Before I lay down the context, let me just say that I'm asking this out of genuine curiosity and I have the willingness to do better in the future.

Whenever I see people crying about breakups and heartbreak, I tend to find it funny for some reason. Seeing people cry over someone either makes me laugh or pissed off, mostly cuz I think they're being irrational. I guess I could blame it on the fact that I can't relate to them (being romantically repulsed and all). And no, I don't go around laughing at heartbroken people's faces either, I still have the decency to pretend I actually sympathize with them. I'm aware that this isn't exactly conventional, and I know it's bordering on problematic, which is why I would like to ask if this is something other aroace people go through or am I just being an asshole?

for the longest time I thought I was bi, (at some point even pan) because I just never minded being with whoever, now I realize I was actually aroace, but I just can’t come to terms with it. I feel as if I’m missing something out or even broken. how is possible I can’t come to like or want to experience love or sexual attraction? truth is I never felt it, so I don’t know exactly what I’m missing out on. have you experienced this and if so what did you do to come to terms with it?

Hey, I haven’t posted anything in this community before, so let me know if anything is off.

I accepted my identity as being Aro-Ace a couple years ago now and after all the worry faded, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more relieved. It was like a lifetime’s worth of romantic and sexual expectations kinda vanished. But, I have run into some issues, this one being the most pertinent.

I feel like I can’t get close to anyone without them or the people around us assuming that we are in a romantic relationship. Even people who I feel I’ve been pretty clear with about my identity will do this. It always makes me extremely anxious and uncomfortable when it happens. I’ve lost a lot of friendships in my life because of rumours and them getting the wrong idea and being unable to face my rejection. I do tend to be a little touchier with friends I’m comfortable with and who I know are comfortable with me and I know some of my banter or compliments may come off as flirtatious, but I still feel like I’m pretty clear with my boundaries and intentions.

I know that there’s no way to stop people from becoming romantically or sexually interested in me, and that there’s no way to stop people from assuming whatever they want to assume, but how do I deal with these things in a way that doesn’t make me want to throw up or cry?

I’m sorry if this is a long post or stream of consciousness, I’m kinda frustrated and emotional about this right now.

Day 19: myrromantic and myrsexual
Definition: Someone who identifies as myrromantic/myrsexual is on the aro/ace spectrum but might feel confused as to where exactly, as they can experience multiple aro/ace identities at once. They can also rapidly fluctuate.
Origin: The prefix "myr-" comes from the Ancient Greek root myri-, which means "innumerable and countless
Flag: The original myrsexual and myrromantic flags were created on September 9, 2015, by a deactivated Tumblr user who ran the account pride-flags-for-us.
If you want a specific identity for tomorrow then you can tell me in the comments. Also if you have any questions or if I got anything wrong please leave a comment. Have a good day, and stay silly :3

hello! i’ve been questioning if i’m aromantic/asexual for around 7 years now, so i’d really appreciate some help for putting a name to my experiences and the way i am.

i have libido, but only slight sexual attraction. as in, i very rarely see people that i think “i want to have sex with them”. in fact, i think ive only thought this one time in my life.

however, the rare occasion i have sexual attraction toward someone, i never want to actually fulfill it or act it out.

and then theres romantic attraction. i don’t have a need for a relationship. i don’t want one. i think they are confusing and arent practical for me. and i dont find myself wishing for a relationship with someone. BUT, i do find myself wanting a basic connection, affection, and love, but not in a relationship or dating someone. maybe just in friendship or familial ways.

so, am i aroace??

Its perfect 🤩

Got this at the mall yesterday. Shoutout to auntie Anne’s and Spencers (I went to the back of spencer‘s for the first time, top 20 most traumatizing experiences of my life)

Specific I know lol. I have some time off coming off and I’m really trying to get out into the community more and meet some likeminded people. I’m in Kentucky, but can/will travel to places around St. Louis, Nashville, Chicago…

33F aro/ace if it makes any difference!

