#avenue writes

Amatonormativity is your family asking if you're dating anyone when you come back to visit.

It's every fairy tale with "true love's kiss".

It's your parents worrying because you haven't dated anyone yet and they "just don't want you to end up alone".

It's only being able to put your spouse on your health insurance.

It's having to fight the law to adopt a child with a friend because no one even considered it a possibility when they wrote them.

It's having the living wage calculated based on two people sharing a bedroom.

It's people saying you're alone because you don't have a partner, even if you have other close relationships.

It's your family asking when you're going to meet someone and settle down.

It's people trying to comfort you by saying "you'll find someone someday".

It's children planning out and dreaming of their weddings.

It's having a whole institution and ceremony for celebrating monogamous romance.

Aromantic people don't need to form strong platonic partnerships to make up for their lack of romantic partnerships.

Aromantic people don't have to replace romance with platonic love.

Aromantic people aren't lacking. There is no void that needs to me filled. Nothing that needs to be replaced.

While this isn't a universal aro experience, I think an aro perspective can bring to the front questions like "what if someone never has a romantic partner, what does their life look like then?". And, oh boy, once you start you can't stop seeing how so so much of our world is built around the assumption that everyone will have one.

We broadly expect most of the emotional support every person needs to be provided by their partner. We expect that there's a partner to come home to at the end of the day to vent to and to talk to about our fears. Especially in out middle age, where most of our peers are partnered, in the height of their careers and raising children. How many middle aged people do you know with strong friendships? How many of them seem to have one person be their main (and at times only) close relationship and source of support? (My parents and all of my parents friends seem to be in that second boat).

We expect them to be the people we take time off of work to care for. Would your boss stare at you sideways of you had to take the day off to visit a friend in the hospital? Would they be more understanding if it was your partner/spouse?

Insurance is a really obvious example of this. You can get your spouse on your insurance or be on your spouses insurance. If you live somewhere with (inadequate) universal health care, your two options are to either get a good job, or marry someone with a good job. For a ton of reasons (*cough* capitalism *cough*) good jobs aren't available to everyone and they certainly aren't accessible to everyone. So, what happens to the unpartnered people without these good jobs?

Even the care we give and receive from our children is restricted by the bounds of romance. Raising a child on your own isn't possible for a lot of people (I highly doubt I'd be able to do it with my depression and fatigue). But, if you aren't in a romantic relationship your options are almost nonexistent then. Adoption can be a complicated (and potentially expensive) web of amatonormativity to crawl through (see the two friends from Ontario who had to get the law changed to be legal coparents). If you aren't able to/don't want to raise a child on your own, and you aren't romantically partnered then it's an uphill battle to be a parent and care for your child.

Not only that, but we often expect a decent amount of the care we will all need when we are older to come from our children. If we were never in a position to be able to raise children (even if we wanted to), what does that mean for our later years?

It feels externally imposed. It never felt like a label I could apply to myself. But rather one I had to run tests to prove.

It felt so fragile. As if, one day someone could tell me I've just misunderstood what romantic attraction is. And there the identity I've spent so long building and accepting would dissapear. I had to measure myself against something I've never understood.