Sexual/romantic orientation, intersections with veganism

[aroneous]

As humans, I think that there are five "principal axes" of pleasure that we can experience in life: food, drugs/alcohol/psychoactive stimulants, thrill-seeking (dopamine/adrenaline), sex, and romance. Of course, there are many, many other kinds of "micro-pleasures", so to speak, but I think these are the main ones that people seek to experience on a regular basis. While the practical aspects of veganism interface quite closely with gustatory/food-related pleasures, I think there are certain connections to be drawn with other pleasures, perhaps less directly but interesting nonetheless. In this thread I wanted to start a discussion specifically on what commonalities there could be between the practice of veganism and the ways that people may (or may not) seek out sexual and romantic pleasure in their lives.

Firstly, we can look at why we experience these pleasures in the first place. With food, the purpose is obviously to encourage eating to sustain the functioning of one's body, though it seems to me that our drive in this regard (a.k.a. appetite) is biased towards calorie-dense foods that are not necessarily nutritious for us to consume regularly. That's probably a holdover from the early days of our evolution where food in general was much less available, and it was quite literally in our best interest to eat such foods whenever they appeared. But this instinctual drive is profoundly misaligned in the modern day where we have an over-abundance of these foods and no evolutionarily coded notion of restraint to account for the short- and long-term risks of overconsumption.

I think a similar kind of scarcity mindset has evolved in the context of sex (for the purpose of reproduction) and romance (for the purpose making sex more likely and ultimately raising offspring with a partner), but through very different means. The key way that sexual and romantic pleasures differ from gustatory ones is that while taste pleasure is somewhat "consistent" (given a certain satiety level), sexual and romantic pleasure is very heavily modulated by mental activity. This is probably out of necessity because these pleasures are experienced in a more "abstract" way than taste pleasure. Whether a certain food is advantageous in terms of our short-term survival odds is pretty easy for the body (i.e. the tongue) to determine based on fat/sugar/salt content, but whether someone could be a good potential reproductive partner is not nearly as clear. We can't just look at someone and instantly know that their genetic material would be a good match for ours in maximizing the survival/reproductive potential of our offspring. Even the intimately physical act of sex does not provide much information in this regard. So a lot more is deferred to the brain itself in the form of heuristic reasoning about a person's overall "attractiveness". Our brains make a tremendous effort to construct a notion of sexual and romantic pleasure as something that is provided/withheld by a potential partner in the same way that taste pleasure is dependent on the consumption of food.

So, I think this is part of the key to understanding why so many different sexual and romantic orientations exist. While there is somewhat of a heteronormative biological precedent for us to prefer opposite-sex partners, we still have a great deal of "control" over how we experience the pleasures relating to sexual and romantic attraction (which can be broadly categorized as "anticipation" of sexual/romantic pleasure), since so much of that lives exclusively within the brain. So many different kinds orientations can manifest depending on various complex aspects of human psychology.

A particularly interesting dimension of this is where a person lies on the asexual/aromantic spectra, that is, the overall degree to which a person experiences any kind of attraction at all. While we may be naturally inclined to experience attraction, whether or not someone actually does in practice depends in large part on whether they have come to possess a certain requisite "cognitive stack" of self-perception and personal belief (that we are certainly not born with) which contributes to a feedback loop of anticipation/experience of sexual and romantic pleasure that ultimately results in reproduction. Attraction is also a separate thing from drive, though their relationship is asymmetric, since drive cannot exist without attraction, but attraction can very much exist without drive.

Personally, regarding sex, like pretty much everyone else I am of course capable of experiencing sexual pleasure and I was a more or less typical horny male teenager (that's all the detail I'm going to get into there), but over the years I have come to see sex as too much of a pleasure that "comes from" myself (as opposed to something that is withheld by someone else) to make sexual attraction something I can still really experience in real life, so today I would consider myself quite thoroughly asexual. A lot of people who are interested in sex will say that they are just very "curious" about the physical aspects of it and really want to know exactly what it feels like. But I find this a bit contradictory since these same people will often lose interest in sex once sexual attraction is no longer present. So what people are fundamentally interested in is the personal validation/psychological aspects of it, and how that can feed back into and "unlock" physical pleasures currently unbeknownst to them. Again, I think sex is just too much of a strictly personal pleasure to make sex with another person a particularly interesting or compelling proposition. And certainly not worth the inherent risks of pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease.

