My journey with sexuality and gender has been an interesting one, to say the least. Around the time when I was 14 I started realizing these differences between me and my peers, but I was too preoccupied with my mental health to focus on this aspect of myself and truly define anything. Knowing the LGBTQIA+ community existed and there were names for what I was feeling was good enough for me at the time. Throughout my senior year of high school, first year of college, and after starting therapy was when I really began focusing on and defining my sexuality and gender.
Looking back, I realize how much literature and media impacted my quest for understanding. Not in a “they’re queer and that’s trendy and different” way, but in a “I didn’t know people like me existed and they’re showing me that I have a community when I’m ready” way. The realization I wasn’t cisgender nor straight came from a fanfiction I read where the main characters were talking about the LGBTQIA+ community and I decided to do more research about it and saw myself within the spectrum of identities. I was decidedly not cis nor straight, but I hadn’t decided on any labels for myself at that time. Closer to graduation I found that pansexual resonated with me, but my gender was still an untouched subject. Right around that time was when I started realizing I was on the asexual spectrum as well. Learning that most people don’t think one-night stands are icky nor having sex is a weird way of identifying the level of intimacy in a relationship was a little wild. (I still have mini existential crises when thinking about it, to be honest) During my first year of college, I realized I couldn’t keep ignoring my gender identity and I explored it as best as I could. In that quest, I landed on transgender and started transitioning my pronouns with my close friends.
I identified as non-binary, panromantic, and asexual and although I felt very secure and satisfied with these terms, there was still something off, like a loose thread on a sweater just waiting to be pulled. Then I started getting aromantic related TikToks and tweets, and I was surprised by how much I could relate. This felt like too big of a realization to have so many years after I first learned about aromanticism in my first searches for clarity back in high school. However, the questioning became too strong, and I wasn’t sure where to start confirming whether I felt romantic attraction or not. Romantic attractions are difficult to define and to identify within oneself. Not to mention all the struggles, memories, and supposed crushes I had had over the years. The thoughts of “was it all fake?” were difficult to come to terms with, to say the least. So, I had solid suspicions that I was aromantic, but the confirmation I had been craving wasn’t coming as easily as I had anticipated.
I’d like to clarify that you don’t need labels to confirm anything about your identity. Labels are tools, they exist to be used should they be wanted. I am one of those people that like labels because they symbolize a community of people I can relate to, that I’m not alone in my experience as well as explanations to behavior, and as reference to others for understanding. Other people are indifferent towards labels while others believe they’re too restrictive; not all people interact with labels in the same way and that’s totally okay. Any way you interact with labels, and the importance you give them, is valid and entirely up to you to define.
That being said, I started my little journey by watching videos, reading blogs, a lot of late-night Googling and introspection, but nothing was quite helping me. I talked about it with a friend and she suggested I read books with aromantic characters to seek some clarity through a new perspective. And that’s when I remembered I had bought Loveless by Alice Oseman. Alice Oseman is the artist and author of Heartstopper, so I knew they could write queer stories. I was hesitant about picking up the book because aromanticism and asexuality are things that are not usually written about nor portrayed, very well if at all. Then I found out Alice themselves is acearo! Knowing she was writing from their experience helped me feel comfortable reading it with the purpose of understanding my position on the aromantic spectrum. And understanding it certainly provided.
Loveless tells the story of Georgia, a college freshman, avid fan-fiction reader, and hopeless romantic, and her journey of discovering and coming to terms with the realization she is in the aromantic and asexual spectrums. As someone who is all of this (or was at some point, because I’m not a girl), clearly this was the perfect book to help me in this particular journey.
