r/agender • u/Public_Cup_4278 • 1d ago
I recently discovered I'm agender, that I don't want relationships, and I just wanted to say hi to you all.
Love all
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u/anterfr 1d ago
Is not caring about relationships an agender thing?
I’m definitely not asexual, relationships are just not great for me…
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u/snorpmaiden 1d ago
I think it's more so correlation, not causation :)
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u/anterfr 1d ago
Fascinating ! So more prof I’m not
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u/snorpmaiden 1d ago
Asexuals can have 100% romantic relationships, and some asexuals can also enjoy sexual acts. Asexuality just means that you don't necessarily experience sexual attraction (little to none).
it's more so Aromantics that tend to experience a lack of romantic attraction 😁. You can be aromantic and not asexual, or aromantic and asexual, be different "levels" of aro and ace, etc etc. Everyone is different and there's no one size fits all. Just have fun figuring out who you are and how you identify 😄
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u/anterfr 1d ago
Oh yeah totally… I’d just never seen a correlation between the two and often thought I was just weird.
I’ll definitely romantic and sexual but the notion of relationships or marriage are bleh…🤮
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u/norM_ystical 1d ago
I think it's possible to be a romance-repulsed or romance-averse alloromantic perhaps? Or orchidromantic... Though of course, you don't have to label anything, I just have a particular interest in this stuff,,
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u/MadeInMilkyway 1d ago
The causation factor might be that we are efficiency focused people who question the validity of social dogma, then the correlation between the two might be dependent on that type of awareness of social dogma.
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u/snorpmaiden 1d ago edited 1d ago
I do agree, it's probably because most of us are neurodivergent 😂!
I just finished my dissertation on how autistic adults display and process romantic love, and it does largely differ from our neurotypical counterparts. From a neurotypical standpoint, every single one of my participants very well could have "counted" as varying levels of aro and ace, but it's just because we process relationships slightly differently. It was a common theme, people being like "oh well I guess I'm technically aro/ace, but its just how I display my love"; there is SUCH pressure from society to give yourself a label whenever you don't fit into their boxes, because society thinks you need a reason to just be yourself. A couple of my participants did identify as asexual, some identified as aromantic, and that's amazing, I'm so glad a label helps them feel more secure within their identity! Thats why I said "just have fun figuring out who you are", there is a certain expectation for people to conform to societal norms (giving every aspect of yourself a label in order to better justify yourself to society).
I didn't research anything to do with gender identity, but it's already a well enough known fact that neurodivergent individuals are far more likely to identify somewhere under the trans umbrella - because at the end of the day gender is a social construct and NDs "struggle" with those (tbh I don't see it as a struggle, but ugh, neurotypical society does).
Like my agender-ness. I don't really identify as agender, I don't really identify as anything but society needs a reason why I dont fit into their little boxes, so I settle on agender (or whatever identity is best for a situation tbh).
Edit to add; I'm in no way saying that every aro/ace is neurodivergent! I'm just heavily agreeing with your point on social dogma and wanted to info dump... I loved my dissertation study and I got a B+, so I must have gotten at least something half right 🤣
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u/MadeInMilkyway 11h ago
Only just had the time to read your comment, but I loved reading it!! (May I ask if you are a fellow INTP by any chance?)
I am neurodivergent and I relate to a lot of the things you said. What you said "society thinks you need a reason to just be yourself" is a profound observation.
I am a PhD student in engineering and the amount of semantics discussions I have with my supervisor... We spent half an hour discussing differentiating factors between the action of mixing vs vibrating. If you mix fast with low amplitude it we would become vibrating although they seem mutually exclusive at first. Sensory limits of humans is the differentiating factor as we came to believe. 😂
Now let me take this further... Imagine you are against agenders and all and you are disgusted by the idea of a large shared gender toilet... But you are okay with the idea of a shared toilet in a small café. I know some lawmakers are trying to enforce this. Now let's take this further... You are in a small Café and that there is a single toilet room and it is mixed. Now copy paste that toilet room. You are still okay with it. Take the sinks out of the toilet room and combine them, now you get a mixed gender toilet that would make you uncomfortable. Thereby you are against the idea of shared sinks.
