I’m quite young, but personally—I spent most of my childhood thinking a crush was just “friendship I’m embarrassed to want to continue,” so I avoided befriending girls I had “crushes” on just because I thought me doing so would be creepy or clingy. Later on, in high school, I didn’t like that I hardly had friends who weren’t guys, so I was happy to befriend someone who wasn’t, who I’ll call Z, even though being around them made me generally anxious.
When I found out about myself being aro (and ace), it lead to me gaining a furthered interest in LGBTQ politics and being less ashamed in trying to advocate for myself in platonic relationships.
Z also figured out that they were aroace, and we quickly and mostly-accidentally entered an intimate platonic relationship. Which… was a big mistake! I was under the impression that our aroace compatibility made us immune to having a bad relationship, but I ended up really liking their touch and acceptance, and not really liking being around them otherwise. Z wasn’t a bad person, so I didn’t really have a reason to be anxious around them, so I thought it might just go away if I tried hard enough. It didn’t. Just a pretty big personality conflict. Cue several months of feeling bad whenever we did anything non-cuddling, and feeling guilty that I felt bad during those times—which ended up being a lot, because Z stopped enjoying cuddling. I’m grateful to them, though, for being willing to talk to me about it, even if it took us a while to figure out what was wrong.
Since then, I’ve found other cuddle buddies that I feel much more secure around. And it’s still weird and surreal to see people in my friend groups having romantic desires, and dating people. Every time it happens I want to quiz them and be like “are you sure you’re not secretly aromantic and you just haven’t realized??” :P
It’s also probably why I like Lemon Demon and Tally Hall and Will Wood instead of, like, normal music that normal people listen to.
Not OP and probably not aromantic. (Questioning’s a bitch sometimes.) My best guess is that a huge amount of “normal” music is about romantic love, which OP cannot relate to. So they do not enjoy “normal” music as much and seek out music that doesn’t talk about romantic love, which is often less mainstream and “weird” music. Especially if you want an artist who never talks about romantic love instead of just being okay with picking out all the “I love to party” songs from the mainstream and skipping on the “listen to my romantic experience” songs.
I will note that as an asexual I’m fine listening to songs about sex even though I don’t relate, because to be honest, I focus way more on the notes than what the people are saying. I want something fun to listen to, I don’t care a bit about being able to relate to it. Oddly enough I still prefer to be able to understand the lyrics even if they’re not too important to me. But for some, relating to what they hear is important. And avoiding topics that repulse them would be important even if relating to the song usually isn’t important for them (see: peoples’ reactions to Blurred Lines). Sex repulsion exists, so I imagine some people might be romance-repulsed.
Yeah, pretty much. I’m not repulsed by romance/sex but I enjoy songs more when they’re about other things. Lemon Demon sings songs about stuff like [having a toy train set] or [being a haunted, half-human arcade machine] or [being Ronald Reagan in a romantic relationship], Tally Hall sings about various subjects in weird ways (see The Bidding or Turn The Lights Off), and Will Wood sings about mental health and how things interact with that (see Love, Me Normally or Dr. Sunshine Is Dead)