#singleatheart

I’m one of those people who doesn’t need other people all that much.

I prefer my own company, to be by myself.

I’m naturally solitary.

  I’ve never experienced any desire to be in a romantic relationship. I’d find it suffocating, to be involved with another person so intimately and exclusively. Then there’s the expectations, the obligations that tend to come when you commit to someone; to share your time, your talk, your energy. I couldn’t be doing with all of that; I’m just not that kind of person.

Being in a relationship would snuff me out; I couldn’t be myself, my truest self, the self I am in solitude. Therefore, I don’t need a significant other to come along and ‘complete’ me. They’d compromise me. No one could know me better than I know myself.

  I used to look to feminism to affirm my singleness.

When feelings of embarrassment and shame about my continual lack of a partner crept in, I’d rally myself with thoughts of: ‘it’s perfectly a-ok for a woman to be single; any weird ‘n’ ugly I might be feeling about not-ever-having-had-a-partner is just the patriarchy poison seeping its way in,’ before asking myself whether a relationship was something I truly-wuly wanted anyway. And the answer was always an emphatic ‘no’.

  This ‘no’ has always come from a deeply-felt place; less head shake, and more heart pull. I’ve never chosen to be single. I didn’t weigh up my options, note that marriage tends to send women to an earlier grave, and therefore decide to place my eggs in the spinster basket. Being in a relationship is something that’s just never been on my radar. I’ve never had the slightest interest in partnering up or settling down.

As I alluded to before, the whole idea of being in a relationship actually repels me.

  This is why I identify as aromantic because my singleness feels innate to me. It’s not a choice. It’s the way I’m oriented. I was wired for the single life. And it’s aromanticism that’s helped me to understand that, and enabled me to start taking more pride in my perma-singledom.

  It makes perfect sense to me that someone as asocial as I am would also be aromantic. I don’t experience romantic attraction, and this intersects, oh-so-rightly, it feels, with the preference I have for being by myself.

I like my own company. I don’t need that special someone.

I’m naturally solitary aromantic.