In relation to romance, I would say that I can experience romantic attraction, but I completely lack any kind of romantic drive, so I would fall under the category of "orchidromantic", more specifically I would say "orchidgrayromantic" since romance is something I have to "make myself" feel, as opposed to being something more involuntary. While I do see romance as something that could be pleasurable, I simply do not wish to engage. It's a bit stronger than the notion of being "single at heart" (written about at length by the psychologist/author Bella DePaulo), because while people who are single at heart may wish to engage in romance from time to time, I am simply uninterested in romance as a whole. I'm not necessarily averse to it, if someone really insisted with me it could be possible, but I would be more or less acting the whole time, and I think the asymmetry of the fact that this other person believes in this thing that I do not would significantly cut into my ability to experience much pleasure (if any) from the interaction. I think what's fundamentally going on here is that the mental distinction I have between romance with another person, and, say, with another copy of myself or an anaesthetized part of my own body, is simply not enough to make romance interesting to me. So the romantic attraction that I can feel is also a more subdued "baseline" attraction that a person can experience without activating the feedback loop resulting from the notion that romance is a realistic possibility for themselves. The question of whether attraction will result in drive, I think, is largely a question of attribution, and I simply don't attribute sexual or romantic pleasure to other people.

Anyways, there's a lot more that I want to talk about in particular regarding the possible parallels between orchidromaticism/veganism and amatonormativity/carnism, but I realize I've already written a lot and would love to hear some of your initial thoughts on this topic.

[brimstoneSalad]

I think you're over-simplifying pleasure and life satisfaction by trying to categorize like that; people value peer regard and feel pleasure from being valued in non-romantic ways by others too. There are also elements of expression and artistic expression if that's something else, and likely more.

I think there could be something to people who are different finding it easier to be different in other ways and think outside the carnist box about ethics and diet and other lifestyle elements.
I'm sorry I can't offer much more than that. If I recall correctly, you're still quite young (doing your doctorate?) so your feelings on some of this may change as you gain life experience and perhaps fall in love by accident. Different emotional connections along with age and experience can go a long way to modulate our feelings about others and relationships.

[aroneous]

I think you're over-simplifying pleasure and life satisfaction by trying to categorize like that; people value peer regard and feel pleasure from being valued in non-romantic ways by others too. There are also elements of expression and artistic expression if that's something else, and likely more.

Yeah, I'm not totally confident in my attempt to identify the "primary pleasures" in life, there's probably a lot more of a spectrum of pleasures and combinations of them, and of course people vary a lot in which ones they prioritize. And probably many things that don't exactly fit under the label of "pleasure" at all, more just things that people find generally fullfilling to do, like art and philosophy and such. That wasn't the main point of my post, but thanks for pointing it out.

I think there could be something to people who are different finding it easier to be different in other ways and think outside the carnist box about ethics and diet and other lifestyle elements.
I'm sorry I can't offer much more than that.

Yes, I think there is indeed a connection between veganism and my particular romantic orientation in that I suspect that part of how my mind works to make me second-guess consuming animal products just because they taste good also makes me second-guess whether I should enter into a romantic relationship just because I feel romantic attraction. At least, my initial motivations were somewhat based on logic, but there's a further parallel here in that at this point I simply am no longer capable of eating animal products out of disgust in much the same way that romance has come to seem just a bit distasteful to me. Well, I am far from being completely disgusted by the thought of it, but something feels slightly off about it to me. At the end of the day, it feels a bit too "personal" to me and too much like "hijacking" someone else's brain, and even if it's something that they would enjoy and it would seem mutually beneficial (at least in terms of the shared experience of pleasure), I'm not sure that it would be the most ethical thing for me to do, or the best version of reality that I can effect. And at the end of the day, I can't really visualize myself doing it except mostly perfomatively, I just wouldn't be 100% into it. I'm not convinced that anyone "has anything" for me in that regard, and I don't think I have anything for anyone else.

If I recall correctly, you're still quite young (doing your doctorate?) so your feelings on some of this may change as you gain life experience and perhaps fall in love by accident. Different emotional connections along with age and experience can go a long way to modulate our feelings about others and relationships.

I don't want to sound like I'm accusing you of anything, especially because I presume you're perhaps a bit older than me, but this is sort of the typical kind of thing that people who identify on the aromantic spectrum tend to hear from their parents and the older generations. It's pretty common for people to just interpret naiivety and say something along the lines of "you just haven't found the right person yet", or "when the circumstances are right, love will just happen". As I mentioned above, in my case, if someone else was insistent enough with me to make it happen, there would be a great deal of asymmetry involved that would make it hard for me to fully engage with them in the way they might want me to. And I especially wouldn't want to risk hurting their feelings.