*Spoiler alert for the book ahead!*
I had known I was asexual at this point, and very settled in the fact, so I was mostly interested in the aromantic aspect. It was not surprising to discover how many aspects of these two identities overlap, but it was still fascinating to unravel all the same. This was the first book I decided to annotate and on every other last page of a chapter I would write about where I stood with my introspection and considerations. Little by little, page by page, everything truly clicked. Needless to say, there were a lot of tears shed while reading. Georgia being an avid lover of love and fanfiction, especially romance stories, added a layer to her journey which resonated with me deeply. She had always loved love, she had always wanted her happily ever after with her royal charming, and so did I. Her denial stemmed from her desire to have what she’d always dreamed of, a fairytale romance, and so did mine. So much of socializing consisted of talking about crushes, so many of the questions from family members are about partners, so many of the questions and future plans by everybody include romantic relationships; it was only natural I adjusted to these expectations. Georgia’s journey became my own journey and her realizations that love wasn’t just romantic, were also mine.
Part One
Part one takes place during her graduation party. Afterwards, Georgia ends up next to a campfire talking with the boy she supposedly had a crush on and, when he leans in for a kiss, the description of her discomfort and panic in that moment was scarily accurate to my own. She didn’t let the kiss happen, and when talking to her friends about it, she says “The idea of it is nice, […] but the reality disgusts me.” Which reminded me that I had never understood why so many people put so much importance on sex and kissing in relationships. I felt close with my friends without doing any of that, so I never understood the need. I have never understood why people cheat either, like why are you having sex with someone else if you love the person you’re with? Little things like this were the alarm bells in my head that made me acknowledge that I was different; and that let other people know I was different, too. It’s that peer pressure and societal expectation that makes these aspects so difficult to define and accept.
“I was going to try harder.
I wanted forever love.
I didn’t want to be loveless.”
Part Two
In part two, Georgia goes off to college with her best friends, Pip and Jason, where she meets her new roommate, Rooney. Georgia’s goal for the semester was to get to the bottom of her “never fancying anyone situation” and fixing whatever problem she thought was there and Rooney turned out to be the perfect roommate to help her. Rooney was out-going, friendly, and seemed to have the whole “connection, love, flirting, one-night stands” thing figured out. They started trying things out, like going out to pubs and flirting, but none of it worked. “It looked so easy. But even imagining myself doing it made me feel a bit nauseated.” Georgia expreses. Every other page there is a “she’s just like me fr, fr,” note written by me somewhere in the margins. It was like Alice was in my head and writing my own thoughts for this book, which admittedly made the whole thing just a smidge more difficult.
Georgia’s need and desire to be just like everyone else and get the normal college experience, combined with her denial of being different, proved a very personal and difficult journey to read. It’s not easy feeling different, like the odd one out, but the thought that “maybe you’re better off conforming with the status quo” is not the way to go either. Conforming might ease one part of yourself, but make other parts too difficult to bear. In the end, the best thing is to do it for yourself. Doing it because you know it will be better to live with yourself, not because of the external validation. At the end of the day, you’re with yourself your whole life, might as well be a pleasant and happy company.
Before getting to the point where one is comfortable admitting that difference, there comes frustration. “How come everyone else could function and I couldn’t?” Georgia thought. Such a uniquely social thought, ache, and frustration of “I just want to be like everyone else, I just want to belong.”
“Sometimes this book broke my heart. Seeing your thoughts reflected on a page is a cathartic experience, but barely anyone makes the emphasis on the pain and heartbreak that catharsis comes with.”
Her need to belong and desire for normalcy like everyone else leads to Georgia thinking that she’s romantically attracted to one of her best friends, Jason. She goes on dates with him as she stews in her denial out of her desire to have romance and normalcy. Then she has a conversation with Sunil, her college parent and the current president of the Pride Society. They explain to her what the terms asexual and aromantic mean, and her denial becomes bone deep as the definitions for those terms resonated deeply with her. She thinks that those terms could not possibly apply to her because she wanted to fall in love and have sex, that it was just a matter of finding the right person. But even to her, that resolution and outcome felt flimsy.
“In the end, that was the problem with romance. It was so easy to romanticize romance because it was everywhere. […] I could see it all, all the time, all around, but when I got closer, I found that nothing was there.
