it might not be, but my recent ex did that with others. she said she found out she was aromantic but while we were dating, didn’t have feelings for me and didn’t make jokes or flirt with me but she would with others.
it might not be, but my recent ex did that with others. she said she found out she was aromantic but while we were dating, didn’t have feelings for me and didn’t make jokes or flirt with me but she would with others.
im gonna sound like a fuckin boomer here but why date someone if you are “aromantic”? just get a ps5 and leave other people out of it.
I mean, I’m aromantic and have a partner. It’s not like I don’t love them, I do, intensely. I simply don’t understand what the difference is between romantic and platonic love.
Like, what’s different about the love you have for a romantic partner than the love you have for a friend? Is it simply the addition of being sexually attracted to someone? So romantic love is friendship plus sexual attraction? What happens when the sexual attraction fades? Do you stop romantically loving your partner? Do you then break up because you’re no longer sexually attracted to them? I just don’t get it, frankly.
Sexual attraction for me is so, so fickle, it comes and goes and never stays. If I tried to build partner relationships on sexual attraction, well, I’d never stick with one partner for long, I’d be breaking up with people constantly, and that sounds like a miserable way to live. Especially since I’ve found a person I get along great with, we have similar long-term goals, senses of humor that mesh great, they’re everything I want in a life partner. I really don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to be married to this person, we’ve built our life together, why would I throw that away just because I don’t really “get” romantic love?
I’ve had many many conversions where I’ve tried to get people to define what romance means, and so far nobody has a satisfying answer. It seems like everyone thinks it should just be obvious what is meant by that word, and can’t or won’t pin it down in a way that describes what’s unique about that kind of love compared to other kinds of love.
The dictionary definitions are also highly circular. It’s like, romance is “the desire to be in romantic relationships”, and romantic relationships are “oriented towards expressions of romance” and so on.
I’ve started to suspect that the very fact that I’m unable to determine what romance even means is a hint that I’m probably aromantic. It’s a very strange thing though… how can I call myself a word that means “not romantic” when I don’t even know what it is that I’m not?
Not everyone values the same things in relationships. Just because someone doesn’t want romance doesn’t mean they don’t deserve or desire intimacy and connection with others.