#naask

There is not just one, happy experience to being aro where you figure yourself out and get to live your life. There are many social layers to being different in sexual and romantic orientations, some which MANY people are familiar with, and some which are forgotten about or ignored. Gay people deal with never having their picture perfect life, where you have kids and a marriage and ride off into your golden years, but so do many straight people who refuse to have kids or live untraditional styles of life. So do infertile people who lose their goal of having children. It's an experience shared, and garners justified sympathy. But not many people understand dealing with the grief of realizing you're aromantic. Even in the best case scenario, of relief that this community exists, of finding out that you're not alone and this is something you CAN do, you live with an experience that garners expectations. And in many cases, aromantic people don't experience that. Many times, we are not happy about being what we are.

You are considered straight, most of the time, just not having found 'the right person'. That idea will exist even till you're 85 with no romantic connections, ever. We are ecstatic that we've found the reason, that it's normal to feel this way, but I'd say a good 25% of us also feel the compounding loneliness awaiting us in a world of love, and ROMANTIC love, taking precedent. I, personally, have always dreamed of kids and a significant other, that one person who I will (or would) have such deep trust, respect, adoration, love, for. I've always expected a family. I haven't expected that for others for well into a decade, since I was a young child, but for me I have wanted the future of family and community for years. There is a very particular feeling of grief that is knowing you will not ever be happy having it.

As an aromantic, I can lie, of course, to a partner but it would never make me happy. It's similar to a gay man in a relationship with a straight woman. Only, all people are straight women, to me. A gay man, woman, nonbinary person, can always break out and find that no matter how hard. I will never, ever be happy that way, though. No matter to who I commit to, in a romantic relationship I would never thrive. In an allosexual relationship, I would feel dirty and unclean. I want children, but I would not have sex for them, and while there is adoption, I do not have the choice most people have because it is Much MUCH harder for a single person to have a child through adoption than a couple. This is a reality SO MANY aromantics realize and have to deal with for the rest of their lives. A lack of community, a lack of freedom, of choice, of want. A lack of friendship, when everyone is suddenly partners with their one and only. A lack of financial stability in a world that expects two to a room. A lack of social acceptance when your plus one ends up just being a "one."

More aromantics don't want kids, a husband or wife or partner, have never wanted that romantic life of community, and even still are burdened with a deep guilt or desire to have loved that way. Many always thought it would come, and when it didn't are still happy in their lives - but because of a world that builds up romance so much, are saddened, almost bereaved of their lack of it. They don't mourn the life they've lost, but the lack of acknowledgement they've received in normalcy, forever pushed to the sidelines and benched in favor of the rom-com quarterback.

There are so many expectations from all sides, for all aromantics. We all deal, in some way, with the weight of them. It is more common, and less recognized than almost everyone thinks, and completely opposite to alloromantic culture