My Aromantic Fears (Part 3)
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 and mental health. This is the third instalment of four.
Word count: 4037 words
Estimated reading time: Approx 20 minutes
Since I won't have a partner, it will be harder to find new groups of friends. I also worry about what happens to my things when I die. Like, for my will and stuff. I worry about how much more expensive it is to be single.
- Anon
I’m afraid of growing old and being alone. I’m a shy person in general, and don’t have many close friends. Now I’m young, at uni full-time, living with my parents, surrounded by people, and already feel lonely every now and then, even though I don’t have many reasons to be. What if, when I’m older and my parents pass away and my friends get bored of me and start their families, what if I’m too shy to make new ones? I’m not planning on having children, and can’t imagine myself having a close platonic/familial/mentor relationship with someone much younger than me. What if I get sick and frail in old age and there’s no one to take care of me?
I think the solution is to start making more friends now and put effort into those relationships on purpose to make them last for many decades. Maybe people will remember me and come visit every now and then. I hope that I’ll still be open and friendly enough to make friends with people my age or volunteer somewhere or delve into hobbies or travel - if I’m physically able, of course. I actually think I could have fun in a residential home or a flat-share with others my age. But what if I can’t?
The only old people I know are grandparents, and they all had lots of kids and grandkids who make up most of their social circle. The only people at my grandmother’s 90th birthday party last year were family members, because all her friends had already passed away. And that makes me so incredibly sad. I don’t have any role models of people who didn’t have children and grandchildren, and who are still happy. I don’t know what that would look like or if it would even work. Yes, I think that’s my worst fear. Being 80+ years old, with no one to live with or visit me or spend holidays with, and lonely.
- Anon
I'm demi/greyro, with a good mix of alloro and aro friends. I'm always afraid that I'm never gonna be "aro enough" for my aro friends, or "alloro enough" for my alloro friends. It's a place in the in-between area that leaves me worried about being abandoned on either side because I want some romantic things but don't want to come second to my alloro friends' partners in their lives.
- Jon
I fear that there will never be any legal recognition in anti-discrimination laws to protect me.
- Anon
As an aroace girl I'm glad but also somewhat jealous, scared of other people. Jealous that they are able to fall in love with each other/feeling that special pull to another called attraction, and scared since I never know how they are going to react to me not being able to feel attracted what's so ever. I mean I'm glad to be skipping a lot of potential drama this way but missing out on the good sides is also sad to me like, going from thank God to Why, just why multiple times a day. Also there are apparently many people who have a problem towards people not feeling attraction, which I don't understand.
Then there is also the issue that something like the aromantic spectrum is not well known which means having to explain it to people due to them not knowing about it in most circumstances, which can be difficult when you are either bad at explaining things or don't have a good explanation prepared. People also can jump to conclusions about why you are something like aromantic, some classics are [you find the right person] [you're just a late bommer] [is it because you have been assaulted].
Most of my fears are more related do to some learning disorders that made my life a hell but there is at least one fear that I'm going to share with you that is related to my identity as aroace and that is acceptance. Not being taken seriously or as a joke because somebody believes that it doesn't exist, that I'm lying or some other reason.
- Stella
I’m afraid that my alloro friends will have a romantic attraction to me, and I’ll lose a friend after rejecting them. I have to tell myself they’re approaching me not only because they have a crush on me, and won’t suddenly go away if they know I’ll never romantically love anyone. Sometimes this fear makes me hide myself in aro community and refuse to contact my alloro friends.
- Anon
My greatest fear as an arospec person is that I will never understand the experience of loving someone romantically and that if I do ever feel attraction to somebody beyond the physical aspect that I'll lose interest in them after we're already together.
- Min
Oo lovely, an opportunity to vent and I fear that I'll be forced to hide this side of myself for fear of judgement. My therapist, concerned, disapproving, comes to mind. Maybe it's your medication? Y'know, the one that saved you life and has made living a possibility again. Come off it and try again for another year, hopefully that won't kill you and maybe then you'll be better, normal. I try to explain to her why she's being harmful, it still comes up almost every session until I quit.
I fear that potential partners will reject me in hurtful ways. Wait so you're a sociopath, basically? You just want to use me for sex! How can I trust you to maintain consent? I try to explain, they won't hear it. Another fear: queerplatonic? What's that. Sounds stupid and childish, you just need to grow up. They won't hear me out.
