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Please keep in mind that the Volcel meme exists largely for the comfort of our ace or otherwise do-not-want-to-hear-about-sex comrades. Please be courteous and use content warnings and spoilers where appropriate.
does anyone have anything worth reading regarding being aroace? asking because I haven't had any romantic connections, even one night stands or simply kissing, in more than two years
sometimes I wonder if I'm aroace or if I'm just depressed and standoffish and have an actual problem... I find it to be a sexual orientation that's somewhat hard to understand, from the point of view of someone who's in my situation
edit: lol went on google and searched for "aroace" and in the "People also ask" section there was the question "what is an arrow ace?"
I'm aroace, you can ask me anything. You can also read the experiences of others on the asexual and/or the aromantic subreddits, as well as the AVEN forum.
There's plenty of asexual podcasts (sounds fake but okay being the biggest one) that have individual episodes on certain topics which might be of interest. (There's a new one, free from desire: asexual in the city of love which is quickly becoming my favourite one, it's really well produced and is basically an autobiography of this aroace person. CW: mentions of SA in one episode)
The biggest help for me was the split attraction model (google it, too). It shows the primary forms of attraction and helped me figure out that I was very obviously not experiencing romantic or sexual attraction, e.g. having never even had the thought of wanting to kiss someone cross my mind. Being aromantic is experiencing little to no romantic attraction to others, being asexual is experiencing little to no sexual attraction to others. Not wanting to have sex, libido, personal preferences etc. are unrelated.
The well timed going-viral of this coming out video, where she basically explains being aroace, was a confirmation for me that there were many others.
thank you, mr. president
I'm doing some reading, and thinking about the way I typically feel about this sort of thing... here's the deal: like I said, I haven't even kissed anyone in more than two years, despite the fact that I'm a young-ish, good looking man who's fit and friendly. I'm fully aware that I could rejoin the dating pool and find a partner. In fact, there are people that I feel attracted to, but the impulse of being in any kind of relationship or going through the motions of approaching someone romantically is met with an equal and opposite force.
I haven't always been attractive as I know I am today (not going to be falsely modest here), but I've always been that gentle soul that falls in love really quickly and ends up hitting his face against the wall. Not having gone incel when younger is a testament to the fact that I was raised right, with empathy, I suppose. The fact is that I only had one girlfriend in my entire life - we dated for more than five years, broke up, but are still best friends - and I never managed to be the walking avatar of libido that most of my friends are or have been at some point.
This has, however, always made me feel left out, as if I didn't know how to dance the dance, to speak in that mysterious way that every other man around me seemed to know how to speak in, which would let them have sex. I was never very confident and always have had self-esteem issues. Only now in my mid-thirties do I have the self-assurance I'd never had, but... now I think about sex and all I associate with it are feelings of shame, anxiety, inadequacy and rejection.
So here's my deal, framed according to that chart you posted: I often feel attracted to women in a romantic, sexual and sensual way. I often feel attracted to men in an aesthetic way. Whenever I feel like actually doing something about my romantic, sexual and sensual attractions, I get slapped in the face with a wave of anxiety and repulsion that makes me immediately back off. The aesthetic attraction is easy, all I have to do is acknowledge it and think "man Pedro Pascal is fucking hot" but there's nothing else to it.
Does this sound familiar to you? Does your experience as aroace reflect this in any way? The thing that makes me wonder if I'm just pathologically averse to sexual connections rather than aroace is the fact that I do feel attraction, but I just don't feel like acting on it.
No, because you do experience attraction and sounds like you want to act on it, but experience grave anxiety once you come close to that. I'd say that's worth talking to a therapist about, and isn't related to sexual orientation.
I have been in one relationship. I was 14 or 15, she was my classmate, and just a good friend. She and her best friend were both good friends of mine. We hung out daily. At some point I asked her out, and nothing changed fundamentally in the relationship (mostly because we were kids, tbh). We were functionally friends. I broke up with her three months later because I "didn't feel anything", at the time I thought I didn't feel anything special for her because of my depression at the time. But that wasn't the case, I just don't feel anything for people beyond friendship. I asked her out because I thought it was what I was supposed to do (related terms: allonormativity/forced heterosexuality)
Ask yourself: would you act on your feelings if you didn't experience "shame, anxiety, inadequacy and rejection"? If so, I'd say that you're straight, but have some mental issues you need to work on. Which is okay, and you're def not alone in.
Yeah, I ask myself that all the time, and I think the answer is kinda yes. I say kinda because in these past few years my whole life has been built around the expectations and demands of someone who's completely alone. Am I okay with being alone? Am I alone or lonely? How can I be sure? I'm very therapized, but this and my phobias have always been a sore spot that I couldn't manage to fully deal with. I'm currently seeking a new therapist after being with the same one for more than five years, but the financial commitment is out of my reach right now.
You know, one of the biggest problems I have in my situation is that I often feel very lonely, not in not having a partner, but rather in being seemingly the only person in my social context who has no interest in seeking sex and love. I hate it that pretty much 95% of all pop culture seems to revolve around either sex or violence, two things I'm averse to in real life. The thing is, I'm desensitized only to violence in media. Stories about sex and intimacy make my skin crawl. I'll gleefully watch John Wick kill five hundred henchmen, but show me people kissing as the emotional peak of a story and I'll cringe. Fucking weird.
Anyways, thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts. It means a lot to me to know that I'm not surrounded by horndogs even in the online spaces I frequent.
That's why I like this site and the usage of the CWs for sexual things, as OP stated. In an allosexual society, even though people view me/my posts that way, this site is the closest to an ace-friendly space.
I never cringe at sex or kissing scenes, I just never understood their need until I understood that most people want to do those things and incorporate those actions in their relationships and emotional bonding with others, I.e. until I understood I'm aroace. Some ppl are sex-repulsed and hate those things, though.
Me appreciating the dialectics of enjoying classic rock but desperately wanting them to stop singing "baby baby love me have sex with me"
I just appreciate lyrics like that in the same way that I enjoy abstract art. I don't understand it, but it sounds nice.
a fun period in my life was when I lurked in places such as r/foreveralone because of being lonely and thinking "I'm around that age now, I might be looking for a relationship soon", in addition to feeling... something for a classmate. It wasn't a desire to commit sexual acts, or a romantic relationship as I now understand it. Not sure, I think I just wanted to become friends or something. I'm not able to tell in hindsight.
But alas, I thought I needed/wanted it. The pattern repeated itself a couple of times, even to the unfortunate event of "confessing" my "feelings" to someone and thankfully getting rejected. Eventually, I think I stumbled upon the ace subreddit and found myself relating to it. I wasn't even surprised/in denial, just accepted it without much hassle. The road to self-discovery is definitely one full of potholes.
Even then, I still have self-doubts that I'm only just faking it or it's a question of my mental health or something. Oh well.
Still, I'm a sucker for romance in fiction despite all that.
Parts of this are very relatable. And yeah, I like romance in fiction too - specifically BL though.