so, this blog post is about me trying to figure shit out. i’ve been labeling myself as aromantic lately. is it necessary to label myself romantically? you could say no, since you can just wing it and see what works, but i also feel like figuring at least some of it out is important.
what’s the inspiration for this? i have to say, mostly the fact that i’m mainly on the queer side of the internet. and on there, you’ll meet many who are poly. and many times on the internet i felt jealous of said entities. i have a fear of missing out oftentimes. but before we discuss that deeper, let’s jump back in time…
duc lore in realms of cishetnormativity
okay, so. i grew up in a family where it was verbally signaled to me multiple times that being gay was okay. they did not say that often. it clearly felt like a secondary option. it very much wasn’t normalized. i got taught mainly that men and women are in love and get married and all, and i claimed to be romantically in love multiple times before even being a teen (kids are dumb ngl - i am saying this neutrally). always with girls, ofc. it was always “oh how are the girls in school? is there any you find cute?” and similar questions. and i never actually understood what romantic love was, but claimed it multiple times, possibly as a result. heck, i even wrote a love song or 2 (that was 10yo me writing down lyrics and smashing the piano - bangers if u ask me).
now, maybe sexual attraction was also a factor as i went into my teens. i was usually not very talkative and didn’t have close friends. so i don’t think i quite knew what platonic affection felt like, either. and while toxic masculinity could also be blamed, i think social anxiety was the main issue in my case (if i didn’t have that, the former would have been the issue tho). in high school, i had 2 occasions where i was almost certain at the time that i was romantically in love. i think that in both cases, i got a bunch of attention from them, and i definitely felt sexual attraction. neither of them turned into actual relationships, so i don’t know if that would have helped me discover things about myself.
looking back at those now… attention was definitely something i required, and there’s a good chance them giving me what i needed was easily mistaken by me as romantic feelings. now, that does not mean it could not have been that. but when i was surrounded by people who kept asking me about the girls in school, it was easy to mislead myself.
jumping to the now
for a looong time, i didn’t have any close friends. like, the people mentioned above might have been the closest, but it never got real close, partially due to me not knowing what i felt. in the 2020s, i realized i was sexually attracted to more than just women and i realized i was non-binary. i finally started getting somewhat closer to others. and since then, i’ve kept on seeing my friends in polycules. and whenever they interact with each other, jealousy hits me. now, i definitely need some kind of affection. but am i capable of romantic attraction, or is it just the idea of romance that i like? maybe i’d just want to be a very close aro friend of a polycule? but there’s also the chance that i’m repressing without realizing, which is really hard to get out.
i’ve tried asking some friends how they see the difference between the types of attraction. and i didn’t get much out of it. it kind of even sounded like “romantic” isn’t really its own scale, it correlates with “platonic” and “sexual”. in some ways. which i guess would make some sense to my brain. but i am still unsure how to figure it out. this is not something one can experiment with on their own. and winging it when it involves the hearts of someone else requires immense levels of trust. so until then, i guess i’ll just keep on questioning. and making sure others are always aware that i am possibly (probably? i’m really not sure anymore) aromantic. hopefully, i’ll get to somehow experiment and find my answer in another castle…
