Guest post by Former Nonbinary Sunbeam
Happy Pride to those who celebrate! This is actually just my second Pride since I realized Pride was about me, too. When I was growing up, the definition of LGBT I was taught didn’t include me, and while something always felt off about that, I still accepted that Pride was about other people, not me. [1] A couple of years ago I read that the A in LGBTQIA could also stand for aromatic, so I thought “I guess that means I’m LGBTQIA. That will take some getting used to.” About thirty seconds later I thought, “You know, I bet my lack of gender fits into those letters somehow too.” So I was just a little decade late to figuring that out.
I thought as a kind of follow up to my post here at Wheat&Tares about being asexual and LDS I’d write about being aromantic and LDS. There’s a common misconception that to be aromantic you have to be asexual, but that isn’t true. I’m not asexual. I feel like that makes navigating being aromatic more complicated, not less. I don’t think I’ve read anything before about how the Church affects aromantic people who aren’t asexual, so this post could be a Wheat and Tares exclusive!
I had my first crush[2] when I was 11 and it hit like a truck. It was strange to me how my brain decided that this physically attractive but otherwise apparently randomly selected person I’d never noticed before was suddenly both Amazing and Very Important. [3] I’m not gonna lie. There were some parts of having a crush I really liked, but I could tell that something was wrong. I didn’t even want to be in the same room. Some of that was nerves, but not all of it.
As I got older there were two things I noticed about my crushes: they seemed much longer lived than those of the other kids, and even though eventually I stopped feeling repulsed by romantic attraction, I never felt motivated by it to do anything about it like the other kids did. I made friends with my crushes because that’s what I thought I was supposed to be doing but I can’t even say for sure that I felt motivated to do that.
I have very vivid memories of some of the most important points in my life[4], so I can tell you exactly when and where I was and what I was doing when I realized I was aromantic. I was 15 years old, standing in my room, looking at the carpet to the left of the door. “Aromantic” wasn’t a word I’d heard, of course, but I had heard before about people who were single and didn’t show any interest in dating. I knew a lot of them were probably closeted gay people, but it seemed reasonable to me that not all of them were and I had the thought that I was probably like those people. It was not that I was entirely opposed to being in a romantic relationship, but I just couldn’t see myself ever going through the effort and heartache to form one.
That realization was both relieving and unsatisfying. The more it percolated over the next few weeks the more unsatisfying it was.
Realizing I was aromantic didn’t make me stop being allosexual. I still had certain urges and needs, and I came to the horrifying realization that there was no socially acceptable way I could ever fulfill them. It was a lot like how the Church expects gay people to live. It was very frustrating.
In desperation I even tried to pray the straight away[5]. Life would have been a lot easier if I just didn’t have those needs. It was only once or twice, and I feel kind of embarrassed about it looking back now, but it shows just how much pain I felt.
You might expect that the Church’s rule against dating before 16 would have helped me at that point in my life, but, reader, it did not. Even in the 90’s teenage social customs had changed enough in the almost entirely nonmember area I lived in that I had no way of knowing what was allowed and what was forbidden, and that made me uncomfortable. I don’t think that I would have done anything differently even if that rule didn’t exist, but it did increase my anxiety about anything remotely romance adjacent. I also knew that the impending pressure to start dating the moment I turned 16 was going to be intense, too, as if my sixteenth birthday would magically change me in some great way.
Fortunately, the worst period of agonizing over my conflicting needs only lasted for a few weeks. I wanted children and I wanted them to be raised in a two-parent household, and so I realized that that didn’t leave me with many options. I decided that I’d try to have something resembling a romantic relationship for the benefit of my future children even if I was just going through the motions.
That decision made things easier but certainly didn’t make them easy.
Ironically the realization I was aromatic happened when I was probably the closest to alloromantic I’ve ever been in my entire life.
I did not date when I turned 16. If I had a crush on a member at the time I might have, but I had a crush on a nonmember who wasn’t interested in me in that way, and by the time of my birthday that crush was more or less over anyway. After that crush faded away another never came to replace it. It took me a few months to notice that but I when I did felt a bit relieved and didn’t worry about it.
A little more than a year later my father asked me who I was interested in romantically. I told him I wasn’t interested in anyone. He said that was okay but wanted to know who I was interested in most recently. I told him I didn’t remember being interested in anyone for quite a while, not even a little. He then told me it was ok if I was gay and that he just wanted to know what was going on. I replied that I was very sure that I wasn’t gay. I could tell he didn’t really believe me but he stopped asking questions.
