Had a brief romantic attraction to someone I met online albeit watered down and dull and vague like it usually is. Dated him and now I'm totally fixated on a fictional character I am fictoromantic and now I have genuinely zero attraction to him. I messaged him about it because I don't wanna keep stringing him along because he deserves someone that can actually feel romantic attraction like a normal person is supposed to and not whatever is wrong with me. And he is offline now. I probably ruined him and he will be so sad. Because there is actually something wrong with me. Why am I like this. I try to date and nothing ever feels the same as the all encompassing passionate love I feel for certain fictional characters. Humans just have never ever felt the same and as I get older it gets lesser and lesser. What makes someone like this. Is it because I have autism. I am scared. How am I supposed to do anything when I don't even feel attracted to my boyfriend anymore because I'm so fucking obsessed with a cartoon. Literally actually what is wrong with me. Like I don't want this. Is it because I was born prematurely and maybe my brain didn't develop or something. Help me please. I try to look at positive aromantic stuff which helps but it makes me so angry. I don't want to hurt the people I love but I do anyway because I just can't feel properly. Literally I am fucking fucked in the head. Imagine dating someone. And they dump you because they are not capable of feeling attraction to anything but actual fucking drawings pixels on a screen. I'm a fucking failure

Context: I have autism and ADHD. I believe this contributes to my aromanticism and possible asexuality. I am a fictophile aka fictoromantic/sexual. Ever since I was young I only really have felt attracted to fictional characters. Nowadays I'll have a few main characters that I'll be attracted to and I see as my partners, and there will be smaller ones I fixated on for a while and move on to the next. Usually getting into a new piece of media or fixation will cause a new fixation on a character. I cant deal with seeing other people self ship or ship other characters with my fictional partners. Its not something I can help but it makes me feel genuinely ill. Like someone is trying to take away someone I love dearly. I've always felt strongly towards characters like this. I do rarely feel attraction to people, but it's very vague, dull, watered down, distant, like trying to remember a dream and only getting bits and pieces of it. I'll be unsure if what I'm feeling is platonic or romantic. But with my love for my characters I can immediately know when I have fallen for them. Its an intense, passionate, and all consuming love and attraction. Where as with real people I have to try to almost make myself be attracted to them? Like I'll feel a ghost of attraction and try to justify being attracted to them. Anyway. I met a lovely guy online and we are kind of casually dating sort of thing. For maybe a month by now. I ruminated on it for ages and realised that I did like him that way. And I am attracted to him. And I care about him. However I've started to become fixated on a character again. A character I've known of and thought was attractive in the past, but now is in the total forefront of my mind. I can only really think of him. And the little attraction I had to my boyfriend is gone. I really only feel like I'll ever be in relationships with other humans to fill the void of never being able to feel the physical and emotional love of my fictional partners. I want to stay in the relationship with him , I don't want to hurt him, but I don't know what to do. I have no real motivation to talk to him ,but I still talk to him. I'm thinking that maybe my attraction for him will come back around like it does with the main characters I like, it fluctuates, sometimes it's zero and I'll be totally obsessed with a different character but they'll still be in the back of my mind, sometimes then it'll come back to them and that's all I can think of. I can't break up with him because knowing my luck I'll break up and my attraction will come back. And I care about him too much to do that anyway. And I don't want to hear that I'm too young and haven't felt real love before. I am a young adult. I'm sick of copping shit from people who don't understand and think I'm just a kid with childish little crushes. My characters are genuinely my partners. I'm happy with that, and I'm happy with them because I love them so much, it just confuses me. Sometimes I don't want to be this way. Most times I don't to be honest. I wish they were just little crushes and I was attracted to other humans properly. The attraction I feel doesn't really come with a desire to want to be with them either . I don't know what is wrong with me. And why I am like this. No trauma or anything around this sort of stuff ever happened to me to make me this way. So why am I this way

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.

originally posted on r/aromantic but was directed here instead.

i am cupioromantic, and i've kind of had an inkling of that since i was literally 13. i'm somewhere on the ace spectrum as well. i'm struggling to accept this about myself and have only recently fully realised that this is an actual part of me and not just something that i can ignore.

