#but i don't know if that's because i'm demisexual or i simply imagine romantic feelings for friends because i enjoy intimacy

[thelostgirl21]

My small issue with the current Alterous Attraction Flag design...

So, I wanted to make myself a personal pride flag design - combining all of my own personal pride flags and orientations into one - and suddenly found myself hitting a bit of a wall when it came to the alterous attraction one.

Because, what's absolutely amazing about the romantic v.s. sexual orientation "binary" is that, when it comes to their flags, both flags are the same, except one has a heart on it.

Left: Pansexual. Right: Panromantic.

Therefore, you can combine both orientations into a single flag, by having the heart show your romantic orientation, and the "wallpaper" in the background showing your sexual orientation.

Ex: Bisexual Panromantic.

Or, when they are the same, doing "half and half, or adding the little Pansexual heart somewhere...

So, it works great!

But there's no such symbol attached to alterous orientation!

And there's no guaranty that the person's alterous orientation is going to be the same as their romantic and/or sexual one, either!

And, as a demisexual, it is SPECIFICALLY alterous attraction that triggers my sexual desires for someone, not romance!

What typically happens, is that I'll develop alterous feelings for one of my friends, become deeply committed to that "friendship" and very much "in love" (with absolutely no romance nor desire for us to ever become an actual "couple", live together, etc.) with them.

And, because I feel so emotionally close and like I could trust them with anything, should they also be aesthetically attractive also, I'll (very instinctively, very strongly) desire to have sex with them.

It's that sense of emotional intimacy that runs soul deep, and where I could no longer imagine my life without them, that makes me want to sexually connect as well.

That being said, I can also desire certain people romantically and have powerful crushes.

It's just that I never sexually desire my crushes until we reach a level of emotional intimacy that can match my alterous friendships.

And, when I find myself desiring a romantic partner both romantically and sexually - should they also be are monoamorous - then I'll stop experiencing any sexual desires for my alterous friends. We usually remain physically intimate/at ease with each other (heartfelt hugs, hand holding, etc.), but those intense friendships lose their sexual appeal.

So basically, I was trying to combine my:

Panromantic

Panalterous

Pansexual

Demisexual

Ambiamorous

identities all into one flag...

And was getting heavily frustrated by the fact that, thus far, people were simply making different color schemes for each alterous orientations!

For example, here are two of the suggested bialterous and panalterous flags I found...

Beautiful flags! The person that designed them did a very nice job with the colors!

That's not the problem.

It's just that there's nothing on them that screams that we're talking about a form of emotional attraction that is different, yet just as important and significant as romance.

Romantic attraction has its very own love symbol. It makes no sense that alterous attraction shouldn't be a symbol driven orientation as well!

I'm also having a bit of a hard time connecting those designs with their romantic and sexual equivalents, and recognizing the "bi" or "pan" elements in both. And I don't know where to place them on my own flag design, either, so that people understand that I'm talking about a form of emotional attraction...

What I needed, was a symbol, similar to the heart of the romantic flag, but specific to alterous forms of love...

After obsessing a bit too much over this, I eventually came up with my own personal versions:

Alterous Flag

Meaning

Possibility of replacing the white areas with other personal flags.

Example of a Panalterous Flag.

Example of a Homoalterous Aromantic Demisexual Man

Example of a Panalterous Panromantic Flag

Example of a Bialterous Greyromantic Queerplatonic Asexual Flag

My personal Pride Flags (Panromantic, Panalterous, Ambiamorous, Demisexual, Pansexual).

When combined into a single flag design.

So yeah, I did like the color scheme of the originally designed Alterous Flag, it's just the lack of potentially recognizable symbol for alterous attraction that bothered me.

And I thought that putting 3 hearts like that would have people ask "Wait. Why 3 hearts?", and give us the opportunity to explain that the one in red (or with the red border) means romantic attraction, the one in yellow (or with the yellow border) means platonic attraction.

The flag inside the yellow (if there is one) is about Queerplatonic relationships that are unconventional friendships where the two friends might share the same level of intimacy as romantic partners, but without the romance and/or sex.

So the yellow includes all types of friendships, from the less emotionally intimate to the most emotionally intimate ones.

And the one in the middle, with the pink border reminding us about how those relationships all share affection, is about alterous attraction, a form of love that feels neither romantic nor platonic, but somewhere in the middle and/our outside of it. It can be accompanied by the eventual desire to form a queerplatonic relationship (or not), a need for different forms of emotional and physical intimacy, including sexual in some cases, etc.

