Alloromantics: what does being/falling in love feel like?
(for your amusement, I, an aro, tried to compile some symptoms, as follows:
- "I become very stupid every time this person is in the room and maybe I like it."
- "I desperately desire them to think I'm neat."
- Sometimes you contemplate them and feel a tender sensation in your chest! )
@Betty (am ace, am probably more aroish than your average jawn)
i would say my inclination for physical touch goes up by a bit and i’m more interested in having their undivided attention as well (as opposed to friends where just hanging out and chatting is good but not necessarily better than doing a thing together or hanging out as a group).
but obv close friendship also includes some aspects of both of those things (these days my best friend and i mostly communicate by having actual phone calls with eachother, crazy i know) so hard to say!
@Betty hahaha yeah the queer grouping effect is really making this difficult
@Betty if i’m not sure, imagining them eg. asking me out and seeing how i feel about that is probably more reliable than anything i could describe in terms of general behavior/feelings, also?
@Satsuma Everytime someone has asked me out I've been like "oh no!" so. Maybe I'm very aro.
@Betty yeah i mean if someone asks me out out of the blue i would probably be pretty awkward about it—generally my actual relationships involve quite a lot of easing in via flirting / date like but not officially a date activities but the *idea* of them being interested in me needs to be like, something at least mildly positive in order for me to y’know enjoy the flirting and date like activities
i guess “will notice/respond to flirting” is another one for the list then???
@Satsuma no, these were almost all, like. Close friends. I just kinda experience flirting as good clean fun and don't always notice it tipping over?
@Betty femme homosociality definitely walks VERY close to flirting so the question of “am i performing female friendship or performing a complex mating ritual” has definitely tripped me up more than once. hence the need to be like “okay but how would i feel if they were actually flirting??” lmao
@Betty @Satsuma yeah the best way i would describe it is it makes you feel like either a warm cosy baby or else a vulnerable needy baby and either way u are baby and just want support from your person the way a baby does from their caretakers
when two people feel this way towards each other it forms a very effective interdependency bond because they both are baby towards each other and want the other person to love and support them
@Satsuma I think I said to a friend, "Hey, I'm enjoying this flirting but just so you know, there's no end game." (She's one of those poly people who believes in communicating, so this was not weird.)
@Satsuma love that I'm crowd-sourcing this definition from people who are all like "I'm aro-ish, but..."
Undivided attention is a data point!