SandyLife223 wrote:
Now for some reason , I get crushes on female characters from shows and movies and games. I mean, I don’t fantasise about them.. doing something, but I really get attached to them. Am I still aroace?
I just went through this myself. I had a crush on a fictional female character 4 years ago.
Actually, because of that is how I came across the aro/ace community.
Anyway, because she’s fictional, I always stuck with the term aromantic because I wasn’t sure it really counted.
A little over a year later (after my 10-month crush ended), I started liking other fictional female characters. However, it wasn’t a crush like before. I liked them in a similar manner, but never as strongly.
This continued on and as the world started to reopen and I began interacting with real people again, it started happening with real people too, in the same way; similar, but never strongly or as a crush.
I had started looking into tertiary attraction as everyone kept saying the same things; romantic attraction is intense, while tertiary attraction isn’t, but it didn’t fit with how I felt. I had looked into the oriented aroace label on and off for several years, but again, I disregarded it because most were fictional.
I started reading about romantic attraction again and it wasn’t until recently that started looking into aro-spec identities. I had heard of grayromantic before and I knew one definition of grayromantic was someone who experiences weak romantic attraction, but I never thought of it meaning “low intensity romantic attraction”. When I came across that definition in a video, that’s when it clicked for me and I had to give it serious consideration.
Anyway, I currently identify as asexual and as a grayromantic lesbian, as well as GNC cis-female.
But enough about me. There are a few labels that come to mind with attraction towards fictional characters.
Fictoromantic: Someone who is exclusively romantically attracted to fictional characters. It’s considered to be on the aromantic spectrum as they are never attracted to real people.
Lithromantic: Someone who experiences romantic attraction without the desire for reciprocation. Attraction will fade once they find out they are liked back or shortly afterward. Some are even repulsed by the idea of acting on their attraction, while some others do, but it then fades if reciprocated. Some are only attracted to those who they can’t possibly be with, such as fictional characters, because they can’t reciprocate their feelings. Many lithromantics are primarily (sometimes exclusively) attracted to fictional characters for this reason.
Aegoromantic: Someone who enjoys romance, but is disconnected from it. Aegoromantics like to seek out romantic media and daydream about romantic activities between characters. However, aegoromantics themselves are never involved in their daydreams and are averse/repulsed by the idea of actually being involved in it (fantasies or IRL). “Aegoromantic” literally means “romantic without self”, thus they like romance, as long as they aren’t involved in it themselves (hence the disconnection).
Demiromantic: Someone who only experiences secondary romantic attraction, never primary. In other words, they have to know the individual first and have a strong bond with them before ever experiencing attraction. I’ve heard a lot about demiromantics being more frequently attracted towards fictional characters because “you can learn a lot more about a character in 10 minutes than you can about a person in 10 conversations.”
As long as you identify as aro-spec, you can continue to refer to yourself as aroace, as it is now an abbreviation for “aro-spec and ace-spec”, rather than “aromantic asexual”.
Also, you don’t have to use a different label to specify your attraction towards fictional characters, unless, of course, you want to.
Hope this helps!