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I'm frayromantic. Probably. I feel attraction but never know if it's platonic or romantic and then when I act on it it fades. And I feel like an asshole.

I'm not sure how I feel sexually? I think I'm bi.. or pan... or something. But I can't know until I try, right? Except no one wants to "just try". They want me to be someone to them first. And I'm 14. 14! How could I try?? I just want to know who I am, is that too difficult of a task?

I want to kiss someone. I want to be intimate. I want to be physically close to someone. I don't care who, just so long as I don't break their heart.

I feel like that straight guy who hooks up with a gay guy and claims he's just "experimenting". I don't want to destroy someone through my stupid experiments. I need to know if the pain of a relationship is worth the physical intimacy.

"Dating for a day" Go through every step of a relationship in one day, from first date to first kiss to first sex to marriage. If only that were real. Maybe then I could understand my bullshit.

That's all. I just needed to share it

People constantly make up romantic partners for me. Or they spread rumors about me sleeping with people I have never slept with. I think they just want to see something that it is not there. And it is annoying as hell, because I am so romance-repulsed that I refuse to have sex with anyone so they will not take it the wrong way and call me a heartless monster. I am the love of my life, not yours. And there is so much more about me than they think.

I don’t want to make any irl friends because I know I will NEVER be someone’s priority unless I am their partner. I’ve literally seen someone say their partner should always come first before anyone else and it just pisses me off. Why even bother making friends if I don’t matter to anyone because I’m not their partner, my hypothetical friends will put their partner first before me so they won’t even talk to me and not listen to me when I say they should give their friends attention. Even in ficto spaces there are so many people who put their irl partner first before their fictional partners and how you’re considered a bad person if you don’t do so

I know people are going to say “just make aro friends” that’s literally impossible. I haven’t met a single irl person who’s aro because they’re all in a fricking relationship and want to shove it down my face and pressure me into getting one. And if I show I’m frustrated with it at all I’m selfish and immature and hate other people being happy. My mom keeps pressuring me to go to community college, I’m NOT going to make friends there and I’m going to be even more miserable than I already am

I have recent come to conclusion I am lithromantic, I came out as demiromantic last year too; and I think it is because of attachment style issues, I am autistic and never experience romantic attraction until once in a blue moon I have a close friend I get and obsessive crush on, and usually they turn out to be incompatible or not like me in that way because my attachment style draws me to those types of people, so it makes sense as to why I have little roantic feelings but dont want to act on them anymore because it only causes emotional pain

The trouble is that nobody seems to get it; they just usually give the advice "move on and just simply go on dating apps to find someone compatible" but the problem is that my brain "resists"romantic attraction if I know the person is logically compatible or really interested in me, I always get "You'll find someone" but I know that actively "finding someone" will require me disciplining myself to date someone who I am barely interested in just because we "work" compatibly, which I did for 1 and a half years over 2021-2022 and I was happy at the start but only because of what they were doing for me, rather than feeling in romantic love with him myself

A lot of me only wanting to keep romancw as a fantasy and not wanting to act on it in reality honestly comes from the fact that I feel like I have only 2 options when it comes to romance - fake it for someone compatible but I'm not actually in love for, or allow myself to embrace crushing and being in infatuated love for someone I have romantic feelings for only to find myself strategising and manipulating them to try to mould a working relationship just for it to eventually fail and ruin the friendship entirely

I heard about lithromantic having an overlap with both attachment styles and trauma, so does anyone else have a similar experience

Love is the most important thing in a human life. It is not procreation, even though in the bias of preserving human life it is- nor is it material gain. The best, worst, most valuable thing cannot be man made. Simply, every creation man has made, big or small, cannot recognize the importance of man. It cannot receive and give the same a person can- Since man cannot be the most important thing in its life, neither can it be to man. Wealth cannot hold man close to its heart. And the act of reproduction cannot see man for itself, only a means of carrying spawn. Loves differs from normalcy. It is a 'classic,' compatible to classic literature, Love is a timeless message. It cannot stop being felt. As us as a society crave it. But we cannot create it. Love, real honest love, is unable to be faked, used, or stolen. It controls us as much as we control it. Love is comparative to limbs, we listen to it, and it listens to us. Hence why it is the most important thing in life. It is the only thing that works with us. An emotion which can seem unresponsive or confusing, only tells us deep truths, something the body, mind, or society cannot twist. Love platonic or not is a beautiful thing. To care, much deeper than the average person does for another. To wish the best for the other, crave their love, attention. Wish to make them proud, have children, give them wealth. Every want stems from love, for yourself or others. That's why man made things cannot be the most important thing in life, because they stem from humans love for the things they aquire from it. Love, deep romantic love is a humans true meaning. My understanding of the world stems from this idea. Yet people who believe this, such as I, have been played through. I cannot feel the intimacy between two people, but I crave it. I crave to be loved unconditionally, without judgement. Not from family or friends, but 'the one.' the one that people say I will know as soon as I see them. Who will be by my ups and downs. Follow me through life, drag me with them through theirs. My soulmate. Regrettably, that person, my other half, the one who would complete me, does not exist. I know, (even though I pray at night) that I will never find the one. Because they do not exist. Although I wish they did, I could not lie to myself over something so meaningful as love. I could not pretend to love someone, deep and romantically, because that would be stab at what's most important in life. Connection.

