Being Aromantic in Romantic Relationships
Written by Akweley Mazarae, AUREA Team
Word count: 1266 words
Estimated reading time: approx. 6 minutes
As a romance-repulsed aroflux person (I fluctuate between different orientations on the aromantic–alloromantic spectrum, but identify as aromantic most of the time), people often wonder how I ended up in a romantic relationship. I often wonder that myself. Our relationship, like any other relationship, is constantly a work-in-progress. And somehow, we’re making it make do.
I am in a long distance romantic relationship with an incredibly shy trans man that lives in Ghana. One side of my family is from Ghana, but I actually met him through a friend of a friend while I was conducting research there one summer. Even though I identify as aroflux/aromantic, I am open to romantic relationships because I desire closeness and intimacy, and it is not important to me whether this comes from familial, platonic, queerplatonic, alterous, soft romo, or any other type of relationship. I just like being connected to people, and believe that those connections can take very different forms.
I have always been a believer that relationships with “mismatched attractions” can work. If people seek out partners from different religious or faith backgrounds, or of a different race or ethnicity, why not different attractions? The labels put on a relationship only matter to the consenting people in the relationship. When you come from a spirit of collaboration, anything is possible. You intentionally choose to be and grow with a person, and that’s the real magic that keeps any relationship alive.
My current long distance boyfriend and I spent two weeks together, just the two of us, because my original flight home from Ghana was cancelled and rescheduled. Apparently he had a crush on me the entire time, but being the oblivious aro that I am, I just thought he wanted to be friends. I thought he was cool and funny and very sweet. He made me dinner everyday and we listened to afropop together. Apparently, everyone else around us could see that he had a crush on me but I didn’t believe it, assuming our growing intimacy to be platonic.
Even though I am romance-repulsed, I did thoroughly enjoy hanging out with him while doing “romance-coded” things because I interpreted our close time together to be platonic. I let him know that if he did like me that I was down for a casual “let’s see where things go” type of relationship. This is because I know myself and my limited, fluctuating, capacity for romantic attraction. I wasn’t very well versed about the visibility of aromanticism in LGBTQ spaces in Ghana. In my personal experience it’s easier to just explain my lack of attraction than with unfamiliar terminology because the focus of the conversation becomes educating the person on the new topic rather than the type of relationship I would like to have them. Terminology can always be introduced later.
Unfortunately for us, my not-yet boyfriend was still too shy to let me know that he was interested in a relationship with me until I had flown all the way to another continent. So our “official” romantic relationship began long distance. Being polyamorous, I had had long distance platonic and queerplatonic relationships (QPRs), but this was the first romantic relationship I had ever been in, long distance or not. I approached it the same way I did my previous relationships, which was kind of like trying to put a square block in a circle hole. It wasn’t quite the right approach.
My previous relationships had all been with people who were also on the asexual and aromantic spectrums, even if they were not out at the time that we were together. Having that personal experience of diverse attractions, it tended to be easier for them to understand that my low or lack of desire for them did not mean that they themselves were unattractive or undesirable. I may not have been in love with them, but I was still committed to them and cherished them, and that made them feel valued in the relationship. Relationships like QPRs had very little to none representation in the middle 2010s, which meant that there weren’t societal norms to dictate how our relationships *should* be.
The exact opposite was true for romantic relationships. There was both internal and external pressure for me to act a certain way and feel certain things because I was in a romantic relationship. If my boyfriend told me he loved me and I didn’t automatically respond with the same statement, he interpreted it as there being something “wrong” with us. I originally thought I could handle him professing his love for me as long as he understood that I could not always reciprocate, but at times it triggered my romance repulsion in a very significant way and I felt trapped, unsure how to communicate that to him. I’d rather have silly debates about food or practice teaching each him Spanish as he taught me Twi and Ewe, or send each other funny videos, than talk about love. I wanted to hear about his day and tell him about mine, or rant about the latest thing my sister had done to annoy me. I wanted to hear him laugh as he attempted to leverage our 5 hour time difference to wake me up for class on time, though I would inevitably be late every day. We both enjoyed these moments. What did love have anything to do with it?
Everything, apparently. Being in a romantic relationship apparently meant that it was fair game for everyone to ask me how things were going between us. For some reason there was an expectation that this relationship would have more prominence in my life than my long distance QPR, or change something fundamentally about me. And I mean, I believe that all people who are in your life affect your personhood in some way or another, but being in a relationship with a man as a genderfluid woman was never going to fundamentally alter who I was. In fact, I often tell people that he’s an accident—I’m typically not into men, and I typically do not seek out romantic relationships, especially not with an alloromantic person. And here I am, in a romantic relationship with an alloromantic trans guy. Who would’ve thunk it?
For the ten months we’ve been together, I’ve gotten a lot of joy in being in a relationship with someone who affirms and understands part of my cultural heritage, who makes me laugh, who so tenderly takes care of me. But there has also been real frustration and insecurities as my romance-repulsion and aromanticism means that he probably won’t ever get from me the romantic love and affirmation he desires. We had to have an important conversation about boundaries and relationship expectations and our future. I learned that it is okay to try something out to see if it will work, and if it doesn’t, that’s alright and is something to learn from. We don’t get all our needs met from one relationship.
Being aromantic in a romantic relationship can be challenging and confusing, but it can also be just as fulfilling as any other relationship. What matters most is consent and an intentional dedication from the people involved to being radically honest and figuring things out together. Sometimes boundaries need to be renegotiated because you’re not comfortable with what you thought you would be comfortable with. Whatever draws you towards someone’s energy is probably worthwhile nurturing and seeing where it goes.
I may not know completely what I’m doing in a romantic relationship, but I do know that I like making this person happy. And that he makes me feel good too. And that’s enough for me.