One-by-one my friends leave me for romantic partners. I'm injured and have no one there for me. The doctors sometimes deny my friends visitation. Rent is too much on my own and my flatmates are abusive. I can't continue like this. My conditions flare up and I'm scraping by on ESA benefits. If only you had a partner to look after you! Then you wouldn't be in such a state. New neighbours call the police on me again for my tic attacks, I'm barely even able answer the door. They're dubious of me while I'm here alone with no one to vouch for me, as always. I'm reconnecting to a culture that was taken from my family, but I fear that I will have no one to share it with. The pressure is to have a partner and raise a kid, the Christian values imposed on us pressure so, and our culture, identity and language will die without youth.
These all scare me, but it's important to remember that these are just that, fears. Not all of these have happened or are guaranteed to continue to happen. I don't always struggle with these and usually I can maintain an optimistic attitude towards the future.
- Anon
At this point in my life I am embracing my aromantic identity and finding peace and joy in it, but it has been a long struggle. Long before I knew what I was or that there was a word for it, I was afraid of being single. As a teenager I watched my peers getting crushes and start dating. And it just wasn’t happening for me. I did not have anyone in particular I wanted to date, but the fact that nobody seemed interested in me made me feel unwanted and I became convinced that people around me viewed me with pity. So when somebody finally showed interest in me, I jumped into their arms and spent the next 25 years of my life passing directly from one relationship to the other.
I was not particularly happy but at least people could see that somebody wanted to be with me. In every relationship I eventually realised that I was not happy with this person and wanted to end things but found it almost impossible to take that step. Looking back, I think it might have been the fact that nothing had changed that confused me. I hadn’t fallen out of love with them because I’d never been in love in the first place. I had felt loved and wanted but it never lasted. Every relationship I’ve had ended with me finding someone else to move on to. Except the last and longest one. Except in a way it also did, only this time the person I had found was myself. And this time it’s true love.
- Anon
I'm afraid that I will never be anything more than second best. I'm afraid that my friends will all find significant others and leave me behind. I’m afraid that I will never be the most important person in someone’s life. I just want to be loved, but I know that it will be hard to find someone who will love me the way I need them to. I’m worried that I will lose good friends because I won’t be able to give them the romantic love that they want. Mostly, I’m just afraid that I will be alone, and unloved, because I’m aro.
- Elias
I’m worried about having unhealthy relationships. I am Aromantic 100% and I also want a polyam qpr. I worry that entering one, poly or not, will lead to either me or my partner(s) being unhappy. I worry I’ll be or feel forced into romance with them or that my partner(s) will feel like I am manipulating or hurting them for feeling different emotions to them than they do to me. I am highly uncomfortable engaging in romance but feel like it will be expected of me even though I am open about being Aro. I know if someone were to tell me that they feel like I am hurting them for not engaging with them in romantic situations or actions that I would probably force myself into them for their sake.
I always tell people who ask me to be in a relationship what to expect from me because I don’t want things to wind up like my first relationship. In my first relationship I was questioning my Aro identity and didn’t yet know about it fully. And my partner (now ex) being a highly romantic person, I often forced myself to do things that made me uncomfortable to try and “fix” myself and get over (what I would later find out is my Aro identity) my discomfort and strange feelings.
I want a domestic relationship with two women, I want to hold and cuddle with them and have a home with them. I want to cook and watch movies with them. But I can never be comfortable being romantically intimate with them. Kissing, mouth, cheek, hand, etc..is a no. Doing romantic activities is a no. Even touch that I interpret as romantic is a no. I would communicate this with my future partners but I’m scared they will try and push me to “get over it”. Or worse, get into the relationship with me knowing my boundaries but leaving me when they realize they can’t change my said boundaries. If my partner(s) we’re truly unhappy with me I would never force them to stay in an unsatisfied relationship, I just hope they’d do the same for me.
Sadly, with experiences I’ve had in the past and other stories I’ve seen and heard, I can still see these things happening. I want partners to spend my life with, but ones that accept my Aromanticism and the boundaries I have with it. I thought maybe I could have partners that are also aro, but they feel impossible to find where I am.
