Am I aromantic or did life just put my mind to more important things than romantic love ?

[Guest Themathlover]

Hello everyaro (and others) !

I'm writing this today a bit lost among the infinite labels falling under the aromantic spectrum, which is something I'm completely new to. It's been a few days that I'm spending most of my time watching informative videos about it, and, on the one hand, I have to admit that they helped me a lot. I came across terms describing things I had struggled with in silence for a long time, assuming I was strange and had to behave "like everyone", including paper and mache or greyromantic for example. This made me realize I was not alone and nothing was wrong with me, but, on the other hand, so many different groups belonging to this spectrum exist that I don't know yet where to position myself.

Currently, the term which relates to me the most is greyromantic, however, certain doubts remain. I chose to identify with this category as it's in the "grey zone", and includes people who are not sure of their romantic orientation. In addition to this, it can mean little romantic attraction and/or under certain circumstances, which could be my case. Actually, when I look for souvenirs of romance in my young memories (I'm a 15 yo cis girl), I can find what seems to be, but is not for sure. To be clearer, I had some innocent "relationships" with boys (I'm also heterosexual) when I was just a kid, and used to call them my "lovers" or my "boyfriends", but I was so young and probably under the influence of our social and societal normative systems that I can't establish whether or not it was truly romantic love or a funny naive experience. Moreover, as now a teenager, I've not had any romantic attraction and relationships since I hit puberty, around 10 ½ yo with my first periods, and I can tell it for sure. With all that, I could be tempted to say "Wait, I'm definitely aromantic ! I've been manipulated and conditioned to assume that romance had to be part of my life or it wouldn't be a happy one, but none of this is true, because it's my life after all ! I must break away from this amatonormativity and go my own way !". I could rebel myself, but I'm aware that I'm still very young and have certainly just not experienced certain things yet. I must add that my context hasn't eased the opportunity to meet someone and discover love because of the pandemic, it wasn't easy for all of us I think, and having an introvert personality which doesn't make me desire to constantly bond myself to others as I have few close friends didn't help.

I found a third term that could fit me, it's demiromantic, a sub-category of greyromantic I guess. My different researches brought me to the same definition, which is "Feeling a romantic attraction to someone only after a strong emotional bond has formed between the individuals". It's an interesting term since it could explain why I don't feel like I've ever had this type of attraction. As I said above, my introversion allows me to feel fulfilled with a few close friends I have a strong connection with, therefore, I could've just simply not met the right person yet. Additionally, life in general hasn't been fantastic these past three years, hasn't it ? But this term is problematic in a way, because I'm heterosexual with a high sex drive (don't judge me please 🥺) and do not need to feel any connection with the person I'm sexually attracted to to desire sex with them. All it takes is just the visual, how good-looking in my eyes this person is, but it does not necessarily involves romantic, platonic or anything else ending with ic love. Then, being demiromantic would necessarily dissociate romance from sexuality in my case. But then, what is romantic love ? Personnally, I view it as a strong connection between two (or more, but for me it's two) person's which leads to or has been led by sex. I can't imagine falling in love for someone I don't want to have sex with. This would potentially mean living with this person, marrying them, being their second half and supporting them wathever it costs. But where's sex in that ? I can dissociate sex from love, but not love from sex. I know it's not easy to understand, but I bet a lot of you will understand me. I can want to have sex and feel aroused by a complete stranger I don't have any connection with, but couldn't develop romantic feelings towards someone but leave sex out of the equation.

It turns out perhaps I'm completely aromantic, because I find it hard to catch the concept of "just" falling in love. To me, if there's no sex but just what people usually refer to as "romance", it's a super powerful friendship, but not romance. 

What do you think of it ?

  Thanks for your answers !

 

[hemogoblin]

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Am I aromantic or did life just put my mind to more important things than romantic love ?

This is something only you can answer! And I want to emphasize here that this isn't an explicitly either/or situation. If you feel romantic attraction but it's rather unimportant to you, then you may well identify more with aromanticism than alloromanticism. Identity is self-determined. It's not a diagnosis or a math equation to be solved. The only criteria you need to meet to use any specific label is to want to use that label, for whatever reason - you relate to it, it's most technically accurate, it communicates to others what you want out of a relationship, it feels best, you relate to the experiences of others who identify that way more than any other label, you think it might fit you, nothing else seems to fit, you want to be whatever that identity is, etc.