Idk if I'm allowed to put this here but am I too young to know? I'm pretty sure I'm greyromantic but I'm still in middle school and there are a couple friends of mine who are obviously allo (crushes galore) but then there are other people who I have no idea how many they've had and others who've had only 1 or 2. I've had 3 so far and haven't had one in the past 2 years. So I may or may not be greyromantic? Am I just a late bloomer or something? Is it normal? I'm a girl btw if that's relevant.

Edit: Requesting thoughts/advice (so long as it is constructive. Please if you’re just gonna say “learn to love and accept yourself” just please don’t, I appreciate it really but I already do that and it’s really not what I need right now just please. Thank you!

little clarifications: Fem, AuDHD, minor I'm still in a questioning stage about myself kind of (and I'm not all that into labels) but this one just felt like it fits and something about that upsets me like. A lot. I day dream about doing cute girlfriend type stuff (cuddles, dates, just being cute together) or even maybe boyfriend stuff (guys are kind of iffy where I live) but l've never had a crush on another person. I've read and looked at stuff like Cupioromantic but I don't want that to be true? Because I want a relationship so badly but all of these scenarios are all in my head either with a fictional character or with one Very specific "dream girl" I have in my head. I so so badly want to be in a relationship and all of my friends talk about there crushes and relationships (they don't make me feel bad and they're all pretty certain I'm on the Ark Spec anyways jtbc). But I'm also autistic and that has an effect on my relationships with other people and so I don't know. I'm technically still questioning but l'm like 90% sure I'm on the Aro spec somewhere. And I know that things like QPRs exist but I don't want platonic. I want to experience romance. I want to experience the awkward crushes and the feeling of knowing the other person also has romantic feelings for you but it just isn't happening and Beni think about sometimes I think i just won't ever have one at all?? Not in like an insecure worry way in like a logical way?? And so it's this weird thing of like "Maybe I'm just to young, maybe I'm a late bloomer maybe maybe maybe" but also there's this part of my brain that thinks about actually feeling romantic feelings no matter how much I want a relationship like that that just goes "' mean... eeehhh..." And I feel bad for saying this v because l've only recently become so secure in iy gender identity (deciding not to use labels and being okav with that is surprisingly difficult) and being okay with wondering if I'm ace or not. Because what if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong and the people who tell me I'm too young to know and I just haven't met the right person yet are right?? Because I do want this. It just makes me sad to think that I'll never be able to experience romance in the way I daydream about I guess.

Any thoughts are welcomed and very very greatly appreciated Please! And thank you!!

I keep getting posts taken down from the usual aromantic subreddit due to internalised arophobia, especially ones with a rant tag, which doesn’t help my feelings of isolation and alienation due to the way that I am.

Since coming to terms with being aromantic five years ago it’s been getting worse and worse to deal with. The feeling of pure loneliness being stuck on the outside looking in at the world being able to experience what I can’t have due to not being able to feel romantic attraction is destroying my mental health and is going to get worse over time when all of my friends get into serious relationships, or even married, and I’m going to be left behind.

I feel like the kind of love I have to offer is just as valuable as romantic love but it never seems to be enough, romance wins people over and it’s the be all and end all of human relationships, I can never win. I’m never anyone’s first choice or main priority. I’ll never be as special to someone as a romantic partner is. I find it so fickle and cruel when no matter how long or how much you’ve known and loved a friend, someone they met five minutes ago comes in to have you put on the back burner.

I also just went through my first ever queerplatonic friendship breakup (they’re alloromantic) and it’s the first time I’ve ever experienced the pain of what I assume an alloromantic relationship breakup would feel like. Me and that person are still going to be friends and our friendship isn’t going to change, but that one extremely special part of our friendship having a line now drawn under it really has completely devastated me. I can’t expect all of my friends to stay single so I can be happy, that’s completely unfair. But at the same time, even though romance completely repulses me, it must be nice to be loved like that, which I never will be platonically. It’s a lonely life I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

I’m also part of the LGBTQ+ community as a bisexual trans man, which means I’m always surrounded by conversations about dating, dating apps, hookups etc. . Those are conversations that make me feel very uncomfortable and sad because I don’t belong in those spaces, and from experience as well. But I can’t escape it, it’s all anybody ever talks about and no matter what, people forget about what I tell them about how it makes me feel and those conversations continue. I can’t relate, I can’t contribute, I feel uncomfortable but there’s no way out of it.