A mirage.”
Part Three
In part three, Georgia is really stewing in the definitions Sunil gave her. Asking questions and being more honest with herself. It leads to a hilarious existential crisis when she realizes most people have sexual fantasies that include themselves and sometimes celebrities or people they have a crush on. (Same.) I can’t believe people imagine themselves having sex with others, that’s such a weird and foreign concept to me. I accept it because so many people talk about it, but I don’t understand it.
Georgia is doubting herself and her tentative relationship with Jason. Because they have been friends for years, she’s lulled into a sense of security and denial when interacting with him but, when they try to kiss, the reality of who she is settles deeply in her. Despite how much she loves him, and how comfortable she is around him, she cannot escape the discomfort at the thought of kissing him, or anyone. Jason recognizes this hesitation and discomfort, and Georgia confesses that she wanted to know whether she could fall in love because, if she could fall for anyone, it would have been him. She used him as an experiment and he, having been in love with her for years already, feels deservedly hurt, betrayed, and used. They part ways, with Georgia respecting Jason’s desire for space, and she leaves to grieve over the fantasy future of fairytale romance she thought could have been hers.
Georgia’s journey through grief is not uncommon or unwarranted. It is normal to grieve the loss of the future you had imagined, of feeling hopeless and loveless, lonely and frustrated, angry and lost, at the thought of never experiencing romantic love, of never experiencing that which has provided happiness to so many in real life and books, of never being able to experience that perceived intimacy that is supposed to come from romantic relationships. The realization of being aromantic comes with a lot of grief and confusion because, from a young age, we are taught to search for the love of our life, to search for that one person who we will grow old with and love forever and will complete our lives. With the realization of being aromantic and asexual comes the belief that one is nothing, and one can have nothing, because it has been ingrained in us that we are nothing without romance and sex.
“‘You’re not nothing,’ Sunil said. ‘You have to believe that.’
Maybe I could do that.
Maybe I could believe.”
Part Four
Aside from Jason and Georgia’s breakup, another dramatic thing happens and Georgia ends up on bad terms with all of her friends. Rooney apologizes to Georgia, and they get back on good terms, but Pip and Jason were much more difficult to reconcile with. Sunil had given Georgia the barebones of information and, of course, she went to the internet for more answers. She was obviously bombarded with information she was maybe not prepared to take in and it took several tries for her to be ready. It was this aspect of her journey which resonated with me. Her denial and resolve to figure it out and then her acknowledgement that realizing you are in fact different does not always feel like breathing a sigh of relief but rather a “people didn’t always love who they were right away” train of thought. You are allowed to be sad and angry and maybe even disappointed at first, there is so much that goes into our perceptions of who we are supposed to be, opinions that we are told as facts, that lead to devastation when we realize fate simply dealt us different cards.
Georgia has come to terms with the realization she is aromantic and asexual. With this came the slap of reality that the true love she had been waiting for and wanting all of her life, had been staring right at her. With Pip and Jason still angry at her, she came to realize that she had never been loveless or alone, she had always had her best friends by her side, she had never needed romance to have love.
Just like that, a holiday break came along, and she was off to visit her family. I won’t go into detail, but it’s not the most positive environment for her at this moment. However, there is one cousin, Ellis, who became Georgia’s ally through this. Ellis is 34 and asexual aromantic herself, though she didn’t know there were names for her feelings; she just knew. They had a wonderful conversation where Georgia internalized that there were in fact others just like her. Ellis gives her some parting words that I think define the overall message this book is conveying:
“Give your friendships the magic you would give a romance. Because they’re just as important. Actually, for us, they’re way more important.”
Loveless By: Alice Oseman
And thus begins Georgia’s plans for a big platonic gesture to get her friends back.
