My Aromantic Fears (Part 2)
The following is a collection of reader submitted narratives. They detail personal stories, thoughts, and feelings about identifying on the aromantic spectrum. Apart from general grammar edits, these submissions have been published as submitted, and as such be aware of discussions of romance, heavy themes, and mental health. This is the second instalment of four.
Word count: 4451 words
Estimated reading time: approx. 22 minutes
I can’t picture a future for myself. I think most people can picture a spouse and maybe kids and a house. I can’t picture anything. I don’t know what aging can look like for people like me, aro and disabled and visibly trans. I know part of it is just a phase everyone goes through in their early twenties, but it’s really scary and demoralizing to not be able to imagine yourself getting older and building a life worth living. Who will I live with when all my friends have families of their own? Will I ever have friends that aren’t just transient? Will I ever find people who love me the same way I love them? Will the world forgive me for being different?
- Artemis
It’s not a fear but it is a worry. And it’s that I’ll never be able to come out using the term Aromantic directly. I’ve told family and friends that I don’t feel romantic attraction but haven’t gotten to say the term.
- Anon
Not being important in the world and also dying alone.
- Anon
I think I have two main fears as an aromantic person. The first one is this idea that I'm lying to myself. You know how your brain can create fake memories, and how strong the power of self-persuasion is ? I worry that, as someone who grew up in a toxic family and had to deal with a lot of trauma, I feel so undeserving of love that I made myself think that I am aro. I want to believe myself, I want to be able to trust myself, but I still have this stupid fear that I am making it all up.
My second fear is not really a persistent thought, it doesn't really upset me but it's still there sometimes. I am afraid of loneliness. When I have a panic attack, or when I'm feeling very paranoid, I calm myself down by imagining a future. In this future, I have a platonic partner, they are nb like me, greyace like me. We have a huge dog, a donkey and bees in the backyard. My platonic partner is the best friend I could ever have. They are never mean, we understand each other deeply and we really care about each other. I'm afraid it'll never happen. I'm afraid I'll live alone forever. I'm afraid I'll never meet an aromantic person.
- Camille
I'm afraid of being alone forever. Not in a "lacking a romantic partner" sense, but rather, that I'll be abandoned by friends over time, and that I won't be able to live a healthy life on my own. I have pretty severe ADHD and worry that without being able to rely on a romantic partner, my executive dysfunction will make living on my own unsafe for me.
- Anon
My main fear is not loneliness, as many allos would think. I know friendships can be and are way more meaningful than romance. Rather it’s ignorance. So many people become utterly shocked when they hear words about me and who I am, aromantic being one of said words. They stare at me blankly as I have to provide a lengthy explanation, thinking about whether it’ll work or not. Whether or not they’ll start saying all the by-the-book things about meeting the right person or me just being traumatised.
I’m really scared of living the rest of my life out in an ignorant world that knows nothing about who people like me are. So I do my best to educate people I meet about aro and/or ace issues, so that hopefully some day in the future other aros won’t have to do the same.
- Kay
I’m afraid of not finding a qpp because no one will understand my needs. I’ve already experienced a situation of being rejected as ’not enough’, being an option.
- Rony
I suppose my main fears are related to my future. After all, for most people, the template would be finding someone they love, marrying them and having children, but that's not really an option for me. I didn't really want to be married or to have kids even before I realized I was aro, but now it feels more final, in a way. And if that template doesn't work, then what will my future look like? Will I be able to be happy? Will I be alone? Will people try to force me into the mold of normality? Will I die alone and unloved? I have no idea and no examples, at least, no positive examples.
My future would scare me even without these thoughts, but this is just the cherry on the top.
- Anon
I fear that, as someone who has some interest in romantic relationships and may engage in one in the future, that I will be unable to relay to my partner how my attraction/love works. I worry that they're going to feel used or hurt because I will be unable to reciprocate attraction in the way that would like.
