Hello again r/nonmonogamy , the subreddit I apparently use as my personal diary now lmao. This has been rotting in my drafts since February, but no time like the present, right?

In case you were unaware, the week following Valentine’s Day was aromantic spectrum awareness week (which regardless of how you identify, you gotta admit is genius). A little before this, I stumbled upon the Aromantic Manifesto, and while I strongly dislike the presentation and tone of the zine itself, I really like a lot of the conversation that’s being had around it. I‘ve since learned quite a bit about aromanticism, and I’ve been finding it quite interesting.

I have always been kinda weird on romance. I’m ADHD and very not-great with social cues. I have a hard time differentiating attraction from fixation on someone. High school crushes were inevitable disasters because I’d be fucking obsessed, even after I lost any “feelings” for that person. Extremely unhealthy. Man, I wish I got diagnosed as a kid and not at 23.

But regardless, I didn’t totally understand what made “romantic” love different from “platonic” love. But mononormativity (and/or amatonormativity, the norms they enforce are very similar) makes it simple: you love the singular person you have sex with and get married to and have lots of babies with.

And so I floated by on this idea… until I got introduced to nonmonogamy in adolescence. Logic’s simple: you don’t have to be romantically attracted to the people you fuck, and as long as everyone knows that you’re nonmon, it’s not harming anyone. You’re still encouraged to have one person (or maybe two, because the mainstream loves triads) that you’re romantically attracted to and get married to and have lots of babies with.

That worked for a while, for me. But like, it
all got me thinking recently of the other ways we talk about “romantic” attraction vs. “platonic” attraction on here (and the polyam sub). For me, there’s nothing really that differentiates the two.

Over the past few years I’ve been unpacking how much I’ve learned about “love” (romantic attraction, not love) through art and poetry and film and fiction and chocolate commercials (not downplaying the value of any of these, but yknow, how much of what I am doing is genuine, and how much is imitation of what I see on TV? Is there a difference? Does it matter?). I’ve struggled long and hard about how I’m influenced by what I see around me. I’ve thought about what makes marriage a milestone of a romantic relationship when I know so many people who’ve either married people they don’t love (for better or worse), or stayed married even when they’re not romantically attracted to someone. At the core of everything, how can I define romantic attraction when I don’t know if I’m experiencing it? If we define romance purely through actions, what differentiates a fancy candlelit dinner with a partner from a fancy candlelit dinner with a friend?

Hey, fun fact, if this resonates with you, turns out that this isn’t how the average person feels about romantic vs. platonic attraction. You might be aromantic. This is an aspect of aromanticism and/or the aromantic spectrum.

For so long I thought that aromanticism was just, like, not feeling love or only wanting to fuck or whatever. But it’s SO much more than that, much like how asexuality isn’t just a lack of a libido. For lack of a better phrase, I have a lot of love to give. I love my friends. I love my family. I love my partners, and my FWBs, and my S/O, and the strangers I meet at sex parties, and my pets, and my community, and all kinds of other stuff. This didn’t come from me asking “what is love” (baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more).

What’s weird is that I think all of these aspects of myself have really fed into each other. Outside of the ADHD, I don’t think I was “born” with any of these desires (but then again I also don’t think I came out of the womb only wanting monogamy and romance, lmao). Real interesting stuff.

Alright, rant over, does anyone else feel this way? Am I speaking total gibberish?