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however, certain doubts remain

A lot of people don't know 100% - and even if you think you know 100%, things can happen. New feelings can crop up. We enter new experiences. We learn and grow more about ourselves. Identity isn't about knowing for 100% that this is and always will be how you feel. It's about how you feel now and what makes the most sense and/or feels more comfortable to you.

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I can't establish whether or not it was truly romantic love or a funny naive experience.

While the past certainly can be helpful, I have also found that when the past is too confusing or too far away, it's just as fine to disregard it! The past can inform the present, but it's also really hard to have a good enough memory to go back to those times and remember exactly how you felt, much less try to sort out what those feelings mean. So while the past can be useful, you might also decide to take those experiences with a grain of salt or disregard them completely and pay attention going forward to current feelings and how they align.

I also personally feel that especially with aspec identities, trying to use the past can become especially confounding because of the socialization of these feelings as we age. For example, when I was like 4 - 8, I had some "kid crushes". Because I had these crushes as a very young child (before anybody had really developed an actual understanding of romantic attraction, much less sexual attraction), I assumed that I had to be panromantic. But, really, crushes for a child that young don't have to mean anything. They're as much a way to try and understand the relationships being role modeled around us as anything else. What would become far more helpful was paying attention to current feelings.

At 15, you're naturally in a period of a lot of change and growth. Add into that how understanding our identities can impact other aspects of our identities (e.g. tons of trans people think they're asexual and cis until they realize they're trans and allo and as well there are tons of trans people who think they're allo until they realize they're trans and they're able to realize they're actually ace). This is a lot of jenga tower pieces building together and impacting each other. So if utilizing the past helps, then great! If not, don't get too caught up on it. =)

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I must break away from this amatonormativity and go my own way !

(Just want to note that you don't have to be aromantic to break the expectations of amatonormativity. Anyone paving their life with a non-normative relationship style is going against the expectations amatonormativity, including: no intimate committed relationship, multiple intimate committed relationships, a non-romantic type of committed relationship, a committed romantic relationship that breaks norms in other ways such as the people living apart and not having kids, etc.)

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but I'm aware that I'm still very young and have certainly just not experienced certain things yet.

Which is fine! Because remember, identity or at least the understanding of identity can change over time. Nobody is a mind reader. Nobody can tell you for sure the words they use to describe their identity will be their forever terms. When I first came out around 16, I was sure I was a panromantic asexual cis girl. A decade and a half later, and I'm now an aplatonic caedromantic/aromantic asexual nonbinary genderqueer person. I didn't do anything wrong when I first came. Those were the words that best suited my feelings at the time. Now I have some different ones and some additional ones. I'm not hurting anybody or lying to anybody by changing my terms. I'm just learning more about myself. =) There is no age limit restriction on using any identity. If you're old enough to be thinking about it, you're old enough to be picking the label!

Labels are also just words. They are simplified, generalized descriptions of a set of feelings, the depths of which will always be deeper than what one mere word can convey.

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But this term is problematic in a way, because I'm heterosexual with a high sex drive (don't judge me please 🥺) and do not need to feel any connection with the person I'm sexually attracted to to desire sex with them.

Okay, so I'm thinking you have heard of the Split Attraction Model. Just in case, real quick, the split attraction model is for those who feel their romantic and sexual attractions don't line up and want to identify them separately. Ex. gay ace, bi lesbian, hetero aro, etc.

So in your case, you might decide to ID yourself as a demiromantic heterosexual, signifying your aro-ness and your allosexuality.

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I can't imagine falling in love for someone I don't want to have sex with.

Equally, you may decide to not utilize the SAM and identity simply as demiromantic or simply as heterosexual, depending on what's more important to you. You might decide to ID as demiromantic if you decide what you want to communicate is about the type of long-term relationship you want (something committed that may be romantic that includes sex but requires for friendship to occur first). Or you might decide to ID as heterosexual if what you want to communicate is about the type of sex you want to have, with the idea of a committed/romantic relationship being secondary due to the unsurity of it or low potential of it happening or believing it will only happen with an established sexual partner, anyway.