I think it's hard not to acknowlege that there have also been generational changes in our perceptions of romance. I'm part of gen Z (though barely) and I would say that our generation is the first one that is more or less generally aware of things like aromanticism and asexuality. Romance is no longer as much of a conclusion in life for people as it was in the past, and I think its influence will continue to wane in the future. Not that I'm antinatalist or see it at something "evil" that needs to be stamped out from the face of the earth, I just think that people will generally come to understand themselves better and the fact that the desire for a long-term romantic relationship is no longer something that immediately follows from the experience of attraction.

[brimstoneSalad]

Just seems like the premise of far too many romcoms. Cynical young person thinks love isn't for him or her, yadda yadda story arc concludes with true love trope. I think the whole thing is a cliche for a reason; the assumption that your generation is the same as the past hundred generations is more likely to be correct than the assumption that it's a revolution in human psychology. The safe assumption is always that we're not all that special and that our psychologies function in much the same ways as others throughout antiquity. It's also something for vegans to be wary of regarding recidivism, activist burnout, etc. and knowing that we need to be vigilant against our own weaknesses.

One thing I will grant, today we're losing a lot of the "third spaces" for socialization, and the internet and social networking is becoming a dangerous pseudo satisfier for human connection that may be genuinely novel, not to mention AI girlfriends... but it's hard to forget the uproar over video games, tv, comics, and fiction books in preceding generations. It's always been the end of the world but never has been, of course until it is.

[Red]

If I can add my two cents here, though it might slightly subvert the purpose of the thread.

Aroneous, I don't mean to pry, but you're an intelligent guy (despite our occasional disagreements, you're smarter than I am) and you always view things from a very logical perspective and sort of project that onto everyone else, in that you FAR overestimate how much thought people put into their desicion making. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, I think it's better to be cold and view things logically than overly emotional and let the elephant decide all your desicions and worldview. So I'm wondering, are you on the autism spectrum? Not asking that in the 4chan sense, asking because it's potentially relevant here.

There is nothing wrong with being autistic or having aspergers, in fact it can be beneficial to be so in many ways, but it can be problematic because higher intelligence and social development problems might cause a "difficult" personality, especially when your mindset and way of thinking are so out of line with how 99% of people operate.

I find the popular idea of a relationship being comprised of "love" and destiny to be while cutesy and poetic, overblown and romanticized. You see people believe that their partners are "the one" and no one else could possibly fill that role, ignoring the thousands of other potential candidates that would provide a relationship of equal quality that they would've had if chaos played events out differently.

It's remarkable isn't it, that out of the three billion adult women in the world, your one true soulmate happens conveniently to live in the same block of flats as you, rather than say, in a village in Mozambique?

I always have some people in their early to mid 20s lament to me how they didn't experience "teen love" which again is romanticized and it's especially ridiculous in this context since the overwhelming majority of teen relationships are giant memes. The under 20 group is particularly dicey when you consider the hormonal and unreliable agents teenagers are. Let's not deny it, kids are dumb, and I wouldn't take many relationships in that age group very seriously when you consider that they consist of teenagers who are fumbling their way through emotions that masquerades as a deep personal connection. So much melodrama over minutia, it's comedic in a way. I've seen this stuff extend into the 20s as well, though not to the same extent.

When I was in my mid teens I sort of used to be in the camp that love is for morons and a waste of time (not as an incel, more like having a superiority complex over my peers... yeah I was pretty insufferable), and I still think the whole topic of love is approached suboptimally by most people, but there is something to be said for a relationship not based on some irrational emotion or infatuation, but rather one based on shared values, interests, goals, worldview, and a strong friendship. Those relationships are not only much more tenable, but you're able to easily justify why you're with your partner, and are able to use it not as a great addition to your life as a companion, but a partner you can accomplish personal and real world goals with (especially with Vegan couples). There actually have been studies that demonstrate that most people can't explain why they love their partner, which is revealing.