The "romantic" crowd sort of "stole everyone's heart" with the romantic flags.

Now, the people on the aromantic spectrum are left without anything to symbolize their own "love".

We need to put the love into the aromantic flag to remind people that love and romance aren't synonyms.

When you remove romance, all that's left isn't "casual sex" or "casual friendships".

I kinda want to see a visual counterpart to romance on flags out there!

Even if that's not my own design!

The reason why I put the "Alterous" heart bigger is not because I believe that "Alterous orientation" is more important than "Romantic orientation" nor "Queerplatonic orientation and relationships".

It's simply because the focus of the Alterous flag should be Alterous love.

It is connected to romantic relationships and queerplatonic ones, but romantic orientations already have their own well-known flags and tons of visibility.

As for the Queerplatonic flag(s), well, let's say that those are relationships we need to talk about about, and having them there on the flag opens the doors for curiosity and conversations, and lets people know that some friendships run as deep and are as powerful as romance.

So I've kept both the same size (romantic orientation + queerplatonic relationships).

And they're not spaces that HAVE to be filled. It's more an added option for convenience's sake to be able to describe what's included in the "red heart" (romantic attraction) and in the "yellow heart" (friendships, if left yellow, or queerplatonic relationships, if a flag is added).

It's a design that I personally could play and have a bit of fun with...

So, if some of you guys enjoy the idea, and want to start using them to express yourselves, until the day we eventually have a more official agreed upon flag, here are the .png files , enjoy!

If you have other ideas that could improve on those designs, too, I'd be very glad to hear them!

(If you want me help you make them, I might be open to do it if I have the time...)

#Alterous #Alterous attraction #Aromantic #Aromantism #Pride Flags #Queerplatonic #Queerplatonic relationships #Flag design #My posts #My stuff #My thoughts #Personal #LGBTQ+ #Alterous orientation #Long posts #Sorry about that... #Didn't really want to put the images under a cut... #I promise not to make a habit of it!

[team7-headquarter]

I'm so fond of writing Sasuke as asexual and aromantic at some degree.

I know it's partially because I'm demisexual and demiromantic myself, as I know I love so much to fit Sasuke in such labels for selfish reasons (giving a character I like some of my personal traits). Yet, I imagine Sasuke simply not getting why everyone is ao obsessed with romantic love and sexual stuff while he just don't suffer with it.

At least not at the beginning.

Whoever you like to think as his pairing, it sounds like him to fall in love only after a while— after he has formed a deeper connection with the person. It's not that he's being selective, it's that he does not feel attraction at all until the connection is there. It's that (for whatever reason) there is no chance of falling in love at first sight, and wanting to engage in romantic or sexual activities with a stranger, there's no appeal in that for him.

Or maybe he gets those impulses, but only on occasions, or maybe he doesn't feel romantic or sexual attraction at all. I love the implications it might bring. What if he shared a queerplatonic relationship with Naruto? Or Sakura? Or Team Taka? What if he struggled finding a wors to describe what Naruto is to him, because he didn't know what queerplatonic is? A relationship that can be not romantic in nature, but it's equally demanding and follows many rules of a romantic relationship, to the point it looks romantic from the outside, but Sasuke knows it's not, not really.

It's something I like to daydream about, how it would go done, how would it look like, how the narrative would fit around it, etc.

#sasuke uchiha #naruto #naruto shippuden

[cloudie-skay]

This would have been a post befitting of Pride month but I say I can post about sexuality and gender any damn time I want. I also just want this written down somewhere

Identity is one shitty puzzle and I lost the box for it ages ago

It was easy to accept that I was nonbinary. It's one of the first things I discovered about myself when the idea of different genders and sexualities was just getting introduced to me. There were signs that even a younger me recognised. I have journal entries dating to 2016 where I referred to my as a gender-neutral person back when I thought I was inventing the term. I told my best friend I was genderfluid but then whenever they asked what pronouns I felt like that day it was always they/them. There had always been some sort of disconnect when people called me a girl that I couldn't quite pinpoint. So when I stared at the definition of nonbinary for maybe a bit too long, it all kinda clicked in place.

It was easy to accept that I was asexual. Getting rid of all the imbalanced hormones and religious trauma, there was no desire left. There was a morbid curiosity for something I was barred from really knowing about but then that was it? Catholic school really scared us into thinking we'd become deranged sex addicts if we looked at porn at all. Then came how others described how they perceived attractive people. Sometimes it came with an underlying motivation that I didn't really understand. I really went through life thinking sexual attraction was some sort of inside joke I just didn't quite get yet because I haven't had sex. Though it didn't initially occur to me that it was because I simply didn't have any sexual attraction, I figure it out eventually. At this point, I wouldn't bat an eye if it turns out I'm demisexual instead though.

