violence is the secret third thing!

bracken! he/they, 22. aro / ace focused blog :) original posts tagged 'talking'! —> about!

[knifearo]

everybody! quick! tell me what aro joy means to you <2

[peach-pot]

being anti-amatonormativity in a romance centered world is like watching half the people you know put all their eggs in one basket and then drop the basket and all their eggs break and they’re crying and swearing they’re never gonna do that again and then a month later they have all new eggs in a new basket and they tell you the problem was they didn’t have a strong enough basket or fresh enough eggs and then they drop the fucking basket again.

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

happy pride to everyone in the community!! happy pride to those who are out, those who are not, those who aren’t sure of their identity yet, those who don’t use labels, those who don’t feel seen, etc, etc. stay safe and don’t be ashamed to be yourself.

[ur-favorite-fishgirl]

sex is a distraction from your true purpose in life which is to go to the aquarium and look at the fish and go "wooooooaaah.... fishies". cmon guys we all need to lock in.

[dingdongyouarewrong]

just so you know i know this dynamic is toxic and i'm not romanticizing it :/ i'm actually sexualizing it

[knifearo]

aroace nonbinary people you are everything to me. shout out to the bitches who just said "nah i'm not doing any of that"

[narcpolar]

Any character can be aromantic if you try hard enough. Be the change you want to see in the world.

[vulpinesaint]

they make these characters in a lab just for me. as a treat. my blorbo design #myblorbodesign

[knifearo]

by the way

[dykesbat]

[ID: Image of the aromantic flag with an emoji of someone giving a thumbs up and the caption, “You can do whatever you want forever.” End ID.]

[knifearo]

i love your blog! I was wondering if you could help me with my identity a little? I have what feels like crushes on people, but I can't even imagine dating let alone marrying them. I don't know if this is because I want nothing besides to grow old with my best friend of two decades and the idea of a romantic relationship with people I've known for only a few months feels so flimsy in comparison, or if it's because I'm actually aro.

I've been in one relationship before that lasted five months. During this time I really cared about and was attracted to my boyfriend, but I couldn't see it as something that would last for long and I still loved my best friend more than him. When they hung out I was jealous of my boyfriend for taking up my friend's time rather than the other way around, which is not typically how it goes.

Do you have any ideas? Does it even matter if I'm aro or not? Should I give up on dating even though my friend probably won't?

to put it extremely extremely simply: no, it doesn't matter if you're aro or not. but not because it's not worth taking time to figure out for yourself! i'll always say that labels are first and foremost a method of communication. if you feel like this aspect of yourself is something that you want to communicate to others, or be able to categorize for yourself, then it's valuable for you to find a word that works for you!

i am not the most helpful person for microlabels (i'm sure someone in the notes can provide some specific suggestions, if that's what you're looking for!) but i'm also a proponent of using gray-labels if you're unsure or in a place where it fluctuates. you can always use grayaro or arospec if you feel it's important but don't know where to place yourself within it. you can ALSO—protip—just say that you're aro! the aromanticism police won't show up at your door. and if they do then you let me know and i'll kill them myself. you can always just be aromantic.

if you'd like, you can take a scroll through my #am i aro if tag for some other people's situations/more of my thoughts to see if anything resonates!!

my other tip: people don't usually spend a lot of time agonizing over whether they're aro or not if they're allo. if you're compatible with the larger default system there's not typically a lot of motivation to break away from it. sometimes people's relationship to aromanticism is in the way that their relationships work, rather than their specific attractions: if you're in a place where it's important to you, i always think the world is better off with more aromantic people. 🖤

[knifearo]

i just wanted to say THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR ARO-FOCUSED BLOG, YOUR TAKES ARE ALWAYS GREAT AND SOOO WELL-SAID AND YOUR POSTS HAVE ALWAYS DONE WONDERS WHEN I FIRST STARTED TO QUESTION MYSELF AND WONDER IF I COULD BE ARO !!! THEY’VE MADE ME THINK OF A LOT AND HAVE SO MANY REVELATIONS AND THEY’VE HELPED ME FIND SUCH A BEAUTIFUL SENSE OF JOY IN MY AROMANTICISM AND I JUST WANTED TO THANK YOU, KEEP DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING, IT HELPS MORE THAN YOU THINK

🥺 THANK YOU SWEETHEART... this is all i ever want this blog to be, is a place where there's space for community and resources (even if those resources are just silly posts) for people who want to think more about aromanticism. i'm so happy that we've all found each other on this website and that we get to spend all this time being beautiful aromantic people together :) genuinely if i've helped you find aro joy in your life then i've done enough. i'm so so so happy to hear this <3 sending millions of kisses. the chocolate ones, if you prefer :)

[knifearo]

hi!! i was wondering if you or your followers would like to give me some advice. no worries if not. i’m a demi/gray-aro person currently in a romantic realtionship. i’ve never had romantic feelings but i really like and care for my girlfriend and can tell there’s “potential” for it. i’ve already told her i love her which is true in a way, but probably not the way she wants me to? I explained to her that to me “love” is akin to caring for a person and being attracted to them, which is how i feel about her. But still, we’re not on the same playing field and i can tell. I just can tell if given time the relationship could really develop in a good way and my feelings could be the same as hers, but right now i feel guilty about being in it. i don’t know how much more honest i could be or what i should say, i just can tell that we don’t feel the exact same way about each other and that my view of romantic relationships is inherently different than theirs. When they tell me they love me and I say it back it feels dishonest.

hi, anon!

my advice is always going to be to be as clear as possible with a partner, which it sounds like you're doing already. in an ideal world, i would say to just tell them everything that you've said in this ask. you don't have to tell people "i love you," especially if it feels disingenuous. sometimes a response to "i love you" can be "i care really deeply about you, too". maybe there's a little game to play of finding something nice to tell her instead of "i love you".

