As a romance-repulsed aro, the idea of someone spontaneously combusting into romantic feelings towards me is an existential threat I walk around with every day. But it’s not just the feelings themselves that fill me with dread. It’s a cultural position I am immediately thrust into when confronted with romantic attraction.
In a society where romance is seen not just as something pure and good, but as an innate part of what makes us human, to respond to romance like a slug shriveling under salt is to immediately become something impure, morally bankrupt, monstrous and inhuman.
To express aromanticism, especially to be outright repulsed by romance, to experience it as discomfort, alien, or violating, is to immediately find oneself in a deeply vulnerable position outside of society. There is no room in our culture for the words “romance makes me feel uncomfortable, and I would prefer not to be exposed to it whenever possible.” There is no language for setting boundaries where romantic affection is off the table, permanently. This is not a sentiment society knows what to do with, because according to society, this is not a thing it is possible for a human being to feel.
Even among romantic folks who know aromanticism, and accept it, tend to misinterpret me when I express it. Rather than seeing me being completely exposed, out on a limb, vulnerable and nervous, they view my feelings through the lens of a toxic masculinity that is in fact diametrically opposed to my aromanticism. I become “afraid of commitment” or “emotionally unavailable” or other euphemisms for male chauvinism. Because they come from a worldview in which their romantic feelings are an innate, assumed thing, good and right, they are incapable of recognizing the deep emotionality and risk of my saying “i don’t feel comfortable with this.” I, a well of emotions, a thing soft and bare, am transformed into a caricature of something overly proud, overly stoic, callous to hide its cowardice. They don’t even notice that their actions have made a giant insect of me, scrabbling about in the bedsheets.
To be a romance repulsed aromantic is to know that the right to love romantically is a thing that has been fought for, died for, a precious thing for queer people. And yet I stand, queer, outside of it. Am I only allowed a shallow sort of pride, the kind found in bathroom hookups, tongue-filled kisses with friends after midnight, unwed and unassimilated?
No. To think my pride is shallow is yet another facade painted over me. My sexuality is fought for. My aromanticism is fought for. And the way I move through the world as I see fit, head high, exposed, is full of a depth no less beautiful for the fact the world does not know it.