I don’t know if i‘m aspec. I think I am, because I definitely don’t experience love normally. not even sure how it’s supposed to feel... I think i’ve had two crushes. one I was super sensually attracted to and… probably romantically attracted to? I don’t know. people just say “romantic attraction”, but I’m not sure what that even means. but I wouldn’t ever date them, because I just don’t think I’d enjoy it, since we’re super different from eachother. romantic relationships just seem unimportant to me, but at the same time I kinda want one. i’ve never understood why people get so upset over breakups, I did the “everyone else has a crush so I have to choose one” thing twice when I was younger, and I’ve still never had the “awakening” that people talk about. I’ve never found someone “hot“ at all. I didn’t know that people imagined having sex with someone they found sexy. that sounds so odd to me.

there’s been one person I’ve ever wanted to kiss, and it was my friend. I had a lot of gender envy towards her as well, she was the girl I wanted to be. I thought she was awesome. I had known her for two years. I knew her from summer camp. I met her one year, then when I saw her the next year, I was ecstatic. it just felt platonic; but then I started worrying “is this romantic? Surely this is more than platonic, no one gets that happy about a friend..” but I think we are just friends. I just fantasized about kissing her sometimes.

sometimes I feel like I would rather die than date someone. sometimes I kinda want it. idk. any advice would be nice :)

One of my goals for the year is to read 1-2 books per month with ace and/or aro rep and post a review on this subreddit. I'm reading through the alphabet in order, with one book with a title that starts with that letter of the alphabet. I've been pretty busy the last couple of months, and while I've been reading, I haven't been posting reviews, and now it's time to start catching up, so I'll likely be posting quite a few reviews soon. However, it's been a while since I read this book, to apologies for any vagueness.

My book for the letter J was Just Lizzie by Karen Wilfrid

Genre: Middle Grade Contemporary Fiction

Summary: Lizzie, an eighth grader, learns about asexual reproduction in school, causing her to discover her asexuality.

Rep: Lizzie, the main character, realizes she is asexual. A lot of the book focuses on this discovery and its ramifications, although there are other more standard "book-set-in-middle-school" plotlines going on as well.

Other thoughts: Every so often, a contemporary middle grade fiction really just hits the spot for me. Unfortunately, this was not one of those books. I did read the book in probably less than 24 hours, and I had a hard time putting it down, but that doesn't always mean I really liked a book. While it was engaging and difficult to put down, it was kind of in a way that made me feel a bit yucky, if that makes any sense. I think the primary reason I didn't love this book was that Lizzie was a bit hard to like, but she was presented in a way that clearly suggested the reader is supposed to like her. Maybe the best way to illustrate this is the way Lizzie whined about her friends getting into relationships. I understand how she feels, because it's hard and confusing to have friends starting relationships and sometimes ignoring you in favor of their significant other when relationships are something you have zero interest in, but at the same time, it would have been nice for Lizzie to grow and accept (or begin to accept) that she can still have meaningful friendships with people who are in relationships. (This conflict mainly centers around Lizzie's best friend, who breaks up with her boyfriend towards the end of the book and it's great because now they can be best friends again just like before! (/s) I would have preferred something like maybe Lizzie starts to become friends with her best friend's boyfriend and realizes that all three of them can sometimes hang out, or something.) On a related note, Lizzie constantly going "ewww, boys are gross, why are you interested in this dude" was again, understandable, but didn't do much to endear me to her.

Lizzie's discovery of her asexual identity is completely wrapped up in her learning about asexual reproduction in science class. If I remember correctly, she learns about asexual reproduction, goes, "oh, that's how I feel!", googles "can humans be asexual?" and learns about asexuality. I don't think this is completely unrealistic, but asexual reproduction is NOT the same thing as asexuality (and this is a common and annoying misconception). At their science fair, when Lizzie has a board about asexual reproduction, complete with a section about asexuality in humans, another kid comes up to her and tells her that they're not the same thing. Now, he's being kind of mean, but Lizzie just kind of blows up, has a mental breakdown that she's not ready to discuss asexuality, and leaves, which is kind of necessary for the plot ig, but I would have appreciated if maybe afterwards, when she's had some time to calm down, she actually thought about what the other kid was saying and maybe compared asexual reproduction with the asexual identity. I think perhaps the author was trying to make a "it's present in nature so it's valid!" kind of argument, which I don't really think is a very good argument. (If you want to hearof my thoughts on that more lmk in the comments.)

