#grayromanticism

[ace-of-hail]

Platonic crushes are so much more interesting and fun than romantic crushes

Like, there's a lot of overlap, but being best friends with someone seems a lot less stressful and demanding than bring their romantic partner

[freethelgbtqia]

[Image description: A grayaro pride flag shaped like a peace sign on a gray background]

Grayromantic: someone who experiences romantic attraction rarely or only under specific circumstances

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

things that are weird: that functionally i could probably class myself as grayromantic, and if anything it seems like it would probably describe my experiences more accurately than demiromantic

but when i try to think about IDing as anything but demiromantic, it ranges anywhere from ‘nnnnnnnn’ to [SCREAM]

grayromantic feels Uncomfortable and Not Right; trying to think of myself as alloromantic is so deeply distressing that i will literally start sobbing if i try to do it, and feel like i’m cutting off a part of myself

whereas legit ever since i discovered demiromantic was a Thing with a Name i was just like [points] that me, and when i thought i was allo for a few years i was constantly like ‘listen no aro but there’s Something That Doesn’t Feel Like an Allo Experience Here’

like. ????????????????????

i guess it might be an internalized thing, like how when i first started questioning my gender the idea of being referred to with they/them was Big Scream and then i eventually got perfectly happy with it? maybe i’m just attached to it because it was the first non-allo label i went with? maybe there are mental health issues i need to work out that are obfuscating it one way or another

which. i feel shitty saying that because it feels like i’m falling into pathologizing aromanticism, but. it’s my own experience? and i’m not reflecting on anyone else. and it’s not so much ‘do i just think i’m arospec because i’m mentally ill’ as it is ‘do i just think i’m arospec because i’m mentally ill, or do i just question whether i might be alloromantic because i’m mentally ill.’ and also the same between two arospec orientations either of which is valid, but which one it actually is might be obfuscated by mental illness, or might be internalized shit

so that does make me feel somewhat better about it

just. hm. it’s a lot. and it’s hard trying to find experiences to compare it to, just because the examples that make me Wonder so much are mostly deeply personal and involve talking about mental illness i still haven’t fully unpacked yet, and i feel antsy about the idea of laying it all out for other people to weigh in on

[alley-cat-sunflower]

I’ve been thinking about my demisexuality/grayromanticism a lot lately, so I was talking to the boyfriend the other day and kinda laughing about how I write smut despite my orientation. like hey isn’t it just a little bit weird for me to research so much nsfw stuff and spend so much time engaging in and inducing fantasies?? like wow I’m so flaky and indecisive huh?? but it was all so internalized that I didn’t even realize how ridiculously insecure I was until he just told me

“Well, you can be on the spectrum and still recognize a good ship/story when you see one. You don’t have to be hungry to tell if a burger looks good.”

…and I’ve never thought about it like that before, so I wanted to share this with my fellow ace and/or aro folk who might also be insecure about the contradictions between their opinions of fiction vs reality. just because we may not want sex for ourselves does not mean we are obligated to be repulsed by it in theory. we are normal. we are valid.

[freethelgbtqia]

[Image description: A black silhouette with stars on it in the colors of the grayaro pride flag, being embraced by hands coming from a swirl made of the grayaro pride flag]

[freethelgbtqia]

[Image description: a semicolon with the word Survive under it with the grayaro pride flag for a background (pic 1), the grayaro pride flag for the semicolon (pic 2), the grayaro pride flag for the Survive (pic 3), and the grayaro pride flag for semicolon and survive (pic 4)]

Grayromantic: someone who experiences romantic attraction rarely or only under specific circumstances

[freethelgbtqia]

[Image description: paint splatter with the grayromantic pride colors]

Grayromantic: someone who experiences romantic attraction rarely or only under specific circumstances

[freethelgbtqia]

[ID: left a black heartbeat line that forms a heart in the middle with the grayromantic flag for a background, right a black background with the grayromantic flag for the heartbeat]