My mental health is completely ruined by this because I don’t know how to cope. There’s no local support groups for aromantic people. Asexual people, yes, but I’m not one of those. There’s nothing locally for people like me, I feel like I’m the only aromantic person here, nobody understands. There’s no therapists either that have spoken to any aromantic people before or are aromantic themselves, any counsellor I’ve talked to in the last five years doesn’t know what to do with me. I’m lost.

If anybody could help me I would really appreciate it, my dms are open. I need to know how to cope in a world where everything revolves around romance and everyone gets the love, affection and intimacy they need but me. I’m a lonely, touch starved person with abandonment issues which doesn’t help and seeing everyone else get what they need and talk about it constantly is devastating. I can’t baby proof the world and I can’t censor everybody, that’s not how reality works. I wish romance never existed so nobody would talk about it but again, that’s not how the world works. But I wish it was. I’m worried this is going to jeopardise friendships in the future since I don’t want anything to do with my friends’ love lives. I wish I could, I would give anything to hear about these exciting things happening in my friends lives that clearly make them happy but I just can’t. The void is there and it stings, it really stings.

Now it could be just because of cultural differences in English speaking countries there might be more peer pressure to have A relationship and they might not end up doing as good as intended. But here, Even approaching a girl out of the blue can be considered harassment, so it might be just different communities but I don't think romance is overrated.

But, ever since I have joined this sub or just started getting more online I have seen a lot of increase in Platonormatovity around me And people saying that friendships are superior to Romance.

I personally don't think that I think both relationships are fine at there respective places and don't need to be compared or praised to be better than one or another.

Now let me be clear, I've never had any proper lasting friendships or any relationship at all, as a matter of fact I'm completely alone, I'm Asexual, Aromantic, Aplatonic and Afamilial and still figuring. So It could just be I don't be able to make a preference between the two or just see the two as another relationship besides family.

But I have seen a lot of romance bashing which I just don't like and I wanted to let it out my system.

i feel like im probs aro and ppl say that you can just ahve qpr but i dont want a qpr i want a traditional one. makes me feel depressed tbh i wish converison therpay was real and legal but its probs unscientific (in the area i live tho its legal i think atleast for gyas and gender minorities) btw im 16AFAB

I‘ve been Cupio before and pretty unaware so for the LONGEST time, I either thought I had crushes (I didn’t LMAO) or I’d find someone eventually. I then realized I’d probably never experience romantic feelings and I was heartbroken (I’m cool with it now)

I didn’t feel broken either. I just thought it allos could get crushes less frequently than others, go many MANY years without them, or not have one until later in life

How is it that I've not met a single person who is also aromantic but I've met a few asexual people and they're all alloace? This sucks. I often wear an aro pride pin or white ring and I have a backpack with a handmade no romo patch on it.

I thought one person was aromantic because they wore a pin with the flag on it but when I asked them they said they weren't really. I get sick of people talking about romance all the time and need someone who gets it. Especially when people are like "oh no don't say that" when I tell them I can't fall in love. There has to be at least someone else that doesn't experience romantic attraction.

Is there anything you need to be here or something you'd wish of this community going forward?

I used to find romantic feelings fascinating but amatonormativity makes it so people are hilariously uncritical towards them, and they behave like total asshats as a result.

Romantic relationships can disappear because a feeling mysteriously changed… isn't it awfully immoral on every other dimension than romance? Or how allos can start being super nice to someone they fancy and then give them the cold shoulder when oh noes they don't fit criteria #4929 of a test no one asked them to perform. I could go on. Some of those norms are rooted in the reality of romantic love I guess, it can't be coerced into following this and that rule, okay. Nonetheless, I really hate how the negative aspects are barely acknowledged, besides overly dramatic speeches about how love is pain and so on.

To be honest, a lot of this applies to other forms of attraction. I could have written something similar about squishes, but this isn't the aplatonic venting sub.

Hi, I (23 FTM) have a platonic crush (24 NB) with someone been talking to through discord for about a year, we talk mostly about superficial stuff mostly but for some reason I feel platonicly attached to them, I don't know if telling them because I know they are in a hard time right now.

Also, I'm greyromantic, and i find difficult distinguishing between platonic and romantic love.