Of course a lot of people don't do that and just marry someone they find attractive and not really consider much else. I worked as a supervisor on a lot of job sites, when they're not working all the laborers do is just complain about their wives. I've had some of them turn to me and say "Kid, whatever you do, don't get married." When I ask them why they married their wives to begin with when they have nothing positive to say, aside from something alone the lines of finding them attractive/having a nice body when they got with them, and if that's the ONLY good thing you can list, that's a major red flag. My dad tells me most of these guys marry because they don't want to be alone, and I can see that, but I figure that they'd wanna make sure they're getting someone they can tolerate before they commit to living with the same person everyday for the rest of their lives. I'd rather spend my life alone than with someone I can't stand. Attractiveness is important in a relationship of course, saying otherwise is bullshit, but obviously don't be so superficial. I'm one of those guys who'll take any girl with a pretty enough face, and I'm sure you'd be a similar boat (unless you're gay, in which case any guy with a handsome enough face, y'know).

Of course these guys bitching about their marriages don't really consider that maybe THEY are also at fault in the relationship and aren't as proactive as they should be, but that's another rant.

Anyway, especially as someone like you who is Vegan, highly logical, science based, focused on doing good, and has a very specialized career, on top of having a more "difficult" personality, that makes it a bit harder to find someone than your average horny jackass who just wants a woman to have sex with and make him dinner and iron his shirts, but that can work in your favour: The types of people you're compatible with would be intelligent, understanding, and have the same goals as you; Someone who values science, ethics, reason, and has her own useful career and goals. Perhaps ladies like that are something of a rare breed as it is for gentlemen, but a person like that who is compatible with you guarantees a long, happy, productive relationship, and while they might be hard to find, they are not nonexistent. Someone you can do activism with. Someone you can share art and media with. Someone you can learn new things with and from. Someone you can share recipes and cook with. Someone you can simply have a conversation with and understand a new perspective about an idea or current event.

For guys in situations like us though, both in our 20s and still focusing on building our careers and portfolios (and admittedly with fairly high standards), we should probably be better served just focusing on ourselves for now; it would be much better if we focus on activist and career goals since there's a higher chance of meeting a compatible partner by virtue of them noticing you from your work. It would be easier than just seeking out a person who has to meet so much criteria.

A romantic relationship seems like something you don't need, until you find someone who is right for you. No relationship is free of conflict, but the point is to learn how to solve the problem together rather than make it a divisive issue.

[aroneous]

Aroneous, I don't mean to pry, but you're an intelligent guy (despite our occasional disagreements, you're smarter than I am) and you always view things from a very logical perspective and sort of project that onto everyone else, in that you FAR overestimate how much thought people put into their desicion making.

Yeah I may tend to do that. I think part of the reason is that I'm in academia I'm surrounded by extremely intelligent people on a daily basis, so when I try to understand why they aren't vegan and why they are so different from me in many other respects, I may be quick to assume that they have thought deeply about these things in particular, when it's probably more likely the case that they don't consider these things very much worth directing their intelligence towards in the first place. People here probably have the mindset of "this thing I'm working on has tremendous import for the future of humanity, so who cares if I might fall short in some other respects, I more than make up for it in the good that I do for other humans on a scientific level". Or maybe not, and I'm just doing it again by assuming they have a more considered position in terms of their moral priorities than they actually do.

So I'm wondering, are you on the autism spectrum? Not asking that in the 4chan sense, asking because it's potentially relevant here.

There is nothing wrong with being autistic or having aspergers, in fact it can be beneficial to be so in many ways, but it can be problematic because higher intelligence and social development problems might cause a "difficult" personality, especially when your mindset and way of thinking are so out of line with how 99% of people operate.

I've been ready to self-diagnose in the past, but people have disagreed with me. I think I'm mostly socially normal, though more on the reserved side. I guess I just really like writing philosophical essays, that's something I quite enjoyed in college and high school but haven't had the chance to do recently. So what you're seeing is kind of a brain dump of things I have thought about for a while but don't get to discuss with people in my day-to-day life, I don't have many hobbies other than surfing the internet so this is something I like to do when I'm bored on the weekends.

I find the popular idea of a relationship being comprised of "love" and destiny to be while cutesy and poetic, overblown and romanticized. You see people believe that their partners are "the one" and no one else could possibly fill that role, ignoring the thousands of other potential candidates that would provide a relationship of equal quality that they would've had if chaos played events out differently.

