Scarleteen

I'm aroace and I don't want to date or have sex with anyone, but I keep thinking about romance and sex and I don't know how to stop caring about it. I know I can't really ask my friends to stop talking about their relationships and I don't mind that as much but I just wish that when I'm alone I could stop thinking about it. Now that I've realised I'm aroace I just want to move on with my life, but when I meet new people I keep thinking, what if this is the person that will be the exception and will make me want to start dating, and then they never are. It feels really difficult to let go of wanting romance when most people are so obsessed with it, but it just feels like my brain is still trying to make me want to date even though I know I don't want to. I feel like I'm enforcing social pressures to date on myself but I just don't know how to turn that part of my brain off and embrace a life without romance. How do I let go?

Hey and also; welcome to the message boards!

I think sometimes it's jarring to know that the way we want to relate to people doesn't match up with some of the societal norms which surround those interactions, and there isn't always an easy fix to living in a society with all its trappings (not without extensive astronaut training, and even then, maybe still not!) - I think what's useful is to learn how to recognise the different wants and thoughts you have, less with the aim of eradicating them but more with a view to learning what they mean to you, not what they maybe mean to 'society' which is itself pretty diverse.

That's easier said than done but maybe we can start with thinking about stuff pretty broadly:

Do you think you could say more about what you mean by dating and by romance?

Those words tend to mean a lot of things to lots of people and it could be that you have no interest in all those versions but it would be super useful to be clear about what you interpret those concepts to mean first and then it can be easier to start understanding how they relate to your experience, including your 'aroace-ness'.

Maybe we can start from there and then look at the thoughts that have been troubling you, how does that sound?