Remember! Labels are just words to simplify communication! They will never encompass the entirety of your feelings, nor do they need to. My sister is a lesbian who had sex with men up until she got into a committed, long-term relationship. If any confusion occurred on the men's side, my sister told them "I'll never want to date you, but I would like to have sex with you" and that was that. It didn't make her not a lesbian. It wasn't too confusing for people to wrap their heads around. The people safe for her to interact with were the people able to respect her right to define her own identity.

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To me, if there's no sex but just what people usually refer to as "romance", it's a super powerful friendship, but not romance. 

I think it's great that you know this about yourself - but to apply this to everyone would be very erasive of asexual folk and anyone else for whom romance does not equate sex.

Overall, it sounds like you're doing a lot of great thinking and working on understanding yourself, and that's great! That, much more than any designation of term, is what's important. Your feelings, your desires, your wants, your needs, your goals, your growth. Those are the things that matter more than the word(s) you use to share some of those things with others.

Edited February 6, 2023 by hemogoblin

[aro_elise]

you sound quite a bit like me.  in other words, i mean, i can't be the one to decide this, but since you're asking i will say you sound like you could well be on the aro spectrum.  really the only question is "do you experience romantic attraction?"  another thing: any time someone talks about not understanding romance except as a combination of friendship and sex, that registers to me as a sign.  because to alloromantics, it is a unique thing.  (that's why "relationship"/"partner" and "friends with benefits" are different terms, for example, or even for allo aces, "partner" and "best friend".)  what you said about sexual attraction and sex without love--i can absolutely relate, but what you said about the reverse, i can't, because for one thing, monogamy doesn't make sense to me so the situation of having a life partner with whom i didn't have sex and therefore couldn't at all wouldn't happen, and, more to the point, i wouldn't have a life partner at all because i'm aro and not interested in a qpr either (not sure whether you're familiar with the concept of queerplatonic relationships?  i'd also suggest looking into that of relationship anarchy.  and as @hemogoblin pointed out, aromanticism is not a prerequisite for these.)  i "can't imagine falling in love with someone i don't want to have sex with" any more or less than i can imagine falling in love at all.  i suppose i'm saying this in case it helps you realize anything about what those feelings mean in terms of your orientation, idk.  as we always say here, it's ok not to choose an identity label or to choose one with the understanding that it could be temporary, but as i always say, i know having a way to describe it is helpful and being confident in it is nice.  though either way you're ahead of me in terms of even hearing of aromanticism at that age.  to be frank, i don't think a ton of people hear of it, feel a possible connection to it, research and introspect further, identify with it, and then turn out to be totally allo, just as not many actually straight people have such a period of questioning being gay for no reason.  i guess stranger things have happened, but...well, just a thought.  if i can be of any more help, i'd be glad to try.

[Guest Themathlover]

First of all, thank you for your responses ! I'm glad tho see you supporting me, even if it's just through a screen. I have no one to talk about this with among my peers, not only are some of them close-minded, but the most thoughtful ones aren't in the conditions to hear of this. I wouldn't like to introduce them to things requiring time, concentration and compassion in a context which doesn't work out... But this is another thing, as I mentioned in my first post, the situation is hectic in the world at the moment. Moreover, I don't crave discussing it with them currently, since I'm not even aware myself of who I am. 

I red you carefully and would like to thank @hemogoblin for reminding that words are just words and @aro_elise for sharing her own aromantic perspectives with me. It's very kind of you. 

