(aromantic Anon) I Actually Can Relate To The "bestie Who Stops Answering Your Calls As Much When They

(aromantic anon) i actually can relate to the "bestie who stops answering your calls as much when they have a boyfriend" too! which is also one of the reasons it took a while for me to start id'ing as aro. the difference for me is that it isnt a boyfriend/partner (although, i thought it was at first), i just really like making new friends, and often getting a new friend (or just, randomly with old friends) i get a sort of mini "honey moon phase", usually for abt a month-ish, where i get a little obsessed w that one friend and accidentally put my other friendships to the side. it got a lot easier to manage once i realized that it passes, and that it didnt mean i had to date the person, bcz if i did they almost certainly would've been disappointed when they become someone who i end up not actually wanting to spend any more time with than i do with my other friends. someone else described it as "having a person as a special interest", which i also relate to! i dont tend to call most of my interest special interests just bcz very few of them tend to last years, its just short bursts of obsessions. but the exact same thing happens when i get a new interest, or have random bouts of intensity with an older interest that usually also last abt a month where i just completely forget to socialize w anyone for a while bcz im too busy being obsessed with something. the new friend/new interest also often coincide, as ill get into a new interest or get re-into an old interest, and meet someone also into that and dont want to talk to anyone else or about anything else for that month, before i inevitably and often really suddenly move onto to something/someone else. feelings of infatuation/love and even arousal are very often built into how i feel about the person and the interest during this time, which is why it was pretty easy for me to mistake for romance bcz it took a while for me to realize that it would level out into regular friendship pretty much every single time, and i would suddenly feel upset and suffocated abt being in that position where this person wanted to continue spending the same amnt of time with me that we were spending before.

this is all super interesting! And it tracks with the thesis many ppl have that "favorite persons" in BPD/Autism/etc are really special interests applied to individuals. I think it's also an attachment-regulation thing, and a way of managing close relationships when those things are difficult for us, but like, yeah! it's neat!