- Anon
I'm an aro in a romantic relationship. He knows I'm aromantic so it's okay, but I still feel guilty. I worry that he thinks he can change me. I'm afraid that he thinks I'm wrong and I'll eventually change. I'm afraid of hurting him. As an alloaro, I'm afraid that I really am a monster. When I have sex I fear the implications, and I fear my partner loving me. The future is terrifying, and I know my partner wants to get married. I can see myself with him forever but I'm scared he thinks he "fixed" me.
- Anon
Being aromantic directly impacts my fears for the future. Mostly because I don’t know what the future holds for me. I would love to be in a qpr but I’m equally as happy if I spend the rest of my life single. What worries me though is that all my friends will get married and move on with their partner. They know how their future is going to play out in some way, shape, or form. For me it’s not like that. My future is a blank page and I have no idea what it may hold for me.
- CS
I'm afraid of being asked out in public. I'm afraid of being pressured into a relationship where I'll be miserable and possibly treated poorly but still be too afraid to leave due to societal pressures. I'm afraid of someone setting me up on blind dates - one friend already asked me if I'd be okay with that despite knowing my identity.
I'm afraid that my not being in a relationship will make people think that I'm not "capable" or "mature enough" for a relationship. I'm absolutely terrified of being "corrective" raped. I'm afraid of people who won't give up when I say no. I'm afraid of people who try to "change my mind" and be "first."
I'm afraid that not experiencing romantic attraction will alienate me from my friends and family as I get older. I'm afraid to come out because I'm sick of people telling me that I'm wrong and that I'm heartless and inhuman. I'm afraid that I'll be mocked if I turn out to be demiromantic. I'm afraid that what everyone says about me being aro is or will be true.
- Anon
I'm afraid of loneliness - society's focus on romance means many of my friends are starting to prize romance over friendship and I feel I'm being left in the dust. I don't desire a romantic relationship but I'm afraid of the isolation that may come with being without one in the future.
- M
When I first realized I was aromantic, I remember it being such an a-ha moment. Finally, all the bits of pieces of myself that I've questioned so much suddenly made sense. I was euphoric, initially. I've been struggling with identifying my romantic orientation for quite some time. After all, romantic attraction wasn't really alien to me. As a kid, I knew I felt romantic attraction. But, somehow, it subsided. I lost that kind of attraction towards people. I liked flirting, and romantic attention. But, I can't seem to feel that instant romantic thrill and pull that I once felt for people. It was great. I found aromantic communities that I could connect with online. Even though I'm still closeted, knowing that there are people who go through the same thing as I do helped ease my worry. It made me feel that I wasn't alone.
However, that didn't last very long. All of a sudden, I felt empty and depressed. Ever since I was a child, all I wanted was to love and be loved back. I wished for those cliché romantic experiences. I wanted to get married with the love of my life, have children, and grow old with them. I longed to feel romantic love. I wanted to fill that hole in my heart with it. But, try hard as I might, I know I could never do it. That terrified me. To fill that hole, I immersed myself in romantic media. I loved looking through comics and shows, watching as the characters fall in love. Each moment, each word they uttered made my heart flutter. Falling in love seems so wonderful - I thought. This romantic media became some sort of drug. It gave me a high that I felt I needed to feel. If I don't consume it, the emptiness and longing would overpower me. And I didn't want that. I didn't want to face that reality.
Eventually, it became too much to bear. After holding it all in, I cried. Lying on my bed, I sobbed like a child. I cried my heart out till my eyes ached. It hurts. It hurts so bad. I felt like I was desperately reaching out. I was trying so hard to chase this thrill and feeling of romantic love. Yet, all I could reach was that soul-sucking sadness and despair. Why was I aromantic? Why now, all of a sudden? What about those feelings I've had before? That wonderful warmth. That debilitating happiness of just being around the person you like. Will I never feel them again? Will they ever come back? All of these questions ran through my mind. I didn't know what to do.
