Being an Aromantic Asexual is Weird
Being an aromantic asexual is weird. We defy not one, not two, but three societal norms; heteronormativity, compulsory sexuality, and amatonormativity. It gets even weirder when youâre indifferent (even favourable!) when it comes to sex and romance because you think your experience is universal, that everyone feels the way you do. Itâs not feeling wrong and broken and out of place. Itâs feeling normal, and then realizing that you arenât.
Thinking (read: assuming) that youâre straight for most of your life and then finding out youâre not is weird. Mostly because once you realize youâre not straight, it dawns on you that you feel the same way about boys that you do about girls and non-binary people. And then you wonder if youâre pansexual because theyâre attracted to all genders, and you have to be attracted to someone, right? And then that thought is immediately dismissed because you donât feel attraction, at all. But it doesnât stop you from contemplating every other sexuality and romantic orientation, because youâve been taught that everyone wants sex and romance.
And then you remember: you like sex and romance in fiction. You like seeing your friends in happy, healthy, consenting relationships, and youâd always assumed that one day, youâd be in one too. But youâve never pursued one. You never had more than a fleeting interest in boys, and lingering but still platonic affection for your female and non-binary friends. Those âcrushesâ that you had in elementary school? Maybe not crushes after all, because God knows you havenât had one in nearly eight years. The most powerful feelings youâve had for another person have been squishes so intense that you had to look back and question if it was actually romantic attraction (spoiler: it wasnât).
And then thereâs that epiphanic moment when things start to fall into place. Why you were always so vehement that soulmates could be platonic too. Why the idea of loving someone more than your best friend is incomprehensible (because romantic love is always shown as being more. Hello amatonormativity). Why when you ship fictional pairings, there are people you want to get together romantically, people you want to be friends so bad, and the ships that you like the most are the ones that could go either way. Why you desire emotional closeness and intimacy with the people in your life, but that had always been conflated with sex and romance so you wondered if what you wanted was more than friendship. Why you want to take the expression âmore than friendsâand burn it to the ground because there is no vocabulary for friendship that exceeds âbest friendâ without crossing over into romantic and/or sexual territory.
You realize that your ideal relationship isnât necessarily romantic. Itâs best friends who cohabitate and snuggle and hold hands and go on adventures to the library together. Kissing and sex? Well, thatâs more of an afterthought. A âyeah, thatâll probably happen somewhere in there.â An assumption, because youâve been taught that primary, monogamous relationships are always romantic and sexual. You reflect and see that there are very few things that you see and inherently romantic, and that there is a lot of cross-over between things you consider platonic, sensual, and romantic. A grey area that you canât define.
Being an aromantic asexual is weird, because while Iâve always said that you donât need romance and sex to be happy, I now realize that it applies to me too.
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Note from mod fitz: This has to be one of the most moving descriptions of this I have ever read. This exactly describes how I felt coming to the realization that I was not straight, and I think had I read this when I first began questioning it would have made things go a lot smoother for me. Thanks so much for submitting!