I also fear family. Even if I did find the relationship I am hoping and looking for, my family would not be understanding or willing to. They already had trouble grasping me being a lesbian, I don’t ever plan on telling them of my Aro identity or ever letting them find out. A sibling of mine is also lgbt+ but she has frequently made unsavory comments about Arospec identities, labels, and relationships. I would have to lie and say my relationship is romantic for it to be accepted and understood. I don’t want to do that. So my options are either lie and be uncomfortable for as long as I am in my relationship to my family, or tell them the truth and deal with their negativity to both my Aro identity and my relationship. I know for a fact they would make fun of and insult my relationship, no doubt about it, but I know people reading this will believe me to be over dramatic or my family be right, which hurts.
My Aromantic identity is so important to me, to have my partner(s), family, and strangers be against such important parts of it hurts and scares me. I want to be known and I want to be accepted. Sadly it seems I cannot have both.
- D
My fear is that we’ll never be acknowledged as our own community or that aroallos, loveless aros, etc will continue to be tossed under the bus by other aros, or that one day someone might try to convince me my aromanticism isn’t real or valid.
- Kronos
Sometimes I'm afraid of interacting with LGBT content mentioning I'm aroace, sometimes don't. I'm scared of being rejected from LGBT safe spaces because they think I'm not LGBT, scared to contact people who are supposed to help me because what if they tell me "sorry, you're not LGBT, we can't help you"?
I'm afraid of being rejected by my family, that people will tell me this isn't an orientation, it's a mental illness. I'm afraid that my mother will never accept who I am. I'm afraid of missing out on life with a partner, as I've always thought that's how my future would look like. But now I know I'm grayro and even tho I feel romantic attraction I feel really disconnected from romance and feel weird in a relationship.
I'm afraid of being alone because my friend's priorities and mine aren't the same, and maybe they'll put their partner before me when they'll always be the first ones for me. I'm afraid of never having someone who understands me and knows how it feels to be aspec when you're surrounded by allos and everyone experiences something that you just can't.
And I'm afraid of people being right about this only being a phase, and the thought of maybe one day feeling attraction feels so alien to me, so weird, so not me that the thought of ever losing my aspec identity scares me.
- Anon
I worry a lot. I am a naturally anxious person. But something that scares me the most regarding my aromanticism, is being left behind. I am still a teenager, and all my friends are constantly talking about relationships and getting married, etc. I know I don't want that, but I'm scared that when those days come and they all go get married and start a family, I will be pushed to the side as they become busier and busier with their new partners and children and I will become less and less important to them.
- Anon
I'm afraid of being alone for the rest of my life, of people who don't believe in my feelings towards them.
- Anon
I’m so afraid that I’ll lose friends over them not understanding, or being trapped in a relationship. I’m afraid that I’ll have to face arophobia in college and not have it accepted. I’m afraid I’ll be alone, friend wise anyway.
- Anon
I have a fear that my best friend (who I kind of want to be my QPR) has a romantic crush on me. I’ve seen several hints and while I don’t particularly mind if they do, I’m afraid that if they confess and I reject them that it will ruin our friendship forever. I guess I really just don’t want to lose any friendships because of unreciprocated feelings.
- Sparklepool101
Honestly, I'm afraid that I will not be able to live a good life as an aromantic person. Not in a "Oh no! what will I do without romantic love in my life!" way, but more in a "Will I be able to afford it? Will people respect me? Am I even allowed to have a family?". I'm scared that, as an alloaro, I'll be made out to be a predator or a monster, and that in therapy I'll be put on meds or taken off meds to try and "fix" the "problem", because that's not considered conversion therapy, for some reason. And, last, but not least, I'm scared that the look of disgust in my friends' face whenever I come out will never go away.
- Anon
I'm afraid of loneliness and physical closeness. Also I'm very afraid of hurting feelings of people who have a crush on me.
- Max
I’m grayromantic, so I do experience a little bit of romance, but my fear would be to fall in love. I’ve only experienced it once or twice but I don’t want to date or marry in the future, and I hate the concept of love in general. So falling in love in the future is my fear. I also fear my parents pushing me to settle down when I reach the age where people usually “start a family.”
- Anon
You know, I thought romance wasn't real until I learned that aromantic was an option. Because if there was a name for not connecting with romance, that meant other people could. I'm afraid that maybe one day I will realise what it's all about. Maybe one day I will be older, and that'll mean I finally understand. I like living alone, but how will I ever afford rent without someone to split it with? This world isn't built for us. Is there an 'us?' The world tells me at every turn that no, no, I am the outlier, I am the freak, what is wrong with me to turn away from this stilted and unnatural form of love? Every single time I think I've ever loved in the way everyone means it, it's passed after two weeks.
