A 3 minute read…
This week is Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week. But what does it mean to be aromantic? We asked some members of our community to share some of their personal experiences with their aromantic identity. Please read their stories below:
I have always believed that I wanted to date, and to have a boyfriend. I do like watching romance movies, and reading romance novels, and shipping all kinds of fictional characters, and therefore it was natural that I wanted that stuff to happen to me... or was it? Apparently it is not, for me and for some people. We're here and we're called aromantic people. I mean, not all aro folks are like this, there is a whole spectrum of us, but I'm here to talk about my experience.
To be fair I did have some warning signs. When I was young and I was questioned about my "celebrity crush" my head always went blank. I didn't have a crush. I could at most blurt out the name of some celebrity that at the time I considered physically cute.
Crushes in general were never my thing. I only had two or three in my 23-year-old life, and I'm not fully sure myself what kind of crushes those were.
Anyways, about a year ago I tried having a relationship with a guy who actually had a crush on me.
I spent days figuring out if I also had a crush on him. He had very quickly become my best friend and I loved spending time with him. I wasn't sure if that was enough, but it was the closest thing to a romantic crush that I ever had. After days I decided that that was enough for me to like him. Only later I realized that it wasn't that kind of crush and that I couldn't reciprocate his feelings.
Let me give you some advice. If you have to decide whether you have a romantic crush on someone, then you very probably don't.
In the relationship I really loved the intimacy, and I loved the sex, but I didn't love the romance. Most romantic things I did was just me doing what I thought I should do, nothing was ever really genuine. To be fair, I was so biased to how to behave in romantic situations and blinded by the novelty of all of that , that I never stopped to wonder what I actually wanted, or rather, not wanted.
To conclude, labeling myself as aro was a messy process, somewhat reassuring, but somewhat groundbreaking. I was learning not to be the person that I assumed I was. I now feel a more complicated person, and I am definitely still adjusting to it.
- F.
I have always found romance to be ew and preferred friends over anything. It’s frustrating when people don't believe that I don't like anyone. There is always a fear in the back of my mind of my friends leaving because they get into a relationship, which happens a lot. For me, my friends are the most important because they feel like a second family that doesn't rely on some weird romantic attraction to function. People always think that I'm gonna have a partner one day but it hasn't happened yet. For some reason, people even came to me for relationship advice and I could help them even though I wasn't in one myself. As an aro person you realize how much romance is around you in the allo would. It's everywhere you go: in every store, in every TV show, everywhere. You can't escape it. In short, you're expected to be allo. If you're not, you’re seen as someone who just hasn’t found the right person yet.
- Sunny
In a world that treats romance as the default, where growing up with Disney movies, in which all the princesses find their prince charming, is part of most people's childhood, aromanticism is out of consideration and discussion. With knowledge of the situation, it slowly reveals itself as a normal thing to be or identify as!
The Aromantic spectrum is so rich that it doesn't make sense that it hasn't been recognized properly as part of human diversity, since after all, diversity is engraved in our species.
My experiences growing up as an Aro-spec person are quite wild when thought about in retrospective, just a sneak peek: This identity of mine is also deeply connected to my Asexuality spectrum identity, and both have had quite the impact, such as not recognizing who's ever had feelings for me, not being interested in anyone in any way for a long time, all the misunderstandings on my side within human relationships, the time it takes for oneself to take everything in and accept oneself without blaming it on being broken...
You're playing with a deck that counters that of mother nature, as in, these basic attractions come from evolutionary strategies that ensure our survival as species, although in this day and age, is it really necessary anymore? Can't we, as an advanced society, put our survival needs on a side and focus on what matters to us, and on how rich and valuable each of our different human experiences are?
- Curro