As someone who is aromantic, I don’t experience romantic attraction. I don’t ‘fall in love’ in a romantic sense. I don’t have romantic relationships. I don’t date anyone. I don’t have boyfriends or girlfriends, or any kind of romantic partner. 

My emotional connections with other people do not manifest in a romantic way and I have no desire for that to happen – I’m just not that way inclined. It isn’t a lifestyle choice, I didn’t decide to avoid the world of dating because of a bad experience. It’s just the way I’ve always been.

I first realised I was aromantic when my peers seemed to realise they weren’t. From a young age, girls are taught to value romantic love. The message was a fixture in almost everything marketed to us. 

In a world where we were encouraged to envision ourselves as our favourite Disney princess, finding a prince charming was the crescendo of our story – in our dreams and in reality. I didn’t have a problem with that until I realised there was a genuine expectation for me to partake in this behaviour and not doing so was seen as abnormal.

It would be years before I learned what I was experiencing was more than just a youthful rebellious aversion to following the status quo. I didn’t discover the term ‘aromantic’ until I was in secondary school, researching asexuality as I tried to work out my sexual orientation. It was then that I realised aromanticism was a legitimate thing with a large worldwide community that intersects with many others, including the asexual community.

Aromanticism is what is known as a romantic orientation. We’re often taught sexual and romantic orientations are one and the same, to the point where the concept of a romantic orientation isn’t applied as widely as it should be. For some people, they line up quite neatly, particularly along the basis of gender. But, this isn’t always the case. You can experience romantic attraction to one gender, but sexual attraction to multiple. Or you might not experience sexual attraction at all (asexuality), but you might still experience romantic attraction.  

The distinction between sexual and romantic attraction is conceptualised in the split attraction model, a discovery that’s helped me and many others understand the diverse way sexual and romantic attraction can be experienced. However, aromanticism is still a widely misunderstood subject. The concept of romantic orientations hasn’t broken into the mainstream, and aromanticism certainly hasn’t.

For years of my life, it was very rare for me to actually describe myself as ‘aromantic’. I avoided the subject of dating and romantic relationships. But when I did begin embracing the true nature of my orientation, I was met with a surprisingly disturbing backlash. The assumption is that if you don’t or can’t experience romantic love, then you must be cold-hearted. There’s something supposedly ‘evil’ about it, something that has led to strangers online dubbing me a ‘sociopath’ more times than I can count. I’ve been told I must not value human relationships at all, that there must be something wrong with my brain, that I must have no emotions.

As someone who loves and cares for many things, including other people, it jars me that romantic love takes such a precedence that the absence of it is seen as being the absence of anything. We live in a society that places romantic love at the top of the hierarchy of human connection to the point where the word ‘love’ is often used synonymously with romantic love. When we talk about ‘finding love’, we aren’t talking about loving your best friend, your child, or some other passion. 

We are taught that you can have everything – great friends, a loving home, a beautiful family, a successful career, comfort within yourself – but if you’re single, you’re incomplete. You haven’t succeeded in life unless someone romantically loves you and you romantically love someone else. Some assume being aromantic must be a terrible thing – like you’re missing something essential. But romantic relationships aren’t the ultimate relationship, and I appreciate all of the others.

While I might not experience the highs of romantic love, I also don’t experience the lows. Instead, I use that same energy to experience the other pleasures life has to offer. Being aromantic encourages me to appreciate these things more deeply, not as something inferior. I find love in so many things, including friendships, helping others, my hobbies and having my own adventures. My confidence is found in having a positive impact in the world, not in my relationship status. Which, by the way, isn’t single. It’s infinite. 

Images: Yasmin Benoit

This article was originally published in 2022 and has been updated throughout.