I wouldn’t call it a “respectable Italian restaurant,” implying that it’s a fancy-schmancy upscale place with waiters, tablecloths, and candles in old bottles of Chianti. It’s just a strip center sub shop with fantastic sandwiches and especially beans! [For locals who are wondering it’s Zito’s.] I’ve often gone there just for a quart of beans to take out. You can’t replicate them at home because they toss in trimmings from all the deli meats that go in their sandwiches. But I digress…
I think there aren’t enough Italians here for people to have grown up knowing that that was a derogatory word and to be offended by it. The people who run the shop are Italian, so maybe they find some kind of humor in it.
Imagine someone who has been sexually abused. They may feel romantic love, but not sexual attraction since that part of them was “turned off” - they might like holding hands and candlelight dinners and cuddling and getting flowers and gazing meaningfully into someone’s eyes, but finds sex frightening. They are Ace, but not Aro. Not that that is the case with my youngest, but that is probably the best way for someone who doesn’t get Aro to understand it. Or think about the ideal of chaste love of the troubadours. That is very romantic, but specifically not sexual. Or think of a spouse that continues to have emotional, but not physical affairs. Then you could have someone who has a friends with benefits arrangement - they are not Ace, but the relationship is Aro - even if they are good friends who would like to remain good friends if the sex ends. Many people who are Ace are also Aro and vice versa, but some are one or the other.
Isn’t this just friends? What do they call their friends? Do they have to spell out this whole litany (heh) of acronyms? Seems kind of overly descriptive to me. Just trying to understand the need for all the categories…
Yeah, that’s a difference. Is it something they had to do legally? Did they get any pushback? Or was it just a matter of filling in the person’s name on a form? This is all a level more complicated than I’m used to.
At this point, with ours, we are still their next of kin. They are in the 21 year old living with their college partners stage. But yes, you can fill out forms. Should their relationship progress to the public commitment point, I’d imagine that will happen.
Just noting that of course there doubtless have been many marital relationships throughout history that were ace or aro in practice, due to the preferences of the spouses involved. They just didn’t discuss those aspects of their marriages with others. But there have always been married couples who didn’t engage in sexual or romantic behavior but nevertheless loved one another (as well as unfortunately many married couples who didn’t engage in sexual or romantic behavior and didn’t love one another).
IIRC “separate bedrooms” used to be a slightly coded term about a marriage without physical intimacy, although (a) it often had negative connotations of emotional alienation or antagonism, and (b) plenty of enthusiastically intimate married couples also occupy separate bedrooms for their actual sleeping, and are apparently being more “out” about it these days.
Er. I don’t think you meant that as a jab at Dangerosa’s family relationships, but surely you agree that married/partnered couples can become one another’s next of kin without thinking that their partnership is “better” than their birth families? Can’t couples form committed partnerships even without sex and/or romance, without it being any kind of a reflection on the birth families who love them?
I look at it as most parents do when their family expands through partnerships. I have more kids. And my husband and I are the parents they wanted to help them move in, and the parents they wanted around for a long visit. But I don’t expect my kids to live with me forever (or want them to), and I hope their relationships will be strong with someone likely to live longer than I am than it is with me and lives closer.
I look at it as most parents do when their family expands through partnerships. I have more kids. And my husband and I are the parents they wanted to help them move in, and the parents they wanted around for a long visit. But I don’t expect my kids to live with me forever (or want them to), and I hope their relationships will be strong with someone likely to live longer than I am than it is with me and lives closer.