"ohh haha an aspec polycule isn't that just –" you know, when you have a community that understands very well that attraction does not equal action, and that relationships are more complicated than just feeling a certain way for another person, you may end up seeing a lot of relationships that do not make sense to the average person who has not unpacked such ideas! Shocking, I know! For your first thought to consider on this magical journey of discovery, how about this: mocking other people's relationships is rude and wrong, and most of the time, you just look like a damn fool doing it. Save yourself some embarrassment – shut the hell up when you come across people who have actually put in the work to deconstruct and understand something you've never questioned once in your life.

I don't say this to rag on anyone who personally views their own attraction/love/whatever this way, but like. I feel like upholding the idea that sexual attraction must always be called lust and isn't an actual form of love is just really sex negative. Like hmmm I wonder what it is about this one form of attraction that might cause you to refuse to consider it as a form of love. Could it be the idea that love is always "pure" and "wholesome" and sex is never either of those things? Could it be the idea that sexual attraction is dirty and sinful and love is neither of those things, so therefore we have to call it by a different word? And RIP to y'all who don't experience sexual attraction as an emotional form of attraction but I'm different. My sexual attraction is very emotional and I will call it love if I so wish – and honestly, I dare say the romantic attraction I've felt in the past has been far more physical than any sexual attraction I've ever experienced. Do not presume that everyone will define their attraction the same way. I mean, c'mon; this is the "doesn't experience attraction in mainstream ways if at all" community. Don't try to make new rules about attraction or drag in all the toxic + sex negative shit we want to do away with.

A podcast run by an asexual, an aromantic, and an aplatonic called "AAA" and every time an episode starts, one of them welcomes the audience by screaming into the mic

"hello and welcome to AAA!"

Being aplspec makes discussions about friendships in aro spaces so awkward like. Yeah I agree friendship should be given more respect and amatonormativity should be dismantled. Yes I care very deeply for my friend(s). No I can't relate to your experiences with friendship or wanting friends. You've lost me. Why are you talking about friendship as if everyone has and/or wants it. Hey. Whatever happened to allowing people to decide what relationships they want and what those relationships entail for themselves.

It's exhausting because aro spaces are often one of the only spaces that will respect my devotion and care (sometimes I even call it love, depending on how I'm feeling that day) for my friend, but friendship is also just treated like romance is everywhere else and no one even seems to notice. You're not gonna defeat amatonormativity with the power of platonormativity. Have you considered readjusting your understanding of relationship anarchy and questioning your own biases and assumptions about platonic relationships? I'm drowning in "use friendship as a substitute for romance" posts over here

(and it's like. I don't want to criticize people's love for their friends or anything like that. I'm just so tired of all the assumptions of having and wanting friends. They're everywhere in here and make me feel so estranged from my own community)

Genuinely forgot romance existed for a moment today. I was trying to think of different close relationships a person could have and somehow just completely blanked on romantic relationships. Really lived up to my bio

Was talking with my headmates earlier and we agreed that we needed a specific term for our relationship with love, so today we're coining it – loveweird.

Loveweird is a word for when your relationship with love is weird, hard to understand, or outside the norm in some way. It can include loveless and lovequeer experiences but does not have to. Some examples of loveweird experiences include (but are not limited to):

You can be a loveweird aro, a loveweird ace, a loveweird apl, or not aspec at all and still use loveweird to describe yourself!

I hope this term helps others as it's helped us!

I wish we could talk about platonic affection and intimacy without people using the word "love". I don't love my friends and I don't want them to love me, I just want them to see me as valuable and not automatically less important than a romantic partner they may someday or currently have. I'm so tired of love being the end-all be-all of relationships. I'm so tired of people using "love" as a synonym for a million different words when it would pay to be more specific. But I can't go two posts into talking about platonic relationships before someone's acting as if love is gonna solve all the world's problems, starting with amatonormativity.

