Aroace thoughts/rants

Its not a social construct?

So I was on TikTok and lately I've been enjoying myself on aro side of TikTok. Been getting a lot of aroace content.

Anyways this girl posted this video and said something about like "me when I find out romantic attraction is a really thing and not a social construct people go with"

And all this time I've been like poorly explains how I thought romance worked but social construct is exactly it. Like I thought it was just a thing you had to do to fit in with society.

And movies and tv shows didn't help me, everyone was always falling in love with those so every time a guy so much as talked to me I was like "omg am I supposed to have a crush on him now. Isn't that how it happens in books/tv?" (Which is why representation is important bc if there was a character who was aro and said they weren't interested in dating more often I wouldn't feel like dating was "just what you do")

Really messed me up and I said I had a lot of crushes I didn't actually have.

And getting embarrassed when people figure out your crush? I thought that was like a thing that just happened. Like I was like "I need to be embarrassed if my crush finds out I like him. It's how it works"

And so in like first grade my best friend told this one dude my "crush" (didn't actually have a crush on him. This crush also lasted for literally one day) and he told the whole class including my crush and I was like "oh so I'm supposed to be embarrassed now" and yeah maybe I was a little bit what's more embarrassing is how I hid under my desk 😭 like girl everyone can still see you. Get out from under there.

That's also why the crush lasted one day. I thought once the crush wasn't a secret anymore you had to find a new crush. I was kinda a dumb kid

And then I told everyone that the dude who told everyone who my crush was had a crush on this other random girl. (I kinda feel bad about that. I straight up lied. And for what? 😭)

So yeah. I guess I thought romance was a social construct and not an actual feeling people got and sometimes I forget it's not a social construct and people actually have a type of feeling for people I've never felt and will never feel and aren't just being like  "let's date for funzies because dating is a thing humans do"

Like I'm a human (I think) but I just do other things for fun. But apparently they actually feel something and I always forget that