Because I’m Aromantic. Or Am I?
Aromantic: ‘A person who has no interest in or desire for romantic relationships.’
These days, there’s a definition for everything, for better or worse. And when I watched this young woman on Instagram debating about why she wanted love but also, didn’t want love, and whether this meant she was Aromantic, I immediately had an ‘aha!’ moment.
Maybe ‘Aromantic’ is me! Or is it? I’ve spent some time thinking about it and I’m still decidedly undecided.
I immediately thought the term defines my love/hate relationship with love and romance because I laugh in the face of it. Love I mean. I’ve always felt that ‘love’, like humans are obsessed with finding, is picturesque. An ideal that is beautiful from afar like a scenic landscape painting, but close up, when you’re right in the picture, is a mish mash of gruesome paint with no sense, rhyme or reason.
It has baffled me for as long as I can remember. Wondering how people can be so caught up with finding and being in love, and being buttered up with romance. Whether it works out or not makes no difference. The thought of being so emotionally dependent on someone you’re in love with is distasteful. It’s fine to be dependent to an extent, but to the extent where it will hurt you to depression if they disappoint you? No. Utterly distasteful.
This is not a stance that I remember particularly taking. One day, I just realized that ultimately, I felt that way.
I imagine that this is a characteristic of ‘Aromanticism’.
Another reason I feel that way is my total lack of awareness for romance in my relationship. Something that my partner picked up and decided very early in the relationship to not bother since it only gets three reactions from me - obliviousness, cringe, and laughing disbelieve. I don’t do these intentionally, it just happens.
When you think about romance, you think passion, big and small gestures that give you butterflies in your stomach, the feeling that you want to be with the person every day. I don’t think I’ve ever felt these…not really, and definitely not intensely. And I’m okay with not feeling it now or ever.
Because I’m aromantic.
But I still question this because the definition itself is so vague that it probably shouldn’t really have a definition - Aromantic people have no desire for romantic relationships; they don’t get “romantically attached”; “they don’t develop romantic attractions, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings”. Many other pivots abound.
Maybe in the end, we ultimately shouldn’t try to put a label on every mental and sexual state of being. It’s best to simply acknowledge that this is how you feel, or how you don’t (and won’t ever) feel, and just be comfortable in your skin and the space you occupy.
Maybe I’m aromantic. Or maybe I’ve just not met the person that’ll make me want to be attached on the hip. Maybe I never will. And I’m okay with that.