#my boyfriend [/r] and my girlfriend!! [/qpr]

[voided-selfships]

THEY ARE MY EVERYTHING!!!

[aspecpplarebeautiful]

I’ve been trying to figure out for sure what alterous means for me, bc I can’t help but be curious if my feelings for my girlfriend are “Romantic like with a capital R” lol, or if it’s in a vague abstract-y demi/recipro maybe alterous maybe romantic way lol.

I found this description of alterous when I was reading Reddit posts about it, and it basically said “I want to be close to you and around you and do everything with you, I just don’t care what form it takes and how we categorize ourselves.” And I totally get that. At the same time, I was the one who asked if we wanted to start officially dating bc honestly I wanted to be able to say to people “I have a partner! I have a girlfriend!!!” And I wanted that label for us too bc I just wanted that feeling of, yes we are committed to each other. But… it didn’t exactly feel like a romantic instinct to wanna call them my partner? And now that I’m thinking about it, my ex and I considered each other as boyfriends, even tho we definitely weren’t dating in any conventional sense, it was a qpr and I had no romantic feelings towards them, not even the “idk if this is romance or not” feelings like I have with my girlfriend. So yeah I think I wanted the label just so I could clearly say, “yes I’m their boyfriend and she’s my girlfriend.” But I honestly wouldn’t have cared that much if she didn’t care about official labels, but I also knew that she would love it, so I wanted the label for her too… and the way we talk and act, definitely looks romantic and the way I act when I’m rambling about them to my friends, I probably look like anyone else who is romantically in love with someone. But I think my point is, I don’t care whether or not our relationship feels “Romantic with a capital R” or not. I like that it feels kinda romantic coded bc I like doing and being cute with her in a way that’s probably romance coded, but I don’t need it to be. I guess… I guess I would consider my feelings towards her as romance-inclined alterous. And I could use my gender identity as an example. I’m nonbinary, but lean towards transmasc too even tho I don’t always feel “Masculine with a capital M”. I’m alterously in love with her, and it leans towards romantically too but I don’t always feel that “Romance with a capital R.” Huh that actually makes a lot of sense to me.

This turned into a slightly chaotic ramble lol but maybe other people can relate or it’ll help them if they’re trying to figure things out. I’ve sent in quite a few asks the last few days, but honestly this is my favorite place in all of tumblr from the first day I found this so thank you for being here for all of us :)))

~wolfyboi

Thanks for sharing your process! I definitely think people will find this helpful, it's not always simple, but it doesn't have to be.

I'm really glad to hear this blog has been helpful! And don't worry about sending in a few asks, multiple asks are definitely welcome.

All the best!

[lilacs-stash]

hey I wanted to ask. how do you think balloon being aroflux (in your headcanons, at least) impacts their relationship w the rest of the grand slams? I know you ship them and I just. I wanted to see the aromanticism elaborated on beyond it just being there for brownie points. (Not to accuse you of anything! I’ve just seen a lot of people slap QPR on them and call it a day, no further thought. I know you’re THE grand slams person, so I know you have thoughts on this, and I’m inviting you to share them!! I’m interested!!)

:D <- just got an excuse to ramble about their HCs

Okay before I get into this I want to mention I myself am not arospec, I do have quite a bit of input from Max who IS aro on this cuz we discuss the grand slams's relationships a lot. But they are also not aroflux. Point is this might not be the most accurate aroflux rep but I am trying 👍

Oh and also please do not they/them my Balloon. She uses she/he.

Since you said grand slams and not "Nickel & Suitcase" I'm going to start with the most simple one. Baseball. They aren't partners 👍. Post show they're good friends and metamours. (Now I do have more to say about their relationship just nothing else in relation to how Balloon's romantic identity effects it)

Now Suitcase. They're queer platonic in the sense of "very much platonic and very much partners", as that's the way they come off to me when watching them. I think they probably dated for two weeks or so at the start before realizing that they aren't romantically attracted to each other, which was a part of Balloon realizing he was aroflux. Also I think the two kissed exactly once back when they were dating and then decided it's gross 👍

Nickel. Oh boy this is a long one. I have a older post talking about this but might as well say it again. Okay so Nickel is romantically attracted to Balloon and she's alterousally attracted to him, well mostly the aro does in fact flux sometimes and it ends up /r or /p. (I previously described this as "Balloon's attraction to Nickel is pretty much "Man. I kinda want to hold him."" I now have an actual word for it yay!)