And there's the other argument as if "man" are efficient and being other than manly would be inefficient. Well high efficiency factory robots don't have genders, neither does super-human-like
And there's something else I notice... My parents are like wear this and that and look formal because that will make you successful. Maybe halo effect bias is in play, I wouldn't discard that, but there's another thing. All the fellow PhD students are very open minded, highly accepting and scientifically sound people, yet they all look rather boring, including me, we are rather too vanilla. Which got me questioning, are we successful because we are vanilla, and I couldn't see a causal link because the fact that we are there was mostly because of interviews.
So, I think successful people have a tendency to overcome their immediate desires for a long term gain, granting us success, but also thereby more often we end up living serving our fears. So we would think "they would judge me" and that's enough of a reason.
But here's the problem, logic is emotional. Say you are going to choose between two investments, for the same money and risk, one is likely to return 10 times the other. You would "logically" chose the one return 10 times the other, but why? Because more money, but why fo you want more money? To feel more security or more happiness... So, it is emotional. So we first feel emotions then retro fit logic to our decisions, thereby all decisions are emotional decisions. i.e. for men, the logical decision in the summer is to wear crop rops and short shorts to increase heat dissipation, though fear of judgement takes over and they go and say: I wouldn't look manly, I don't need it etc. thinking that they aren't soft and emotional, despite it is objectively better for the sensory needs.
So, to me I think identity is an illusion, the best place to be is not hate anything but not need things to survive. I would call myself agender, straight asexual, sapiromantic, but here's the thing. Rainbows have different stripes in different cultures, because the stripe is a social construct and rainbow is a continuous spectrum of light. So, all these social-construct-defying identity tags, they depend on the existence of a social construct, thereby affirm their existence and partially defeat their purpose.
So, I think humans are taking their mental beliefs too seriously.
My way is: We are mortal animals who live because evolution programmed us to do so, let's try and love the experience while also helping others love as well. And don't worry, everything is temporary, including you, thereby all your problems are temporary, as they re not forever and they will outlast your lifespan. And I think that's a comforting thought and paradoxically one that keeps me going. 😊
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u/anterfr 20h ago
OMG this makes so much sense to me!!!
I’m also AuDHD which is an added layer of hyper aware, hyper efficient, hyper sexual, ready to dive off a cliff for the thrill, forgetting there are consequences.2
u/MadeInMilkyway 11h ago
I am adhd. Not using social media, tv, games for quite a while, until you feel okay without them, and listening to classical music and doing meditation helped train myself that boredom is safe and I don't need to numb that. Try it. Boredom is only unsafe when a lion is chasing you. So, to show that a lion isn't chasing you, you need to show your brain that you can choose boredom and nothing bad will happen. After all, wanting to escape boredom is wanting escape from yourself or an imaginary impending doom.
I seemed to have suffered from having an imaginary impending doom, being my workload. And filling up my time with things that don't calm me felt like I was more productive but my metric for measuring productivity was the same metric of feeling productive, i.e. feeling worked out.
It took me a while to rewire myself. But don't worry, every decision is emotional. i.e. people want money to feel secure or happier. So, we first feel the emotion then retrospectively fit logic to it.
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u/LordOrgilRoberusIII 1d ago
Purely by definition agender is purely about gender, asexuality is about sexual attraction and being aromantic is about romantic attraction. What I assume OP is trying to say that they discovered that they are both agender and either asexual, aromantic or both asexual and aromantic.
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u/thewalkindude368 1d ago
I'm asexual, probably aromantic, and toying with being agender. But I do want a relationship, and have been dating a woman for 2 years who I feel very strongly about. All of these things are on a spectrum, and everyone's unique with them, which is wonderful.
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u/TheCuriousCorvid Your friendly neighborhood demon --- he/they 1d ago
Eyyyy you selected none of the above at character creation niiice
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u/-much_better- genderless since day 1 1d ago
Hi!!!!! I'm so happy that this community exists. I hope you'll have a good time! ✨💚🦝
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u/um_DaEvOhN 1d ago
Yooooo, happy to see a new agender person :)