But, in that despair, I mustered the will to smile. This time, I reached down deep within myself and faced my aromantic self without fear. I repeated the words that I dreaded for so long "I'm aromantic." "I'm aromantic." "I'm aromantic." And that's okay. To this day, I admit I'm still saddened by the fact that I can't feel romantic love. Often, I would daydream about myself in romantic situations. I still consume romantic media. Sometimes, I'll even fantasize about some wonderful person who would accept my aromantic ass and shower me with romantic attention and affection. It still seems so nice to have. Yet, I don't feel I need it to be happy anymore. I don't think I ever will.
- K. Ybañez
What makes me the most anxious is how people's expectations will affect my relationships. I'll give two examples: I'm close friends with someone who's aro/ace, and I'm aro but very sexual. We're thinking of moving in together because we get along and it's easier to have an apartment with more than one person paying for it.
However I see that she gets hesitant when we both bring up stuff like this, and I feel like it's due to the societal expectations of what these things imply; that if you move in together, then you're gonna want to have sex, get married, whatever. I don't want any of that with her, I don't want to be anything but friends, and I will certainly never desire her romantically, but it may be one of those things where she will only be reassured as time goes on and our actions prove it to her.
The second example is I have an online play partner who I'm in a D/s relationship with (he's my Dom, I'm his sub). He knows and accepts that I'm aromantic. However, because I've told him that I also can form affectionate, loving attachments, he tends to distance himself from me a bit when I start phrasing things that emulate those feelings more. I'm worried that he feels like I'm growing romantically attached, despite me saying over the years, consistently, that I never will. I'm worried that the best way he can understand my comments and phrasing is through the lens of romance, rather than a non-romantic, loving devotion.
So circling back to the beginning, I'm worried about how others' insecurities will shape my relationships with them, because I want to be purely honest with what I want to do with them, but am deeply unnerved but what I want being potentially misconstrued, and eventually scaring people off unless the evolution of the relationship is paced slower than I want it to be.
- Raymond Lee
I've identified as aromantic for about 3 months now, even though I know I've been an aromantic for my whole life basically. Generally, I don't find anything negative about it and feel quite good.
But of course there are those thoughts in my head that appear late at night. As an aromantic, I feel like I will always be lonely. Personally, I have a friend that deep down I know I could have a QPR with her, but I know that she would not be comfortable with that, and it's totally fine. I'm ok with not having a romantic relationship but because of that I feel like I cherish my friendships more than aro people would. Friendships are everything to me, to some I might be exaggerating and I'm not sure if what I'm saying makes sense, but in my future I see myself with friends, no one else. So, to me it's hard to let a friend go, it's hard when I don't see someone wanting to be my friend.
When I say "I love you" to a friend I mean it, with all my heart. And to see others put romantic relationships above friendships hurts a little. I understand their position but it makes me feel left out, especially because I don't resonate with their experiences. All my friends talking about love life and me standing there "hahaha totally" when I just don't relate to anything they are saying. And yes, no one knows I am aroace except for that one friend I mentioned earlier. I just feel like others won't understand it. Like, they all understand feeling something towards others but not the absence of that.
So I guess being misunderstood is another of my worries. Why can't I scream to the whole world "I AM AROACE! I DON'T HAVE SEXUAL NOR ROMANTIC ATTRACTION TOWARDS ANYONE!" Why do I feel the need to keep quiet? Why can't I be proud? Why do I need to hide it? Why do I feel excluded even in the LGBGQIA+ community? Why is acephobia and arophobia overlooked? Why if someone says "I'm gay" there are applauded, but if another says "I'm aro" people respond with "Who asked?", "No one cares"? Why are we any different? Just why?
To clarify, I am not hating on others who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, I am just curious as to why we are treated differently. Regardless, I am still happy to be who I am, couldn't imagine myself any other way. I am glad that I found this community and know that I am not alone, I am not weird, I am not broken, I am valid, and yes... I can still love and be loved.
