Am I even a dev? A ramble about devness and asexuality

[Deleted]

I’m apologising in advance for writing this quickly on my phone and only having glanced through the responses. I just wanted to say that we are all guilty of trying to fit in to certain spaces throughout our lives regardless of whether we actually fit, there is no ‘normal’ and no ‘right’ way of how to feel. We owe it to ourselves to live OUR best way, to make peace with ourselves and to move forward at a pace that suits ourselves. Try not to overthink labels or society norms, we are individuals in every way and that’s something we should all celebrate x

[LaMara]

Thanks devogirl, I will definitely check the UK site!

[mona]

devogirl, I absolutely agree! It took me a while to feel as a sexual being again ...

[missparkle]

LaMara, I don't have much to say, I just wanted to let you know that I've read your post, I feel for you and I'm sorry for whatever you are going through.

As for being dev... We've discussed it here, over and over again, it's not (only) sexual, it's not (only) romantic, it is so fluid and layered that I'd say any particular interest or drive toward pwds (in fantasy or IRL) is being dev. So, don't you worry, you are absolutely dev enough, as much as any other of us!

[elbs]

Oct 13, 2020 12:30:32 GMT -5 ContingentlyComposite said:

Wow, that guy is an asshole!

I'm curious if you or newjess have ever read anything about attachment theory (re. adults)? The way you describe your feelings and experiences sounds a lot like how people I know who identify as having an avoidant attachment style describe theirs.

I'm aroace too, and definitely not avoidantly attached. On most quizzes I typically score as a mix of secure and anxious attachment. Based on my research into attachment theory, my best guess is that I've got a disorganized attachment style with secondary secure attachment, which isn't surprising given my trauma history.

However, if I answer the quiz specifically about my feelings about romantic relationships, not any other kind of relationship, then I tend to get called avoidantly attached. But the thing about your attachment style is that it's not specific to a certain type of relationship. Attachment style involves consistent patterns in how you relate to your parents, your close friends, your romantic partners, your children, etc. Meanwhile, being aromantic only makes you indifferent to romantic relationships - it doesn't affect how you relate to family and close friends.

In addition, there's a stereotype that avoidantly attached people just aren't loving and don't want close relationships, but that's not how it works. When things are going well and you're feeling emotionally stable, your attachment style actually doesn't have much, if any, effect on your interactions with loved ones. But when your attachment system is activated by distress or separation, or you're reacting to their attachment system getting activated, that's when attachment style becomes relevant. So an avoidantly attached person in a romantic relationship is likely to enjoy romantic activities as much as anyone else when they and their SO are both feeling safe. But when they get upset by something, or when their SO is upset by something, their first instinct will be to pull away and seek space. Even though they want to be in the relationship, when someone's attachment system is activated, they feel like the closeness is suffocating and they need to escape. (Meanwhile, anxiously attached people want to simultaneously cling and fight in those moments, while securely attached people want to get/give comfort and talk about their feelings, and disorganized attachment people show a mix of multiple styles with a dash of dissociative symptoms.)

In contrast, being aromantic in a romantic relationship affects interaction with your SO even when no one's attachment system is activated. For people like me, who are more indifferent to romance, it's like your SO wants all sort of things you don't care about from the relationship, and probably seems weirdly obsessed about you. For other aromantic people, romantic gestures actually repulse them. This results in the confusing feeling that even though the relationship should be doing great, something's off. At best, it's a mismatched relationship where one person is in love and the other sees them as a best friend, at worst, the aromantic person might be trying to force themselves to be "normal" and causing themselves misery in the process.

