#loveless apl

[lovelessrage]

Happy Pride! As always, here's your reminder: don't abandon your own. Don't abandon your own for catchy slogans, don't sacrifice others for a punchier post, don't demean others to elevate your own activism.

We're all here, and while our experiences aren't always the same, while not all of us have the same kind of difficulties or deal with the same problems, we're still all here. Anybody will tell you that you can't just declare yourself an ally - it's something you earn by having other people feel safe enough to call you one. So, even if you are aspec yourself in other ways, before you make dozens of post declaring yourself an ally to all aspec identities, ask yourself a few questions:

Am I familiar with their issues?

How can I educate myself if I'm not?

How can I reduce these issues and avoid contributing?

How can I support others through things I can't solve?

I'm a loveless aroallo, that's pretty obvious from my page, and I'm always grateful for support I see. But, asking these four questions are always going to be supremely more important than a post about how we are valid or claiming that you're an ally or just including loveless people in a dropdown list of identities. Plenty of people don't understand or know there's even loveless people OUTSIDE of aromantics! There are! Lovelessness is not one size fits all, and if you didn't know that before, I'm glad you do now. It's not exclusive to any one person, or any one experience, as with any other identity like it.

If you want to be an activist, if you want to be supportive, you must strive for it. You won't always click right away, and it might be hard to unlearn and let go of some things you thought in your heart of hearts was true. However, it is necessary. It is necessary if you want to foster community built on understanding, and not assumptions.

Pride is a celebration, and Pride is also a recognition of how far we've come. Let's keep moving forward.

[infiniteorangethethird]

sure "romantic" isn't the only type of love but also "love" isn't the only type of positive feeling. So maybe stop insisting everyone needs love to be happy and accept that loveless ppl exist? Pretty please?

[love-me-love-my-weirdness]

Cishet aspecs are queer.

Cishet aromantics are queer. Cishet asexuals are queer. Cishet aplatonics are queer. Cishet afamilials are queer. Cishet anattractionals are queer.

Aspecs are queer as hell and excluding them only isolates queer people from their community.

[fallenrain40]

"oh i love VERY DEEPLY and VERY STRONGLY" okay? that doesnt make you better than anyone else. it's not inherently a positive thing to love more. you can love someone all you want but it's how you treat others that matters more. you could not love someone at all, yet still treat them with all the respect! meanwhile the person that loves oh so much, could still hurt you in so many ways, despite feeling those things.

just some 4AM aspec thoughts.

[papercranesandpride]

I've never actually talked about why I identify as loveless, have I? I want to do that. I think my experience with it is interesting.

A lot of time lovelessness is paired with aromanticism and aplatonicism, and that's interesting because while I am both, it isn't about either of them for me. It's really just a consequence of my schizophrenia. I have pretty much always been apl and aro, but I definitely used to feel love.

I had a pretty sudden psychotic break. It dulled all my feelings pretty much immediately. For a while there, they were pretty much gone, and they're still significantly less strong. That includes love. I did used to feel love. And then suddenly, I didn't.

I panicked a lot. A lot, a lot. I cried about it. For a while I only sent people orange heart emoji to signify the lack of real love. The only way I eventually got past it was by concluding that I did love other people. Clearly I did. I continued talking to them. I did things for them. I maintained relationships with them. I worried about them. Obviously if I did all of that, I still loved them. All of that is love. Love is a choice. It's a continuous action. It isn't just a feeling.

Except that's bullshit. It took me years to realize, but it is. Why did I need to feel love in the first place? Why was love something I needed to have? It's just a feeling. It's one thing that a person can experience. Nothing more and nothing less. Yes, it means a lot to a lot of people. That's great for them. So do football, and Star Wars, and Jesus, and Disney. None of those are mandatory, though. None of them are claimed to be universal across the human experience. No one says that being a fan of any of them is what makes you a good person. If you woke up one day and suddenly stopped caring about any of those things, the sudden change would definitely alarm you, but you wouldn't need to find a way to like them again. You'd be okay without them. The same should be true of love.

Because you know what? I used to feel love. And for about five years now, I pretty much don't. It really hasn't made a difference. A lot has changed in my life. Some things are better. Some are worse. I've certainly discovered a hell of a lot about myself that I didn't know when I was 16. But if I got love back? I don't think it wouldn't improve or worsen any of it. I wouldn't mind feeling love again. It wouldn't cause any problems. If tomorrow I started feeling it again, it'd be weird as hell, but I wouldn't be upset. But I don't particularly want it, either. I'm used to living this way. Having an additional feeling seems unnecessary.