Yeah, I never did actually believe in the concept of soulmates. Randall Munroe actually did the math on this one: https://what-if.xkcd.com/9/

When I was in my mid teens I sort of used to be in the camp that love is for morons and a waste of time (not as an incel, more like having a superiority complex over my peers... yeah I was pretty insufferable), and I still think the whole topic of love is approached suboptimally by most people, but there is something to be said for a relationship not based on some irrational emotion or infatuation, but rather one based on shared values, interests, goals, worldview, and a strong friendship. Those relationships are not only much more tenable, but you're able to easily justify why you're with your partner, and are able to use it not as a great addition to your life as a companion, but a partner you can accomplish personal and real world goals with (especially with Vegan couples). There actually have been studies that demonstrate that most people can't explain why they love their partner, which is revealing.

I'm sure there are benefits to relationships in terms of companionship (being around other people is good for your mental health), helping each other in terms of pursuing shared goals, and human redundancy in the case of medical emergencies and such. These things do come with romantic relationships, and that is the way that people commonly pursue them, but of course romance is not the only way about it. You could have all of these things simply by living with a group of people who share your views, without needing to commit to the romantic aspects of a relationship with just one other person. There's also the issue of loneliness that people often struggle with, and people who feel affected by that often see a single romantic partner who devotes a good portion of their time to themselves in particular as the only true way to "cure" their loneliness, and something that you can't get just by living in a commune. But I don't think that's really the case. I think there are other ways to address loneliness that really get at the root of the issue on a psychological level. Having a relationship just kind of masks a fundamental problem, I think.

I'm one of those guys who'll take any girl with a pretty enough face, and I'm sure you'd be a similar boat (unless you're gay, in which case any guy with a handsome enough face, y'know).

Haha, yeah you have assumed correctly that I am more on the hetero side, at least that feels a bit more natural to me but I'm perhaps a bit bi since I can get myself to go both ways.

As for the rest of your reply, I can tell that this is where you and I may diverge a bit in terms of our views on romance. Let me try to clear things up a bit below.

I understand that the inclination is to think of this as a convoluted cry for help from a (very confused) hopeless romantic, but really all that’s going on here is that I wanted to breach a topic that I haven’t seen covered yet in vegan circles, it’s something that has been on my mind for a while, and I think it’s important to talk about since sex and romance define a such a large part of most people’s lives (and thus a lot of how society works in general). I can see that your reactions have sort of been to try and hold out hope for me on my behalf, which is a very kind gesture that I do appreciate, but that isn’t necessary and I think this is a bit of a misunderstanding that I can perhaps resolve by giving you a few more data points here. (Anyways, this is all pretty good practice for when I will have to explain this stuff to my parents, maybe I’ll just end up showing them this thread, lol)

Perhaps you might think of it, like, by not going for a relationship, I’m necessarily depriving someone else of the experience, and how sad and disappointing that must be for the both of us, since there are people out there could be such a good match for me (and me for them). But I don’t quite see it that way. Someone who might theoretically be a good match for me, but who is also interested in a long-term relationship, can’t really be a good match for me because we’re already too different on that count alone. I’d rather leave them to find someone else who shares that interest than lead them on and inevitably end up disappointing them. Even if they’re also vegan and we can fundamentally relate to one another on that level, I don’t think this is something that we would be able to resolve in the end. And if someone is like me in not wanting a long-term relationship, we’re both best off living our lives (mostly) single anyways. It’s sort of a catch-22, but not at all in a dismal kind of sense, since we’re ultimately both just pursuing the lifestyles we prefer. So I like to think that the math adds up here. You could say that our “relationship” exists, but more on the metaphysical level of us living our best lives apart, but together at the same time in having that shared experience of thriving as a single person, if that makes any sense.

Anyways, in this post I kind of went very detailed into the specifics of my orientation, and while I do quite firmly identify as orchidromantic, for the average person I think that “single at heart” is a very fitting way for me to describe myself, and easy for most people to understand, it is essentially a superset of orchidromantic anyways. Again, you should check out some of what Bella DePaulo has written about it. Companionship is a different thing from romance and in fact I do intend to spend most of my life living with and around other people for the benefits I mentioned above. But I probably won’t stay with one particular person for a very long time and it won’t be in a romantic capacity. As I mentioned, romance is not completely off the table for me, but I would put some firm limits on it (and make sure that the other person is aware of them) since it just seems a bit too imposing on my part, with a lot of risk for things to go wrong (in large part because I wouldn't be fully invested myself). And I’m very perfectly content with it being something I never experience, I feel like I’m able to imagine it well enough and don't find the real thing to be all that mystical or alluring, nor am I really looking for the explicit validation that it offers. So it's not something that I am particularly worried about "missing out on".

