So, I recently discovered I 100% am on the aroace spectrum. I've always been more open to romance, open to trying sexual things, and the like. However, I've had many people not believe I'm aromantic. They'll either tell me I'm just neurodivergent, or one day I'll meet the right person.
My family expects me to be with a guy due to me being a closeted transmasc person who they see as a girl. The guy they want me to be with, ideally, is conservative, too. I can form alterous attraction to any gender, even though it's usually women I find more appealing, so if I had to pick a guy, he wouldn't be homophobic or bigoted, he wouldn't be a predator, and he wouldn't be a mean/bad guy.
Anyway, I don't know why, but I'm kinda expected to just "meet the right one", even though I know they're old-fashioned.
Why is it so hard to believe that some people just can't feel standard attraction? The attraction I do feel is 100% towards fictional characters without a doubt because I'm something called fictoromantic.
1 Comments
WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 10d
This is the part that would concern me as a parent. In my totally uneducated opinion, only being attracted towards fictional characters suggests a certain inability to connect with real people, and by extension, an inability to accept normal human flaws. I imagine that trait can easily lead to a pretty isolated life of only surface level relationships.
I’d be curious to hear an opinion on fictoromanticism from a psychologist. It sounds like you do have romantic feelings, but some protection mechanism has focused them on fictional characters since they are inherently safer and more controllable than a real human being. That’s just my armchair psychologist speculation before my morning coffee though, so apologies if I’m coming off as offensive.
At the end of the day, you do you and I hope you find happiness.