There's nothing wrong with not feeling love. Period. End of story. Whether you demonstrate any kind of devotation or caring towards other people or not. Whether you still have friends, family, and lovers or not. Whether you can pass as someone who does feel love or not. It's just a different experience. That's all. Deciding that any one experience is the one that counts, that matters, that is universal and makes us human, is pointless and ridiculous. We all experience and define and feel things differently and that's the entire point.

That's why I don't use that word anymore, even for the handful of people who I do genuinely still feel something warm and fuzzy for (pretty much just family — my sister, my brother, my grandfather, some aunts and uncles). I'm still not over how fucked up it was that I needed to make up a way that I did love all the other people in my life when I just didn't, just to feel like I was a complete person. That's bullshit. I don't like it. And as a result, I reject the entire concept. I don't need it. It isn't my experience. It isn't useful to me. I don't love. That's fine, actually.

(Also please don't have your takeaway from this be "schizophrenics don't feel love." I've never heard another schizophrenic have this outlook on love. Love is experienced and defined in different ways by different people, and schizophrenia manifests differently for everyone. This is just about me.)

[neptune-scythe]

shout-out to the heartless, loveless, and repulsed a-specs today

stay strong speak your shit be as annoying as the allos

[aaa-battery-not-rechargeable]

"everyone feels love-"

everyone feels my fist through your eye! :)

[hoardmelt]

[dumbfuckingidiotlol]

i'm loveless as fuck, by the way. where are all my loveless anattractionals at?

[allegoriesandepithets]

Large Pixel Size Loveless A- Flags

[PT: Large Pixel Size Loveless A- Flags]

Loveless Ace ~ Loveless Aro

Loveless Apl ~ Loveless Aqp

Loveless Analt ~ Loveless Asen ~ Loveless Anae

Definition: One who is a- [attraction type], and feel disconnected from love, does not feel love, rejects the idea of experiencing love, or otherwise feels connected to being ‘loveless’.

Credit to @ryanyflags for the atertiary flags. I changed the colors of the original ace flag to better match the rest, and changed the aqp to a gradient.

All flags are 3000x2000 pixels.

@tertiary-attraction-archive @orientation-archive @radiomogai @liom-archive @imoga-pride

[haarvira]

Hey! I mean no disrespect by this at all I'm just genuinely curious, in your bio it says you're an emotionless / loveless aplaroace, but you're taken? How does that work?

Oh hey, you're fine. So, I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you know that aromantics can still date, and aces can still participate in intercourse or other. You don't need attraction to do these things, though I'm sure it certainly helps! There identities that are on the aromantic/asexual spectrums where they can experience attraction as well or want to participate in these sorts of relationships(ex: romo or sexual positive aro/aces). Now apply this to the broader aspec/anattractional spectrums.

I will say that emotions can be similar. You don't need to have emotions to be in different kinds of relationships.

Emotionless/loveless are terms I go by to describe my overall experience and/or identity. It does not specify how much emotion or love I can experience, it's just easier to go by the terms instead of describing it all, as like with my aplaroace label which does not specify which identities I go by under that.

I also find it matters little to certain people and they treat me like others who experience even less than I do.

Now with all of that out of the way, I am on the aroace spectrums so I do experience attraction to an extent, and I experience it only with my two partners. All three of us have varying and different types of attraction. I also experience some other non-rose attractions to my partners and even for people outside of them, such as communal or community based attraction, impersonal attraction, solaic, et cetera.

You can really have any type of relationship, as long as it's consensual and in good faith, it's really limitless. Maybe you don't care about that and that's totally fine. Labels, identities, relationship styles/dynamics are for us to use or enjoy but it doesn't mean we have to. But I do and it makes me happy. My partners know I support them and wouldn't want either to be in a relationship with me where they are unhappy or discontent.

[lovelessrage]

Yes, normalize "I love you" not always being romantic. At the same time, normalise asking someone if they are comfortable with it. I cannot count how many times someone thought platonic meant "no boundary questions required" and thought the fact it was platonic was enough. Yes, normalise this expression being used in this way. Yes, normalise boundaries around platonic love.