i'm scared. i just wish i could feel romantic love the way it's always talked about in books, even just for a moment. everyone i've wanted a QPR or long term relationship with isn't aro, it's not fair to either of us. it's not that i think i'm broken, necessarily, but i'm just sacred i'll never be able to feel love the way other people talk about it. i love my parents, and my friends, but it doesn't feel like * love *.

i'll read books, or look at fanart, and i'll just feel this gut-wrenching, unexplainable emotion, because i'm looking at something (even fictional) that i know i'll never be able to experience. and god, do i want it. i don't even want a sexual relationship (although it would be nice to try it, just once, to see what all the fuss is about). but god, the romance. i just wish i knew what it was like to love someone so wholly and completely. i wish i knew what romance felt like, even if it was just unrequited crushing/pining.

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

I am abrosexual and aromantic, and I find myself feeling depressed and lonely without the comfort of a queer-platonic relationship. I've attempted to have qpr's before, some with other arospec people, some not, but my partners have never taken anything seriously. I know what I need in a relationship, and have put so much effort into the ones I have had, only to be told that the others were never actually serious and thought it was silly. I need a friend that I can spend my life with, and express my love for them as I feel it! I may not experience romantic love, but the platonic love I have for some people is so overwhelming, I don't know what to do with myself. I want to kiss and hug and be close to someone, someone I can appreciate, and they appreciate me back. I don't care if they date other people, I don't care if they fuck other people. I just want to find my other half.

(side note; for anyone doubting my aromanticism, fuck off. It is a spectrum, and I know exactly where I sit. All love is love, platonic or romantic, and both are just as valid in a relationship. I just so happen to feel one in the place of the other.)

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.

Lately i’ve been watching many romantic movies and series, though it is very euphoric, and essential for me, because movies are my lalaland, and help me to stay positive about this shitty life. All these is making me feel so sad, just realizing that i’ll never experience anything like that. I hate being aroace. I’m having one of these moments. Just the thought of experiencing a tiniest bit of the full range of attraction people experience daily from their earliest childhood. i would rather be on the "no attraction" part than little to no. I do find people attractive, but it’s so insignificant amount. I feel very lonely. I don’t even have friends, which makes it million times worse.

The reason I'm so scared isn't because they wont be accepting or anything it's just that I dated one of them and they were how I found out and I don't want them to think it's their fault I'm aro since I've also had multiple relationships before them (I often dont know the difference between romantic and sexual feelings) i think they'd understand cause they're ace but I don't know and it's scary to think, I also don't want people asking questions about how I feel being aro cause I'm still kinda confused about exactly how I feel.

Honestly, seeing couples holding hands on the streets, madly in love, I dont get it. Are people not able to feel comfort in themselves? I feel this whole world is under some programming.

You must find someone, must get attracted to them, must marry them and then have kids. Only then you will find happiness.

If you stay single you will be alone You need companion...

Honestly? I'm already fulfilled and happy. Is there something wrong with me???

Sometimes it can so hard to be accepting of your identity when you are surrounded by so much amatonormativity (internalized or not), and/or listening to the experiences of people who do not accept themselves/>!hate their arospec identity!<. It doesn’t really help when you don’t have a support system to fall back on. It doesn’t help when you don’t have anyone to confide your arospec identity in, or if you do they most likely are not immediately proud of you for working thro your internalized amatonormativity and accepting an arospec label (or a few) that fit. (Because they are most likely uneducated, or need to work thro their own internalized amatonormativity.) It can be so challenging when you are the only one supporting yourself and advocating for yourself and advocating for people like you.

My BPD symptom of emptiness has been noticeable recently, so that doesn’t really help either. It can be so exhausting when you try to save everyone except yourself.

Hello, can someone help me? I have started my first relationship with a boy and I like him and I love him but... physical contact is very difficult for me. It makes me somewhat anxious, I can't help but clench my fists, make repetitive movements like little taps or shake as if I were very cold. Has something similar happened to you? What I can do? :(

This sub could have specific tag options like “advice please” or “no advice” or “need validation” or “need support” or idk. This just seems like a great and safe resource aros could use instead of venting in larger subs where the posts get downvoted and ignored.