school me aromanticism, I want to understand it better
tell me stuff, link things, etc. I really really want to understand it better for a person I consider a friend. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable at all.
BET
Okay, Aromanticism crash course time lads lets go!
Aromantic - Feeling little to no romantic attraction. Much like asexuality it is a spectrum with many different identities under the Arospec umbrella.
Asexuality and Aromanticism are NOT THE SAME THING AND NOT REQUIRED FOR EACHOTHER.
You can be aro and not ace like myself (This is called being Alloaro or Aroallo)
You can be ace and not aro (This is called being alloace)
Aromanticism is NOT under the Asexual Umbrella. Aromantic and Asexual are under the ASPEC Umbrella which is a general term for the seperate ace and aro communities.
Sometimes however, they can collide (This is called being Aroace)
QPR’s or Queer/Quasai Platonic Relationships can be desired by an aromantic but never assume that all aro’s want to be in any form of relationship just because the options exist.
Not feeling romantic attraction does not make you heartless!
Feel free to add onto this yall, thats the bare basics up there but the aromantic community is extremely diverse and unique, so for the OP I suggest looking around through the aromantic tags as well as the alloaro tag!
There is a phase in our lives where everyone seems asexual and almost everyone seems aromantic. It wasn’t until puberty kicked in that platonic relationships seemed to take a backseat. My peers stopped wanting to play together and started wanting to ‘date’ each other. That was when I started to realise that there was something different about me. I didn’t seem to be experiencing the same urges as those I was around. I chose to go to an all girls school in the hopes that – in the absence of boys – everyone would stop caring about sex and dating. It actually had the opposite effect. There was a sense of deprivation in the air and the heightened desire to project their sexuality onto anything and everything.
Therefore, my lack of interest became even more obvious, and it became a not-so-fun game to work out the source of what should be troubling me, but hadn’t been until that point. Having a sexual orientation isn’t just natural, it’s essential. It’s part of being a fully-functional human being. And to be romantically love and be loved by another is the ultimate goal. It’s part of being normal, which made me both abnormal and puzzling. When your asexual, people think there’s something wrong with your body. When you’re aromantic, they think there’s something wrong with your soul. Even for a teenage girl who internalised all of Disney Channel’s “be yourself” messages, it’s never nice to have people publicly debate your supposed physical and psychological flaws.
My nickname in school was “hollow and emotionless.” I was a joker with a decent amount of friends, but I was lacking something crucial, the kind of love that really mattered and the kind of lust that made life exciting…so I was practically Lord Voldemort with braids. I sat through the regular DIY sexuality tests, having my peers show me graphic sexual imagery, have very sexual conversations in my presence, and ask me inappropriately intimate questions to gauge how far gone I truly was. These tests lead to the development of theories, most centred around me having some kind of mental problem. After a while, you start to wonder if everyone knows something you don’t.
When they said that I must have been molested as a child and “broken” by the trauma, I wondered if I had somehow forgotten about sexual abuse that actually hadn’t happened. I looked at some of my own relatives with suspicion, the same people who would later ask me if I didn’t experience sexual attraction because I was a pedophile. It was suggested that I was “suffering” from my “issues” because I was socially anxious and insecure. The suggestion that my ‘issue’ was pathological stayed with me for a long time, but not as much as the widely accepted theory that I was mentally slow. Unfortunately, that one stuck. I was referred to as “stupid” and I started to believe that was the case. It would impact my experience in education for the next eight years, long after I realised that there was a word for what I was.
Asexual.
I first heard the word during one of the near-daily sexuality tests that I was subjected to. I was asked if I was gay, to which I said that I wasn’t interested in anybody like that – men or women. At fifteen, I was asked, “Maybe you’re asexual or something?” but it wasn’t quite a lightbulb moment. How could it be when I had never heard the word outside of biology class? After an evening of Google searching, I realised that there were many people with my exact same experience, complete strangers whose stories sounded so strangely similar to mine. I also stumbled across the word ‘aromantic,’ but at the time, I didn’t understand the need for it. “Wouldn’t all asexual people be aromantic? A romantic relationship without sex is just friendship with rules,” I thought.
Either way, my discoveries showed me that I wasn’t alone, but that only half helpful. I now had an identity that no one had heard of or understood. Most didn’t believe that being asexual or aromantic was a real thing, and I doubted it to. I had been taught to after years of armchair pathologisation. If asexuality was real, why did no one tell you that being sexually attracted to nobody was an option? What if it was just an internet identity made up to comfort people with all of the issues that had been attributed to me? I didn’t have to go far down the rabbit hole to realise that asexuality, like many non-heteronormative identities, had been medicalised. What I had experienced as just the tip of the iceberg. As someone who hadn’t been prescribed drugs I didn’t need or subjected to unnecessary hormone tests, I was one of the lucky ones.
My activism would be my gateway to the community. Despite being the ugly friend at school, I ended up becoming a model while in university. I decided to use the platform I had gained through my career to raise awareness for asexuality and aromanticism. It gave me the opportunity to encounter a range of asexual and aromantic offline, it was then that I learned the significance of having an aromantic identity. There are many asexual people who still feel romantic attraction, as well as aromantic people who still feel sexual attraction. They have their own range of experiences, their own culture, their own flag, and like the asexual community, I was relieved to see that they are just normal people. These intersecting communities are not stereotypes. They weren’t just thirteen year old, pink haired kids making up identities on Tumblr to feel special. They were parents, lawyers, academics, husbands, girlfriends, artists, black, white, young, old, with differing feelings towards the many complex elements of sexuality and intimacy. Most importantly, they were happy.
