#romantic repulsion

Okay, so I was talking with my mother today and she brought up a topic and says, "maybe you'll want to do that with someone you're dating in the future" and that sent my body into overdrive, my nausea and just the general weight on my chest got so much worse. Now I'm in a QPR and I love my platonic partner and my mom knows that it's platonic. It's purely her word choice that has made me nauseous for the rest of the day and I can barely talk to my platonic partner without breaking down and I'm just so sick of it. I know she didn't mean it in a romantic context and yet I just can't shake it off.

how i ever walked down the aisle idk

tunnel vision?

being the center of attention might have been it, the flattery of looking the best in the entire room, finally (and that is a whole other topic of insecurity and never feeling enough or pretty or worthy of affection so maybe it finally felt like a whole room had my back and i liked that feeling even tho i wasn't totally sure or sold about the marriage itself).

but ew. walking down the aisle and having people stare at you, nope. i don't want anyone "witnessing" my love for other people, my relationships are not a spectator sport or some tv show for ppl to consume. pls no. that has always grossed me out.

it's sort of weird tho, bc i used to want to be married and i did look forward to it as something that would be fun and fulfilling and then it was just ok and not really fulfilling and i was still my same self afterward (and all the unexplored aroace under the surface).

so now what am I looking forward to? what can I look forward to honestly? society doesn't really teach us to look forward to anything else, and love was such an easy thing for me to get excited about and fantasize about but not actually practice.. so what now?

In time for the holiday, I’ve published a new work, a short story this time.

An Aroflux Valentine’s Day

Sidra is looking forward to spending Valentine's Day with her boyfriend, Bennet, until she wakes up with the very idea of romance making her feel sick to her stomach. Bennet knows Sidra identifies as aroflux, that her level of romantic attraction can vary from day to day, but she worries how he will react and what will become of the special day. An Aroflux Valentine's Day is a short story of roughly 4,000 words featuring an aromantic spectrum lead.

I think there’s a good number of aros, actually, who are repulsed by romance being forced on their lives and experiences but have no repulsion when it is associated with others. I’d guess that it’s near as common as being more completely repulsed--it’s just that this is less understood by others and we’re working in the confines of a pretty new set of terms, making communicating degrees of things felt difficult. There’s so many experiences that we’re still struggling to build a language for and, traditionally, the broader LGBTQIA+ community has trouble with grey areas. Hell, I’d say the want for nice, binary you’re either this or that definitions is a problem long had with Western society generally, and we’re very good at assuming terminology operates on that binary.

I myself don’t find myself fitting in the repulsed/not-repulsed binary, to such an extent that I use “romance overloaded” or “romance alienated”. I’m not neutral in the sense that I don’t care. I am repulsed when I am forced into romantic situations or have them applied to me (which I think is a pretty fair response given that I wouldn’t and don’t consent to it). But while I can’t read very romantic romance novels, the conventional meaning of completely repulsed also doesn’t feel like it describes me. It’s more a case of being tired of its omnipresence than repulsion, but it isn’t exactly neutrality or indifference, either.

I do mark, at this point in my ramble, that I don’t have an answer. I personally think that “repulsed” can and should describe any degree of repulsion, and the world would be better off if we stopped assuming and started asking people what their needs are--as in, if someone says they’re repulsed, we ask them then about their individual access and comfort requirements. (Pretty much how we, ideally, treat disability.) However, in a world that’s going to assume, it may be useful for us to have a term for the experience you’ve described, especially when we’re navigating alloromantic folks.

Can folks offer up some good suggestions for our anon?

I wish I could have said all this yesterday. When my friend asked me if she set me up on a blind date, would I go. I answered no. She thought I didn't trust her. Why can't you just understand?