Carnival of Aros - Commitment

[arias_hollow]

This month's Carnival of Aros is on the theme of Commitment, which I'm pretty excited to see all the different responses for since it's certainly a topic I've seen many different takes on within the community. There's a lot of different areas in one's life where commitment can come in to play, so for myself, I'll be starting with the areas that are most straightforward to me: academics and creative interests. Whenever I'm enrolled in school, it always becomes my most important commitment. Part of this admittedly is because I'm a perfectionist who becomes distressed at the slightest failure and this trait becomes far more prominent in class, but its also because I enjoy school and find it incredibly important to me personally. It's one area that I think about and plan for most, and if I had the resources to do so I'd likely never stop going to school/taking classes. Creative interests are the only things that rival education for me in terms of importance. I definitely consider myself committed to creativity and story telling in general, and I see it as both a hobby and my ideal career. Of course, staying committed to specific creative projects is much harder for me - if something isn't an external obligation or a hyperfixation, it's extremely difficult to focus on/be invested in for extended periods of time. That has been a major obstacle for me, as I do greatly want to be able to finish things, but so far all I've managed to do is make sure I work on something creative most days.

Does my aromanticism have anything to do with any of this? Possibly, in so far as I consider my aromanticism to be influential on my general philosophy/world view. But more directly, of course, my aromanticism relates to commitment in interpersonal relationships - something far less straightforward to me, personally. I would say I do look for some level of commitment in my friendships, even if that's only 'commitment to behaving in a friendly manner around each other and offering assistance when necessary'. I'm very poor at social consistency myself, so I usually don't expect anyone to spend x amount of time with me to be a friend (although a certain amount of time is definitely needed before I usually feel especially close to someone). I generally have very little idea how committed people do or don't feel towards me, so I typically just take actions/behaviors at face value, and don't take it too personally if people don't contact me in a while.

When it comes to the idea of 'partnerships', that level of commitment has always seemed like A Bit Much to me. Romantic relationships seem rather unappealing and stifling, and I can't relate at all to how people talk about queerplatonic relationships now a days either. That said, the way the concept of a qpr was originally introduced to me - an entirely malleable platonic partnership - did sound quite appealing at the time. To have someone who functionally was a Best Friend in most ways but more committed to living with me/less likely to ditch me for a romantic partner would be pretty neat. It's not something I'm actively seeking out, but the idea is a lot nicer than any other form of partnership.

(Family commitments are the most straightforward to me, the only time things get at all complicated it with extended relatives. And 'genetic family' as a concept isn't really important to me, even if most of my family is related by blood, as you can be genetically related to someone who doesn't earn the familial relationship or eventually find people who aren't related that do)

So as a whole, I do think my aromanticism, but more specifically my romance repulsion, does influence my relationship with commitment to some degree. And while I may not look for as intense of commitments as others, the commitments I do make I take very seriously. (Some of this could also be a neurodivergence thing but I'm not as clear on that). Thanks to this month's host and the carnival itself for offering these opportunities to examine different facets of aromanticism!