Despite all these lables seeming slotting into my identity pretty neatly, it was not and still isn't easy to come to terms that I might be aromantic. To me it simultaneously doesn't make any sense and makes too much sense.

I'm a hopeless romantic, I say with emphasis on hopeless every single time. I've had crushes, I've dated people, and I have a desire for romance! Surely that means something?

But I fantasise over the most mundane things, I read fairy tales of princesses and their knights, I watched movies of people falling in love. Maybe the romance I want isn't something I could even get.

I want to love and be loved in that way. I want the intimacy and emotions you get from romantic love. I've always wanted that kind of love where you are each other's world, where you put each other over most else. I still want to be held desperately close by the person who knows me like the back of their hand, as I do them

But whenever I think of these scenarios and images, I can never really put someone there with me. There's never a solid image of someone in my life that I could fully imagine doing those act with.

The pessimistic side of me thinks I'll feel like this forever, that I'm just not built for that kind of love no matter how hard I try. And that I shouldn't pull someone through my fantasies without loving them the same way.

The desperate optimistic side of me thinks that maybe I just need to find the right person. That when I finally do, I would pour all this bottled up love on them as soon as I can. Maybe even a little scared that I'd love too intensely.

As of now, I can't piece that part of my identity and even then, I don't even know if I'd like what piece ends up fitting in that empty space. I feel like that this point, I'm avoiding finishing the puzzle because halfway in, I realised I didn't like the picture I was about to complete.

I like the parts I did put together before, and I'll probably stare at the unfinished puzzle for a while before I dare put it together fully

#nonbinary #asexual #aromantic #aroace #arospec #pride #sexuality #gender

[probablynotnothing]

Sexuality and being alive

Sexuality is such a nice universal topic, warm and comforting. Part of why it's so universal is because people's models of sexuality can vary so much- not just who we are attracted to or physically touch, but the very model of what sexuality means to us and the function it serves. My own understanding of sexuality has changed greatly a few times in my life, and it's especially strange through hindsight to realize what it used to mean to me, without me being aware of it.

When I was a child, sexuality was arguably not a thing. Children aren't aware of the complexity of power dynamics, negotiating and transmuting emotions and life circumstances, and the need to be a stable self-possessed strategic ship navigating a higher quality of life and access to physical resources. I do remember seeing sexual imagery in movies and simply thinking it looked beautiful, like heaven in the midst of hell on earth, and just fun and intriguing. It was an emotional experience and there was little to none intellectual processing, except in terms of knowing the sexual morals I read and heard within a religious environment didn't make sense to me.

As I got older and became sexual with people, I began to see it as a way to communicate things I couldn't verbalize. I was awkward and an extremely cautious (often silent) communicator of my thoughts, feelings, goals and experiences. I still tend to be though am working on it. I used sex as a way to attempt to non verbally communicate that I saw someone positively, wanted them to see me positively, and to "seal" an unspoken contract of partnership, to build a life together. I had grown up sheltered and didn't realize that people can have such different associations with sexual behavior, and that these acts don't make a contract or build trust and knowledge of a person's values and behaviors. I also saw sexual behaviors as a way of making friends and spending time with people amidst depression and the confusion in life. I also saw sexual behaviors as a means of negotiating access to physical resources.

Through all this "survival", I didn't have an idea of my sexuality- only the idea of sexual behaviors. I am still learning what my individual sexuality means.

The past 4 years, I've been celibate and my view of my sexuality is based on safety, comfort, and a stable future. I have a lot of unanswered questions regarding what it means to me and what values and criteria can guide my sexual behaviors, but I know that it includes only being sexual with a person I know well and can have open communication with, someone I share similar values with an can build a life with, and I know I must communicate these things verbally to someone and must ask questions and learn about someone. I am demisexual because I know the consequences that can come from dishonesty and lack of shared emotional connection, and my logical reasoning of potential cause and effect doesn't allow me to be relaxed and experience attraction unless I feel the trust and long term romantic commitment. Life is hard and there will always be struggles, but people can have very different ideas of what's an acceptable struggle.

When I was younger I was attracted to women, but not the ones around me, due to the circumstances and my all encompassing anxiety. I read Annie On My Mind, watched films like Imagine Me & You (still one of my favorites!), and Incredible True Adventures of Two Girls in Love and it felt like home. However I also had panic attacks and due to my sheltered religious upbringing, interpreted these as punishments for entertaining attractions to women. I thought about dating women now and then but my life circumstances, anxiety and immense shyness meant I didn't pursue anything.

