Wired

People touch their romantic and sexual partners a lot. Family members can have more physical contact without it being weird. But western society expects friends to touch during greetings and goodbyes and thats all thats guaranteed. In straight women circles they engage in more platonic touching (as ive observed)

But i need something here. Its more pronounced because I have moved away from my friends and family.

I truly feel like my soul is going to depart from my body sometimes (or maybe thats just me posting this too late at night) but what I wouldnt give to put my head on someones shoulder, to brush someones hair or they brush mine, to cuddle on a couch watching a movie

It does have the usual number of the typical dating app creeps, but the rules are VERY strict about platonic, so they get banned easily.

People touch their romantic and sexual partners a lot. Family members can have more physical contact without it being weird. But western society expects friends to touch during greetings and goodbyes and thats all thats guaranteed. In straight women circles they engage in more platonic touching (as ive observed)

But i need something here. Its more pronounced because I have moved away from my friends and family.

I truly feel like my soul is going to depart from my body sometimes (or maybe thats just me posting this too late at night) but what I wouldnt give to put my head on someones shoulder, to brush someones hair or they brush mine, to cuddle on a couch watching a movie

I love hugs but my best friend doesn’t really (she doesn’t like physical touch from anyone but her bf and I obv respect that) so I rarely get hugs except when I get to see like two of my friends, one of which lives like 45 minutes away (she gives legit the best hugs too), and like this post said, even that is limited to greetings and goodbyes. I’m so desperate for physical affection, in fact that’s one of the things I think about when I think about what/if I might want a qpr because, again like this poster says, it’s really limited to your partner (typically romantic/sexual)

Yeah i had / have friends that are not very touchy. Its a complicated process learning to communicate more of my need for touch — further complicated by the fact that I moved away from my good friends and making new CLOSE friends is a slow process

I like the idea of a qpr more and more. Its just there are no contenders for a qpr in my life rn organically

I meant more to talk about how when you’re aro, there’s this whole side of relationships, those that are lauded as the « most powerful bonds » that you don’t have access to. You’re effectively barred from getting to close to people you know? How must it feel, to know yourself secondary in all relationships? If all you can have are friends, how do you cope with the expectation that all those friends could leave you to live with a partner?

And when you’re ace, especially when otherwise queer (like, being transfem), you have to reckon with the fact that no matter what, there’s a facet of socializing that you can’t access. This goes into relationships too, of course. What do you do with partners that expect some degree of sexual reciprocation? What do you do, when flirting, playing with desire, is so common in your community? Do you just accept you’ll be isolated from your peers in a tangible way? Is that even something you can accept?

I can’t claim these are the worst things the world does, nor to have solutions. But, when connecting with people, and doing so deeply and fully is predicated on relating with them, sexually or romantically, and you can’t do that. What do you do?

So often there's this unspoken assumption within transfem communities that we're all sapphic in some way, which is especially alienating to me as someone who very much is not. It's not a conscious erasure either; I'm sure if you were to point this out, many would be quick to point out that they support aspecs. But clearly not enough to question their unconscious biases.

I'm used to the question. it's not like it's something outrageous that he's asking. so I simply said no, that's not for me.

he looked at me and said "well, someday." not someday maybe, just.... someday.

of course I'm not quick to anger, but there's a part of me that's a little more defensive about my aroace identity. so I jumped to my defense.

my uncle isn't a bad guy, he's quite nice and tries his best to be respectful in the current political shit storm by supporting queer people. but apparently that does exclude me, an aroace.

I reiterated that I'm just not interested in a romantic or sexual partnership, and I really do not ever see that changing.

and he said something to the effect of "it's okay if you don't want that now."

and I said, "no, it's just okay that I don't want that."

and he said that I was pessimistic. as if I was secretly searching for a relationship or a partner, but was rejecting love because I could not find one.

I calmly (with all the rage in my veins) told him "no, a life without love or sex is something optimistic for me."

he had the gall to look horrified.

I'm sick of aroace people not being seen as normal human people when they don't want the outcome of their life to look like everyone else's. I'm sick of the white picket fence, I'm sick of the assumption that everyone has another half out there.