[elbs]

Oct 13, 2020 8:55:30 GMT -5 LaMara said:

I've been struggling for a while with my sexual orientation and where being a dev fits in it, or if it fits at all.
In the last few years I figured out I'm almost certainly asexual and also likely aromantic (lack of romantic attraction).
My relationships always felt forced, like something that I "had" to do because everybody does it and isn't that the only way to be happy?
I even dated a PWD once and it didn't work out, I was still afraid and averse to sex and the romantic feelings evaporated within weeks.
I know I'm asexual towards most people (as in, I feel no sexual attraction and I cannot even imagine myself being intimate) but I do have a libido and I do fantasize about stuff, mostly very abstract stuff that I wouldn't be interested in in real life. According to other asexuals and to the official definition, I still "qualify" because being ace doesn't mean not having a libido, just not really wanting to have partnered sex.
But then, am I actually a dev? I do feel some kind of strong attraction to PWDs, and although it's 99% non sexual, there is a sexual element in it, but... I don't think I would ever want to actually have a relationship with a PWD. I have spent hours and hours imagining an idealized relationship, but knowing that it would never happen irl. I just wouldn't enjoy it.
I feel like I'm in a limbo where I have feelings that closely resemble those of a dev but at the same time I will never truly be a dev if I'm unwilling to ever have a relationship with a PWD, and not because of reasons other devs bring up sometimes, like being already in a relationship with an AB person, not finding The One, not wanting to be a carer etc... 
Am I a dev if I only like imagining a relationship with a PWD? 
I was recently chatting (out of PD) with a PWD that kind of accused me of "leading people on" on this board if I say I'm a dev but not willing to do anything tangible about it, and it made me feel like s**t. Every time I receive the mildest amount of flirtation from a PWD (or any man, in general, actually), I freeze up and want to run away and disappear, because actual relationships terrify me and any hint of sexy talk makes me want to move to Mars.
PD made me feel better about myself when I discovered it many years ago, but now I feel like a fraud, like I'm not "dev enough".
I'm sorry for the long ramble but I've been particularly depressed and preoccupied with this stuff lately.
I even brought it up in the past if I remember well and you folks were really nice about it. Idk. I'm just paranoid and in a really low place.

Have you heard of the term autochorissexual? It's a subtype of asexuality where the person enjoys sexual fantasies only if they don't imagine themselves actually being in those situations. Like, enjoying the abstract concept of sex, but not wanting to think about you actually having sex.

I'm another aroace dev, by the way. It took me several years to figure out how it works for me. Basically, unless one of my kinks (as well as being a devotee I'm also a mind control fetishist, sadist, and somewhat of a xenophile and villain fetishist) is involved, I feel absolutely no attraction. I can appreciate someone aesthetically, and I can feel a bond of friendship or admiration, but nothing sexual or romantic.

But while I'm completely aromantic, I'm not completely asexual. If I see or imagine someone in a situation that hits one of my kinks, I get turned on. If I see the same person in kink situations enough, I start to feel attracted to them, even when they're not in that situation.

For example, I've taken psych quizzes that involve rating the faces of strangers based on sexual attractiveness, and basically felt 0 attraction to any of them. Meanwhile, when I came across a Twitter thread with a list of pictures of sexy supervillains (both men and women), each character I recognized in the list, I also felt attracted to.

In terms of the devotee element, just seeing someone in a wheelchair doesn't really do much for me because it's basically just a fancy seat in my eyes, but watching people move atypically (eg having spasms or muscle twitches, walking with an atypical gait, having limbs remain limp in situations where I'd expect them to tense up, etc) is one of the situational triggers that sets off arousal for me. And so many physically disabled people can eventually elicit attraction from me if I spend enough time with them. My first close wheelchair-using friend is also probably my only major IRL crush, because her CP mannerisms, her slurred voice, her Mom helping her transfer, her spasms and the way she swims all set off my kinks enough to build up an ongoing attraction to her. (I've still been too much of a coward to tell her any of this, btw, even though I've mentioned devotees as a concept and she's not bothered by the idea. But then again, she's also straight and vanilla so is there even a point in me telling her how I feel? Ugh, having crushes on incompatible people sucks.)

As for that asshole who claimed you're leading people on, I wonder if he's realized that there's plenty of partnered, monogamous devs on this forum, too. Paradevo isn't a dating site, it's a community. And even dating sites have plenty of people who aren't available to everyone on the site - eg having both straight and LGBT people, having people looking for friends vs fuckbuddies vs lifelong love, vanilla people as well as people with a wide variety of different kinks that are essential for their enjoyment of a relationship, people of varying ages who have preferences for people close in age to them, people across the world who aren't interested in LDRs, and so forth. You'd have to be seriously entitled to think someone having a profile on a site automatically makes them sexually available to you personally.