ASAW day 5: “Questioning”
What are some experiences you had when discovering your arospec identity?
Not distinguishing between platonic attraction and romantic attraction from and towards me was always a big one, even back when I was allo. I always had a girl friend and she would be kind to me, and I lost my marbles, and that usually led to them not being my friends anymore since I had gotten the wrong idea. I only had one girlfriend and it was... less than good, to say little.
I first discovered I was demiheterosexual, and that slowly faded away and I ended up discovering I was now asexual. My aromanticism was nothing like that. I was low key crushing on a friend a few years ago, and as I realised she hadn’t noticed that I liked her, that also had me confused, because I thought she kinda liked me, and I started questioning if I was reciproromantic, but in the end, we stayed friends. She never knew about it. Ever since then I’ve identified as aromantic, since I figured out I just wanted close friends and lots of hugs.
About a year after that, or a year ago also, I started uni and I met someone who was like that. So early on into our friendship (maybe a month or two) I thought she was coming onto me, since she wasn’t really like that with our other guy friend from the group. Again, it was me misinterpreting regular kindness, good vibes and human contact as attraction. At that time she and our other two friends knew about my sexuality (aro and ace), but I was confused then. I talked about it with her, that I might be recipromantic and that she was confusing me (not blaming her or anything like that lol). We talked about it, and honestly I have no idea what happened after that. Suddenly, a year later, our friendship has grown ever so strong, and we get to have this beautiful, pure, innocent friendship where all feelings are clear, we can talk about what we feel, what we like, just our regular lives, send each other memes, hug, hold hands... I wouldn’t be able to ask for a better friend even if I wanted to.
The two stories with my friends are by no means the only times I confused platonic attraction with romantic attraction. It pretty much happened with every girl friend I have,and I don’t know how to feel about that, because back then I thought I knew how I felt. I surely can say that everytime, I got my feels straight, my mind cleared, and everytime it strengthened our bond, so maybe it was a mandatory rite of passage back then.
I have yet to live a case in which it doesn’t happen, but I want to believe it won’t since I am now much more confident in my orientation, and I have stuff a lot clearer in my head now than before.
Bottom line is, I love my friends, and that love has everytime proved itself against adversity of all kind, and I couldn’t ask for better people to love and let in my life.