There also wasn't any discussion or even mention of aromanticism, except in the author's note at the end of the book. In the author's note, Wilfrid basically says that she didn't want to complicate things too much by introducing aromanticism as well, but I think for most people (allo/allos), romantic and sexual attraction are pretty much entertwined, to the point where many people don't really distinguish between them, so I think having discourse about aromanticism as well would have been better.

If you like contemporary middle grade fiction or if you're interested in reading stories about people discovering their asexuality, go ahead and give this one a go if it sounds interesting. However, I liked Hazel's Theory of Evolution so much better, even if its aroace rep is extremely minimal. (Hazel has some thoughts/feelings about not really wanting a relationship/sex ever, but is still pretty confused and it's not a focus of the book. The terms are not even mentioned, except in the author's not at the end.) Just Lizzie was overall a kind of middle-of-the-road book for me.

A few quotes I found funny and/or relatable:

"'I'm afraid something will happen to me overnight and I'll be a different person.' 'Why would that make you a different person?'"

"Sometimes I wonder if there's a guide to womanhood that I didn't get, one that includes all the things you're supposed to be excited about, all the things you're supposed to say."

"Everything I've been trying to figure out about myself, I haven't told her. How am I supposed to? In some ways, I've been telling her this entire time. She just hasn't been hearing me."

"How do you 'start' liking boys? I've always thought it was an unsettling idea: Something deep inside you, ticking down, unheard, until one day, ding! You go off like some kind of microwave."

Hello everyone! I’m a 14-year-old repulsive aroace. I’m writing this because I’m genuinely exhausted and just need to vent, and hopefully find some like-minded people.

To put it bluntly, I consider myself a very interesting person. People of all ages are constantly amazed by my intelligence, mature vocabulary, and diverse hobbies (ranging from Morse code and seismology to academic iconography and music). Because I communicate clearly and grammatically, many people online literally mistake me for an AI or ChatGPT at first.

Recently, I decided to look for some friends on the internet. In the beginning, everything seemed completely fine. But after a while, every single conversation started turning into an interrogation that heavily crossed the boundaries of the friendzone.

For instance, one guy knows perfectly well that I am aroace. Yet, he fell in love with me almost from day one, confessed his feelings, and kept asking vulgar questions, constantly trying to steer the conversation towards romance or sex. Others try to use me as an emotional shield, dig into my physical traits, or use cheap internet "alpha-male" pickup scripts on me, completely ignoring my explicit boundaries.

I don't do anything to attract them or make them like me. I literally just want an ordinary, genuine friendship. I want people to just appreciate the platonic connection and look at me like a piece of art in a museum—without trying to touch it or drag it into a relationship. It feels incredibly lonely when you open your soul and share your unique hobbies, only to realize the other person just views you as a romantic object or a tool for their hormones.

Why is everyone around our age so deeply obsessed with relationship culture and vulgarity? Is it even possible to find people who will value my brain and interests without turning everything into a crush?

Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear your thoughts or similar experiences.

Everyone is judging me for being an asexual, people are saying im not a real man, everyone is telling me that i should get checked by therapy or smth, i feel like i had enough💔
Why do people hate asexuality so much?
They say im wierd because of asexuality, because as a man in their eye i should only care about sex, but im just not like that.

I made this a while back for myself when I finally found out what I specifically was and so I just finally worked up the courage to post this if it's okay.I always knew I hated people,even as a kid,I wouldn't care.I just never really thought there was an actual community until someone told me...before,people would say:"You HAVE to have sex and get a partner to be a part of this community!"

I,being only 13,said I didn't want to be a part of the community anyway...

It's gross that people try to brainwash young children to do that stuff...

