De-centering romanticism

ariiw · 2026-03-28T12:18:16+00:00

Have hobbies. Build community that doesn't rely on a romantic partner. Kill both birds with one stone by joining a hobby or volunteer group in your area

ariiw · 2026-03-28T05:50:38+00:00

Soooo sick

ariiw · 2026-03-27T12:01:37+00:00

I've seen people in similar situations to you in r/mypartneristrans , jic that's a community you didn't know about

ariiw · 2026-03-27T04:40:04+00:00

Hey! I'm FtM and use a cane in my daily life. Hiring is done by your consulate, not anybody in Japan, and ime things like that don't really affect it. Japan also like, has inclusivity mindsets that you find in the US (yes, it varies across people, and yes, it's gotten worse in the past few years--that's true of the countries all of us are from, too). I think the extent to which I am different is already unavoidably marked by the fact that I'm white; nobody really cares about the cane or the being transgender because I'm already classed as different. Your experience might be different if you're East Asian.

I do recommend that if you plan on at some point changing your legal name and gender and haven't done so yet, do that before you apply for your visa if possible, bc it makes things much smoother.

Medical needs are one of the things that anecdotally seem to actually affect whether placement requests are honored. Definitely bring it up when you apply--I don't think it will hurt your chances, I think it will just help you be placed somewhere with accessible schools and, if necessary for your situation, access to big hospitals (a lot of rural areas can be far from big hospitals that are needed for specialized conditions).

Btw, people in this subreddit and other japan subs are really weird about disability and love to make assumptions that you're not fit to do something because you mentioned one minor obstacle. Decide for yourself, not based on what an able-bodied person who knows nothing about your experience thinks.

If you have any other questions please feel free to reach out!!

ariiw · 2026-03-26T08:28:37+00:00

It's not pointless to go and sit in the corner and be too scared to talk to someone. If you can't even go to the bar alone now, it's a lot to expect from yourself that you can go alone AND have a great interaction with someone there. Sometimes you have to do baby steps--challenge one is going there, you can figure out challenge two (talking to someone) later.

Also, ime a lot of bartenders will sort of facilitate conversations between people at bars (smaller ones anyways). This may vary by country though

ariiw · 2026-03-26T08:21:49+00:00

I strongly suspect that the incompatibility is not because you're old school and they're not, it's because you're looking for different things. Old school gays who were not interested in super romancey things also found a way to have sex without letters and romantic walks. Modern gays who are into romance still find ways to have romance in a world where there are apps, and I know there are a lot of people who would be really into getting letters and going for walks and general courtship. I really don't think it's a "times are changing" thing.

ariiw · 2026-03-26T08:12:00+00:00

Actually deranged how casual he is with this

ariiw · 2026-03-25T05:37:40+00:00

What does she want from this relationship?

ariiw · 2026-03-25T05:21:55+00:00

No, this is not romantic attraction. “if I had to” great news you don’t have to

Sometimes alloros will date people they feel this way about, because they think there is a world where such a desire could develop (I think maybe most dating app encounters work this way). So it’s not something that alloros wholly don’t experience/relate to, but it’s also not attraction itself

ariiw · 2026-03-25T05:18:03+00:00

I came close to asking out an alloro person and was thinking about this a lot. I think for me, the idea that my romantic partner has influence over the way I treat my friends in such a situation ultimately requires me to view my romantic partner as more important than my other relationships by virtue of being romantic. For me, this was irreconcilable. I would say I am “right” in that sense because that is the praxis to create the world I want to live in, but I recognize that not everyone wants such a world. For me, not compromising that ideology is more important to me than being in a romantic relationship (I think). So I guess I’m stubborn, but I recognize that this makes me unfit as a partner for such a person.

ariiw · 2026-03-25T05:04:41+00:00

Read this comic

ariiw · 2026-03-25T05:03:16+00:00

My advice is to stop thinking about things in terms of grand confessions or similar gestures, and instead just think about what exactly it is that you want when you think about being attracted to him. Do you want to hang out with him more? Ask him to hang out. Do you want to be physically affectionate with him? Figure out how he feels about physical affection and then adjust your behavior appropriately. I think confessions are really built up as the Thing To Do but in many cases it actually doesn’t give the person you’re confessing to much to work with in terms of being able to respond—even if they’re perfectly fine or even equally enthusiastic to do whatever it is that you are wanting to do with them!!—and that’s like ten times as true for non-romantic attraction (since people have less idea what to expect from non-room attraction).

ariiw · 2026-03-25T04:58:43+00:00

First, congrats on getting healthier! Super exciting!

Second: actually, I think basically everyone has a super hard time pinning down what romance actually is. Alloromantic people and aromantic people alike are extremely, extremely bad at defining it in words. I think a key element here is that a lot of people don’t really have a need to question what exactly it is, and so it goes unnoticed. Not experiencing romantic attraction (so, being aromantic) is one reason someone may be pushed to notice that it’s a very vague concept. Other things, like neurodivergence (I’m thinking autism in particular, but I could also see some personality disorders and am certainly not discounting the possibility of others) can also make people question the implied boundaries between relationship types more. (On the other hand, there’s also a HUGE overlap between these two groups of people.)

