Everyone knows the story of a prince and princess falling in love and living Happily Ever After, right? After all, we’ve been told the story since we were little (especially if you’re lucky enough to be born a girl): you’ll find the One and be with them forever; they’ll make you happy and feel loved for the rest of time, till death do you part and whatnot. But what if I don’t want to find the One? What if there’s no One for me? At least, not in this romantic sense. What if I want to be by myself, even if I have people who you perceive would be a good match for me? What if I don’t crave this thing we call romantic love?
Well, I’m not entirely alone in this fun little thing called aromanticism. “What is it?”, you may ask, having seen it in the title of this piece and feeling your curiosity tickled. Being aromantic means that a person (such as myself) does not crave/need romantic love or relationships. This isn’t to say that aromantics are incapable of forming emotional bonds with people—just that the romantic part doesn’t really do it for us. Naturally, its definition varies from person to person but this is a pretty generalized version of the concept. It is also what you, dear reader, need to keep in mind to understand where I’m coming from.
Like many others, I once was told the Happily Ever After story. And for a long time, I wanted a Prince to come and for us to fall in love, and eventually marry, etc. By the time I reached about the eighth grade, I had hope for either a Prince or a Princess. However, it was in the eleventh grade that I thought to myself: “Why do I always feel so unattached to my partners? Do I not actually like them? Am I too mature for this? Do I actually want to just focus on my education?” To summarize, relationships were awkward for me. And it negatively affected my interactions with said partners and even led to my last relationship having an ugly end to it, including three-hour-long calls that included screaming matches and tears from both parties involved. It was extremely difficult for me to really be able to process this, and my realization of me being aromantic didn’t help one bit. He was willing to fight for the relationship. I, on the other hand, wasn’t. It sucked big time.
As I previously mentioned, I’ve been in several relationships throughout the years with different kinds of people. The relationships were always initiated by someone other than me, with them having asked me to be their girlfriend. I accepted, knowing that we were good friends and thinking that our good friendship would translate into a lovely relationship. For the most part, I wasn’t wrong; things went pretty well for a little while but would eventually lead to me being dumped. Hell, I was even cheated on a few times.
Even though I never truly reciprocated the romantic feelings, it felt nice to be paired off with someone. To some degree, I had someone who I could trust on a more intimate level and who made me feel safe. I also had someone I could experiment with intimately, which my curious teenage self was grateful for. Looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t realize I was aromantic sooner. But also, I’m not surprised it took me so long to figure out: my feeling safe and cared for by my partners created a sense of debt to them, which made me want to reciprocate their loving actions, ultimately leading me to experience a mental block because I just didn’t know how to.
Generally speaking, relationships are a complicated and delicate thing; like a plant, you need to nurture it and put in work to make sure it remains healthy. All parties interested in these need to understand this and to follow through with it, communicating their needs and voicing any issues they may have with it- especially in romantic relationships, where emotions find themselves augmented by the hormones people release when they like someone. So, if a relationship is what your heart desires, go for it and put in the work. Be happy! Just know that some of us don’t necessarily want it, we can live Happily Ever After by ourselves.