Afamilial Safe Place

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This is a place for all afamilials, aspecs, and well-meaning others, from anywhere in the world, to engage in discussing afamiliality, learning, and accepting eachother. Safe space for everybody who makes it a safe space. Asks will be engaged with in good faith. No DNI but mod blocks freely. Any trigger warnings will be tagged with "cw [trigger warning]". Mentions will be tagged with this and have a separate tag to add on that says "<- mention". Please do not take it personally if your ask is tagged with a TW.

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FAQ and important resources:

What is afamiliality? Signs of afamiliality. Am I afamilial? Some afamilial userboxes. Platonic and familial love. || Platonormativity. Can you be afamilial and not want to cut ties with your family? Can trauma therapy change your afamiliality? Is being afamilial due to trauma "valid"? Is "familial attraction" an appropriate term? Unifamilial, afamweird, quoifamilial, nebulafamilial, and some other afamspec terms. Can a person become afamilial? How to go non-contact with a conventionally "good" family.

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"mod charlie" : Hi! I'm Lysander / Atari. I'll go by he/him and hy/hym for simplicity. My main blog is @remnants-of-his-last-resort. I'm a minor. Feel free to have a chat with me, my DMs are open for anything you need. I'm afamilial, more specifically apothifamilial. I'm also queer and transgender.

"mod v": [ @lifea16 , original moderator] appears to be inactive. Her bio can be found in the old intro post.

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Claimed anons: 🫧 , ☎️ , 🌊 , ⚓️ , ⭐⭐ , 🐾 , 🍑✨️ , 🍝📼 , 🍎🐛 , 🦈 , Cedar , 🫀, Nonny ,

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Asks will not be closed without notice.

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Similar blogs I know of to check out: @our-arospec-experience - made the fifth image below. @our-aplatonic-experience @aroacesafeplaceforall

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[ @pride-hearts for the first three, @plural-this-user-is for the fourth ]

But i cant really explain any of that to the average person so i just say im bad with babies and they let me go

it's like. incredibly slow and in the back of my head but it's still nice. that's a word i can use. i can talk about it now

we're about to have a very distressing 2 weeks and it's reassuring to see that i can be as uncomfortable as i want to be

So, so many folk stories and fables talking about the importance of listening to your parents. So much emphasis on seeing your family during cultural holidays, it is all about the family, the family, the family. Even if your parents are excessively strict or even downright abusive it is so looked down upon to "disrespect" or cut ties with them. It is so normalised, Asian parenting they call it, brush off every mistreatment. Do you expect them to coddle you the way white parents coddle their kids? And you are still expected to love them because they are your parents, how could you be so disrespectful? You want them to apologise to you? They don't have to do that, they are your parents. They are only harsh to you because that is what they want from you. You want to move away from your parents before you are married? We don't do that, that is not how it is supposed to be done, we are not like those Western people. I shudder to think what my parents or even any of my adult relatives would say if they even heard of the term afamilial. Can they even get any MORE queerphobic? This family thing is baked into our very laws, housing policies, education, everything. Family is the basic unit of society. I hate it so much.

Of course I know certainly other cultures have similar things too. But I wish I could talk to someone about how it is when my religion and culture so strongly emphasises family and loving your parents and it is just so isolating to not be able to relate.

Sometimes i feel spoiled for having watched up with ouran highschool host club bc it helped me understand the distinction really really well (tamakis main thing is that since the club is like his home away from home, he feels like the people in it are family to him and puts himself in a corner assigning them family roles & then getting a crush on the person he shoved into the "daughter" role and gets really confused because he thought they were like a family, forgetting the emphasis on the word "like" in that phrase, something i think a lot of allofamilial fandom ppl need to remember as well)

"NO ONE i feel familial about"

hit guy my friend: "i kinda see you guys as an older brother figure :]"

"ONE(&) person i feel familial about"

Because of how horribly repulsed by family and familial love I am.

Should I really be proud of occasionally finding myself in spirals where I fantasize about my family members dying in a freak accident so I don’t have to be the “heartless child” by cutting them off while they’re still alive?

Should I be proud of feeling like I would choose suicide over a life where I would be always tied to them? And that frequently feels like how this will end?

I hate being afam. I hate that I can fantasize about moving to another country, changing my name, becoming super rich so I can pay them back for raising me and then leave without guilt, get them to cut me off instead by doing something really horrible (these are all real), but I’ll never truly be rid of them.

We’ll always be blood.

no anon because im practising self acceptance.