I am proud to be part of both, and I know that while being asexual and aromantic, I am a complete person and I can live a perfectly fulfilling life. Since meeting members of my communities, I’ve become more open about my identities in real life, and a reaction I’m often met with is sympathy. “You must feel like you’re missing out,” “I can’t imagine being like that,” “It must be hard for your family,” “Do you worry no one will want you?” “How do you handle being so lonely?” “You’re so brave and strong,” “What will you do with your life now?” Even in 2021, a woman who isn’t romantically loved or sexually desired by their “special someone” is perceived as being afflicted with some kind of life-limiting condition.
Asexuality doesn’t make undesirable or unable to desire others. It is a unique experience of sexuality, not a deprivation from it. Even if it was, there is so much more to life than what turns us on and what we do about it. Romantic love is just one form of love, neither superior nor inferior to any other. Being aromantic doesn’t mean that you can’t love or be loved, it does not mean you are void of other emotions or capabilities. I am not lonely with my friends, family, co-workers and supporters. I feel confident not when someone wants to date me but when I meet my goals and form worthwhile connections with others. My success isn’t determined by whether someone will want to marry me someday. What we want out of life is our decision alone, our sources of happiness should not be defined by our ever-changing, culturally relative social standards. The love of a romantic partner won’t complete me because I was born complete. Feeling sexual attraction to others won’t liberate me because my liberation is not dependent on other people.
Valentine’s Day is on the horizon. It’s an occasion that amps up the focus on (and the pressure to achieve) a very specific type of love and sexual expression, one that is actually alienating for people inside and outside of the asexual community. During a pandemic where many relationships have been strained, tested, formed or distanced, it’s important to keep the diversity of romantic and sexual feelings in mind. Many expect me to feel annoyed or lonely during this time of year, but I actually feel empowered and excited by the way sex, romance and love are discussed more deeply around this time. These conversations are constantly expanding to become more inclusive for everyone, and that’s what we need to see all year round.
An important tenet of aro activism is–or should be–dismantling the idea that any type of relationship or attraction (romantic, platonic, queerplatonic, sexual, etc.) is inherently deeper, more meaningful, or more valuable than any other. The axis on which someone’s feelings or interpersonal relationships operate should not determine their value. All of these things are self-definable, and the depth and meaningfulness of anyone’s individual experiences ought to be determined by that individual, not by classifications constructed by others.
Another fun fact: You’re not doing aromanticism wrong if you don’t want a qpp.
Yet one more fun fact: Some aros are very tired of well meaning alloros substituting the word ‘qpp’ or 'qpr’ in their amatonormative assumptions about you after they hear you’re aro. Some of us are very tired of alloros treating QPRs as this gold standard Otherwise Acceptable Replacement For Romance: Romance Lite™ which is unbelievably unfortunate considering why the term even exists.
Coming from your aro buddy here. It’s going to be okay if you discovered that you are aromantic. It will be okay. Even if you’re 100% sure that you are. I know that not all of you are feeling comforted by realizing you’re aro- and why wouldn’t some of us be unhappy? Society puts so much pressure on youth to seek out love and emphasizes so much that romantic love is what makes us human, that its easy to forget that its possible to be happy without it. Its easy to slip into the mindset that you are either never going to be happy, or that you are not human at all.
Youcanbe happy without it. Its possible to live a meaningful life without a romantic partner. And you don’t need a romantic partner to know that you are not alone.
Asexual Aros Allosexual Aros Trans Aros Nonbinary Aros Lesbian Aros Gay Aros Bisexual Aros Pansexual Aros Autistic Aros Disabled Aros Aros of Color Closeted Aros Out and Proud Aros Romance-Repulsed Aros Romance-Indifferent Aros Romance-Favorable Aros Younger Aros Older Aros Christian Aros Muslim Aros Jewish Aros Aros of All Faiths Aros across the Ace-Spectrum Aros Across the Aro-Spectrum
I run a prominent group blog, The Asexual Agenda, and one of our goals is to promote insightful commentary. Although we are an ace blog, we regularly promote and discuss content from the aro community as well–including allo aro stuff. If you have some commentary, and would like people to see it and talk about it, I’m here for you, so let me know.
This is an especially great opportunity if for some reason you want the attention of people in the ace community. For example, we recently hosted a collection of aro complaints about ace communities.
If this offer interests you, then I have another post with further details and caveats. The most important detail is that I can promote you in two ways: link to your content, or host it. Message me and we can discuss our approach.
And although I’m emphasizing that this offer is open to aros, naturally it is open to aces as well.
[Image Description: A photo of a black calligraphy pen laying on a folded aromantic flag. Overlaid on the picture are the words “AUREA- Call for Submissions - May Carnival of Aros”]
Just found out that green is associated with aros because it’s the opposite of red which is considered the “romance color” :0 that’s so cool, did y’all know that?
Lmaooo my dad just told me my aromanticism is a phase and i just haven’t met the right person AND that I’m too young to know aromantic bingo is filling up
