You know what I'm going to be angry for a bit. I think I deserve it.
I've known I was aromantic asexual since I was nine years old, two weeks after I had my first girlfriend. She was my best friend and I loved her, still love her, and out of all the people to be the only person I've dated she is who I would want it to be. When my parents found out that my sibling had a boyfriend - something that for some reason my sibling blamed me for - they then told my parents that I had a girlfriend. I didn't consider myself gay in any way. I mean, even though we were both girls I wasn't the same gender as her, so it didn't count. I also didn't consider myself trans. In all honesty, I hadn't looked into it much, and I didn't really understand why my parents made such a big deal over me having a girlfriend. We'd already broken up by then! It didn't matter! I didn't care that my sibling essentially outed me to my parents, I cared that they all assumed it meant I would always want a girlfriend. Two weeks of research later and I found the labels Asexual, Aromantic, and Agender. I still use these sometimes.
In the time since I realised what my sexuality was, I have encountered three pieces of media that I've consumed - not just heard about, but actively engaged in - with a canonically aromantic or asexual character. Two of these were by the same author. (Loveless, Heartstopper, and The Magnus Archives - Alice Osman and Jonny Sims). Representation is so rare that I cling to any mention of it until I essentially strangle it to death. That's not to say these are niche identities, they're talked about a lot in queer spaces, albeit not always positively, but there's still a staggering lack of actual representation.
And when it comes to aro- and ace-spec people, I'm lucky in how often my sexuality is talked about. Aroace people are pretty much the centre of the conversation. Alloace people are talked about even less, though still sometimes - Jonathan Sims from TMA is alloace, for example. But the idea of people outside of a romantic relationship makes people feel so astonishingly uncomfortable that aroallo people are very, very rarely mentioned. If you say you're aromantic people assume you're asexual too.
And asexual as a term is much more known than aromantic because people just cannot comprehend the idea that you might not want a romantic relationship. Society is so focused around romance that the idea of being without it is something so many people just genuinely cannot comprehend.
And let's not even fucking start on aplatonic. I'm not aplatonic myself but those people are hounded after like they're the devils spawn for, what. Not experiencing platonic love? What the hell? It doesn't affect literally anyone if someone doesn't want that kind of relationship. Calm down. I know some aplatonic folk and they're lovely.
This expectation that having a friend means you need to date them is exhausting. Every time I talk about a male friend for too long my parents assume I have a crush on them, every time one comes round they ask me if its a date. And I am so tired of people assuming that I'm dating someone because I "should be" by now. I know I should be. I know this isn't what you consider normal. I know. You don't need to keep going on about it.
I used to go through lists of my friends and picture myself in a relationship with them. Being married, having children. I still catch myself doing it. Because a part of myself will always hope that one day I'll be able to exist in the way everyone wants me to. The only time I can let myself live with the fact that I will probably never have a romantic partner is when engaging with media which has characters like me in it. So yes, when one of my friends starts talking incredibly sexually about Jon Sims, I do get annoyed. Because this is the one thing I can have which has someone remotely like me in it that doesn't make a big deal about it and that doesn't paint him out to be a cold-hearted monster because of it. He isn't an alien, he isn't a robot, he's Jon. Who makes mistakes and is kind and loves people regardless. That is so rare. You don't get to take that away from me.
And I haven't even mentioned the alienation I feel from my own community. The aroace community, the queer community, whatever. I don't seem to fit in anywhere. Because I have a queerplatonic partner - something most people don't think is real. I've had a close friend tell me to my face that it isn't a real thing. I love him so much. I love being in a relationship with him and sometimes I have to pinch myself to see if it's real. Two of my friends used to consistently make comments about how I must have a crush on him and must be dating him. I'm not welcome in queer spaces because I'm not queer enough and I'm not comfortable in non-queer spaces because I know I'm not. People in the aroace community assume that we shouldn’t ever want a relationship - apart from people outside of the community, who as a way of “comfort” say that “it’s okay, you can still have a queerplatonic relationship!”
I'm just tired, I think. I'm tired of having to defend my identity and I'm tired of being told that I'm not enough because of it.
