for demiromantics/demisexuals

Cal, she/her not super active but trying my best ~assholes get blocked~

[thedemiexperience]

FAQ

What is demiromantic/demisexual?

People who need a close bond with someone before they experience romantic/sexual attraction.

What counts as a close bond?

There are as many definitions of that as there are people, but most often it’s someone you’ve known for a while and are emotionally close with, a friend.

I understand sexual attraction, but what is romantic attraction?

It’s always hard to describe something you’ve only personally experienced two or three times in your life but I’ll do my best. At simplest, open to dating them. In order to have a crush on someone, you must first be romantically attracted. That’s a common misconception, but a crush is Not the same as romantic attraction, just a possible and very common result of it. Right now I’m romantically attracted towards a girl, if she asked me out I’d probably say yes and we could give it a shot, but I’m not upset that she hasn’t asked me and I’m not going to ask her. I am open to dating her, but not pining, because I don’t have a crush on her.

What experiences do demi people have?

Most of us experience infrequent crushes, and like aro/ace people we don’t usually go through a boy/girl crazy phase as teens. I thought everyone just picked a boy that looked nice and said they had a crush on them. We only have crushes on close friends obviously, though some have fictional characters as the exception.

Why is this lgbt/queer?

There are a lot of ways to answer this honestly, especially since people define lgbt in different ways, and some people don’t even see ace/aro identities as lgbt let alone ace/aro spec. The way I see it, it’s a non normative way of attraction. Honestly, 90% of the time I feel aromantic, there’s just a certain conditional exception that comes up occaisionally. Even if someone is demi but attracted to the opposite gender, that’s not heteronormative since they’re on the ace/aro spectrum. (if you want to argue feel free to message me but I did not make this blog to argue with people, there is no guarantee I will entertain a lengthy argument and certainly not insults)

[yippeeepenid]

there are two aromantic moods:

1. HELL YEA im aromantic im so happy that i dont feel the need to have someone else to complete me!

2. im going to slap the next person that mentions romance because amatonormativity has made it so i cant see a future for myself

[disasterdemi]

[ID: The “Types of Headaches” meme. There are four diagrams of a head, each with a different region highlighted in red. The fourth diagram is completely red, and captioned “trying to figure out what kind of attraction I’m experiencing”. End ID]

[spacezeros123]

wanting and not wanting at the same time

a comic for asexual awareness week

[spacezeros123]

bringing this back today for the start of pride month. still overwhelmed by how well this comic went down and with how many people relate. it’s easy to think aro-ace people are all totally accepting of their identities and really proud of who they are. i guess on websites like this you see a lot of people proudly putting their identity in their bio, a flag in their profile picture.

in fact i think a lot of aro-ace people really hate that part of themselves, hide it, and struggle for a long time to ‘accept’ who they are and feel any sense of ‘pride’. that’s the feeling i wanted to capture here. the disappointment, the loneliness, upon realising that you can’t feel what is such a wonderful thing. the embarrassment of not being ‘normal’, of being some random sexuality that nobody irl has heard of, and letting down those around you because you can’t be who they want you to be. how desperately you want to change, how desperately you want to feel. but you just can’t.

i know not all aro-ace people feel like this. i know lots of aro and/or ace people feel able to be in relationships, to feel closeness and have partners in other ways. but i think it’s important to be aware that some aro-ace people do feel like this.

the comments on this comic have mostly been great but a few have been very frustrating. a comment it got a lot was along the lines of ‘aw!! you don’t need to have sex to be in a relationship!’. you completely missed the point, hah. this is not a comic about sex. it’s about a lack of feeling, the lack of something beautiful other people seem to have. another comment that popped up a few times was ‘maybe she’s a lesbian’. well maybe lesbians and aro/ace girls have more in common than people think - maybe they both often struggle to accept that they feel no attraction to men, even though society has conditioned them to do so, sometimes spending years trying to force themselves to like men in that way, when they just can’t.

this comic is called ‘wanting and not wanting at the same time’ because she wants to love. but when it comes down to the reality, she can’t fulfil the requirements of that. she wants to love someone forever, to get married and have children and grow old with her soulmate, but she doesn’t want it with this person. or that person. or anyone she meets or will ever meet. a sort of catch 22, i guess.

hope that makes sense. thanks for listening, and have a lovely pride month ❤️

[thedemiexperience]

I’m gonna leave this as my most recent post for anyone checking this blog out!

I’ve been struggling lately with a worsening mental health and avoiding social media has really helped with that so even more than usual I’m going to be not very active :/ I also have been honestly sliding down the scale towards straight up aromantic lately but haven’t had the time to examine that much what with work. That being said I never plan to delete this blog even if I do go inactive one day, I’ve put a lot of time and care into collecting resources and sharing my experiences and I hope this blog can continue to help people in my absences!

[lowkeyedgyfire]

look at those

[aceandarothingies]

Stick it to Rainbow Capitalism!

Since rainbow capitalism sucks, here are some small queer shops to support this coming pride month instead of giving all your money to Disney and Walmart!

Pride bows!

All the buttons you could ever need or want!

Dice and dominoes!

Bottle charms!

Armour-inspired jewelry!

Stickers, stickers, and more stickers!

Black queer art prints!

Shoelaces!

Hats!

Patches!

Cross stitch!

Earrings, earrings, and more earrings!

Bat dolls!

Bracelets 1 and Bracelets 2

Dragon dolls!

Sweaters!

Queer deer!

Abrosexual pride!

Do no harm, take no shit!

Pride moths!

Misc. Identity merch!

Chocolate!

Pride shrimp!

And finally, it's not specifically queer, but these shops do custom flags!

If you have a shop or know a shop you want to promote, please reblog with a link!

