Scarleteen

So I am a very physically affectionate person, as are my friends, we (at least pre-COVID we did) spend a lot of our time together cuddling and almost always greet each other with hugs and "love you"s and so on and so forth. Lately, I've noticed that I've wanted to do things with them that are abnormal for people who are "just" friends. I've had impulses to kiss friends on the lips, and more recently I've kinda wanted to just sorta hold a friend's ass. Obviously the former is traditionally considered romantic and the latter sexual, but I want to do them in a platonic way, if that makes any sense. Obviously I need my friends' consent for these things, and I'm not going to even bring up the latter because while I know they won't misinterpret it I'm still worried that they will. The reason for wanting to do the former is partially wanting to show affection and partially because I'm curious about how I feel about it. I'm aro and haven't kissed anybody on the lips in a very long time and don't really know how I'd feel about it. The latter is almost entirely showing affection, with a little bit of haha human go squish for good measure. I guess the question I'm asking is is this healthy and how do I navigate these feelings?

We all show affection in different ways, and whilst you're right that we have stuck things like ass holding and lip kissing in the boxes labelled "romantic" and "sexual" in our culture there is no reason why they have to feel that way for everyone.

I also think that wanting additional intimacy and looking towards physical intimacy are normal reactions right now. So nothing you're describing sounds unhealthy to me. Navigating them could be tricky if you actually want to act on them since, as you point out, just because it doesn't feel romantic or sexual to you doesn't mean it doesn't feel romantic or sexual to your friends. For now, especially with kissing on the lips being a great way to transmit the virus, what if you just observe those feelings with an attitude of "huh, interesting" and don't pressure yourself to act on it in any particular way? If they stick around, maybe down the line you'll have some ideas of whether you want to do something with those impulses and we can talk about that too, but maybe there's no rush?