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Recently, I attended a class at Chicago Fetish Weekend about aromanticism. Honestly, it was my first time hearing about a lot of these obscure titles and categories. I'd never actually heard of other people having an aversion to romantic feelings. Or having interest plummet once it's reciprocated, etc.
I've long had a weird relationship with romantic feelings. They feel more like anxiety to me than joy. It was like constantly having a stomach ache, not butterflies.
I've found myself single for most of my life, and I always chalked it up to some kind of psychological trauma from being raised by far-right evangelicals. So, the question is this: Can you share any knowledge or validity findings about aromanticism? And specifically, any advice on how to communicate this to sexual partners I meet?
I don't know how to frame it so that it doesn't just sound like unresolved trauma or a mental illness. I feel like most people see aversion to romance as nearly psychotic behavior.
Do you have any recommendations on how to communicate this so I don't keep going through the routine of letting people down who get too emotionally invested when I'm unable to reciprocate?
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Hey friend,
We are living in an era of a lot of new words! Not all of them are useful.
"Aromantic," as you've discovered, means having little to no romantic attraction at all.
Elsewhere on the internet, people have come up with terms like "lithromantic," from the Greek lithos (stone) coined by a Tumblr user around 2014 who identified as having all the sexual cravings of a rock (none).
"Akoiromantic" followed after some online objected that "stone" already carries meaning in lesbian culture, as in the case of "stone butch," a butch lesbian who doesn't let herself be touched in sex, often taking pleasure in her partner's pleasure rather than receiving any touch herself; this term was popularized by Leslie Feinberg's 1993 novel Stone Butch Blues but one that predates the book by decades.
"Akoiromantic" itself traces to the Greek koine, meaning “common” or “shared,” with an "a-" prefix meaning not, so: "not shared.” It was proposed in 2014 by a popular Tumblr user, and even people who use the word regularly admit online they can't fully agree on or trace its exact derivation, which tells you something about how solid this vocabulary actually is.
All this is internet speak. The past few decades have seen a huge increase in language, largely online, about how we can understand and talk about ourselves and how we relate to others. While the attempt, the effort to name real experiences and feelings is deeply human, not all the words we come up with help. "Aromantic" itself was only coined in 2005 by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (asexuality.org).
I think a lot of people feel anxious in love. I feel like relationships are anxiety-inducing things, at least for many, many people. While I have no desire to discredit anything you're feeling, I wonder what use can be made of using this label in conversations with people. Telling a fuck buddy something like, "Hey, I'm aromantic, so let's just keep this casual," is likely to trigger questions and interrogation, not clarity. Just don't date. Don't start romantic things, and when others catch feelings, learn the wise, kind art of letting people down gently. Have lines at the ready, like: "Hey, I understand this might feel romantic. I have to be honest, I'm not there with you, and I want to express that without hurting you. I hope we can keep it casual, if that’s OK."
Gentle, kind, clear boundaries and emotionally transparent communication: that's it. That's how we solve most issues with others.
Babe, I'm sure you have some trauma from being raised in the same kind of environment and family I come from. I sure do. I know so many guys who are highly avoidant in their adult relationships, who all but bristle against intimacy, who all happen to come from a similar place: parents who rejected us, childhood friends who judged and eventually abandoned us. Do I think all these things are related? Absolutely. But now we're adults, so the job falls on us to look critically at how we respond to others, and I think that can go two ways.
On the one hand, we can accept that our nature is baked-in and say we’re aromantic. That might make the matter feel settled, and I think that's a perfectly acceptable approach.
On the other hand, we can try to heal some of that trauma and, if we deem it a worthy enterprise, try and make improvements.
"Deem it a worthy enterprise" is important. I know many gay men who, for various reasons, just don't want a relationship. They're happy on their own. For them, addressing the things holding them back from long-term love and intimacy is not a worthy enterprise. They're happy. And that's OK! The world holds all types of people and every kind of person deserves to have their own happiness in it.
But the fact is, life gets lonely.
I would have called myself aromantic at one point. Intimacy creates anxiety in me, not thrill. I get that same stomach ache, not butterflies. But I also get lonely, and life is hard to do fully on one's own, so at some point, I had to accept an inalienable truth: Life is, for better and worse, about others. Life is relationships. The fact that I struggle with them, and that I have struggled with them all my life, doesn't make that any less true.
I did some self work, some therapy, some meditation, and somewhere in all that, it clicked that a relationship isn't only about what I feel. It's also about what the other person feels and needs. That's not just true in romance: My work relationships are often about just being what my coworkers need. My friendships are sometimes about just being what my friends need. Now, I have a boyfriend, and he needs a bit more contact than I do, a bit more checking in. Some days his desire for closeness feels like an intrusion on my privacy; the warm, romantic feelings he has for me so easily do not come so naturally on those days. But it doesn't matter: I still have to send that little daily text. I have to show up. Because his heart is on the line. It's work, it's hard sometimes, but the cost of the alternative, not having him, not doing this, is loneliness.
Sometimes I like periods of life lived alone. I am sure I will have such periods again. My default nature, which sounds like it's the same as yours, guarantees that I will have stretches of life ahead that are solitary, single, quite enjoyable. My solo chapters are always very growth-heavy, very rich. I know I'll go back to that default state. But I don't want to stay there forever, and even when I'm single, I still have to navigate the myriad other relationships that compose a life, the daily people I have to interact with, so the lessons, the self-work, hold true for these too: It's not just about you. It's not just about me. It's about them.
Let's be clear: Casual sexual connections, even brief ones, are still relationships. Every person you know or interact with regularly is someone you have a relationship with. So it behooves you to get better at them. Because that is the work of life. We live with others.
You're never required to date or have romantic relationships. But I think defining yourself as "aromantic" and calling it done, and not investigating why you respond to closeness this way, and how you might respond to it differently, will not make life among other people any easier. But again, only do that work if it feels worthy of your time, because it takes time. It takes work. It might even take therapy.
If you’re happy where you are now, put that work off; it’s not the right time. Let people down easy by just telling them the truth: They’ll be grateful for it, and you might get a good, steady fuck buddy in the process.
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