Part of my fear in describing all of this is that in doing so people will interpret it as an attempt to sort of narcissistically position myself as the “ultimate prize/challenge” to narrow my pool of possible partners down to the person who is worthy of myself, a protracted and overblown instance of “playing hard to get”. But I can’t emphasize enough that this isn’t the case. I really am just single at heart and happier on my own and I don’t want people to think that it’s any more complex than that, because it really isn’t.

[aroneous]

Just seems like the premise of far too many romcoms. Cynical young person thinks love isn't for him or her, yadda yadda story arc concludes with true love trope.

But don't you see that as a case of survivorship bias? Someone renouncing love in their youth and actually remaining single into their older years doesn't exactly make for a good love story. You'd have to look at demographic data, like people who stay unmarried into their 50s, but still this doesn't tell you much about what things will be like for the younger generation today.

I think the whole thing is a cliche for a reason; the assumption that your generation is the same as the past hundred generations is more likely to be correct than the assumption that it's a revolution in human psychology. The safe assumption is always that we're not all that special and that our psychologies function in much the same ways as others throughout antiquity.

But we're already seeing certain measurable trends in changing preferences surrounding traditional family life, e.g. declining birthrates. That's played out quite dramatically over the past couple generations in countries like Japan, a bit less so in western countries but quite surely nonetheless. Having a lifetime partner is not nearly as much of a commitment as having children, but it's a pretty big one nonetheless that you have to structure your whole life around. So I don't think it's that farfetched that people will come to prefer some of the freedoms of being single once they have a change in perspective on the supposed benefits of romantic partnership. Similarly to how I see the future as being mostly vegan, I also could see it as one in which people choose to remain single for most of their lives and can no longer really relate to things like believing in soulmates, or having a fear of "dying alone".

[Red]

Yeah I may tend to do that. I think part of the reason is that I'm in academia I'm surrounded by extremely intelligent people on a daily basis, so when I try to understand why they aren't vegan and why they are so different from me in many other respects, I may be quick to assume that they have thought deeply about these things in particular, when it's probably more likely the case that they don't consider these things very much worth directing their intelligence towards in the first place. People here probably have the mindset of "this thing I'm working on has tremendous import for the future of humanity, so who cares if I might fall short in some other respects, I more than make up for it in the good that I do for other humans on a scientific level". Or maybe not, and I'm just doing it again by assuming they have a more considered position in terms of their moral priorities than they actually do.

As I'm sure you know even the most intelligent people are prone to making some of the dumbest rationalizations and especially if it's something morally troubling to them they come up with a quick rationalization to ease the mental discomfort and move on with their lives, even if they know it's bullshit. If they're older they probably haven't considered meat consumption much if at all, or maybe they're in the Richard Dawkins/Hank Green camp of acknowledging it is the moral thing to do but just can't see themselves committing to it. Have you talked about it with them? I would expect them to be in the camp of acknowledging it as the moral choice but they just don't practice it themselves. Bill Gates is a pretty smart guy, yet I think he still eats meat.

I've been ready to self-diagnose in the past, but people have disagreed with me. I think I'm mostly socially normal, though more on the reserved side. I guess I just really like writing philosophical essays, that's something I quite enjoyed in college and high school but haven't had the chance to do recently. So what you're seeing is kind of a brain dump of things I have thought about for a while but don't get to discuss with people in my day-to-day life, I don't have many hobbies other than surfing the internet so this is something I like to do when I'm bored on the weekends.

I almost never trust self-diagnoses (especially in this day and age when racking up mental illnesses is some kind of badge of honor, not that I'm accusing you of doing that), I was just wondering if you've ever been formally diagnosed because it could potentially offer some insight. Sometimes someone who just has a lot to say about niche topics doesn't necessarily mean that he or she is autistic. I'm sure you know 99% of people have little interest in such topics (as Jdawg would say they're more interested in watching the FATBAWL game).

I'm sure there are benefits to relationships in terms of companionship (being around other people is good for your mental health), helping each other in terms of pursuing shared goals, and human redundancy in the case of medical emergencies and such. These things do come with romantic relationships, and that is the way that people commonly pursue them, but of course romance is not the only way about it. You could have all of these things simply by living with a group of people who share your views, without needing to commit to the romantic aspects of a relationship with just one other person. There's also the issue of loneliness that people often struggle with, and people who feel affected by that often see a single romantic partner who devotes a good portion of their time to themselves in particular as the only true way to "cure" their loneliness, and something that you can't get just by living in a commune. But I don't think that's really the case. I think there are other ways to address loneliness that really get at the root of the issue on a psychological level. Having a relationship just kind of masks a fundamental problem, I think.

