11 Comments
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Raven Mitchell's avatar

Love love love! Great article your experience as an aro/ace is eye opening can’t wait to read more!

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Kirsty Anne's avatar

🩷🩷🩷

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One Brilliant Arc (OBA)'s avatar

Thank you for sharing your authentic self and unfiltered experiences. It is an honor to get to know you as the unique human you are, and also to connect over good books! You highlighted something so true: stories really are necessary in our society in order to teach us empathy and understanding—both for ourselves and for others who are vastly different from us.

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Sharanya Sharma's avatar

I LOVE this, thank you for sharing!! As a fellow enemies-to-lovers stan your ruminations on why you love the trope — that it’s a counterpoint to what is considered “normal” — really resonates with me.

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Divs.BookCrumbs's avatar

Yesss! It’s such an elite trope!! I love it so much

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Ash Story's avatar

I love love love this, holy moly, reading this resonates a lot. Also, adding these books to my list immediately.

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Divs.BookCrumbs's avatar

Thank you so much for reading and sharing your experience with me!! I hope you get to enjoy those books as much as I did!

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Stephanie Demler's avatar

Im always looking to delve more deeply into my psyche and my sexuality over the past few years has particularly been a focus. I was also quite a late bloomer and have been considered “picky.” Not being conventionally attractive, I never really saw it as anything other than a lack of options.

Not having an actual relationship until well into my 30s, I started to worry a little. Because I am quite a romantic person. Or at least I’ve always thought of myself as one. I just tended to prefer fictional or totally unavailable to myself choices for my romantic attention.

It wasn’t until after a friend of mine came out as asexual, and looking into it I wondered if there was something similar for romantic feelings. I fall closer to lithromantic than anything else on the scale. Especially after now having had some experience in a relationship. Almost immediately I lost interest.

I like to keep my romantic interests in fiction. So many more options and the HEA/HFNs are much more satisfying than experiences in reality.

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Thea's avatar

Thank you for sharing!

I'm also an aro/ace person who loves reading romance novels. Fake dating is one of my fave genres as well

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angel's avatar

Thank you so much for writing this!! I also, as an aro-ace person myself, love some good old romance and smut. It’s so nice to know I am not the only person feeling this way, and I will definitely add those book recs to my tbr!

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Briette Platt's avatar

Not gonna lie, reading this made me very emotional. As someone who sees themself as a romantic aromantic, this made me feel very seen in a way I often don’t get to experience. Thank you for sharing, and I’m looking forward to checking out Just for the Summer!

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