- Sade
The fear that my friends will abandon me for their romantic partners; that it won't be possible to live by myself because of the price of taxes; that nobody will listen to me when talking about these feelings with them
- aro-and-ace-memes-thoughts (on Tumblr)
I don't know what I'm afraid off. I think. I know I dread the day quarantine ends and we all start seeing eachother again, and that maybe, when all my friends are reunited, they'll ask why me and my now ex boyfriend broke up. I dread this day, because I'll have to tell them I am aro, and that means I was faking this entire time, lying, for years. I didn't know I was faking, or lying. But still, it doesn't matter.
I feel a little anxious every time a friend I'm not out to talks about their crushes and saying something "relatable", as if I obviously relate to them. Should I tell them in that moment that I am aromantic? Would it be rude, making the conversation about myself? Would they understand? Would they smile and say it's ok, or would they laugh, or would they hate me? I had 2 friends tell me I needed to see a doctor. One felt betrayed. 90% of the time I had to explain what aromanticism was, and it is so, so tiring.
Oh, I know something I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of losing my friends. Don't get me wrong, I would understand if they left me, eventually. If they moved on with their lives and stopped having time for me, or if my 2 best friends told me they didn't want to live with me in the future anymore. But I'm afraid we'll fight. I'm afraid they will leave me because I hurt them by being like I am, having them being my n° ones, even though they are "just friends". But it's never "just" friends. Friendship is no lesser than romance. I am mostly afraid I ruin their lives, tbh. What if them staying is not the best option? But what if they leave, and then they need me but won't call me, and I won't be able to help them? I just want to be able to be there for them :/
I'm also a little afraid I think I'm in love, and then I date that person, and then we get married. Because I know I am aromantic, but there were so many times I thought I was mistaken just because I thought a friend liked me romantically and that I had to return those feelings. I don't want to live trapped in a romantic relationship. But I also don't want to be alone. Tbh, the best scenario to me would be living in a house with my future adopted child, my family living nearby and my friends even closer. I'd help raise their kids and vice versa. Or we would raise a kid together, as siblings. That's what I want. I know it won't probably happen though, so it's not like I'm afraid it won't happen, and more like it's a bittersweet feeling of something probably unreachable.
- Helena / Chika
I'm afraid of people confessing they have a crush on me, and having to let them down. I'm afraid of that ruining our friendship. I'm afraid of being alone forever. I'm afraid of always feeling second best to everyone else when they get in a romantic relationship. Yet I'm also afraid of being that important to someone, of someone needing or wanting me that much. I'm afraid I might be wrong and I'm not aro, I'm just afraid of intimacy or something.
- Anon
I’m afraid that in the future I will lose people I’m close to because I’m aromantic. Whether it’s my family if they don’t support me, or my friends. I’m afraid that even platonic relationships will become impossible to me, and that I’ll end up having no one to love at all.
- Anon
I have a lot of fears stemming from being arospec, almost too many to describe and count. I was told as a child, either implicitly through media and even explicitly by my family, that my friends would abandon me in favour of their romantic partners one day. As an adult, I'm scared that I will never be anything but second best to any bond formed for the rest of my life. I was also told often by a parent that I should avoid adults who were "still single" when middle-aged because there had to be something "wrong with them" because nobody could "stay with them". Said parent even made a point of clarifying that this didn't apply to closeted gay people. It was the fact they didn't pursue, or want, a relationship that was bad (or maybe it was the fact that they didn't have one, because it was expected that everyone wanted a romantic relationship). I'm still scared, to this day, if the rest of the world will think there's something wrong with me, avoid me, for being single when I'm older.
I have interest in finding a QPR, but I'm completely lost on how to navigate that kind of relationship. There's no cultural guidance for forming a close bond outside of romance, and as someone who has struggled with forming bonds in general (due to a complicated, and traumatizing childhood) it makes me worry I will never find a QPR because of it. On top of all this, my past experiences with platonic attraction have involved masculine-presenting people and did not end well (had my affection/feelings interpreted as romantic). My feelings for people in general have always been taken the wrong way. I'm often too scared to show affection to people at all.
