r/AroAllo

There's this guy who is a friend of a friend and he clearly has a romantic interest in me, I can see it and all our mutual friends can see it. They know I am Aromantic but aren't telling him to leave me alone.

I am the kinda person who feels deeply disgusted and uncomfortable at the thought of someone being romantic attracted to me, and a chronic people pleaser, so I just tend to pretend to notice someone flirting with me till they confess and I can just let them down easy. The thing is I am genuinely starting to hate this guy, he let's his preconceived notions about me dictate how I should be as a person. This one time I said that I'm really chalant about things and he literally asked me to say the most chalant thing I've done, he's made me prove my interests!

It also kinda feels like my friends find his interest in me amusing and sweet, but I hate it so much, when I said all the things I dislike about him one said he's just shy and really cares about me, and another said I should give him a chance. I don't like having to disclose my identity to everyone especially because of the country I live in, yes I know queer people but there have been times I've had to explain what being Aromantic is.

Me being Aromantic is something I'm still kinda sensitive about, especially talking about my negative feelings towards people's romantic attraction to me, with the way the world is it's something that they can't comprehend. What really hurts is that my friends are queer too, but it feels like they treat my Aromance as an option. I'm sorry if this is hard to understand I'm just feeling emotional overwhelmed right now.

I’ve been doing a deep audit of my entire relational history lately, and every single puzzle piece has finally snapped into place: I am, and have always been, an allosexual aromantic woman.
For the longest time, amatonormativity had me second-guessing my own memory. You wonder: “Did I just forget what falling in love felt like?” or “Am I emotionally repressed?” But looking back at every milestone from teenage crushes that were actually just intense platonic loyalty, to pure physical/sexual attraction that vanished the second the person left the room, the data is completely consistent. I have zero capacity for—and zero interest in—the romantic script.
Which brings me to my marriage.
My husband and I have been together for years. We built a life, had a child (who is now an adult), and have a rock-solid foundation. But I never fell in love with him.
When we got together, it wasn't fireworks, butterflies, or obsessive dopamine loops. It was simple, grounded logic:

1. The physical and sexual chemistry was there.
2. I genuinely liked his company and thought exclusivity sounded nice.
3. It felt like a reliable, sane partnership to build a life around.
   He leans more romantic than I do. Early on, he’d try traditional gestures that I completely short-circuited. Once, he brought home a huge bouquet with a single fake plastic rose tucked inside, accompanied by a note: “I’ll love you until the last flower dies.”
   Instead of melting, my brain calculated the vase-life of the cut stems and I dryly responded: “Well, only about three days of love left then.” (That plastic rose is still sitting on our TV console years later—less as a symbol of eternal romance, and more as a private comedy trophy for our communication gap.)
   Over the years, he’s simply learned that my loyalty, practical care, and sexual desire are fiercely real, but I will never speak the language of movie-style infatuation. We bypassed the fragile "honeymoon madness" and landed straight onto solid, adult commitment.
   Most aro spaces online skew heavily toward teenagers or assume that being aromantic means staying entirely solitary or only doing casual dating.
   For the older folks here in long-term marriages or partnerships: how do you experience this dynamic? Did you also skip the "falling in love" phase entirely, and how does your partner handle the lack of romantic theater?