Have You Ever Experienced Alterous Attraction? Well, I Have!

Since I was a child, I’ve never had a crush. Most of my friends have had a boy/girlfriend or a crush at least once. But for me? Zero. However, if you asked me whether I had any interest in this topic, it’d become complicated. I don’t want to involve in romantic relationship, but I love to experience the feeling of loving someone. Nonetheless, I still haven’t understood it. And instead of romantic affection, I discovered that I have “alterous attraction”.

What is “Alterous attraction”?

It is a type of attraction and desire for an emotional closeness with a person that exist in-between romantic and platonic feeling. An alterous “crush” is called a mesh. It’s relatively new word (created in 2015), but I don’t know how long it has occurred in people. Since it seems like there’s not a lot of people know about it, I decided to talk and to explain about it based on my own experience.

The awakening

I met a man. He doesn’t really have anything special and I think I shouldn’t talk about him too much, so you just know that he is a man and he is kind. We met, came to know each other, and became friends in a very normal situation - talking. Because I love asking and he somehow managed to answer almost every time (regardless correct or not) , we talked with each other a lot more than I expected. After a while, I began to have a weird feeling. The feeling itself made me exhilarated. When I first noticed the feeling, (even though I didn’t know what it was) I felt like I was flying whenever I walked. I just knew that I was happy whenever I had the chance to talk to him and that I wanted to talk with him more and more.

Is this the feeling of loving someone?

I asked myself. However, after asking myself countless time, I still couldn’t bring myself to say fully that I loved him. I asked other people how they feel when they fell in love, and evaluated my feeling based on those answers. But I still couldn’t say it! Yes! I was happy to chat with him, but I had no desire to be with him or to be near him every time. I also didn’t like the idea of calling him or texting to him on the phone. Moreover, I didn’t want to sit and look at him all the time, as shown in some romance dramas. Stalking? I hated that creepy stuff. Especially, I had no desire to date him at all. All I wanted was meeting each other and talking like nothing happened between us. But, I knew that how I felt for him was special. In short, instead of lovesickness, I was confused by not understanding my own feeling.

In the end (not really), I declared to myself that this level of attraction is the threshold. If I feel for anyone more than that, it means I fall in love with the person. But still, I was kind of not satisfied with this strange emotion, and often got distracted by the same old question.

The answer

One day, I discovered that there’re many terms for romantic identity, one of which is “quoiromantic” (similar to that is “platoniromantic”). It describes the feeling of not being able to distinguish platonic attraction from romantic attraction. When I read what a quoiromantic person may experience, I was like “That’s me! That’s me!” and started to identify myself as quoiromantic or platoniromantic. My complicated feeling was put to rest (for a while).

However, not for a long time after that, I found a video on YouTube titled “The kind of attraction NO ONE is talking about | Alterous Attraction”, created by Artemis Munoz. I thought “No… Not another term… Please don’t make me question my feeling or identity anymore!”

Nonetheless, I still clicked on the video. And my mind was blown by it! After thinking for a while, I realized that I had alterous attraction! I finally understood! Later, I watched another video titled “Mesh (Short film)”, by the same creator. As I watched it, I laughed “This is so relatable!”. I felt as if there was someone understanding my feeling.

But there was still another problem…

Am I still a quoiromantic individual now that I understand that what I feel is alterous attraction?

I think that only “quoiromantic” fits me best. Also, wasn’t “alterous attraction” formed by being unable to distinguish platonic and romantic attraction (at least in my case)? So, I still think of myself as quoiromantic while also having alterous attraction at the same time.

Why care so much about identifying or naming it?

Understanding what kind of attraction I have and what my romantic identity is lifts the burden from my brain a lot. My learn-based-on-fact brain always tries to find the answer and solution, but when facing a conceptual problem such as love or attraction, it becomes forever “still loading” mode and pushes me to find the truth. Furthermore, I realized that not only me who experience this funny feeling, and it feels good to know that!

The purpose of this article

I hope that you alloromantic (a person who experiences romantic feeling) and aromantic (a person who feel little to no romantic attraction) out there understand or at least get the image of how a quoiromantic is and how alterous attraction feels like. I also hope that this article or the videos I mentioned above are helpful for someone who still can’t figure out what their romantic identity or their feeling.

By the way, it was such a fun journey to learn more and more about yourself!