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.
I think what I find most frustrating about it, is that I'm often on the exact same page in terms of what is desired as the person who decides not to date me because they are scared away by the aro label. I very much enjoy all the kinds of intimacy that are available when people open themselves up to a partnership with someone, I just don't experience a unique feeling that I define separately from each of these kinds of intimacy. For example, I deeply desire physical intimacy whether the context is with someone where sex is on the table or not. That desire for physical intimacy varies from person to person based on a variety of attributes but none of the attributes are an innate feeling that I have but cannot name. I also love getting deeply emotionally intimate with people, but many people are unwilling to explore that kind of intimacy if it's not a sexual/partnered relationship. I do not draw a distinction between a deep emotional intimacy with a friend, a family member, or someone with which I'm in a sexual or partnered relationship. Even describing all this I struggle for the right words sometimes, because people usually don't call it "partnered relationship", they call it a romantic one 🤪