Life before Aromanticism or How I ended up with a 3 year crush on John Malkovich

[mesotablar]

Picture post this time because I am lazy.

I am aromantic. I don't get crushes. I don't even get squishes. It was always so hard to keep remembering who I was supposed to like. I used to pick singers but then I would only be able to remember the band names. Then one day I was caught out and my mouth moved faster than my brain and out popped John Malkovich. Who is an awesome actor. But it creeped my friends out a bit. They stopped asking me 'who I liked' for a while after that. So all in all, John Malkovich was the best and most useful (not) crush I ever had.

Comments

[pokemonnovice]

My friends and family are always asking me who I have a crush on - I need to do something like this!! xD

You know what's funny, though - I get friend crushes a lot. There are people I just want to hang out with so bad and my friends often time mistake that for romantic crushes (which, ew, no).

[mesotablar]

I've moved onto the "I'm not interested" answer, but if you do make an epic weird crush declaration I would love to know who your mouth blurts out!

My friends went through a period of wanting to couple me up. They got desperate, to the point of teasing me that I like waiters or cashiers or lost people just because I was nice and smiled at them. If I'd had squishes I'm sure they would have thrown me into surprise blind dates! ....even without squishes they did that actually.
I hope you have better luck controlling your friend's misconceptions!
John Malkovich is always a good answer :D

[gloriousmonsters]

man, this is giving me flashbacks to my brief 'pretend to have crushes' period. (Mainly so brief because I didn't interact with other kids for most of my childhood.) I always went for either someone I guessed was supposed to be cute by other people's standards but was totally unattainable, or would say I was 'in love' with some fictional character instead (usually male villains that I would figure out years later I was having 'i want to BE you' feelings about. Hooray for aro+trans confusion. :P)

[mesotablar]

You conflated being and loving a fictional male villain and that was aro+trans confusion.
So does that mean that the villainous-ness was always a certainty? :P

[gloriousmonsters]

well considering male villains always got the queer coding AND were the only mentally ill male characters I ever saw... and sometimes had bonus aro coding with sneering at love or just being generally 'cold-hearted'... yeah, villains were always the most relatable option. :P

[mesotablar]

oooh, a considered answer! My own interest in villains is generally that they are the best dressed and have the most fun (and get the best one-liners) :P

But what you say is so true, I have noticed it more and more since interacting in the aro community. Marginalised groups seem to have their representation identifiers demonised into villainistic characters. A small group of people with mainstream ideals (trying to keep the status quo or deeply blinded by their own prejudice) creating a dirty whirlpool of bad representation and erasure.

Sorry for making up so many 'villain' words, I thought they were needed!