#aroacediary

So, apparently, I have been wrong about the ethnicities of most of my friends. It doesn't matter, but it feels weird to not have had that data already, when I've been friends with them for half a damn decade, and I've met their parents. Just sort of inexcusable to not notice.

On top of this, something I have known is that I am a bad judge of at-a-glance gender presentation detection. I have asked people their gender for years, to the point I don't even think about it not being a typical question where I live.

And not only am I bad, I'm like, fuckin horrible. Part of why I acclimated to fast to the concept of gender identity when I was young was being genuinely unable to determine any feminine or masculine traits from any person with hair. Asking was so easy. So clear cut. Still is. Maybe this is some kinda Neuro-nontypicality, but I ain't no governmence scientician.

I think this might be a side effect of being my specific brand of aroace, but I have a hard time thinking of someone as handsome or beautiful, and kinda just feel nothing about the normally heavily scrutinized features most people attribute to attractiveness.

So I frequent a lot of pornographic forums (mostly due to the human desire to talk about something you like) and I find they drop into two categories neatly:

1: aw yeah we're so fucked up and I love being a degenerate yeeea

Or 2: so I'm looking around and it seems like everyone here is missing, like, the exact same thing from their daily life that this gives me. Which uh, feels bad, but I guess this is group therapy now.

Like, check any gentle-dom, mommydom, even some pegging forums and you will just find a wealth of "oh." As people realize the bone deep desire to be told they are loved, wanted, and are doing a good job is uh, not primarily at least, a sex thing.

Posts with titled like "I don't care about gender, sex, identity, I just want to be loved" over a shockingly well rendered animation of a dude getting his back blown out by an older woman hit different when you know they're 1000% serious.

Like. I am guilty. I'm on those forums.

But I find myself at times of weakness, where I wonder if I'm Ace or Aro at all, having to draw a knife's edge border between psychological need and genuine desire.

And I do not know where that line is because I am not sure I've ever been on the other side of it.

Like, do I want romance or is the love of a trusted person a shockingly effective shortcut to self-actualizing and pride? Do I want to engage in a sexual act with someone or is it just a fastpass ticket to being told I am wanted and worthy of being desired?

Is it BDSM or do I just want to be reassured that what I'm doing is good, correct, and effective? That I can engage in an act I am unconfident in and be forgiven my inability due to my lack of choice and being provided constant instruction.

Am I not AroAce or just Insecure?

Like, there was teasing, obviously, but other than a few confused bites at the apple I had when I was real small, I never brought home news of the warfront and they didn't ask.

To be fair, should they have been more involved, probably, but in terms of identity, it's weird to tell someone 'thanks for never giving a shit enough to hound me about something outside of my control.'

When I told my father how I was grateful, he said "...do you want me to ask?" Because parents totally listen like normal people, but hey, he's trying.

In that vein, I've always had a fascination with love and romantic affection. A combination of being denied tenderness for the half of my life I could still remember and a genuine desire to study what I didn't understand left me with an insatiable desire to consume tender, romantic media.

The idea of the thing appealed to me like the willpower of a warrior training, or the righteous anger of a hero who has lost their home. Something that gave you just a taste of what they were feeling just by watching them feel it, but whose scale you probably could not emulate. Those emotions are for characters in stories, as fictional as the magics or demons they face.

Did you know that there are special nerves in your skin that are designed for social touch? They have a direct line to the serotonin response and take 3 real world seconds to get there. This is the nerve that causes/cures touch starvation, the reason why characters can feel the lips of a lovers kiss for seconds afterward as their lips tingle electrically, the reason why a character can be wrapped in a hug in shock for a few seconds before they break down crying in grief.

All of these I thought were artistic fiction. Like someone with aphantasia learning that others really do visualize things, or me realizing other people store memories in video. It also brought up a question I posed to my therapist: "why, if I've been without social contact for most of my life, am I not touch starved?'

She answered in two options:

1 - everyone is different, and some people have more or less of certain needs.

I'm going by Jason on this blog, this name, like most info I'll share, is edited to protect my anonymity. As long as it isn't my identity, I'll try to keep as honest and consistent as possible, so please let me know if I contradict myself.

I'm, as far as I've been able to determine, Ace/Aro, I work in a dead end Corpo job, I read webnovels and play pornographic games, and tend to heavily prefer content focused around people with Phalluses or who are left ambiguous enough that I may imagine they do.

Due to the nature of my interests, I find myself having to tactfully ignore the, at times, tasteless terminology used by the game's creators and user base. As you may imagine, not all pornographers are terribly respectful of their target demo. I'll say here, once and only once, that I do not bide by the schools of thought of such individuals.