Living w/ aromantics💚🤍🖤

So I'm staying with my grandparents and my aunt for a while, not realizing that we all have something in common. My grandparent's marriage was arranged, despite that they manage to live comfortably and even happily. My aunt on the other hand is not married, the only out of 5 siblings which can seem irregular but she has always been my biggest role model. And then there's me, they live in a quite town embedded with nature and old styled everyday objects like any typical village. The life that they have explicitly seems lonely and boring but if you just stop and look, it's actually very peaceful and healthy. Living with them has thought me that there is no one way of living, none of them has a particularly romantic life but just sitting down at the dinner table made me feel more love than any other dinner table in my family. It's so genuinely soft and caring, though not perfect. Yes the house can get suffocatingly quiet at times, but knowing that my grandparents have successfully raised 5 stable adults is enough for them to block out all the silence. We all aren't born with partners, but we all are born with family, Whether it be by blood or founded in unusual places ..

People seemed to really like last year's critters, so I'm back to celebrate Ace Week again with some more simple little artworks of silly little creatures. ✨Keep being amazing, fellow aces.✨

seven years ago, they used to be friends. almost.

1 / 2 / ?

Due to that post I made re: why it's hard for aros/aces to imagine a future for themselves because society tells you a romantic partner will always take priority, a lot of people (aros/aces and allos alike) are sharing stories about how they have been discarded by their close friends and it's breaking my heart. But allos and aspecs coming in and sharing how they have the same amount of love for their partners and their best friends/siblings is healing it.

Still, there are people in the tags saying that aros/aces can "never offer their partners the kind of intimacy they need" and so they shouldn't be "surprised" when they feel closer to partners than their friends. You guys are missing the point.

The point is that we should NOT be ranking our relationships. People aren't there to be ranked on a scale of "This person is my number one and this person comes after that." The point is that you need multiple people in your life. One person cannot - and should not - be responsible for giving you everything you need. Different people will give you different things that you need in life and you should value all of them.

The idea that a romantic partner will give you every single thing you need in life is a toxic idea in itself and puts undue pressure on said partner and the relationship as a whole. A best friend won't give you everything either. You NEED multiple people in your life and they will all give you a part of what you need, but there is no one perfect person out there who perfectly gives you exactly what you want. We need multiple people and they should all be valued by you. Love is not limited.

zolu is maybe one of the easiest ships i've ever liked. they're dating, except when they're not, they're best friends even when they're kissing and they're still captain and first mate when they aren't. they hold hands, they hug. they have sex. they don't.

Luffy can hold Zoro's katanas and Zoro can hold Luffy's strawhat and no one bats an eye. one says "You're so cool!" and the other says "You're strong" and it's just another way to say "I see you, this is why I follow you/this is why I trust you". it's not seeing each other for a long time and still knowing how the other's steps sound like against wood and sand. the captain runs and the first mate follows. it's always "Zoro and the others" and "Where's Luffy?"

if they're just friends, if they're something more, if they don't have a label for it, at its core, it's just about how they get each other. they understand how the other's mind works. however you view them, it doesn't erase they fact that they love each other in a way they don't love other people.

hi guys here is a collection of screenshots of tiktoks that i think all of us in the sapphic community can relate to

my daughter who i love

The aromatic and asexual community and positivity is so strong on this app it makes me so very happy I never want to leave

I love all of you so much ♡ aspecs deserve the world and more

here's a clip of my best boy rudy singing k.k. moody 🎈

How I want to hug every aroacespec person to ever exist ☹️

starting another gameplay bc why not

anyway meet aster! i made her using this random sims generator and i’m going to be trying to complete all the aspirations in (my) game with her starting with angling ace! inspired by @squea’s corn gameplay :)

beginning / next

Yes, I’m a sex repulsed asexual.

Yes, I love Rocky Horror.

We exist.

Going to your grandma is like a perfect trap for asexuals/aromantics

You are given free homemade food, delicious pies... THEN BAM!

DO YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND

COME ON YOU ARE SO YOUNG YOU SHOULD FIND SOMEONE TO MARRY AND HAVE CHILDREN WITH

I CAN DIE AT ANY MOMENTS OF COURSE I WANT TO SEE MY GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN

I am ashamed to admit that it works every fucking time

Hot take but the aggressive hardline separation of asexual and aromantic is actually EXTREMELY harmful to a lot of ace/aro people.

