I'm demiromantic and recently wrote a sci-fi novel with an aro main character. I partially based his experiences off of my own, but I'm worried that it's not clear enough that he's aromantic. He's gay aromantic and has had a number of romantic/sexual relationships, but values his platonic bond with his best friend more. He realizes he's aromanitc during the book as he's in a romantic/sexual relationship, but there's a mismatch between his and his partner's (who's allo) feelings. (1/2)
(2/2) He's social and physically affectionate, so he thinks of romantic relationships as friendships with sex where you're allowed to be more affectionate. It's the difference between his and his partners feelings that makes him realize that isn't how it is for everyone. It hurts their relationship. His partner and others accuses him of being cold and he faces arophobia, but later he gets an apology and people around him validate him as loving and aro. Are there pitfalls I should be aware of?
Oh, this is another one of the two-part ask about the aromantic main character in my sci-fi novel from the demiromantic writer! I was hoping to make this a series and have him end up with the partner I mentioned in the last ask at the end, but with the understanding that he's aromantic and while he does care about his partner its not in a romantic way. They go into it openly knowing their feelings are mismatched. Do you think it's okay or still amatonormative to have him end in a monogamous qpr?
So, first off, I really love that the character eventually gets an apology from his friends. I’m sure lots of us on the aro spectrum will find that very satisfying to read, myself included!
I also think your story has potential to be a really interesting portrayal of an aro piecing together how he’s different to others, as if I’ve understood properly it’s not a lack of feeling but a difference that makes him notice his aromanticism, and that’s another thing I’d love to read because we’re in desperate need of coming out stories and media that examines how aros question seeing as we’re realising a lack rather than a differing attraction. As you’re someone on the arospec who does experience attraction, I imagine pulling from your own experiences will be very useful in this case, though you can of course always ask aromantics to compare and contrast experiences if you need to.
As for making it clear your character is aromantic: I’ve written a post about this topic here, but the tl;dr is that you can just use the word. Explaining what this means for the character in the text is always good, but don’t feel like there’s anything stopping you from hitting your readers over the head with the specifics of what your character is and isn’t.
It’s difficult to think of specific pitfalls with what you’ve described. That doesn’t mean your writing has no awkward phrasing or dodgy implications, because I haven’t read it, but it seems like you’re covering bases by doing things like actively presenting arophobic characters as wrong and needing to grow. If you’re asexual, I would recommend following a few allosexual aros and maybe asking for further specific advice about writing a gay aro’s experience of a romantic/sexual experience, but that’s about it.
Whether or not it’s amatonormative to have an aro end up in a monogamous qpr is really about the specifics (again) of that situation. It’s far from inherently arophobic, as it’s the reality for lots of aros, but I agree that it’s something to be handled with care.
The biggest things that stick out for me are that a) the aro character is intended to end up with a previous partner who was arophobic to them in the past, and b) that you describe the two as having mismatched feelings. The first thing here means that you’re going to have to put a lot of work into showing how the alloromantic partner has grown and made it up to the aro, because otherwise as a reader I would struggle to feel convinced that the relationship would be healthy for the aro, and would likely have my romance repulsion triggered.
This isn’t to say it *is* unhealthy to write a relationship like this, just that I’m on high alert for situations that might trigger an aro character’s repulsion, especially as they are the character I’m likely to identify with, and I imagine that’s the same for a lot of romance repulsed people. If you decide you do want to write this relationship, I think you just need to sit down and go over the eventual relationship dynamic you’ve written like it’s a contract, and look for ‘loopholes’ that might lead to a reader not being convinced the aro is safe. And then fix them.
The second thing just concerns me because you can take ‘mismatched’ to mean they have different or unequal feelings towards their relationship. I think you may just have meant they have different base feelings about each other (romantic/platonic), and if so that’s fine and obviously fairly standard, but if not you may need to tweak a few things to make sure both characters are going into this relationship with the same intentions and ideas about what they want it to be.
Really, what I think you need to do is consider *why* you want the characters to end up together, because reasoning and intent are I think very important aspects of what makes something amatonormative. Does the idea of either character ending the series single make you feel sad or guilty? Do you feel that their relationship is just how your story would be expected to end? Do you not actually know why you want to write it? If yes to any of these, it might be amatonormative. Hopefully you figure out what’s best for you and your story.