The opportunity to meet more eligible members wasn’t the only reason I chose to go to BYU, but it was a large factor in my mind. I figured a large pool of options would provide the best chance of finding someone that would interest me.
After a few months of being at BYU I felt a lot of stress. I met a lot of nice people but no one that I was even a little interested in romantically. I didn’t worry about not dating in high school, but I felt like the time to start had arrived and I was wasting valuable time. I was a teenager, so my body made me quite aware of the fact that there were a lot of physically attractive people around, but that seemed like something too superficial to treat someone differently because of.
Finally, I decided to ask my best friend out. I really loved being with my best friend, who met all the minimum requirements for being a suitable mate, so I thought that maybe even if I never developed any romantic feelings I could make a marriage work. At that point it had been two and a half years since the last time I had been romantically interested in anyone and I had no way of knowing if I’d ever feel that way about anyone again.
Unfortunately, before I could decide where to ask my friend out on a date to, my friend told me that they were dating sometime. My mouth said “Congratulations! 😀” but my brain said “There goes that idea! 🥺” That relationship didn’t last long but I had eternally chickened out by the time it was over, and so I never tried again. Knowing what I know now I really do think I could have made a spousal relationship with that friend work and I occasionally wonder how my life would have gone differently if I had just made that decision a week or two earlier. I never told my friend any of those things.
At the MTC I developed a full-fledged crush on one of the missionaries in my district. It completely shocked me. I wasn’t doing anything different than I did at BYU, and I certainly wasn’t actively looking for anyone at the MTC. It turns out that I’m what they call aroflux. There are periods in my life when I can feel romantic attraction and there are times I really can’t.[6] For some aroflux people those shifts can happen several times in a day, but for me I can go years before a noticeable change. I have tried my whole life to find some kind of a pattern but there isn’t one.
While the Church’s rules about turning on and off your romantic desires at arbitrarily chosen life events are just as broken as the ones about turning on and off sexual desires, I have to admit it was pretty easy for me to keep the rules on my mission against fraternizing with the enemy gender. I was slightly interested in one of the members in one of the wards I was assigned to, but it was no big deal.
I did end up becoming romantically interested in someone at BYU a few days before the last session of the last class I needed to graduate. It didn’t go anywhere, for obvious logistical reasons.
It probably doesn’t surprise you to hear that I spent a few years in a singles ward after that. I liked the fact that the congregation was quieter than a regular ward but everything else was a bit uncomfortable. Unlike BYU there was often a bit of an undertone to the meetings that we were delinquent or at least lazy. It would have been a lot worse but I always took solace in the doctrine that if you didn’t find anyone in this life you’d have the opportunity in the next. That doctrine was usually presented with very pointed commentary on who they thought was worthy of getting that opportunity and that people like me weren’t on that list, but I figured the Lord knew my heart better than they did.
I did get set up on a few blind dates by people who knew me well, and one of them ended up working out for me. I’m now married to one of the handful of people in my life I’ve ever been romantically attracted to. We love spending time together, are devoted to our children, and generally are very happy together. My spouse is Amazing and Very Important to me.
I am still aroflux. I still go for years without feeling romantic attraction for anyone, even the person I’m married to. I honestly don’t think my spouse can tell the difference. I don’t need to feel romantic attraction to love someone, and we do all the same things whether I’m feeling romantic attraction or not. I like the way romantic attraction feels but I don’t miss it when it’s gone.
It was a rough road. I’m glad I’ve ended up in a good place. I realize several places in my life I’ve been unreasonably lucky and resilient. I know it doesn’t work out that way for all of us.
Questions:
1. How many Mormon kids do you think decide to “pray the straight away”?
2. It’s not just the Church but our entire society that puts romantic relationships on a pedestal, and certain aspects of life are gatekept by requiring a romantic relationship to obtain. How does that harm people?
3. The phrase “just friends” really bothers me, like it does for a lot of aromantic people. Can you see why?
4. Does nagging people attending singles wards about the importance of marriage actually benefit anyone ever?
[1] Even though I was excluded by overly strict definitions, I still knew that the way I felt about gender could get me killed and so for a few years in high school it seemed to me like it was really important to avoid bringing attention to that part of myself and that associating with LGBT people might do that. No child should ever have to come to that kind of a realization, and yet new ones do every day.
