Hi everyone. I am so sorry for my extreme delay in posting this round up post! It’s December 10th/December 11th already (depending on your time zone) but at least it’s finally here. The Call for Submissions for December 2020 has been up for a bit now, and the theme is “Happily Ever After” and is being hosted by Aspec of Stardust. The deadline is the end of December, goal to post the round up of submissions on January 1st. (At least one of the participants below has already written a December submission as well!)
Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the November 2020 Carnival of Aros. The call for submissions was here. I’m fairly sure it was only six of us total who participated. This is quite out of order of when they were submitted but bear with me, and please make sure to read the full posts if you can! 
- I myself submitted a very late post on Being Commitment Driven. In it, I discussed a variety of types of commitments in my life including within interpersonal relationships, and my desire to become a parent and find a committed co-parenting partner.
2. Cinnamon (cinnamon_possum) wrote Commitment to Self. Here are a couple quotes to capture a lot of what the post was about:
It took even longer for me to understand that I could engage in relationships on my own terms, and that I’m more than capable of preventing marriage from happening to me.
and
My mind and heart do best when alone, and living in a society that often pathologizes and vilifies this way of being takes its toll.
3. arias_hollow also participated, with an untitled post, and here are a couple quotes:
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’.
and
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.
4. CharCharChar wrote Defining a Relationship for Fun, and explained the experience of “the DTR” (a slang term used to mean the Defining The Relationship conversation) within one relationship in their life.
I read a few articles on defining relationships in preparation and made a list of topics to consider:
-how we contact each other
-boundaries, anything that makes us uncomfortable to avoid
-what types of interactions we want to have and how frequently
-what we hope to get out of the relationship / where we see the relationship going
And be sure to check out the post for what happened!
5. graces-of-luck wrote a post on tumblr! Here’s a section from it:
So what truly distinguishes a close friend from a casual friend is the degree of commitment, in which a close friendship is characterized by being deeply committed to the ongoing continuation of the relationship and to each other. Commitment to a person certainly evokes a sense of security and comfort for me. The way I do commitment, though, does require that I maintain some freedom and lets the other person also maintain some freedom. The quote by Thich Nhat Hanh embodies this: “You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.”
6. Finally, aro-and-ace-memes-thoughts wrote Committed relationships don’t work for everyone. Here’s a section from this one:
So, seeing the person I liked the most calling another one their “best friend” was crushing to me, despite my friends liking me and me liking them. I had, and still have, a friendship version of amatonormative goals. Like best friends are a platonic version of soulmates, which isn’t always true.
It took me a lot to realize it’s quite unrealistic for me to have that kind of relationship with someone.
All of these posts were great submissions and I really appreciate everyone participating! If I missed a post that should have been included in this roundup please let me know.