[ceilingfanenvy]

friends to lovers but instead they're just demiromantic

[arostellar]

i'm going to say it because i feel it's something we should talk about. this thought of "you're incomplete until you find your other half" and this other half is always in a romantic way is toxic and arophobic.

no, you're complete, you're not missing something and this is why the first type of love we should learn is self love, so the perception of ourselves doesn't have to be related to someone else or what kind of relationship we have with someone else.

besides that it implies that you're only going to have one special person throughout your life, which is kind of sad isn't it?

all your life you're going to meet people, in different ways and with whom you're going to share different types and levels of love, but why is people so pressured to find only one?

and why after having a partner it's almost instant that you lose all your friends? i've lived that with friends and it's so sad.

platonic relationships and friendships are so devalued and it makes me mad.

i don't know what i'm saying anymore, just don't keep perpetuating the idea that falling in love is everybody's dream and goal, please.

[aro-and-tired]

Sometimes I see a certain annoyance that aromantic discussions on tumblr seem to focus a lot on fandom, fictional media and the likes rather than more serious problems like the issues aros face in real life. I totally understand this irritation, because aromanticism can hardly be boiled down to how we interact with fiction. I love talking about fandom because fandom is one of my primary hobbies, but I too would like more real life talk, so to speak.

Then again, it’s not like I don’t see why so many aros focus on fandom. There’s a lot of good reasons for it. This is tumblr, for starters. Fandom is a huge part of this site’s culture.

Then there is the incredible damage discourse has done to aromantic and asexual communities - everyone who was here before the height of discourse can attest that there was a thriving aspec community on tumblr, before people started mocking and dismissing our struggles and spreading misinformation and generally doing their best to destroy our spaces. Receiving arophobic hate for an headcanon is not pleasant, but getting arophobic hate when discussing your personal struggles is much worse.

Also, many of the older aspec folk left tumblr for their own safety during that time, leading to the aromantic community on tumblr skewing young. Young people have many, many great things to say, but also less experience. Older aro folk may have a lot of advice and discussion topics that a younger person doesn’t. I’m in my early twenties, and I already have many more things to say than I did when I was a teenager. If you realized you were aro six months ago, are still mightly confused about your feelings, and don’t have that much life experience, well, it’s just going to be easier to talk about fandom and exploring yourself through fandom lenses.

And considering that aromanticism is still an almost unknown identity, it’s also understandable that people would focus on things such as possible media representation and possible aro readings. We want to be known. We want people to understand who we are and what we want, even if it’s just our tumblr followers, and what better way to explain ourselves than to say “look, you see this character you love? This character is like me”?

Lastly, I know I don’t really like to talk about the arophobia I experience in my life. I can make a character in a fictional story face arophobia and win and feel vindicated through it. But no one likes to think about their oppression. It’s permeates life, and when I come online I just want to be distracted for a while, not feel even worse. It’s important to talk about arophobia, it’s very, very important. But it’s disheartening too, especially when alloromantics so often tend to discredit us. It’s just much easier to think about your favorite aromantic headcanons than writing a long post discussing amatonormativity that will make you grow angrier and angrier as you write while knowing you will surely have some bad faith alloromantic trying to argue that you somehow hate them personally by daring to discuss your own struggles.

[hyenasbreath--archive]

Happy birthday lesbians this means trans lesbians and butch lesbians and femme lesbians and masc lesbians and lesbians who had to be comphet and aro lesbians and ace lesbians and lesbians of color and disabled lesbians and lesbians who have that as their only connection to womanhood and lesbians that fully embrace loving other lesbians/sapphics. i love you

[acedthatnickname]

Everyone: *dreams about meeting the right one*

Me, an aroace:

[demiros-are-demigods]

me sometimes: yes yes yes I definitely feel romantic attraction I so know what that is this is so cool I love it my crush is so beautiful and amazing and I want to date her and kiss her and hold hands with her and live with her and do everything with her

me other times: aaaaaaagggghhhh what is this attraction am I feeling romantic attraction have I ever felt romantic attraction do I know what it is help me please I’m having a crisis wait but I did feel romantic attraction, I always wanted to get married, I’m not aroflux my brain is just weird, but is it really??? am I even demiromantic, didn’t I maybe have a romantic crush on that girl six months ago, omg oh no did I??? idk anymore, I’m probably just overthinking this

my third mood: wtf is romantic attraction???? why would someone want to spend their life with one person above everyone else, it’s too restricting, it feels weird to think about, I don’t understand it, why do people want this, am I aroflux or just aro aghhhh

[aspecpplarebeautiful]

Aromanticism is a description of your orientation. It’s not about how you feel about romance, and it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy romance, whether it’s dating or doing romantic coded things yourself, or enjoying in a distanced way such as liking/writing romantic stories or enjoying shipping.

[officialaspec]

friendly reminder that anyone on the ace spectrum can use the ace flag of that's the one you prefer. you aren't required to use the flag specific to your label if you don't want to.

friendly reminder that anyone on the aro spectrum can use the aro flag of that's the one you prefer. you aren't required to use the flag specific to your label if you don't want to.

friendly reminder that anyone on the aroace spectrums can use the aroace flag of that's the one you prefer. you aren't required to use the flags specific to your labels if you don't want to.

if you're grayromantic but want to use the common aro flag? go for it. if you're cupiosexual but want to use the common ace flag? do it. if you're demiromantic abrosexual but want to use the orange-blue aroace flag? that's your decision. these flags exist for the entire community to use if they wish. you are just as aspec as anyone else on the spectrum.

[aroloverboy]

Hey it’s ace week and you’re local ace has something to say! I’ve been out as ace for 3 years now and it’s still a big part of my identity that I’m proud of so here’s a lil something for those who need it!

[bastart13]

I keep forgetting when these days are, but if you're ace, you're cool