How did you know you were aro (if it's too personal, feel free to ignore this ask)?
Hi Anon, no worries, itâs not something I canât share.Â
For a long time, I didnât know I was Aro, I didn't even know there was something I could be instead of just broken.Â
I had my crushes when I was a teenager, but instead of the drama and the uncertainty and desire it was just choosing the boy that was cute and nobody else wanted and focusing on them. It was the thing to do because all my friends had crushes on boys, so why wouldnât I? If they didnât care for me, I was never very bothered. I never cried for them, never even bent under pressure when the one I was with gave me an ultimatum. I broke things off and moved on. All my friends told me I was too cold and too rational, that one day I would fall as well. Spoiler alert: I never did.
Then came the crushes on girls, I thought that maybe I had never fallen for a boy because I was a lesbian and I didn't know it. Turns out that wasnât it either, I started identifying as bisexual in my late teens and early twenties, but I still hadnât been in love or felt anything more than a twinge of interest.Â
Not even for the person I was in a relationship with for over a year. They would say âI love youâ and there was that expectation to say it back, but it tasted terrible when I did because it wasnât true. I broke things off when I realized it was never going to be true, and pretending was becoming more and more difficult.
I thought there was something wrong with me for the longest time. That something in my upbringing, in the relationships I had seen around me made me incapable of loving someone. That just the right person hadnât turned up. That I was broken somehow (there is an element of childhood trauma in here, one that sometimes still makes me wonder).Â
I had considered going to therapy to find out if there was some kind of roadblock in my mind stopping me from feeling romantic love, I considered it during my twenties and when I got to my thirties I was sure there was something wrong with me. Everyone kept telling me it was just a question of time, that the âright personâ would appear and then I would fall harder than I could ever imagine. It always made me wonder why that was something I had to look forward to, because I wasnât. I really wasnât looking forward to falling in love. Iâve always been an affectionate person, and I have lots of friends. I get all my emotional needs fulfilled with them, because I do love my friends and family and they love me. Just because itâs not romantic doesnât make it less love.
I was well into my thirties when I stumbled into the word Aromantic for the first time and it clicked. It fucking clicked. There were people who just didn't feel romantic attraction and if there was a word for it, then it was something real. It wasnât just me, it wasnât just a question of time.
People still ask me if I am sure of it, it might be that the right person hasnât come along yet. Why do I believe I am aromantic if I might find the perfect person five, ten, twenty years down the line. (Iâve had this question asked by many gay friends, I ask them how do they know theyâre gay, maybe the right person of the opposite sex hasnât come along yet, it might be just a question of time. How is that different from all those cis men telling my lesbian friends they are only lesbians because they hadnât found the right man yet. They rarely have an answer for that.)
I think the hardest thing for them to understand is not that I havenât met the right person yet, is that I donât want to. That I am happy the way I am.Â
It was the hardest thing to understand for me too, but then I realized there was a name for people like me, that I could finally let go of the expectation of just waiting for the âright personâ and that there was nothing wrong with not wanting what the rest of them wanted.Â
Iâm not sure if this will help or clarify things for you, the short of it is: I didnât know I could be aromantic for most of my life. I just thought there was something wrong with me because there wasnât a name that I knew for it. Once I saw the name for the first time and read what it meant, it felt right. I knew that was me. And I wasnât alone in that.