[2] Obviously that means that even though I’m aromatic spectrum I do have some limited ability to feel romantic attraction. Also, the term “aromantic” is usually understood to include atypical reactions to romantic attraction when it occurs, not just the lack of it.
[3] When I was that age I actually tried to find an encyclopedia article that would explain to me how brains pick out who to have a crush on. Turns out no one knows.
[4] This is why it took me so long to realize I have PTSD. My flashbacks don’t seem any more vivid or real than some of my other memories. They just kind of make me feel bad and my other memories don’t. (I have pretty much every other possible symptom of PTSD.)
[5] There aren’t generally agreed on definitions for the words “homosexual” and “heterosexual” when applied to nonbinary people like me, but I definitely understood myself to be straight at that time and if you asked me to describe my sexuality in one commonly known word, “straight” is still the one I’d use, even though it’s not that clear cut. I’m only attracted to one gender, but some aspects of that experience are more like what binary heterosexuals experience and some are more like what binary homosexuals experience. In particular, I’ve learned I’m a lot more like binary homosexuals in my romantic expectations and that’s just not the role someone who looked like me was expected to play in romantic relationships. In other words, my natural instincts were all “wrong” for a context with as strictly separated gender roles as Mormon dating and that made things even harder for me.
[6] This is a considerable simplification of what it means to be aroflux and even a considerable simplification of the different experiences I’ve fluctuated between, but it’s sufficient for this post. For more information I’d start with AUREA at https://www.aromanticism.org
Wheat & Tares 
So this is interesting. I wasn’t aware that being romantic was a regular requirement, or expectation. Is it weird that it bothers me that we have a need for so much categorisation and box creating. I suppose many diverse boxes are better than few still very narrowly defined boxes, but it still feels to me like boxes are getting out of control. At what point do we accept that everyone is an individual, and that the only box we need is human.
I am not a romantic person, as my husband has often commented (I’m not sure I even know what being romantic would involve.) Fortunately he loves me as I am, and doesn’t require me to be romantic. It’s a lovable quirk that I’m not. I absolutely love my husband and children. I can relate to obsessive crushes on people as a teenager.
I always felt a strong dislike for gender role boxes. Much of the feminine or womanly traits GA talks drove me mad. See my post here:
Some time after writing that that I found that I perhaps did have some trauma perhaps from those ideas. It seems I permanently steeled myself against these kind of comments in a church environment, because I was expecting to hear them there. But when someone expressed basically similar sentiments in the entirely different environment of a band rehearsal a few years later I found myself experiencing a fight/flight response to threat.
Enjoy being you.
Thank you for writing this. It was very interesting to go beyond the name of “aromantic” into the feelings and I even learned that it could fluctuate. It takes bravery to put your feelings out there
And I kind of agree with Hedgehog that the boxes with labels on them become problematic. We usually do not fit perfectly into any of those labels, and trying to avoid a label or cram ourselves into existing boxes can be damaging.
But the definitions of behaviors are helpful in understanding ourselves and how we are different from “normal”. But they don’t help very much with societies demand that we all be “normal.” So, what I really wish we could get away from is the expectation that we all should be alike in some arbitrary thing called “normal” because nobody is exactly that either.
Instead of boxes we need to think in terms of spectrum. Just like “normal” doesn’t exist, and perfectly healthy doesn’t exist, 100% straight doesn’t exist either. Maybe 99%. Like someone I know who can’t stand the idea of her son being on the autism spectrum, even though he was diagnosed as a child, she thinks he has totally outgrown it. No, autism is a spectrum—everyone ever born is on the spectrum somewhere, so neurotypical might be one end and maybe lots of people are toward that end, but nobody is neuroperfect, so those of you who think “on the spectrum” is bad, get over yourselves because you are slightly autistic too. If this person could get over the idea of boxes and labels and think spectrum, she would have such a hard time accepting her other kids have lots of autism traits too. It isn’t horrible, it is just a way people are different.