They both more so care about being partners in general, rather then what kind of partners they are. And tbh they probably couldn't describe it if they tried. They're very unlabeled to me. They're not /p or /r or /qp they're just…Nickloon. Yeah 💕

At the start before they considered each other partners Nickel wanted to be in a standard romantic relationship with Balloon (she wasn't out to him at the time) but now the idea of that feels…off to him. He's incredibly happy with how things are and he knows Balloon doesn't want that.

Now some smaller stuff, they tend to call each other more /p stuff. Dude bro, "bud" is the big one (yeah that's just canon). Sometimes you'll get something like babe though. Balloon's not really comfortable with other people referring to their relationship with romantic terms (accept like, Suitcase). So if Nickel calls him his girlfriend that's great if someone ELSE does the same yeah no that's uncomfortable. He usually just calls Nickel his partner or guy and then boyfriend is mostly for being affection directly (ie she'll call Nickel her BF when talking to him as a form of affection but not causally to other people)

Another thing is both kisses and "I love you"s are very intimate for them. I admittedly am not very good at portraying the kiss HC (I just like drawing kisses 👍), but I do genuinely think they only really kiss in private and/or emotional moments. Now of course they say and show each other they love them a lot and in many ways, but directly saying I love you tends to be mostly for when the other needs to hear it. Reassurance type thing. "I love you, you're loved, it's gonna be okay."

Idk how to end this but wow I wonder what Lilac's favorite grand slams ship is

[yardsards]

What made you realize you’re aro? An idea has been planted in my head of me being aro

i feel like for me, my thing was less about *realizing* i was aro and more about *accepting* that i was aro. (also talk abt my asexuality in here bc those two parts of my identity feel very intertwined. and some gender stuff as well)

as a little kid, i didn't have any crushes. i assumed all my classmates that said they had crushes were just lying or doing some kind of social performance that i (as an undiagnosed autistic who frequently felt left out by my peers' social rules) figured i just didn't get. i figured real crushes wouldn't happen til we were teenagers or something.

when i was like 13, i was clicking around on wikipedia, and found an article about asexuality. immediately i identified myself in it (and realized that oh, it wasn't the default). my confusion about why the girls my age always talked about finding guys hot finally made sense to me. it just clicked into place.

i read up more about asexuality. i looked at the asexual tag on tumblr. i learned about aromanticism and the split attraction model.

but i wasn't ready to accept being aromantic yet. i labelled myself a heteroromantic asexual for several months, maybe even a year. the idea of never having sex wasn't scary to me. but the idea of never falling in love was *terrifying*. so i told myself i just hadn't met the right boy yet and would grow into it. (you'd think a 13 year old would figure out their romantic orientation before their sexual orientation, cuz it's normal for sexual attraction to not be fully developed yet. but i was not coming from the most logical place here)

over time, seeing aromantics online, and unlearning heteronormativity and amatonormativity, the idea of being aromantic started to feel less scary. so i *began* to accept the fact that i could be aro and that would be okay, and started calling myself aromantic.

but a part of me still didn't *want* to be aromantic.

i tried looking for alternative explanations. i questioned if i was a lesbian: i now knew i didn't want to be any boy's girlfriend, but being a girl's girlfriend was never shoved down my throat (and didn't have heteronormative gender roles baked into it) the way dating boys was and so didn't make me so viscerally uncomfortable. and something about butch lesbians really resonated with me (hello repressed gender crisis). i found girls pretty to look at, and fun to draw.