Angry rant under the cut

It's one to thing to go: "okay yes sometimes they go together but it's important to remember that for some people they can be different things and you can be one and not the other"

And go: "These are TOTALLY DIFFERENT 100 always separate there is no intersection EVER and if you DARE to be both then you have to piecemeal your identity to not uwu invalidate others(we do not care that we are invalidating you though lol) Don't you DARE ever experience them together you are CONFLATING"

It's like yall just want asexual to = alloromantic only and aromantic to = allosexual only.

You don't give a shit about aroaces, aces who aren't alloromantic but don't ID as aromantic or aros who aren't allosexual but don't ID as asexual.

The aspec community despises us. We get talked down to demanded to split our identities apart for your comfort. We can't exist in certain spaces because our presence there is a personal affront to allo-aspecs. Shout out to the alloaros that bitch about those disgusting aroaces just clogging up the aromantic tag ☺. Shout out to the alloaces who can still love and aren't totally heartless monsters 🥺.

Don't talk about ace shit in the aro tags, Don't talk about aro shit in the ace tags...what's that you're both? And can't neatly separate them and it brings you comfort to be able to discuss your whole orientation? SHUT THE FVCK UP YOU CONFLATING IGNORANT SHIT HEAD.

If you want to be in the aromantic community you have to leave your ace-ness at the door same for asexual community and disregarding your aromantism.

A personal example was an Aspec discord server I was in that had two media recs channels one for sex repulsed people and the other for romance repulsed. Now the issue came is that they didn't acknowledge someone could be both i.e both sex & romance repulsed/just looking for media that had neither sexual nor romantic content, what this lead too is that the romance free media channel was filled with graphic hookup erotica or sexually explicit songs and the sex free channel was just fade to black romance books 🙃...wonderful.

Or when polls/forms will ask you to pick your orientation but only things listed are het,gay,bi/pan yes even the ones made by aspecs, and what they actually mean is use the one that correlates to your romantic/sexual attraction...so fvck aroaces and non sam aces & aros?

And don't get me started on how you treat non sam aces & aros. You at least tolerate the self IDing aroaces, because they have the "curtesy" of separating themselves from the real proper aces & aros.(let's not question how many aroaces would prefer to just ID as just asexual or just aromantic but are forced into aroace identity because that would be "conflating" and they don't want to deal with the harassment).

"UwU don't say asexual when you actually mean aromantic" Some bitches don't use to SAM fvck off with allo-splaining my own sexuality to me.

It would be so much easier and save a lot of pain if yall just went : "asexual for some means no sexual attraction and it says nothing of your romantic attraction AND some people use it to mean no attraction generally". And "aromantic for some means no romantic attraction and it says nothing of your sexual attraction AND some people use it to mean no attraction generally" and "for some they are separated but others not so much as there isn't always a strict separation. Just be chill about it don't accuse people of being ignorant or conflating they know their identities better than you". But no ya chose violent aphobia instead.

But ultimately nobody cares because this shit is only harming the undesirable aces/aros the ones who are harmful stereotypes the ones that make you "look bad".

I know deep in my heart there are a lot of alloaces & alloaros that who would be happy if aroaces & non sam aces/aros didn't exist, there I said it. How can I not come to that conclusion when at every turn they shit on us. They talk about how the worst thing in the world is to be mistaken for one of us. That our representation is actively harmful.

A last parting spicy take it's either "asexulity and aromantism are full identities on their own and aren't modifiers" OR "actually neither asexual nor aromantic can stand on their own they need to be paired with another orientation and they actually are just modifiers" you can't have it both ways. 🤭

question for fellow aces (and aroaces)

do you think i would still be able to identify as oriented aroace if i were to use an ace-spec label that included zero sexual attraction experienced (specifically the label pseudosexual, https://asexuals.fandom.com/wiki/Pseudosexual#:~:text=Pseudosexual%20or%20senssexual%20is%20a,attraction%20which%20mimics%20sexual%20attraction.)?

to me, it would make sense that i would be able to still identify as oriented aroace, since i don’t experience sexual attraction whatsoever and i know that FOR SURE.

but i know that the oriented aroace label is specifically for those who identify as both strictly aromantic and asexual.

i just feel the oriented aroace label is so myself, and it feels incredibly comfortable, and i don’t want to lose that label if it means that i use a label that is more specific than just saying i’m asexual.

the pseudosexual label describes my experience as an asexual, but i believe i can also identify as just asexual and have that experience with the label if it means that i can keep the oriented aroace label.

so, what do you all think?

EDIT: thank you all to the bunch that answered this, that was so helpful and i’m glad that i can continue to use the oriented aroace label (and i do have significant other attractions that i use along that label btw :3)