Instead of boxes, we need to accept *spectrum*. There is no hard and fast line between heterosexual, bi, or homosexual. It is a spectrum with two kind of lumps at each end instead of one in the middle, your normal bell curve. Sexuality is a bimodal spectrum, not a binary pair of boxes. Most people are slightly bi. Very few are totally only ever attracted to one gender. Gender is even more of a spectrum. Even XY chromosomes are not two separate boxes, because there is XXY, XXX, XYYY and a bunch of others, as well an androgen insensitivity.
So spectrum. I am only slightly to the feminine side of that gender spectrum. My loved one who is trans is such an interesting mix of feminine and masculine. Yes, being raised male she conformed to many male behaviors, but she enjoys many very masculine things, like fixing cars. She is currently replacing an engine. Gender is NOT binary, but a spectrum. Sexuality, gender, autism, ADHD, everything is more of a spectrum than distinct categories. It is a line we stand along, not boxes we fit into.
So, I would classify myself as toward the “attracted to men” end of that spectrum. Toward the not at all romantically attracted to anyone end of that spectrum. My dating, lack of crushes, and being “in love” was always so odd compared to the girls around me. It wasn’t until I heard the term aromantic that I finally understood why my girl friends fell head over heels gaga over guys, and I calculated. Yes, I calculated. So, picking a mate was more like a checklist for me than the going gaga over a guy my friends did. I still kind of roll my eyes at my husband’s romantic behavior. I put up with it because he is my best friend.
“A couple of years ago I read that the A in LGBTQIA could also stand for aromatic”
for a minute I thought this was going to be about pheromones
Holy moley! From your description I may be aromantic too. …even though I’ve never heard the term before or been aware of that set of reactions/non-reactions.
Nevertheless, like you, I met the right person almost 60 years ago.
From time to time I’ve enjoyed having sex with him. I’ve never had discomfort engaging in sex even when I wasn’t into it but when he ended up with ED after prostate cancer some 15 years ago I haven’t missed it in the least. However, even without a physical element beyond a smooch here and there and warm hugs and snuggles, our relationship based on love, trust, respect, and — don’t dismiss it! — shared memories is enduring and a gift beyond measure.
I guess what I’m saying is if you don’t measure yourself or your relationships by society’s or anyone else’s standards, it’s not a bad thing and it doesn’t change or fade with distracting hormonal currents.
As Abraham Lincoln famously stated: “Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.“
I agree with Anna’s recommendation that we think in terms of spectrums instead of boxes. But I also think that we may be inventing unnecessary spectrums. Your experience is very familiar to me, but having recently accepted my place on the autism spectrum, I don’t feel the need for another one to account for my aromanticism–I think it is just one manifestation of my autism. I ended up marrying a woman who was closer to aromantic than most women and thus was generally willing to tolerate it in me (but not always). But, in retrospect, I think she was quite a ways down the ADD spectrum (no H–not even a little) and her lesser aromanticism may just have been a manifestation of that. Other manifestations of my autism and her ADD caused far more problems for us than aromanticism–in fact our mutual aromanticism probably facilitated our staying together in that we avoided yet another set of unfulfilled expectations.
JCS:
Your considerably misattributed Lincoln Quote is by Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Grey.
(Is it my OCD wanting to correct things?)
This quote refers to seeking life’s one great experience by repeating the same intense emotions with different partners.
Hello, yes, I am aromantic and thank you for writing this post. I’m also asexual. I did not have an easy time accepting either of those because I knew it meant I was likely to end up alone. And yes, that is what happened. I am wistfully envious of the rest of you in the comment section who are aromantic and yet found a partner anyway. I tell myself that there are many reasons besides being aromantic that I would really have a hard time with a relationship. And there are. Lots of reasons to not try a relationship, I mean. I’ve got some dysfunctional patterns and I wouldn’t trust myself or anyone else to not turn that into another dysfunctional relationship. And it’s not like anyone is volunteering to have a relationship with me anyway, so it’s all hypothetical. It’s like I told my well-meaning friends when they wanted to know why I wasn’t dating. “It’s not like I’m turning anyone down.”
I like the labels. I like the boxes. I like knowing that there is a word that describes my experiences and that if I say that word, other people know what I’m talking about without me having to describe my inner life for an hour. Finding out the “A” in LGBTQIA could be for Asexual and/or Aromantic helped me figure out an important part of my identity. Labels on a spectrum are helpful.
I’m going to take a stab at answering the questions in the op:
1. How many Mormon kids do you think decide to “pray the straight away”?
I did! I tried to pray myself into being a lesbian. It did not work.
