Hi.

I consider myself aromantic.  I have absolutely no conscious interest in relationships (or sex or anything…even real friendship).  But I have a weird problem of sorts — sometimes, I’ll develop a “crush” on someone, like a girl in a class I’m taking.  I feel typical crushy feelings towards this person, sometimes to the extreme that I feel like I “love” the person.  But I don’t rationally acknowledge these feelings — like, I’ll feel like I want to talk to a person I have a silly crush on, but I think “no, that’s stupid and pointless” and I suppress those feelings.

It’s not because I’m afraid of rejection or anything.  I sincerely do not want to be in a relationship.

I feel like there’s a divide between the rational and emotional parts of my brain.

What would you call me?  A “wtfromantic,” perhaps?  Have you encountered people with feelings like mine?  Any words of advice, in general?

I’m almost certain there are others out there that are in the same situation that you are in.  I can definitely understand what you mean when you say that there is a divide between emotion and reason. There have been times where I have attempted to do some introspection with regards to my feelings towards other people and in almost 9/10 of when I do so, I keep reminding myself that regardless of what my feelings may be, the fact remains that I predominantly enjoy my own company, and I have no interest/desire in engaging in behavior that is typically perceived as romantic anyhow (i.e I don’t like kissing, hand holding etc.)

I suppose it will help if you ask yourself why you do not wish to engage in a romantic relationship.

With that said, I don’t believe that suppressing feelings is necessarily a good idea. Just out of curiosity, could the reason that you consider your feelings to be ‘silly’ and your ‘crush’(or whatever it is) as stupid and pointless  is because you realize that it will not result in a romantic relationship? Because if so, then I think it would help you if you remember that mainstream society has unfortunately a way of devaluing relationships/behaviour that isn’t perceived to be romantic . Just something to think about

[I’m aro and I’ve recently gotten into a platonic “thing” with a friend of mine (I think)

I’m afraid to talk about it with her because I feel like quantifying it would just be proving the “you just haven’t found the right one yet” people right. (I’ve always been very anti-relationship)

(I feel stupid for being more concerned about this than the actual possibility that I’ve just misread her intents)

“Because of the relative emptiness of the source site, it feels like something that was put together by a couple of people and not by a community. I like the ace flag because they at least attempted to get many peoples’ opinions and there is real thought behind it, real representation of the community.”

I’m actually one of the people who originally put together aromantic.org. At the time there were absolutely no resources for aromantics that were not exclusively asexual spaces. We made the site in the hopes that it would encourage a community, because we were sure we weren’t the only ones who felt the way we did.

And it worked! I was so excited when the aromantic community suddenly exploded on tumblr! 

We designed the flag to be as inclusive as possible and we used fairly basic color symbolism. Green, (being the opposite, complimentary color to red, which usually represents romance), represents aromanticism. Yellow, like the yellow rose which represents friendship, stands for various forms of queerplatonic love. Orange, being red once removed toward yellow, represents lithromantics. And black represents romantics who choose to reject traditional romance.

We decided to make a flag even though there were so few of us because having a rallying symbol, we felt, would help coalesce the community. And I think it worked!

That said, of course now that there is a large, active community we should reopen discussion of the flag and any other symbols.

- From detectivepunchymchitsthings:

Hey guys! :)

Just a friendly hi from the new admin of this blog. (though fret not, the old mod will most likely be lurking/sticking around)  I will do my best to keep it running as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Since the old format seemed to work, I will use the same template as the previous mod.

So yes, wherever you may happen to be on the aromantic spectrum, if you have a secret you wish to share, submit away :)

Mod doesn’t have the time or energy or drive anymore to keep arosecret going (as you can tell from the general decay of this tumblr) so I’m offering the URL to any people who feel they have what it takes to get it running and successful. If you’re interested, send an ask or a submission into this tumblr.

A note, I will only give the URL to someone who will keep the blog open to anyone on the aromantic spectrum.

[Image of the actress Horikita Maki, with the text, “Even if you weren’t a super-famous celebrity, but just the girl who lived next door, I wouldn’t want a relationship with you. I don’t want a relationship with anyone. I really prefer being alone. So… that should make it hurt less that I’ll never meet you, right? I wish I knew what to call this feeling.”]

[Image of a person, only from the knees down, walking barefoot over a moss-covered walkway over water. Text says, “There is more to wonder than romance. Please, can there be more stories about wonder and dreams that are not romantic?”]

[Image with the text, “I don’t know how to live without you” and a background of boats. Over the top is added text: “I know it’s harsh, but, every time I see one of these images on Tumblr, I just want to cross out “you” and replace it with “kittens” or “biscuits”. I find it annoying that no one ever talks about the non-people things they love.]

I don’t know if I’m aromantic, jaded, or just bitter.

Maybe I’m just afraid of having a relationship after living in a family with parents who stayed married about 30 years longer than they should have. I’m the only person I know who WISHES their parents would get a divorce.

But they tell me they still love each other. And if that’s what love is, if that’s what romance is, I don’t want a part of it. Because it’s terrible.

For better or worse, whether we crash and burn or survive and flourish, Aro Secret is now open. Modelled after the popular postsecret and queersecrets, Aro Secret is a platform for anonymous venting based on and around anything to do with aromantics and the aromantic spectrum.

We accept images, text and quote formats. Aro Secret wants to be as accessible as possible, so if you are submitting an image, please write an image description to accompany it. Graphic images will be placed behind a cut.

Submit!