you mentioned feeling like you're on a different playing field. i definitely get it. being arospec changes things really significantly when you've unpacked things that society is so built upon that most people haven't even looked at the box. what's worked for me is just talking endlessly about aromanticism. genuinely! before my wife and i got married or were in "a relationship" (we started using boyfriend/girlfriend but. nothing changed. you know how it is) i had been talking for years about being aromantic and how it changes your outlook on life. i didn't really have to worry about being on a different playing field because i'd already explained the minutiae of the field to her on multiple occasions, and even when she didn't get it, we both knew that we were operating on different fundamentals, but that it didn't change anything that we had agreed upon between us. if you feel like you're not being understood, the only thing i can think of is to talk about it more. not necessarily in a "sit down, i need to tell you something" way, but. y'know. sitting in the car while we're driving somewhere and i'm talking about how the societal boundaries around "romantic" and "platonic" are bullshit social constructs that are unhelpful and fake. hanging out and i'm talking about how i feel like i don't have access to what society traditionally deems as love. every once in a while going "hey, you know that when i say "i love you," i mean that i care really deeply about you in a way that is different and more than love, right?" and she says "yes". 'cause we're caught up about this stuff. i know i'm saying all the time that all of us should talk about aromanticism more but i do genuinely think it's so helpful!! bring that theory up as much as you can, and maybe that'll help build a little more of a bridge across your perspectives.

if none of that works, or you feel like she's not getting it, or not listening, or she's really insistent that she wants the relationship to be One Way and isn't cool with it being different from your side (which is always an option! a relationship is predicated on agreements of what that relationship constitutes, not necessarily identical feelings from both parties. if you wanna hang out and hold hands it can be romantic for one person and not for another as long as you're both wanting to hold hands.) then maybe she's not a person you want to be with right now. for your sake and for the sake of the person you're in a relationship with, make sure that you're both happy. if anyone else has any advice please share in the replies/reblogs!! wishing you all the best anon. you got this <3

[cosmos-dot-semicolon]

I swear to god, the number of cool conceptual songs that always go back to this...

[beybuniki]

mwah!

[beybuniki]

[ur-fav-is-asexual]

you know who else is ace?

YOU, THE READER, FROM REAL LIFE

YOU from Real Life is asexual!

[mysweetoddbird]

listen to me. if youre aro you have to be louder about it. i dont care how loud about it you are already you have to be louder. if we have to be surrounded knee deep by amatonormativity all the time every day its good for the soul to be loud and annoying about your aromanticism

[knifearo]

How is your relationship with you partner? Currently living a similar situation and I would love to hear other aro people perspectives while I figure my own relationship

hi darling! assuming you're not asking about the general health of my relationship as much as the logistics haha? w r happily married, to start off. just moved to a new place (nicer than the student housing that we got married to live in together). we're getting a dog at the end of the month. idk i've been thinking about it a lot in the past month! cause i'm always saying that if you're looking for connection, you'll find the right people. you won't have to compromise. you don't deserve to have to compromise. we didn't call it dating before we were married cause the word made me uncomfortable and it was my wife who offered that option up. my wife and i have our own separate rooms and have sleepovers when we feel like it (and i get to be as particular about wanting my own space as i need). we ended up in really similar situations re: asexuality, so neither of us have to worry about that. it's romantic for her and not for me and that's cool cause i've always been fine with her loving me and she's always been fine with me saying that i don't have access to "love" as society frames it but that i care about her more than what that word implies. from a technical perspective we're practicing relationship anarchy every day but to us it's just living the way we want to live. we have a lot of mutual friends by virtue of living in the same place but also many of our own individual relationships and we go out to do our own things and hang out with our own people. we want kids really fucking bad. we both planned on single-parenting our whole lives so imagining division of labor for childcare is awesome cause it's always easier than either of us planned for it to be. it's gonna be a really expensive process on account of the transgenderism and everything so if anyone wants to contribute to the us having a baby fund it would be greatly appreciated. we're both really secure in the knowledge that if we ever split up we would be amicable about it. that if we split up we would be looking out for the kids. that we would still be friends. that if something about this arrangement doesn't work out that there are other ways to be close or connected. we've talked about this.

and frankly i think it's cool to have a relationship not based on physical attraction or the necessity of romance cause there's nothing that's like... pressuring us to stay together. we don't have an expectation that we're going to be forever alone if we aren't married. we don't rely on variable physical attributes or desire for any aspect of it. we get to do whatever the fuck we want and go out into the world and meet more cool gay people who hear what our deal is and go "yeah sick" (and filter out the gay people who are weird about it). and we stick together cause we like each other's company and decorate our house with ghosts and bats and vampire shit and get tax benefits. i spent like 8 years being a confidently nonpartnering aro and honestly that's still where i am in my ideals. i'm not looking for a partner, and i don't think that's my default happiest state. the relationship between my wife and i just happened to be best codified with words that typically go along with romantic relationships, and it was something that she wanted that didn't bother me, and if we happened to be in a different situation we would call it something else. if we decided to split up for any reason i wouldn't be looking for another partner. she's very important to me but i don't buy into the idea that she's my other half or that she completes me. we're two people who like to be around each other and we've decided to do that as much as possible. and i think it's very important that i know that i could be perfectly happy living and dying alone: anything that i'm doing now is because i want to, not because i'm caught in the societal ultimatum of romance or else. she likes being around me and i like being around her and now we get to make jokes about getting married for tax benefits or committing housing fraud. and it's a win for both of us not because we're married and not because there's a romantic aspect but because we're both doing whatever we want forever. and i have my own bed and i'm happy. amen.