This especially goes for when the discussion is about how amatonormativity and its relationship hierarchy affect aros. I don't need ~love~, I need my social needs to be met!! I need a support system!! I need to be able to trust I won't suddenly become the last priority of someone who used to support and be there for me just because they started dating someone!! I do not need a vague emotion that's up to personal interpretation and tied up in way too many social connotations, I just need people.

I want to put the word "love" up on a shelf and make people open a dictionary for once in their lives. There's other words out there. It's okay to use them. It can be preferable, even. Not everything needs love. No, not even if it's platonic. Love is not some magical force that's gonna save the day, it's just an emotion that most people find pleasant. Recreating the amatonormative problems surrounding how people treat romantic love with platonic love was not something I thought was possible, but people have done it, and I want it gone.

I'm so tired of people forcing the concept of love into a discussion or post just because it's about platonic relationships, even when it doesn't make any sense or actively makes the conversation worse.

(vent but okay to reblog)

You know, I think that somewhere along the way, I've rewired my associations with the concept of soulmates; whenever I hear the term, I have to remind myself that it's part of amatonormativity and romance for most people (whether they know what amatonormativity is or not). I've gotten a bit too deep into my own experimentation with the concept, and now the concept of "We're soulmates so that means we're destined to be together romantically" is just foreign to me. Give me more content where soulbonds don't mean shit and anyone who assumes they have to date their soulmate has either been severely misguided or is just being creepy. I want to see characters unpack their amatonormativity by learning they don't have to date their soulmate – nor do they have to be friends with them, or rivals, or whatever else – and I want to see the entire concept of soulmates picked apart in a new way that isn't just "What if there were platonic soulmates, too?"

Because to be completely honest, I think it is possible to write soulmates in a way that challenges arophobia instead of contributes to it. It's just that most people either aren't willing to do so or have no idea where to start. And to the latter, I say, start with challenging the idea that a soulmate is someone you have to be together with in any way, not just romantically. Give your characters some perspectives on soulmates that isn't "dread that turns into appreciation because they were always destined to get along" or "excited curiosity over who this One True Love may be." When you take away the idea that a "soulmate" is a responsibility you don't have the option to back out of in some way... What happens? That's the sort of soulmate story I'd like to read.

(Disclaimer that this is mostly just a personal post with some thoughts I've been having for a while, and shouldn't be taken as some perfect philosophical ideal. I just like deconstructing soulmate AUs and other amatonormative tropes.)

That's the aroflux flag! Aroflux is a romantic orientation where one's ability to feel romantic attraction fluctuates. Usually, this means fluctuating from no romantic attraction to full romantic attraction (and gray areas in-between), but it's also used to describe someone who goes between different arospec labels depending on what fits best for their current situation/attraction level/sexuality.

"I don't support loveless/aplatonic/etc people because I think they have something wrong with them!" Okay, but you do know not supporting someone just because you think they're mentally ill isn't, like, better, right? Like, it's not better to say that you're invalidating people just because you assume they have a mental condition. It's not better to say they shouldn't have words for their experiences or talk about them to other people just because their experiences might have something to do with poor mental health. That just makes you an ableist shitbag who wants mentally ill people to stfu about their life experiences.

Friendly reminder, since I still see this being confused! (No hate to those of you who get this confused, this is a genuinely friendly reminder.)

Aspec = asexual spectrum and aromantic spectrum (and nowadays may include the aplatonic spectrum as well, it's just less known)

Acespec = asexual spectrum only

Arospec = aromantic spectrum only

Aplspec = aplatonic spectrum only

"Aspec" does not mean "only asexual!" "Aspec" means anyone who is anywhere on the multiple spectrums of lacking attraction! If you're aromantic, you can consider yourself aspec! If you're cupiosexual, you can consider yourself aspec! If you're demiplatonic, to hell with it, consider yourself aspec if you want to! "Aspec" is an umbrella term for all of us.