I'm in a qpr now, and while sometimes it's good it's also sometimes constricting - how much of it do I want and how much is because I've been taught I need a partner, any partner, in order to be worth something? That if I can't force romance then queerplatonic is a decent substitute? A second choice? Option B when it comes to how to spend your life? I'm not missing anyone that I've never met. I don't want to date anyone that I've ever met. What's wrong with me? Nothing, nothing, nothing, I'm just different, but I wish I wasn't alienated every time I pick up a book and two characters fall in Love before even being friends. I wish I didn't alienate myself by viewing friendship as less serious.
- Anon
I'm afraid that I'm just faking being aro because there's no way I can't feel 'that way' towards anyone. I'm afraid that I just haven't tried hard enough. I'm afraid I'll be alone forever, and that no matter who I come in to contact with, is going to ask for something I can't give them. I'm afraid of being left behind by my family and my friends. But I'm also afraid that this is just a phase: nothing has felt more comforting than this, more welcoming, more real. I'm afraid that one day I'll wake up and have to find someone to date romantically, regardless of gender. I'm afraid that I'll always be seen as less than for not being in a relationship. I'm afraid that people will see me as repressed or in denial or too traumatized to bond with someone. I'm afraid that people won't want to know me the way I want to know them.
- Anon
I'm worried that something really IS wrong with me and I'm using aromanticism as a shield or an excuse. Logically, I know that being aromantic (in any capacity, all along the spectrum) is a legitimate orientation. But I can't help thinking I'm missing some key factor that my subconscious has buried.
- Anon
I'm afraid of us forever being invisible, of forever being ignored, alienated, always the outsider. I'm in a few big fandoms, popular ones. I'm always paranoid that someday people are going to look at my headcanons and writing and go 'homophobe' or something. It feels so alienating in a place where every pairing that so much as looks at each other is shipped. And only romantically at that.
I've come across romantic ships I have only seen as siblings, mother daughters, friends who were happy and no less meaningful in friendship. I've never had the urge to ship any characters as romantic, if I could have my way they would all be queerplatonic. But I can't say that can I? If I would turn a popular gay ship into a qpr people would scream 'homophobe!', 'but they're in love!', 'erasure!', 'they're more than just friends!' like qpr are lesser than romance, like it means they love each other less, like romance is better and more meaningful than 'boring old friendship'. Like they don't know and don't care how much it hurt. Like allos complaining aspec headcanons are 'infantilizing', 'demonizing', and 'misinterpreting' the characters, like there are no romance favourable aros, like there are no meaningful non romantic relationships, like romance repulsion is childish or a thing thats undesirable. Like they don't know how much it feeds into aphobic rhetoric and hurts us.
I fear aros would always be alone in our suffering. I fear that allos would forever not care. We fight for the other non aros in the queer community, the gays, the lesbian, the bis, the alloaces, and so on. Yet we're practically always excluded, shamed, belittled, alienated from the queer community outside of our own little one. I'm afraid years from now this will never change and they will never care.
- June E.
Feeling empty.
- Anon
While I accept and embrace my aromanticism, it can make life difficult. Amatonormativity has made it so that it’s difficult for me to imagine a future, or at least to dare to hope for a future. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to get the domestic intimacy and bliss that I crave. I’m afraid that I will not find a found family of people who prioritize me. I’m afraid that my relationships will be unfulfilling because others won’t want to deeply commit to or invest in friendships or platonic relationships. I fear that I’ll always be on the fringe, not really part of something to call my own.
I’m afraid that I won’t be able to afford a home and that I’ll suffer financially because I’m single. I sometimes dread getting older because it’ll become more difficult for me to take care of everything on my own. I dread my friends getting married or into serious romantic relationships because they will probably not have much more time for me. I’m afraid that I’ll miss out on togetherness and sharing the simple pleasures of life. I worry that I won’t get the support and care that I need.
I fear having to forever live anonymously, in silence, in the shadows, and not being able to truly and openly express myself because it’s non-normative and queer. Being aromantic has in a way opened me to a whole new world of possibilities and has expanded my mind and heart, but because of society’s normative standards, these possibilities seem to be fiction and feel so far out of reach. In two years, I turn 30, and I often wonder… will I ever be able to have the life that I want? I have accepted myself, but will society ever fully embrace me as I am?
- UC