The past few years I've been able to become quite comfortable acknowledging I'm only sexually and romantic interested in a future partner who is a woman. I don't yet know about marriage since that seems more a tax and assets related structure than anything, that seems to be more fit for business relationships. I wonder if that's too much pressure on 2 people, to be business partners (seeing our two lives as a united business) as well as romantic and sexual. But maybe whatever improves my quality of life and orientation to the world is what I want, and if that means a dissolved marriage one day, well so be it? I always think of worst case scenario and make decisions based on that, to give me a wide margin of error, so that I'm always on the safe side of stability and predictability of having a self sufficient livelihood and not being homeless. Having being homeless many times as well as other experiences I wish never to repeat, my first priority is always going to be physical stability, health, and peace. The experience of living should not and need not be hell.

I've tried dating through apps a little bit but haven't found what I've been wanting. Since I value friendships first and letting a relationship evolve into romantic and sexual if it feels right and I know them, perhaps I should simply get involved in environments on or offline that I enjoy to meet like minded people.

Seeing sexuality now as a basic hub or common thread through which to examine all the cause and effects in my life and give myself the best chance possible to be stable and experience more peace in this crazy world, I've come to now examine my regrets. regrets as related to my sexuality has forced me to analyze the reasons for this sexual behaviors, the function they served, and what other options and expressions of sexuality I would have had if I had different options to access physical and emotional resources. I can only empathize with myself, and all others, that none of us asked to exist and that being alive is a very confusing and painful undertaking. There are so many

I think sexuality can be an interesting window to understand my overall perspective and values as a person. I'm opening into a new and unknown part of my life- just 1 year ago, or 5 years ago, I had no way of knowing what my life would be like now, and my future is equally mysterious. However I have decided, as I'm going on 30, that I can gift myself financial and relative emotional stability, and continue to be celibate until I find my future partner to be mutual rocks for, build a financially mobile life with, and enjoy the experience of being a living being with.

#sexuality

[misseffie]

I really don’t want to be aromantic/asexual if I’m being honest. But it seems likely. Considering how much I’ve had to force myself into romantic/sexual situations and then disliked the entire experience. But I’m a romantic at heart and really want to experience those sort of feelings for someone - including enjoying sexual intimacy. So is there like a support group for people who are on the ace spectrum but don’t want to be?

#asexuality #aromantic #certain people in my life say i just haven't 'met' the right person #but honestly.... if it's THIS difficult to for me to develop feelings for people then idk what to say #it's not like i'm a teenager anymore... i'm 27 #i've met a LOT of people... i've travelled a lot #i've dated... experimented #and you're saying i'm so special that none of them did it for me? #and i know i've talked before about my crush on a close friend #but i don't know if that's because i'm demisexual or i simply imagine romantic feelings for friends because i enjoy intimacy #i also call myself bisexual because i tend to notice men and women #but i think the attraction is pretty shallow on my end #maybe i'm just depressed #or have hormonal issues or something #welcome to another day of: rebecca questions her sexuality for the millionth time with no clear results #here i go again oversharing shit #personal

[demisexual-kingdom]

hi im a demisexual/demiromantic woman, and i have been wondering if i'm bi too. since i have been raised with heteronormativity and my lack of attraction i have always just assumed i was hetero, but after i have seen more representation on wIw i have been thinking. I wouldn't mind a woman instead of a man, though i'm a little unsure about how i would go about sex.. but i'm just not sure if its just that i feel more comfortable around women or that i could be bi. how did you guys find out?

For me, I knew I was attracted to women because I was able to comfortably imagine myself kissing women, being in a relationship with women, and just overall spending my life with a women. When I try picturing the same with a guy I feel very uncomfortable and wrong.

I understand being unsure on whether or not you're simply more comfortable around women then men, it's definitely something I struggled with at first. You mentioned you're demiromantic and demisexual, so this might be tougher to figure out! If you can, I think you should first consider how you're attracted to guys (if you are). If you can imagine yourself being kissing or being in a relationship with a guy, try applying that to women. Do you get the same feeling? When you look at women do you feel you're attracted to them in a way you'd want to be with them, or is it just that you appreciate how she looks?

I know this is a lot, so keep in mind you don't have to rush to figure this out! This may take some time to figure out, and you may not know until an emotional bond that's formed allows you to feel romantically or sexually attracted.

- Mod Hail

#answered #asks #mod hail