[infiniteorangethethird]

Remember folks the solution to amatonormativity isn't to replace one type of expectation (romantic love) with another, slightly less restrictive but still restrictive expectation (every other form of love) but to erase the expectation altogether and let people be

It is true that (some) aros can still love but not all of them, and aros shouldn't have to make up for their lack of romantic attraction/love by feeling other types of attraction/love stronger. Love should not be a requirement to be treated as people

[ryanyflags]

Aplatonic (apl for short) flags part 4 :3 🍏🟩🟦🟪 (This set uses green+blue+purple, there's another set that uses yellow for apl instead.) (Due to the image limit, this is split into 4 posts.)

I noticed some a-spec flags were missing tertiary counterparts, so I made some. Some of these flags have already been made before, so they're not all original (I still wanted to have all the flags together in a set, and all in the same res).

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loveless apl (1) | loveless apl (2) | lovequeer apl

the loveless apl (2) design comes from @arokill

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heartless apl | aplvague | caedplatonic

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autiapl (1) | autiapl (2)

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I'll also note that some of these terms can have multiple names, with the "platonic", "aplatonic", & "apl" part being interchangeable. This isn't applicable to every term though. I also chose not to list everything to try to keep it brief. So for example, loveless apl can also be called loveless aplatonic.

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[A-spec flag sets masterpost]

[fallenrain40]

i was just thinkin about something interesting i like calling myself loveless, specifically in the context of me being aroace in the context of my aplspec identity tho, i don't see myself as a loveless aplatonic, probably becuase i'm greyplatonic. imo those feelings are rare but i don't think they are purely nonexistent? (at least, as far as i can tell atm.) just a neat lil thing i was thinking about. i like the idea of being able to be a loveless aro OR loveless apl, but not necessarily having to be both if you happen to be apl and aro, and have them be different things yknow? like, you could be a loveless apl but not even be aro! so it would make sense that you could be apl and aro, but only feel you are "loveless" in the context of one of them. i mean, that's how i feel, so it must be a thing.

i hope that i made some sense with this hgvgjbh

[papercranesandpride]

Can we talk about The Giver by Lois Lowry from the perspective of a loveless person?

I'm going to start with a passage that runs through my head all the time when I think about my lovelessness, because it resonates with me in pretty much the exact opposite way that it's supposed to.

"Do you love me?" There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!" "What do you mean?" Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated. "Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," his mother explained carefully. Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory. "And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language. You could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes,'" his mother said. "Or," his father suggested, "'Do you take pride in my accomplishments?' And the answer is wholeheartedly 'Yes.'" "Do you understand why it's inappropriate to use a word like 'love'?" Mother asked. Jonas nodded. "Yes, thank you, I do," he replied slowly. It was his first lie to his parents

I agree with Jonas' parents here. You aren't supposed to agree with them, because they're expression the views of the average person in this dystopian society where love has been eliminated. You're supposed to think "wow, this is a really fucked up society if parents don't love their children." More importantly, you're supposed to think "wow, this is a really fucked up society if no one feels love at all." But I agree with them. "I enjoy you" is a vastly more correct and useful thing for me to say. I do wish people used more precise language instead of the term that's been diluted to meaninglessness. I would love a world where we say things like "I'm happier when I talk to you" or "it's cool to be able to say I know someone so talented" instead of "I love you." That's exactly what I'd like.

I just... As someone who grew up to be loveless, it scares me how much I loved this book as a kid. I grew up to be the kind of person this book views as missing an essential part of the human experience. Lois Lowry thinks that being like me is dystopic. It's not fun to realize that about a book I read over and over, and then read again in school as the first book I really, properly analyzed for English class. Some fundamental part of me was formed when I wrote my first very angsty fanfiction about it for a school project. And this book looks at me with revulsion.

Lois Lowry is just wrong. I used to feel love and then stopped feeling it (and I need to post about that sometime, because all the loveless people I see talk about never having felt love and so I want to voice my own experience). I don't think I'm missing out. I have no desire to get it back. To be clear, I don't think I'm better off without it, either. It's a neutral thing. Some people feel it, some people don't feel it, and neither group is worse off. I wasn't any happier with it than I am without it.

I don't really have a point, except just that it sucks that the whole origin point of the teen dystopia craze that formed all of YA during my peak YA-reading years sees lovelessness as bad. But you know. Of course it does. So does the rest of the culture.