#aro relationships

[aro-but-not-ace]

Being in relationships as a romance neutral/favorable aro (for alloro readers with aro partners)

I’m romance neutral* and greyromantic*. I have been in romantic relationships. I don’t believe I was attracted to my partners as much as people thought I was. But I chose to be in those relationships and stayed with those people until other factors didn’t work out (ie unfixable communication issues or different long term goals).

I’ve had some of my partners ask “so you don’t love me?” when I opened up more about being arospec with a sad tone in their voice. Or I’ve had friends say “why would you be someone’s partner if you don’t love them?” with a hint of judgment and disdain as they say it.

Here is how I look at it, and keep in mind, this is most likely NOT a universal aro experience. BUT I know that some alloro people worry that since their aro partners don’t “love” them, they can’t be sure about their relationship at all.

Aromanticism is the lack of romantic attraction. In my personal experience, this generally means I have equal attraction to everybody in a romantic sense (side note, this is why I thought I was biromantic for a long time). So, imagine, baseline I just feel neutral about everyone. My relationships are largely based upon experiences and connections I have with people, not solely on attraction.

A lot of my partners thought that this means I feel less about them or that they were just like everyone else. But here’s the thing—I literally chose them out of everyone else to be partners with. In a broader sense, take how alloplatonic* people view friendships: you may be closer with some friends, you may trust some friends with certain things more, or you might have just become friends and are learning more about each other. These people are all friends, and the friendship dynamic isn’t always built on platonic attraction. It can be extremely circumstantial.

If you worry about your aro partner leaving you because they’re aro, I assure you that they will not just up and leave at random just because they’re aro. If they do, there is a very different reason for that. It’s a very personal and complex topic. It ties into factors such as commitment, communication, life goals, and relationship satisfaction and compatibility.

So if anyone is alloromantic and questioning if they can be in a relationship with an aro person, think about it this way: the question shouldn’t be “do they love me?”, and try thinking about it as “do they care for me?”

Glossary* and footnotes after the break

Just some disclaimers so I don’t have to explain later:

1. Yes, some aro people can feel love in other ways. Yes, some aros are loveless. We are all different. I mostly think that alloro people associate “do they love me?” directly with “do they love me romantically?”, which is understandable, but personally I think that in any relationship, CARE and ACTION are the most important aspects in any relationship. Even in an allo relationship, two people can love each other but not properly care for one another.

2. Also, love is not easily defined, so “do they care for me” presents a much more concrete and observable question that is much less stressful than “do they love me?” And I say this as someone who ended up in abusive situations because I told myself “well, they love me, so this must be fine.” I am mostly making this post to tell alloromantic people that being aro does not directly affect how someone may act in a relationship. Yes, it might be a factor, but saying aro = unloving partner is not true and extremely harmful.

3. I wrote this while sleep deprived and I talk a lot when sleep deprived so sorry if this all made no sense or was very rambley.

*GLOSSARY:

Romance neutral - feeling indifferent to romance, whether it be romantic coded actions (ie kissing, hugging, cuddling, etc), romantic situations (ie dates), or the general idea of a romantic relationship

Romance favorable - desiring to engage in romance despite being aromantic, generally the opposite of being romance repulsed

Greyromantic - feeling romantic attraction but less frequently or intensely as alloromantic people. Also an umbrella term for other microlabels in the aro community

Alloplatonic - people who feel platonic (friend) attraction, as opposed to being aplatonic (lacking platonic attraction)

[arotechno]

maybe it's a result of my specific flavor of aromanticism in that i'm asexual, romance/sex-repulsed and non-partnering but i have always felt more strongly connected to the idea of friends becoming chosen family than to the idea of having a partner of some kind, even if those relationship structures bear some similarities. perhaps that's why i've never felt like models of attraction adequately describe my relationships. my closest platonic relationships are borderline familial in nature (to me) and i don't consider them to be based in attraction of any kind. a partnership to me feels like an agreement whereas my close relationships feel like they just kinda happened.

someone i had only recently met once described me and one of my friends as acting like siblings and i nearly started clapping and cheering. my ideal friendship dynamic is somewhere between "bickering siblings" and "old married couple."

this is why i used to think i wanted a qpr (when i was like 16) because what i wanted was platonic relationships that functioned like and felt like familial ones, and to have my feelings for my friends validated as equally meaningful. this is no longer accurate, in part because the term got warped and re-defined out from under me and in part just because i no longer felt like it accurately described what i really wanted. but i think it's a reflection of my specific constellation of identities and experiences that i initially saw it that way.

