I’m quite young, but personally—I spent most of my childhood thinking a crush was just “friendship I’m embarrassed to want to continue,” so I avoided befriending girls I had “crushes” on just because I thought me doing so would be creepy or clingy. Later on, in high school, I didn’t like that I hardly had friends who weren’t guys, so I was happy to befriend someone who wasn’t, who I’ll call Z, even though being around them made me generally anxious.
When I found out about myself being aro (and ace), it lead to me gaining a furthered interest in LGBTQ politics and being less ashamed in trying to advocate for myself in platonic relationships.
Z also figured out that they were aroace, and we quickly and mostly-accidentally entered an intimate platonic relationship. Which… was a big mistake! I was under the impression that our aroace compatibility made us immune to having a bad relationship, but I ended up really liking their touch and acceptance, and not really liking being around them otherwise. Z wasn’t a bad person, so I didn’t really have a reason to be anxious around them, so I thought it might just go away if I tried hard enough. It didn’t. Just a pretty big personality conflict. Cue several months of feeling bad whenever we did anything non-cuddling, and feeling guilty that I felt bad during those times—which ended up being a lot, because Z stopped enjoying cuddling. I’m grateful to them, though, for being willing to talk to me about it, even if it took us a while to figure out what was wrong.
Since then, I’ve found other cuddle buddies that I feel much more secure around. And it’s still weird and surreal to see people in my friend groups having romantic desires, and dating people. Every time it happens I want to quiz them and be like “are you sure you’re not secretly aromantic and you just haven’t realized??” :P
It’s also probably why I like Lemon Demon and Tally Hall and Will Wood instead of, like, normal music that normal people listen to.
Relationships? Which relationships?
I'm honestly half joking. The one relationship I ever entered as a teenager was because I was drowning in hetero- and amatonormativity and didn't know any better. I never hugged her, I never kissed her, and I especially never did any naughty things with her. It was an attempt from my mother to encourage me to feel love as an otherwise friend-less neurodivergent child. you know, the kind of "why don't you write a love letter to her, if you enjoy being around her?" encouragement. It was only platonic, but I didn't know better. I'm sure my mother meant well, but in hindsight it is disgusting how much it actually was amatonormative coercion.
Other than that, as an aroace, I never entered a romantic or sexual relationship.
I did find some amazing online friends for life, though. We've been meeting for a full week once a year, for the last decade, and always have a blast. Funnily enough, at least 4 people in the friend group turned out to be queer... :D
And friendships is where I excel at, I'd say. I'd consider myself a very loyal friend.
What does hurt a bit is the obvious priority shift when people start putting their long term relationship to the next level, which usually massively decreases the time and effort they put into their friend groups. The fact that they suddenly have something better to do than do stuff with friends, or only rarely show up, because their significant other(s) are more important does feel more and more isolating over time.