and i had this female friend that i tended to cling to (i have always had a habit of clinging stronglyvto one best friend at a time in my younger years, as a weird autism-anxiety thing). i liked being by her side, and i wanted to hold her hand. i wanted us to be in each other's lives forever. i found myself jealous when she paid more attention to her various boyfriends and girlfriends than me. (later on i realized that she actually wasn't a very good friend and treated all of her friends like free therapy or pit stops between romantic partners. very high school.)

then i realized i was trans, and came out to some close friends.

and then two separate male-aligned friends both admitted romantic feelings towards me in a very close timespan. it made me feel warm when they told me they wanted to be with me. but i told them i didn't think i reciprocated the feelings. both of them told me they'd be okay with something queerplatonic instead of romantic. but i told them i wasn't sure about that either bc commitment like that was scary to me. and i wasn't sure that if i did want a qpr if i would want it with either of them specifically.

i started to think, maybe i was biromantic. the idea of being a boy's boyfriend didn't make my skin crawl the same way the idea of being a boy's girlfriend did. i wondered if maybe the reason i didn't say yes to being in a romantic relationship was just the same reasons i also didn't say yes to being in a queerplatonic relationship (commitment issues/not being sure if either of those particular people were right for me)

but i slowly realized that all of my feelings that i was hoping to fit into a romantic box just. weren't romantic and couldn't be forced to be romantic. it was all either just strong platonic love (i remember noting that it was roughly the same type of love i'd felt towards favorite cousins, who the idea of being romantic with obviously disgusted me). or in other cases were just me being lonely and wanting to be loved and paid attention to, and wanting any love i could get even if it were romantic. and being so afraid of being abandoned in favour of everyone getting romantic partners (because our amatonormative society says that friends should always come second to romantic partners, plus that first girl friend regularly ditching me for her partners increasing that fear) so i was hoping to be in a romantic relationship with the people i loved platonically so that i wouldn't have to worry about them leaving me behind.

idk if i explained it well, and idk if any of this is helpful to you. but yeah.

[whataterribleidea-doit]

Re: the whole q***r/quasi platonic relationship thing

Most people who say they want/ have a QPR are just talking about close friends. Some are using it to describe literally all of their friendships. This is really annoying and stupid, yes. Especially that whole idea of wanting a big group of "polyamorous quasi platonic relationships" like you're literally just talking about a big group of friends calm down lol

But. I understand the original intent of it, which was asexuals* wanting a name for the close, intimate, non sexual, totally platonic partnerships that they wanted to have. Not being attracted to anyone at all must be really isolating. Wanting to have a life partner without the expectation of sex and romance would be a natural reaction to that loneliness.

As I've said before on here, my relationship** with C can very much be described as quasi platonic. We have long term goals, live together, share finances, are genuinely committed to each other. Some of what we do together could possibly be described by outsiders as romantic, but I don't view it that way. We're just very close.***

Does that sound like "close friends" to you? To me, that doesn't really cut it. It doesn't have the same level of commitment. I mean hell when was the last time you had a friend with whom you talked about moving out of state and building a house with? That's not really the type of thing friends do, even close ones.

I still think that the way people on this site use QPR is definitely just another word for close friend. But that doesn't mean that wanting a name for something that actually is something that's not quite friendship and not quite partner is a bad thing.

I think that if you're going to use QPR to describe a relationship it should be reserved for something that's significantly more committed than regular friendships. Like personally I use girlfriend for someone with whom I'm in a romantic/ sexual relationship with, but I don't live with. Partner would be that person but they live with me. And obviously wife for that person but we're married lol. QPR would be the same level as partner minus the romantic/ sexual relationship.

I'm probably not going to use QPR still because tbh this website has ruined that concept and most people, if they even knew what I was talking about, would still think "close friend" because that's what it's become. I guess I could just use partner, but that's usually interpreted the same as girlfriend/ boyfriend/ wife/ husband. So that still doesn't work.

Anyways there's my hot take on the issue, take it or leave it lol

*(meaning fully asexual, no attraction to either sex, what that community would call aroace)

**(also having this relationship doesn't make me bi. There's no attraction there.)

***(I'm really lucky that my girlfriend is understanding of this relationship and that she and C get along so well lol)