What finding out I'm aromantic made me realize
08/12/2026
So, I'm aromantic. And I only found out just recently after many conversations with friends and a bit of research. Though, for me, it didn't feel like some kind of enlightening process of finding oneself, but more like me trying to explain a specific phenomenon that happened to me. And that phenomenon was me having to manually pick and choose my "crush" growing up because I was never actually organically interested in boys the way other girls were. In my eyes, having a crush was the only way I, as an AFAB, could relate to girls my age and have something to talk about with them in High School.
I came up with multiple hypotheses for this phenomenon. At first, I thought I was just lesbian and not bisexual as I first thought. But then, I found I also struggle to form romantic relationships with women too. It was only until I projected my ideas of romance and sexuality onto my OC and had some conversations about it with my friends when it hit me that I was probably aromantic.
The caveat, though, is that I'm still bisexual and still experience sexual desire for people. This is something I don't see talked about a lot. In fact, I feel it's even stigmatized.
See, even though I'm aromantic, I'm a huge sucker for romance in fiction. I like writing it, as a lot of thought and skill actually goes into writing good romance and I like seeing that in literature and fiction. But growing up, I became familiar with certain concepts and ideals in fiction, like how if it is shown that Character A, for example, only likes Character B sexually and not romantically, this character is objectifying Character B and is an asshole unfit to be Character B's partner, and Character B deserves a true lover who wants them for their heart and not just their body. Characters that only want sex and never romance are portrayed as shallow, promiscuous, and unable to have a fulfilling life because obviously the meaning of life is to get married and have kids with a romantic partner. And sure, the girls and the gays are always willing to be allies to their aroace siblings, but the moment they see a character, or hell, a real life person, who exhibits the behaviors of aromantism but without the label, they refuse to give them any grace and immediately demonize them. Such is the way of this romance-oriented society that we all live in.