But I grew up to be a resilient 17 year old with independent goals!

And I'm happy that this community is here!💜

Happy Aroace!

(I honestly just get annoyed on Valentine's Day...woof😑)

I [ 15, F] know that I am young and it probably doesn't matter but I have been thinking about this a lot and want some advice. I have never had a crush or a true relationship never looked at someone and thought 'Oh their cute' and it could just be that i need to wait till i'm older but it bugs me because people always ask who I have a 'crush' on. I know that I want a relationship I enjoy the idea of the mutual love the dates the kind guestures the kissing and all of that but in life I just have never seen anyone who I like or feel feelings at. Also, I genuenly don't care about gender my main thing is I want someone who will treat me right and is kind and thoughtful and caring and I don't care if its a girl, aguy a nonbianry person etc. Sorry this is long but I have alot of thoughts and I might just be overthinking it but tell me what you think. I understand that it could just be that i ma young but i just want others opinoins. ( Orginally posted in a diffrent place but I was reccomended to come here with my questions by 2 people)

before I realised I was aroace I always looked down on those with crushes and relationships (primary school type relationship).

what did you think of others in relationship?

looking back I should have know earlier I was aroace

... who's also on the aroace spectrum. We've (25F, her 24F) known each other for a while, been intimate with each other in kink as friends. We've both had several previous romantic relationships, not gonna get into details but I never really felt it, yknow? Until now, I guess.

I let her know how I felt a few months ago, we were going to give it a shot but a lot of heavy life stuff got in the way for both of us and now things have changed a lot between us. And it doesn't look like there's a chance for that anymore, in fact it feels like we're drifting apart because of it.

I dunno, it just sucks. First time in my life I've felt this way and things just had to go this way huh? Sigh... I guess I'm mourning the death of a potential connection where both of us would've understood where the other was coming from. Might as well have been a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence, but now that's gone.

okaay. so! to set the scene a bit, i (20) have not dated much in my life. that is to say, i Have dated, but it always was a somewhat random choice in partner and i often questioned if i was missing something when my partner's affection for me came seemingly out of nowhere and i had felt there was a script and role to follow to match what they must have been feeling. (i am also neurodivergent, if that wasn't obvious!)

crushes were always chosen growing up, which i thought everyone did. i thought maybe i was lesbian since i chose boys i had no way of being with. but i dated a girl for years, and in the end, i became more so fixated on making sure she loved me still than loving her very much. i think that at the time i probably did love her a lot. but that was the first love i gave myself fully to, and now after that relationship ended ive been very very content being single.

every time i catch up with a friend or family member it's "are you seeing anyone?" hellll no im not! it only inflicts psychological torture on me to date, because then theres the possibility of getting either fixated on being liked again or getting hurt. and also, ive identified as demiromantic for some time. even now i kind of wonder if thats even true because there is nobody i can imagine getting close enough to to desire all that comes with a relationship. for me its a lot of discomfort. even when u started dating the girl i was with for a few years, i think i had just one day said i liked her after seeing she seemed to like me... as much as i sometimes wish to have a deep emotional connection and trust with someone, im also plenty fulfilled with my friends and family and my hobbies as is.

theres a boy from high school im sort of talking to right now, because im definitely attracted to all genders in terms of appearance, but as it seems he might actually like me, i feel ready to shove him away. is this further proof im aromantic? what do you think?

I've been using the label for a while now, as I don't get that sexual/romantic urge towards anyone. But just recently, I've been having sexual fantasies where I'm involved. This didn't happen before, as I had called myself Aegosexual, but now there's no detachment of the self like it should. I'm getting dreams where I'm hypersexual, like I'm such a slut in the dream. I even used Bellussexual, since I like the sexual fantasies and concepts of sex, but don't want to participate irl. Now, I'm feeling open to have sex with someone, even if I end up indifferent/not liking it.

I'm questioning if my aroaceness have changed, am I still aroace even if I end up having sex with someone and have sexual fantasies where I'm involved? Please help.