[redysetdare]

Sometimes...characters being in a romantic relationship is worse.

[glitchedcosmos]

Characters dynamic that’s like “ they’re not in a romantic relationship but they definitely love each other with all their heart and fucking soul”

[sleepii-freddie]

I swear, if "aromantic people need a queerplatonic partner to be happy" becomes an actual societal expectation, I'm going to actually cry.

edit: please stop reblogging this, this is not an actual thing people are saying. I just saw one bad take and got mad. please ignore this yall

[wishfularoace]

does anyone want to be best friends that also live together and go on adventures together but like mundane adventures like ikea and target and also wants to lay our heads on each others shoulders when sleepy but also have separate bedrooms but also enjoy spending most of our free time together……. just me? ok

[vroomvroomwee]

Something that often scared aspec people is being left out in the cold when all our friends eventually find partners and start families and it leaves us feeling so unimportant and like we always come second place.

But this...

It shows how capable of perseverance platonic love is. It only needs to be strong enough. People can love their best friends just as much as their families. And it can be beautiful. To see this as an aspec person gives me so much hope for the future, I hope rtd knows how much this finale means to so many ace and aro people

[aroacemisha]

My brain gave me this image.

[spacedykez]

genuinely think everyone would benefit from learning about aromanticism and relationship anarchy. even straight, allosexual, alloromantics. because amatonormativity affects everyone, and learning about relationship anarchy and redefining how you think about relationships is so freeing. youcan do whatever you want 4ever.

[ale-arro]

been going a little bit insane about this sentence from Ace by Angela Chen for the past week

[bitchliteraria1906]

Listen, I'm a shipper. Shipping is fun. Exploring relationships between the silly characters I like is fun, and to me, that includes shipping.

HOWEVER, as an aroace person who started valuing both my friendships and my ability to be alone without feeling like shit even more as I learnt about amatonormativity, I just need to say:

Can we please stop throwing around phrases like "There's no platonic explanation for this" or "They're too close, they can't be just friends" when talking about ships we like and analyzing the reasons why we think they should have been canon?

Can we please stop acting as if romance is some sort of "end goal" and that if two characters who have some form of chemistry don't get in a canon romantic relationship, then their potential was wasted?

Can we stop assuming that characters who end up single will automatically feel alone and miserable?

Like, can we stop normalizing amatonormativity in fandoms? I know it's difficult because those phrases and thought processes are very normalized, but can we try?

Also, some people will find this controversial, but yes, this includes not screaming "Are you homophobic???" At anyone who doesn't like a popular, implied or even canon queer ship. Yes, some people who don't like the ship will be homophobic, but some of us really just want more representation of single main characters who actually stay single, as well as representation of qprs, strong platonic bonds, people who live well by themselves/in solitude and so much other stuff that we often don’t get due to the world kind of being obsessed with romance (and sex tbh, but that's not the point of this post).

[huginsmemory]

What can I say really

[artemx746]

can people start obsessing over queerplatontic ships the same way they obsess over romantic ships

[redysetdare]

enough stories about how someone learns to truely be happy through love. i want a story where someone is desperately seeking out love thinking it's the only way to be happy only for them to learn by the end that happiness is what they make of it and they don't need love at all to make it.

[the-great-kraken]

if you see a male character kiss a male character, you assume they are gay.

if you see a female character kiss a female character, you assume they are a lesbian.

if you hear a character say they don't feel like their gender, you assume they are trans.

so why do a-spec characters have to jump through so many loops?

a character saying they've never had a crush or don't want a relationship or that they don't understand romantic love is so often ignored or used as fodder for other queer or autistic headcanons (reinforcing stereotypes that aroace people are secretly gay or always autistic)

why is it that our stories are always "up to interpretation"? why do we have to wait for the words aromantic or asexual to be said to be taken seriously? why is it that even when characters say they don't want relationships, fans will scream and cry about sex/romance favourable aspecs and qprs?

when it comes to gay and trans characters, even the likes of bisexual lighting is often treated as though it canonises their sexuality. for aroace characters, even the most explicit coding possible is swept under the rug in favour of other "interpretations"

i'm so tired of fighting for representation just to have it ignored and minimised by fans. let characters be aroace. please.

[acexualien]

Had fun making these today 😌