I want to have kids but I have no idea how. I considered trying to find a domestic partnership, and was pretty excited to find an article about platonic co-parenting, but when I actually read it I realized it described a lot of my fears about finding a co-parent. One woman said she believed their co-parent didn't want a romantic relationship, but they secretly did and it made co-parenting really difficult. Another pair said they eventually fell in love, which is cute but also not helpful to an arospec person. I think I might have to be a single mother (which of course is completely valid and respectable) but I... I guess that I wish it didn't have to be this way.
As an alloaro, I'm scared of being seen as predatory, shallow, vain, emotionally stunted. Even now I barely acknowledge the other part of my orientation because I don't want people to get the wrong idea.
And finally, I'm scared about what the rest of my life is going to look like. I want to understand what it means to be an older aro, how to navigate a fulfilling, successful adult life without romance, but there's basically no representation for aromantic people, especially older aromantics. It feels like staring into an abyss. It's hauntingly lonely.
- Celia
I'm afraid of my identity as aro being invalidated because it isn't "enough". Like, to the world outside my queer community. The idea of "coming out" as aromantic to my parents feels like I need the quotation marks. I've had two serious relationships and my parents met them both. I was in a relationship when I realized I was aro. I don't know how to tell them that "we're not romantically involved anymore" and that I never want a romantic relationship again, because I don't think they will understand it, or they will wonder why on earth I felt the need to tell them this. Because it's not like when I came out as lesbian, and I don't know how to explain that thanks to amatonormativity I didn't have the right words for my feelings or an understanding of what I really wanted. I'm afraid of my parents never really knowing me because they might not accept "aro" as part of my identity.
- Anon
I fear that my family/friends will reject me because of my identity as aromantic, and that I'm pushing away people with my identity. Another fear is that I'm just broken or doing something wrong for not understanding romance/romantic attraction/customs around romance.
- Anon
Discovering new things about yourself can be both a thrilling and terrifying experience. I was on the precipice of my aromantic self-discovery for a long time, subconsciously knowing the cookie-cutter lifestyle - the spouse, the kids, the picket fence - was at odds with the underlying truth. I made these vague plans of a future with a faceless Other to cohabitate with, produce faceless offspring with, while knowing it wasn't what I felt or wanted. It was just expected.
What really held me back from connecting the dots was fear. Fear that I was different and people would see, fear that my social and safety networks would crumble as I moved into adulthood and lost my friends to those milestones that we're taught are the natural course of life. I also feared (and still do fear) the responsibility of supporting myself and not being able to live the single lifestyle that I want without compromise.
Above all this, my greatest fear lies in our invisibility, that others won't be so lucky to find this word, this community, that opened so many doors for me. I fear for others who might go through life feeling wrong for what they want, ashamed that they can't connect on a romantic level, can't muster the feelings that society declares is vital to the human experience. I fear for the aros who are, or have been, left behind without a word that encapsulates their experience and brings them to a community where they're understood. My fear is that our lack of visibility has erased us and will be our erasure in the present and future because it easily could have happened to me.
- S. B. R.
Afraid all my friends will leave me for romantic interests and I'll be alone.
- Fern
I feel like I’m going to miss out on having a partner that appreciates me because this world seems filled with alloros despite all the arospec individuals I see on the internet. I find that to be hilarious since I might be Grey-Aqueerplatonic which could mean that this is simply amatonormativity. That scares me. Amatonormativity scares me. It makes me wonder if my feelings about having a partner are real or conditioning. Makes me wonder if I will be alone in the future and if finding that to be a bad thing is amatonormative. I dread having to be by myself without my friends because this world makes it so that platonic relationships are deemed inferior to romantic ones. So that I am constantly never a priority, even though I put more effort into appreciating them. That’s annoying. I guess all I really fear are the effects of amatonormativity.
- Anon