NGL, I hate that the aromantic community just keeps trying to change how we "make up" for our lack of romantic attraction. "Don't worry, I can still love!" "Don't worry, I'll still get a partner in the form of a QPP!" "Don't worry, I still have and want friends!" Not all of us fit that, and we shouldn't be left behind.

Everytime I see these sentiments, it's like they're saying, "You're not the right kind of aro; we don't want you around." Regardless of whether or not that was their intention, it's certainly how their words come off, and it makes me so frustrated. Frustrated that not only am I being treated as less than even in the aro community, but that this conditional tolerance, where it's only "okay" to be aromantic if you're still x and y and z, is seen as okay. It's not! It's not!! Conditional tolerance based on compensating for our sexuality is not okay, nor is it actual acceptance, even if you're the one being tolerated!

Fuck the idea that just because I'm aro, I have to fill out a bunch of imaginary boxes to be worth respecting. That's just not okay at all.

Avoidants* feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I've seen a few sentiments that are similar to this (that is, being happy about break-ups, whether real or fictional, because it means that's one less person for them or the character to avoid), and thought, "Hey, that sounds like something a lot of aros have gone through, just for different reasons!" And so, I made this meme showing that.

*For my followers who don't know, an avoidant is a person with Avoidant Personality Disorder (AVPD).

Aspec Basics

With Jaiden's new video, there are a lot of new/baby aspecs just realizing their identity. If you're new to the community, welcome! Some things that this community discusses may be confusing to you since you likely don't know what everything means yet. There's theories, terminology, microlabels, subcultures, and on and on. I feel your pain, I was in your shoes once! So, if you're new to the aspec community on Tumblr, here's some basics I feel you might want to know!

(Put under a cut because this got longer than I expected it to be.)

Starting to consider identifying as both loveless and lovequeer. I know at first that sounds like a contradiction, but these two aren't actually opposites – the former is a rejection of love, while the latter is a refocus of love. Both are about moving away from "love" as a purely romantic concept, just in slightly different directions – directions that you can combine.

When you refocus a concept, you are in a sense rejecting it in its standard form, are you not? You're changing the concept from what it is most known as, tearing off its assumptions and shining it up as something new. In the refocus of love there is a rejection of love's expected form (romance). Moreover, it seems to me that there are two forms of love – love as an emotion, and love as a descriptor. When someone says they love their favorite food, are they seriously saying they feel a deep, personal bond and affection to that food? No, they're just using love to describe/conceptualize how much they like it. Therefore, one may reject love as an emotion while also using it as a shorthand descriptor for everyday life, refocusing the concept of love away from romance and towards whatever else they feel like. Rejection and refocus – loveless and lovequeer.

Or, if you'd prefer I wax my thoughts in a more poetic form:

Loveless as in I do not feel that way towards you. Lovequeer as in I love what you do and say anyway. Loveless as in my throat closes up when I'm expected to say "I love you too," but lovequeer as in I love showing you my affection in actions instead of in words. Loveless as in I don't feel anything. Lovequeer as in I still want to make sure you know how I feel. Loveless as in love is too broad. Lovequeer as in love is broad, so I'm going to use it as such. Loveless as in "Use your words instead of a cliche phrase to tell me how you feel; love won't cut it." Lovequeer as in "The best way I can describe this is love, even though we both know it's not that." Loveless as in I don't need to love to be a good person. Lovequeer as in love can be anything you want it to be. Loveless as in love can hurt and I want to make people see that. Lovequeer as in love can be mundane and I'm tired of its pedestal. Loveless as in love is just a social construct, it shouldn't matter to you if I don't feel it. Lovequeer as in love is just a social construct, it shouldn't matter to you if I use it flippantly.

Loveless as in "love may not apply to me, and that's okay." Lovequeer as in "love may not be the most important thing in my life, and that's okay."

Both loveless and lovequeer as in I'm aromantic and I can decide for myself how I feel about something as intertwined with romance as love. Fuck amatonormativity.