Step one was Jason. Sunil helps her out by getting Jason to come to the surprise gesture she had planned in order to apologize to him, and it worked. Georgia got Rooney and Sunil to dress up as the Scooby-Doo gang because those were Jason’s favorite movies and they reconnected at the little costume party they had for themselves. They finally talked and Jason forgave her. They decided to stay friends and Jason said something that really stuck with me, “Just friends’ makes it sound like being friends is worse. I think this is better, personally, considering how terrible that kiss was.”
After Jason’s big gesture, then came Pip’s. There’s this tradition of campus marriages, where freshmen propose to their campus spouse and then they become campus parents, like Sunil, though they’re a single parent this year. Georgia’s idea for a big platonic gesture, to convey to Pip how much she loved her, and felt sorry for everything that happened, was to make an extremely elaborate proposal to her. It was a success, of course. I cried like a little baby, of course. I don’t think I stopped crying for a good chunk of the finale of the book, come to think of it. Jason and Pip were back in Georgia’s life, and they were all on good terms once more. But then, in the night and morning of a huge event for all five of them, Rooney was nowhere to be found. Georgia’s newfound depth of connection and love for her friends manifested a fear of abandonment within her. She thought that if she didn’t have them, she’d have no one and this felt especially important with Rooney because she was her first roommate and college friend.
It was during these chapters I couldn’t make out the words on the page from the amount of tears and sobs that came out of me. I’ve made it very clear how much Georgia’s thoughts have mirrored my own and these last chapters were no exception. Rooney realized how much she loved Georgia while walking to get coffee and that’s why she decided to make a grand gesture for her as well. These chapters are the ones that impacted me the most because what Georgia was feeling really resonated with me and what Rooney said to Georgia mirrored conversations I’ve had with my best friend. These last chapters of part four truly drove home the fact that I will never be loveless, I will never be alone, and I will never be nothing, because I have fantastic friends by my side:
“She gestured at the bunch of flowers, which had pretty much exploded in my lap. ‘I really wanted to do some grand gesture like you did for Pip and Jason, but I couldn’t think of anything because you’re the brains in this friendship.’
That made me laugh. She wrapped her arms around me, and then I was just half laughing, half crying, happy and sad at the same time.
‘Don’t you believe me?’ she asked again, holding me tight.
‘I believe you,’ I said, my nose all bunged up and my voice croaky. ‘I promise.’”
Part Five
Part five regales us with how their play goes, and gives us the cutest of all interactions ever; they were given the good news they were hoping for and did a little hug and cuddle pile that had me dissolve into a puddle of tears once again. The book ends with the five of them finding the house they are going to be moving into together at the beginning of the next college year. Georgia confessed she still wasn’t overflowing with confidence about her sexuality, that she still doubted herself, but the days were few and far in between. She knew she would never be alone and loveless, not truly.
“I had time to get used to the idea though.
Until then, we would keep the beds together.”
I hope you consider reading the book if you are questioning your sexuality, and even if you aren’t, this was a fantastic book to read about queerness in general. There are a lot of important things we miss or forget, or we might be forced into believing about the queer experience and this book helped me evaluate those things and allowed me to think deeper about my own experiences.
I am non-binary in the sense that I don’t like the box, or the binary, that other labels imply. Non-binary allows me the freedom to explore whatever I want about my gender expression, with no constraints. I am asexual in that, although I have a libido, I feel no sexual attraction or desire to do anything sexual with other people. I am aromantic in that I don’t feel substantial romantic attraction; I feel attracted to other people I would like to be closer with but feel no real distinction between a platonic or romantic desire to be closer. I feel attraction, in the literal sense, to a person. I experience love with my friends and attraction to cool strangers I’d like to have a relationship with. This was very cheesy and very lovely to write. I hope that if you are questioning any aspect of your gender and sexuality, know that you are loved, you are seen, and you are valid.
“I used to dream of a spellbinding, endless, forever romance. A beautiful story of meeting a person who could change your whole world.
But now, I realized, friendship could be that too.”