request an aromatic stimboard with a ghost/paranormal theme? ty!

I do not owe anyone an explanation about my identity.

I do not owe anyone a disclaimer about the ways I do or do not love others.

Hi Anon, no worries, it’s not something I can’t share. 

For a long time, I didn’t know I was Aro, I didn't even know there was something I could be instead of just broken. 

I had my crushes when I was a teenager, but instead of the drama and the uncertainty and desire it was just choosing the boy that was cute and nobody else wanted and focusing on them. It was the thing to do because all my friends had crushes on boys, so why wouldn’t I? If they didn’t care for me, I was never very bothered. I never cried for them, never even bent under pressure when the one I was with gave me an ultimatum. I broke things off and moved on. All my friends told me I was too cold and too rational, that one day I would fall as well. Spoiler alert: I never did.

Then came the crushes on girls, I thought that maybe I had never fallen for a boy because I was a lesbian and I didn't know it. Turns out that wasn’t it either, I started identifying as bisexual in my late teens and early twenties, but I still hadn’t been in love or felt anything more than a twinge of interest. 

Not even for the person I was in a relationship with for over a year. They would say “I love you” and there was that expectation to say it back, but it tasted terrible when I did because it wasn’t true. I broke things off when I realized it was never going to be true, and pretending was becoming more and more difficult.

I thought there was something wrong with me for the longest time. That something in my upbringing, in the relationships I had seen around me made me incapable of loving someone. That just the right person hadn’t turned up. That I was broken somehow (there is an element of childhood trauma in here, one that sometimes still makes me wonder). 

I had considered going to therapy to find out if there was some kind of roadblock in my mind stopping me from feeling romantic love, I considered it during my twenties and when I got to my thirties I was sure there was something wrong with me. Everyone kept telling me it was just a question of time, that the “right person” would appear and then I would fall harder than I could ever imagine. It always made me wonder why that was something I had to look forward to, because I wasn’t. I really wasn’t looking forward to falling in love. I’ve always been an affectionate person, and I have lots of friends. I get all my emotional needs fulfilled with them, because I do love my friends and family and they love me. Just because it’s not romantic doesn’t make it less love.

I was well into my thirties when I stumbled into the word Aromantic for the first time and it clicked. It fucking clicked. There were people who just didn't feel romantic attraction and if there was a word for it, then it was something real. It wasn’t just me, it wasn’t just a question of time.

People still ask me if I am sure of it, it might be that the right person hasn’t come along yet. Why do I believe I am aromantic if I might find the perfect person five, ten, twenty years down the line. (I’ve had this question asked by many gay friends, I ask them how do they know they’re gay, maybe the right person of the opposite sex hasn’t come along yet, it might be just a question of time. How is that different from all those cis men telling my lesbian friends they are only lesbians because they hadn’t found the right man yet. They rarely have an answer for that.)

I think the hardest thing for them to understand is not that I haven’t met the right person yet, is that I don’t want to. That I am happy the way I am. 

It was the hardest thing to understand for me too, but then I realized there was a name for people like me, that I could finally let go of the expectation of just waiting for the “right person” and that there was nothing wrong with not wanting what the rest of them wanted. 

Click for better resolution!