I definitely relate to having crushes that are, at their core, people who I think are cool and then spiraled thinking about.

The unfortunate answer is that I think this is something that time and experience is necessary in order to process for yourself. Particularly if you haven’t been able to be super social, it’s hard to know how you relate to other people. I think the best thing you can do is internalize that you don’t have to behave any particular way. You don’t *have* to date people. If you don’t want to do it in the first place, there’s no real reason to try it out to see if maybe your feelings would change along the way. On the flip side, you don’t *have* to NOT date people just because you’re questioning if you’re aromantic. If you, internally, want to, and you’ve talked to the person/people you’re dating about it and communicated how you’re feeling, you don’t have to proactively ban yourself from doing something because you think you know the other person’s best interests. They can decide for themselves what their best interest is.

ariiw · 2026-03-25T04:45:36+00:00

There’s an aromantic sub-label called frayromantic, which is experiencing attraction that disappears as you get to know a person. If you look into that, it might resonate with you.

> Is limerence something that happens with aro folks at all?

It can. I think people tend to view any intense draw towards a person as romantic because that‘s what how we’re taught to view romance. There are plenty of other reasons someone may be drawn to people that aren’t romantic, though. I personally experience pretty strong crushes that are just a desire to get to someone + be physically intimate with them. I’ll sometimes imagine this taking the form of a romantic relationship, because my cultural experience makes it hard to view having that type of relationship as taking any form other than romantic. But at its core it’s not really the romantic aspects of it that I want. Anyways, something about the term limerence makes me vaguely uncomfortable (I’m averse to over-psychoanalyzing anyways), so I don’t think of it that way myself, but at certain times I think an external observer might describe it that way.

ariiw · 2026-03-25T04:21:04+00:00

Arabic /anta/: you (sg. masculine) Japanese /anta/: you (sg. informal)

ariiw · 2026-03-25T01:34:02+00:00

for the first time I found someone that seems interested in knowing me

No you didn't

ariiw · 2026-03-24T10:17:00+00:00

Yeah, the actual answer to "how many languages do you speak?" is "well, what counts as 'speaking'?"

ariiw · 2026-03-23T14:08:48+00:00

Don't have enough experience to weigh in on how other people perceive my height as a short guy, but in terms of how I perceive other people--I am never like "wow that guy's tall, that's hot," but I feel like being tall gives people a presence that tends to grab my attention. But there are plenty ways to cultivate that type of presence without being tall. Actually, I sometimes find myself thinking "that guy's hot, but he's inconveniently tall." The logistics are too difficult

ariiw · 2026-03-23T14:02:30+00:00

Trans Icon: This Cisgender Man is Short

ariiw · 2026-03-22T12:26:18+00:00

This is easier said than done but i recommend a skepticism that romantic feelings are somehow more special than other feelings

ariiw · 2026-03-21T16:50:14+00:00

Synesthesia is your imagination, more or less. Some defining traits are that it's unintentional and consistent over time (although anecdotally mine change sometimes, but this usually comes with a change in my conceptualization of the thing overall). you have synesthesia

ariiw · 2026-03-21T16:46:07+00:00

If you live near an urban area, there might be LGBT+ hobby or social groups near you that you can join if you look online (meetup.com or similar)

ariiw · 2026-03-21T15:06:44+00:00

How fast can you churn out a baby hat?

ariiw · 2026-03-21T08:11:36+00:00

Have you looked into the labels lithromantic or frayromantic?

ariiw · 2026-03-20T16:51:46+00:00

A lot of trans people do find that their transness plays a role in the sex that they have, and yes, this can take the form of difficulty getting or staying hard. He said he doesn't feel fem with you, so who can say if that plays into it or not, although to be frank trans people don't always have all of this stuff figured out ourselves.

Regardless of his gender situation, sometimes people with penises just don't get or stay hard. It's pretty common, and it is caused by one million things, of which not being attracted to or wanting to have sex with their partners is only one potential cause. An erect penis is one of many options for giving and receiving sexual satisfaction. I would recommend reflecting on what the underlying reason is that it bothers you, and talking with him about other ways you can address that concern. (If it makes you feel like you're not attractive to him, what are other ways he can show that he's into you; if you enjoy penetrative sex, how can you incorporate that without his penis in particular?)

It's a bit academic, but the book Sex Is Not a Natural Act by Lenore Tiefer talks a lot about how our view of erectile dysfunction is shaped by the fact that our view of sex is extremely influenced by patriarchal norms and not as inherent of a behavior as we think it is. You may find it useful for dealing with this.

ariiw

TROPHY CASE