The human behind this blog (what you’re telling me this isn’t just chatgpt nonsense??…) for most of his life hasn’t really thought about many aspects of his emotions/feelings deeply in some sense. Only in recent adult years has more introspection occurred in order to mature those aspects as well… I’m making progress to understand many things, and I definitely am getting smarter about what kind of bullshit to post on the internet (i know you don’t believe me).

For now, I will use the label aromantic heterosexual to describe myself personally. The culmination of talking to an aroace friend, reading posts on r/aromantic, and watching a short tv series about this aroace pair in Koisenu Futari, the best way I describe how I feel is relieved. I do feel less lonely to understand that a big majority of one’s sum of waking hours doesn’t need to be about finding love or dating to find love or whatever. Sometimes, I can understand some people’s anger at the forceful depictions of people in some fiction media having this romantic aspect to their relationship. Sometimes it is unnecessary and over the top, sometimes it’s nice to see them happy in a different way than “just friends”. And sometimes, it’s a kind of painful reminder of how you’re different once again, and it’s just painful I guess. Heteronormativity pushes some messages that can definitely be painful to queer people, and to some extent I understand now.

I will not get into the messy details of how I got here, but I’ll make some notes on what I think, as a young person caring somewhat about my future, is a reasonable desire in the “significant partner” or “partner in the crime of life” kind of deal. Love always felt to me, and I understand it is by definition, an irrational obsession to someone or something. And I think it’s ok to have those things, if it makes you happy and it doesn’t harm anyone in the process. Although, I’m sure we all know of people who do many things for love. People really do fall under a spell. It is really strange to me to see why you would allow yourself to fall apart over someone else. I understand feeling sad or maybe depressed, but the extent some people go to just doesn’t make any sense to me. I guess I just don’t care as much or am slightly “colder”. However, I do greatly enjoy people’s company and developing deep relationships with people who I actually like. I love touch, engaging in the sensual feelings — outside of and within sexual contexts. Of course, I have only gathered partial experimental evidence to back up my claims, I need more 🥴.

Like in Koisenu Futari, I understand what they mean about the loneliness, the fear of it, in a world where it’s typical that “really close people living together” equates to them having romantic feelings for each other. Nevermind conducting sexual activities with one another. One could just say they were “good friends” but a lot of people would say bullshit, that can’t be, they must feel something special for each other for them to be like that. And maybe they are right, but I’ll argue that there is the possibility that it can be a platonic love and doesn’t always have to be romantic.

I don’t want to be alone. I want to have a ‘family’. I also want to have sex. And I want to have children some day and to be able to raise them with a partner who shares the same values and objectives in regards to our partnership and our childrens’ future. I want to be able to create a life for myself in which I can have these things in my personal life without hindering someone else’s happiness.

Edit 1 [12/27/2023]:

When dealing with people in real life, I realize that it is somewhat inevitable to be forced to lie about dating. I find that I can just pretend to know exactly what I want and I will feel that way. People have found this out for themselves by playing with the narratives in their head — you can often change your own experience of reality by changing the narratives that play on in your own head. If I submit myself to my own constructived narratives that will allow me to be fit into a society by pretending to be like the majority groups, maybe I will achieve happiness in my own way while hiding parts of myself in an iron box somewhere else. Or maybe this is just a recipe for a sad life. Have I already cast a self-illusion for myself to cope and am living inside the cope already? How many layers deep does this go, just for some version of myself to protect another version of myself?

I think one thing I should emphasize, about this kind of desire, is that I really think it is uncertain whether I want this for myself, or I want this because I feel pressured by society to want this outcome. This becomes philosophical in that it is a useless tangent on what comes first, the desire bubbling out of carnal animal drive or from society’s constructions that are helpful in continuing the human civilization — they obviously feed into one another.

I feel like I can be happy with friends, a job, and hobbies for the rest of my life — but the idea of starting a family with a partner who shares a lot of the same interests and values I think sounds fun. I know there will be hard times, but I really hope the outcome will have a net positive impact on both of us if we play our hands right. I think for the right person, I wouldn’t care about having sex honestly. I’ve managed so far through solo relief measures and it’s manageable. The idea of an intimate partnership sounds great, someone to share with things that you can’t share with anyone else, someone you would love to take care of because you care about them, and you’d feel comfort in knowing that they would do the same for you. However, one must still be honest with themselves in what they like — each person to some extent needs to check some mental boxes, cross some thresholds in general character traits, etc. You don’t have to be so unreasonable, unless you want to make things harder for yourself.

One thing that I can submit myself for sure to is that my youth means I still lack much life experience information to allow myself to comfortably come to conclusions. There are so many things yet to try, I feel like this exercise in writing is almost a “pointless” waste of time. Similar, in my opinion, to reading a book on how to ride a bike with the sole objective to just ride the bike to go from point A to point B instead of just iterating on trial and error on riding the bike yourself and letting your brain do the magic in a feedback loop of physical information.