Well as I said, it should be based on a very deep friendship anyways, and if you really aren't interested that would work just fine as a substitute. As I've clarified I object to the traditional view of romance.

But a romantic relationship generally is a more intimate bond where you cuddle and all that, and the one where you can have children. It's not typical for people who are just close friends to have babies together though I guess not impossible (bit more than friends with benefits since you're both taking on a huge and equal responsibility that is legally binding).

I can see that your reactions have sort of been to try and hold out hope for me on my behalf, which is a very kind gesture that I do appreciate, but that isn’t necessary and I think this is a bit of a misunderstanding that I can perhaps resolve by giving you a few more data points here. (Anyways, this is all pretty good practice for when I will have to explain this stuff to my parents, maybe I’ll just end up showing them this thread, lol)

My reply was more meant to elaborate on why the traditional idea of romantic love is mostly bullshit and offered a more logical and rational approach to the matter that I figured you'd appreciate, and how even though you probably think it isn't something you want, it could be when you meet someone right. Just wanted to give you something to think about. If it's any relevant I've never been in a relationship myself and am not planning on entering one for a few years (I do want children some day).

Perhaps you might think of it, like, by not going for a relationship, I’m necessarily depriving someone else of the experience, and how sad and disappointing that must be for the both of us, since there are people out there could be such a good match for me (and me for them).

That isn't really the concern, since if you don't take them they're likely to find someone else. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that. You certainly shouldn't enter a relationship just because you feel bad for someone.

But I don’t quite see it that way. Someone who might theoretically be a good match for me, but who is also interested in a long-term relationship, can’t really be a good match for me because we’re already too different on that count alone. I’d rather leave them to find someone else who shares that interest than lead them on and inevitably end up disappointing them. Even if they’re also vegan and we can fundamentally relate to one another on that level, I don’t think this is something that we would be able to resolve in the end. And if someone is like me in not wanting a long-term relationship, we’re both best off living our lives (mostly) single anyways. It’s sort of a catch-22, but not at all in a dismal kind of sense, since we’re ultimately both just pursuing the lifestyles we prefer. So I like to think that the math adds up here. You could say that our “relationship” exists, but more on the metaphysical level of us living our best lives apart, but together at the same time in having that shared experience of thriving as a single person, if that makes any sense.

I'm not trying to assume here but it could be one of those "You're just saying that now" things. If you ever do meet someone who is right, your perspective could change. Just make sure to not fall into the irrational pitfalls of "love" if you do (I doubt you would but even logical people aren't immune). Kind of like how a lot of people who swear they're never going to have children in their teens and 20s because they're annoying and too much responsibility end up having children and saying they're the best thing that's ever happened to them.

Companionship is a different thing from romance and in fact I do intend to spend most of my life living with and around other people for the benefits I mentioned above. But I probably won’t stay with one particular person for a very long time and it won’t be in a romantic capacity.

I don't see the issue with having long term companions. You would be something of a drifter if you were to do that though, having a revolving door like that.

As I mentioned, romance is not completely off the table for me, but I would put some firm limits on it (and make sure that the other person is aware of them) since it just seems a bit too imposing on my part, with a lot of risk for things to go wrong (in large part because I wouldn't be fully invested myself). And I’m very perfectly content with it being something I never experience, I feel like I’m able to imagine it well enough and don't find the real thing to be all that mystical or alluring, nor am I really looking for the explicit validation that it offers. So it's not something that I am particularly worried about "missing out on".

I'm not gonna stand here and say it's something you absolutely need in order to be happy and fulfilled, you can get on without it and still live a perfectly happy life, my objection here is that you seem a bit too convinced that you being "single at heart" is concrete and not subject change. If you haven't really put yourself out there for a relationship, even a short term one, it's really hard to say something like that with certainty. I've known my share of loners who wanted to live alone not want to live alone when they find the right friends/partners.

It's your life, you lead it however you see fit. It is not my position to say this or that would be better for you, since you know your situation best. What I do think though, is that some things we once believed strongly about ourselves might not be what we thought.

Part of my fear in describing all of this is that in doing so people will interpret it as an attempt to sort of narcissistically position myself as the “ultimate prize/challenge” to narrow my pool of possible partners down to the person who is worthy of myself, a protracted and overblown instance of “playing hard to get”. But I can’t emphasize enough that this isn’t the case. I really am just single at heart and happier on my own and I don’t want people to think that it’s any more complex than that, because it really isn’t.

