#loveless aplatonic

[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.

[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.

[neptune-scythe]

hugest shout-out to heartless a-specs, afamilials, aplatonics, loveless folks, repulsed a-specs and whatever the micro label is where your aspec identity is tied to neurodivergence/disability I shamefully never remember what that one's called

but yeah special shout out for pride month

[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.)

[shiutsu]

Am I the only one that likes being an aspec? I've seen number of people hating themselves since of that & I barely see anyone liking it.

Lacking attraction is great, y'all just haven't reconciled w it yet/pos

[justagaymoth]

I love being aplatonic. I just don't like being ignored and invalidated in the aromantic community. The whole putting friendship on a pedestal thing that so many aromantics do sucks and is just as bad as what alloromantics do to romance. Shaming people for not loving any is no different than alloromantics shaming you for not loving or having a romantic partner. I don't need friends. I have friends but sometimes I want to be friendless. I am not a monster for not loving my friends. The whole we Aromantics can still love our friends is just as bad as when AlloAces say they can still love. There is nothing wrong with not loving. Fun fact you can care about someone and humanity without love. Kindness is more important than love. Sometimes I hate being loveless aplatonic, aromantic because I get hated on by my own community.

[shawdios]

Loveless.

Had a bit of a breakdown last night because I finally got around to reading The Giver. And FUCKKKKK that book. I’ve never had one of those a-spec experiences of “I feel broken for not feeling [x]” before, but that book triggered one.

I don’t experience love. It’s always been a fictional thing for me. Or performative. I saw people in relationships growing up, loving their friends, loving their family, or loving their partners, and it always felt fake? Like wtf are you doing?

And like a lot of things I thought were normal growing up (didn’t know people ACTUALLY heard things when told to imagine it, or that seeing an overlay of static on your vision wasn’t normal), I’ve had my reality shaken. And yet again I’m reminded that I’m Other. I’m what the stories portray as the evil inhuman alien or the evil, because it’s run on logic not love, robot.

But, my bestie as I call them because they’re the only person I will be on an emotional connection level affected by if they were to leave my life, they don’t make me feel Other. Im confused when they say “love you”, but they don’t judge me for not saying it back. They don’t judge me for not feeling what they feel. Nor do they judge me for my violent emotions and disordered mind. They just accept my attachment, my clinging, to their presence in my life.

That’s the closest thing to “love” I have to give. And I’m trying to be okay with that.

[aaa-battery-not-rechargeable]

"everyone feels love-"

everyone feels my fist through your eye! :)

[growling]

"you HAVE to have love without it you will never be complete or happy or worthy of being appreciated by other people" idgaf. Also if you think that simply 'having Love' and nothing else will get you all of these things then you're in for a dissapointment

[infiniteorangethethird]

loveless people. You agree. Reblog

[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

[lovelessrage]

Being loveless isn't bad. Lovelessness isn't something you should dread or shame. A lot of you still act like the mere idea of being loveless amounts to an accusation, like you're being sentenced to something horrific or being charged with a crime. I don't know how to convey how much it hurts seeing almost daily people reacting to a label I hold so dearly like a disease they can catch that they need to defend themselves against, lest they be mistaken for being one of us.

Why do you feel like you need to separate yourself from us so badly?

[neptune-scythe]

anyone who responds to "hey I don't like that/that made me uncomfortable/whatever else boundary" with "that's just how I express love/it was out of love just get over it" is getting WHACKED

love isn't some bandaid that you can slap onto any situation to magically fix it, and intention doesn't even matter

actions do in fact have consequences and constantly upsetting and harming another person in the name of "love" is going to have the exact same effect as it would if you had neutral or negative intentions, because ultimately you're still hurting that person regardless of if you "meant to" or not

and calling something "love" doesn't make it comfortable or okay or enjoyable for the person on the receiving end

it just makes the person doing it feel better about themselves and that's just manipulation and abuse

thank you for coming to my Ted talk

[hoardmelt]

[shiutsu]

"People don't owe you gratitude/[anything that's positive in relationships]"

And I don't owe them attraction, but you get mad about that.