I understand that doubting is normal, and everything changes and matures just as you do, but I'm at a period of my life where changes are so fast and chaotic, especially intellectually, that I need to categorize myself. I've been said it's common at 15 yo to wish for identification with specific groups, ideologically, politically, and more closely, sexually and/or emotionally. It's also an age where you can feel like you have contradictory identities, particularly when it comes to intimate topics, and I rely on it sometimes. I actually happen to engross myself in books containing romantic passages, and kind of like it, but I still find myself to be (I think ?) aromantic. The problem is that I can't clearly say if I'm fond of the romantic aspect of those books, or if my interpretation of it is sexual. It might be that, I probably just don't make the difference between romance and sex as they're one same thing for me, do I ? Perhaps I'm hypersexual, and therefore, what would be considered as simply romantic for someone allosexual would be sexual for me, such as cuddling a guy I'm attracted to. But is hypersexuality a disorder ? The scenes I'm relating to are not just cute scenes like offering a flower to your lover, they can be interpretated as sexual scenes as well, sometimes, it's even obvious they are. I feel guilty sometimes for these strong sex urges I get, and, without entering the details, they're very very strong most of the time. Whenever they appear, I can feel my whole body tingling, including what is called "butterflies", but they're not just located in the stomach as usually described, but everywhere. I'm not going to make a biology lesson, but if you experience sexual appetites, you understand what I mean. And this is how my body responds to these scenes. Same for visual stimuli only, but I think they're even stronger when it just takes the visual. I'm pretty sure it's just sexual when I'm visually stimulated, but when I read these books, I don't.

Just as I said above, I can't conceive of romance as sexless, but can easily imagine sex without romance/emotions. Romance is tough to catch for me, in fact. I can barely put words on it, which may make my text confusing and I apologize for this. As I said, if romance isn't linked to sex but is a unique thing, then, I just see it as a strong bond, similar to long lasting friendship, but how can such a connection come from nothing and be isolated from sexual desire ? It's really unclear for me. It's like looking for something which I don't know the appearence of through a thick fog. And it makes the process of self-identification much harder. All of that is quite baffling to me.

I think I will begin to define myself as heterosexual quoiromantic, which means "a romantic orientation in which a person cannot differentiate between romantic and platonic feelings". 

 

[Guest Themathlover]

2 hours ago, Guest Themathlover said:

Perhaps I'm hypersexual, and therefore, what would be considered as simply romantic for someone allosexual would be sexual for me, such as cuddling a guy I'm attracted to.

I meant "alloromantic", "allosexual" was just a blunder of mine.

[hemogoblin]

10 hours ago, Guest Themathlover said:

Perhaps I'm hypersexual, and therefore, what would be considered as simply romantic for someone allosexual would be sexual for me, such as cuddling a guy I'm attracted to. But is hypersexuality a disorder ?

Yes, hypersexuality is a disorder, not a sexuality-type identity. It often stems from trauma but doesn't have to.

Hypersexuality is a compulsive behavior regarding sex and sexuality. It has to do with having a preoccupation with sexual thoughts, fantasies, urges, and behaviors that the user doesn't know how to control that are at such an intensity that they negatively impact your life (such as failing out of school, being unable to uphold a job, and/or destroying personal relationships). Anyone can have sexual urges that come at at inopportune times. Hypersexuality is when you have these so often that they stop you from living/enjoying your life.

10 hours ago, Guest Themathlover said:

Perhaps I'm hypersexual, and therefore, what would be considered as simply romantic for someone allosexual would be sexual for me, such as cuddling a guy I'm attracted to.

In this regard, actions are defined by intent, so it's fine and normal for different people/in different scenarios to view the same action (cuddling, kissing - whatever) as platonic/romantic/queerplatonic/sexual/some mix of these.

10 hours ago, Guest Themathlover said:

I think I will begin to define myself as heterosexual quoiromantic

Congrats! =)

Edited February 6, 2023 by hemogoblin

[Themathlover]

Thank you @hemogoblinfor answering again (I created an account) ! So, if hypersexuality means compulsive sexual behaviour negatively impacting your life, then, I'm not, I'm probably just high sex-drived. There's still a question left, about what you wrote down here :

24 minutes ago, hemogoblin said:

In this regard, actions are defined by intent, so it's fine and normal for different people/in different scenarios to view the same action (cuddling, kissing - whatever) as platonic/romantic/queerplatonic/sexual/some mix of these.

I understand it's normal, but is there any specific term within the aromantic spectrum to describe this ?

Thank you again !