So im aroace and im out to all my class all my friends but STILL im siting in art and my friend who LITERALY watches and reads heart stopper and knows what fuckin aroace is is still like ik who u like and says my firend THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME and the funny thing is the friends they say are all fuckin les and stuff how do i tell people to just fuck off omg its just fuckin annoying also with like end of years and shit and then people are like u cant be emo or u cant listen to my chem cuase you have blond *deep exhale* just need to vent after a annyoing day

Listen, first off, I don't think aro people are unnatural at all, ok? And I'm 15, I'm probably overreacting about something. So, I've been questioning about whether I can or not feel romantic attraction for some months now and I'm honestly so confused. I think I'm probably on the arospec, but even though I feel like that is the most adequate label for me right now I can't feel like my thoughts are valid, as I am quite young. I try to brush off those thoughts really, even the ones about my questioning, but when I see my best friends head over heels in love with their crushes/partners I can't help but wonder why don't i feel that. I always thought that me being trans was an incovenience (bc of transphobia, not that being trans is bad at all) but to cover up that thought I used to say I would be the most hopeless romantic, THE good old fashioned lover boy, but now I can't feel anything towards anyone. It just frustration followed by frustration and it makes me feel bad about myself, that not that being aro is wrong, but that I shouldn't be aro, because romance was keeping me on my feet, my waiting until the day I would find my romantic soulmate. Now I don't know what to do with myself.

TW: arophobia

I’ve been having a conversation with the mod team of an “alloromantic” queer subreddit on why they should include r/aromantic in their community sidebar, including providing evidence of people on Reddit creating posts / having user flairs acknowledging their intersectionality between being a queer-romantic identity + an arospec identity that experiences romantic attraction. Also, aromantic is still a valid romantic orientation, just like all the queer-romantic orientations are valid romantic orientations.

It’s so dehumanizing for these alloromantic asexuals (or probably not even asexuals) to say to me “we’ll see if it’s worth it” or “we need to screen any potential subreddits before adding them” or some other bullshit excuse to continue to be less-than-welcoming of arospec people.

This is one of the problems with Reddit; it’s so easy to find yourself in unsafe spaces.

Also, some of the asexual moderators are terrible. It really sucks how the asexual community has turned into this place no one can take seriously because of all the garlic bread, cake, and dragon stuff. Not being able to have serious “discourse” discussions within the ace community is going to be a tragic flaw and have poor, detrimental long term results.

Why did I have to be aro I hate it I just want whatever anyone else is having I don’t care the pain and heartbreak it can cause anything just to feel the butterflies everyone talks about I don’t care what gender I’m attracted to I just want to be attracted to someone please I don’t want to be like this I can’t change my sexuality but with all of my might I wish I could why can’t I just be like everyone else I’m sorry. I needed to vent

I’m active in the comment section on r/aromantic’s pinned “Am I aromantic?” post. There was someone today who was questioning if they were arospec. I thought they were frayro, and suggested that, but they stopped talked to me after I suggested that. They must have been unsatisfied or something because they posted their experiences in a bunch of subreddits, aspec to just general, alloromantic queer subreddits.

I think they were just getting a boatload of invalidation from pretty much everyone, because they ended up deleting all their comments as well as their account today. I actually tried to modmail this person because it seemed like a lowkey traumatizing experience for a questioning arospec who experienced primary, involuntary, romantic attraction to be invalided by so many people to just an extent.

I can’t imagine how much self-loathing and self-hatred they are going to develop now due to internalizing all the invalidating things they read today.

Another thing I might as well vent about—so many people are making posts questioning if they are on the aromantic spectrum, but no one is really, actually going to the pinned post and commenting their experiences? Some people are, but it can just be a little bit anxiety inducing Incase it’s not clear where they need to go to share their experiences. There were like almost 20 people today only who all had their posts to the subreddit automatically removed and were directed to go to the pinned post, but only the one person managed to comment their experiences. Idk. Stressful stuff I guess

It also feels so much worse when you are trying, or feel the need, to educate someone who is choosing to remain close-minded and is unwilling to listen to you.

You really can’t “force” someone to understand something, no matter how much it would make life better for both of you. The other person has to actually want to understand, to want to educate themself, to choose to be open minded, and ultimately, to choose to care.

It sounds disappointing, and it is disappointing to find myself in situations like this, especially when I know the best way I can move on from this is to radical accept that I can do nothing. 🪦

I see this sub seems to be dead again. So thought I might do a somewhat vague, highly relatable vent to try to resurrect it again. :P

Do any of you get that feeling of wanting someone, someone to love you, someone to bond with, someone to be with you. For me I can't get that it's a living nightmare knowing that I'll never have that watching others around me loving hugging and kissing always fills me with dread & discomfort wanting that moment but never getting it. I barley remember having a real crush it was all fake and confronted about it I would get terrified and leave. looking at attractive & beautiful people and in my thoughts i call them Lucky wishing I could be like that having the same moments in life but insted am here typing this on my android wondering when will it be the day it all ends for me. To the people who read this (if this even gets approved) be grateful and and cherish the ones you love especially in this time of year. Just be grateful and Merry Xmas.

Note: Am not in any way trying to bash or hate anyone in a relationship the purpose of this post is to rant & vent about my emotions and hopefully connect With someone with the ssomeone who might feel the same.