this is a bit of a personal and rambly post, so i apologise in advance - i’ve been thinking about this concept of aspecs being fundamentally unable to access certain emotions and experiences due to our lack of attraction (such as lust, yearning, romantic love, etc.) for a bit now and the conclusion i think i have come to on that is while i do believe that there are some intrinsic differences in aspec vs allo experience, especially because relationships / emotions / attraction / the meanings we attach to those things are as much a social construction as anything innately felt, the vast majority of human emotion & experience is not in any real way inaccessible to a person because of their orientation. i just do not think that the essence of any one emotion is exclusive to one type of experience, even if that is the context where it most commonly occurs. i cut off a friendship a little while back (for multiple reasons, but certainly in part) because they insisted i was incapable of understanding or relating to the concept of yearning on the basis of my aromanticism; they insisted because i could not experience romantic attraction, describing my experience as such was both fundamentally inaccurate and also offensive (in comparison to their own romantic troubles). i don’t disagree that there are emotions i will never understand; but i genuinely do think, as someone who has experienced in a very serious way, platonic “crushes” before, that most of the emotions typically considered to be exclusively reserved for romance can and do appear in other non-romantic contexts. even if it is uncommon! i do not think you need to experience sexual or romantic attraction to have access to many of the feelings that exist in the world. and i think you might be surprised by the way emotions and feelings can manifest themselves.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
areudirty
gracieabrams
vaporwave
dailybridgerton
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
romaincrisis