I'm not sure if anyone would really interpret it like that.

[aroneous]

As I'm sure you know even the most intelligent people are prone to making some of the dumbest rationalizations and especially if it's something morally troubling to them they come up with a quick rationalization to ease the mental discomfort and move on with their lives, even if they know it's bullshit. If they're older they probably haven't considered meat consumption much if at all, or maybe they're in the Richard Dawkins/Hank Green camp of acknowledging it is the moral thing to do but just can't see themselves committing to it. Have you talked about it with them? I would expect them to be in the camp of acknowledging it as the moral choice but they just don't practice it themselves. Bill Gates is a pretty smart guy, yet I think he still eats meat.

Hmm yeah, good point. I guess I would have to ask them to know for sure. But anyways I think it doesn't hurt to hypothesize about things and "cover the bases" so to speak, even if it doesn't reflect the vast majority of the cases. Particularly since people who might attempt to rationalize to these ends are probably quite smart and therefore possibly more open to veganism, and so could be a good place to direct our activism. So it's probably a good idea to try to at least be aware of what all of these more obscure/convoluted/heavily rationalized justifications could be.

I almost never trust self-diagnoses (especially in this day and age when racking up mental illnesses is some kind of badge of honor, not that I'm accusing you of doing that), I was just wondering if you've ever been formally diagnosed because it could potentially offer some insight. Sometimes someone who just has a lot to say about niche topics doesn't necessarily mean that he or she is autistic. I'm sure you know 99% of people have little interest in such topics (as Jdawg would say they're more interested in watching the FATBAWL game).

Nope, I've had no formal diagnosis or anything like that. I just feel a bit crazy sometimes keeping these thoughts in my head (since there's really not much of a place for them in casual conversation), it's really quite cathartic to be able to discuss them in a place made specifically for having these kinds of discussions.

That isn't really the concern, since if you don't take them they're likely to find someone else. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that. You certainly shouldn't enter a relationship just because you feel bad for someone.

Right, but the fact that I have taken myself "off the market" does reduce the average person's odds just a bit. It's quite relevant in everyday IRL interactions though, since if someone takes interest but I don't reciprocate, it's something which I fear can cause them quite some pain. I like to think that I make it somewhat clear through my demeanor that I'm not looking for that sort of thing to begin with, so it's not something they should take personally (it's not that I haven't selected them, but that I'm not selecting to begin with), but there is some risk of being misinterpreted.

Though you could say that the odds for people to find love are better than ever before, especially with the presence of dating apps, social media and such. It can feel quite artificial and forced, which has caused many millenials and gen-zers to lament the "death of romance", but I think if someone is motivated to find a partner, technology opens many more possibilities for doing so that didn't exist a few decades ago.

I'm not trying to assume here but it could be one of those "You're just saying that now" things. If you ever do meet someone who is right, your perspective could change. Just make sure to not fall into the irrational pitfalls of "love" if you do (I doubt you would but even logical people aren't immune). Kind of like how a lot of people who swear they're never going to have children in their teens and 20s because they're annoying and too much responsibility end up having children and saying they're the best thing that's ever happened to them.

Right, but surely you can start to see some of the parallels between veganism and a-spec identities here. "It's just a phase" is a common retort given to vegans, particularly if they're below a certain age to be able to be considered immature and unstable. And the fact that most people who are vegan at some point end up returning to omnivory doesn't help much. In order to be taken seriously as a vegan, you would necessarily have to be an anomaly, so people are less ready to even consider veganism as a philosophy because of the ad hominem fallacy of the person presenting to it them being a silly kid who's most likely going to give it up someday.

That's one of the reasons why I wanted to discuss this here in particular. I think that many of the same reasons that make veganism hard to discuss in a carnist space can make a-spec identities hard to discuss in an amatonormative one. I'm not accusing you of an "ad-hominem fallacy" here, I don't think that it really applies since we're not exactly debating a logical or philosophical position, but I think you may have picked up on some personal details that make it seem easier to dismiss what I believe to be a meaningful psychological distinction that our vocabulary has only recently been able to capture through words like "orchidromantic" and "single at heart". Even if you think it's just a phase and that I'll eventually give in to settling down with a partner once I find the right person, it's still something that is very relevant to my present existence, and perhaps a bit more than me simply being too distracted by my work, or naiively eschewing love as a "silly waste of time".