2. It’s not just the Church but our entire society that puts romantic relationships on a pedestal, and certain aspects of life are gatekept by requiring a romantic relationship to obtain. How does that harm people?
Right???!!1! I felt so much pressure. I could put on an act and flirt and got a couple dates that way, but I wasn’t being genuine at all. Fortunately, I finally reached the age where I’m old enough that people have quit asking me if I’m dating anyone. I’ve been around long enough to see my friends’ marriages settle into good relationships, or bad relationships, and to realize that I’m not any happier or sadder than anyone else. The insistence that a romantic relationship is the only true happiness in life created a lot of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and it took a long time before I was able to let go of those thoughts.
3. The phrase “just friends” really bothers me, like it does for a lot of aromantic people. Can you see why?
Friends are so important. Friends are also a lot less drama. It’s very common to have drama with an ex-spouse or ex-romantic partner. It’s much less common to have drama with a friendship that fell apart. Friends are not a lesser relationship, just a different relationship.
4. Does nagging people attending singles wards about the importance of marriage actually benefit anyone ever?
No.
Last Lemming, I had not thought that being uninterested in the romantic aspects of relationship could be part of being on the autism spectrum or part of ADD/ADHD. That is an interesting thought. It could apply in my case, because I have had competent psychologists tell me that I am ADHD as well as that I am likely on the autism spectrum. Never been officially diagnosed, but with me having that university degree in psychology, I highly suspect my psychology professor, my therapist and my daughter’s therapist telling me that I am, that could be correct, and my daughter who has been diagnosed, Yeah just like me.
Janey, I think why those of us who are aromantic can make a “romantic” relationship work is because we are not also asexual. I don’t think my husband would feel like I loved him without me lusting him. Think of couples who are “friends with benefits” and maybe they learn to love each other over time.
My mother used to say that “you can fall in love or you can grow in love.” For aromantic, we don’t seem to “fall” in love, but maybe finding the right partner we grow in love. But without the “wanting sex” part of the relationship, our partners would feel very hurt and unloved and probably end the relationship.
But I think there is something different about *how* we love than most people in romantic relationships. But I could only see that difference in the beginning of my friends relationships compared to mine. They were all, “he’s so dreamy” yuck. And a month later, gushing over the next guy. And I didn’t feel any of that. So, it is hard to say exactly how it might be different long term, but I suspect it still is. But I watched my friends “fall” and I watched guys fall for me, but I didn’t “fall” in love. I made sure he was smitten and very “in love” with me, and made sure we could have a good relationship with enough in common and same values and the ability to work out problems. And that was all very calculated. He was way head over heels in love with me and then I felt “safe” enough to love him in return. But, see that need to feel safe might very well be from being abused and so I don’t know how much of which for me as an individual. I just know that my whole dating thing was SO different than my friends. I never had a guy dump me either. It was always me doing the dumping. But I also went most of high school without so much as a date or guy I was half interested in, while my friends went from crush, to crush, to crush. I didn’t even have any guy that I even half liked. I had some who swooned over me, and I was disgusted. And the only word that makes sense for that difference is aromantic.
Another difference I just thought of. Someone once called my husband handsome and it really kind of shocked me. I had never considered if he was or wasn’t. Over 30 years married and I had never even considered if he was attractive. What’s wrong with that?
I’m enjoying this thread; thanx to all for posting and commenting. Now, a slight threadjack:
“Your considerably misattributed Lincoln Quote is by Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Grey.
(Is it my OCD wanting to correct things?) ” and My OCD needs to point out the correct spelling is Dorian GRAY. Thanks for listening; now back to the topic.
Anna, LastLemming… a spectrum is probably an improvement on a box, but it still feels like I am being asked to cut myself into pieces of different attributes making it difficult to feel and function as a whole person. It frequently appears to me that proponents of boxes and spectrums /spectra also seem to demand loyalty to and action on that particular category, so that a person can be concentrating on a single aspect of their being to the detriment of other aspects. I guess I just really dislike being categorised.
That said, Last Lemming, yes perhaps neurodivergence has something to do with whether a person is or is not more likely to be romantic. But I get annoyed by even that division. Yes I am pretty sure there’s a lot of neurodivergence in my family. Both my kids and severaL of my siblings kids have formal diagnoses. My siblings and I acknowledge various traits amongst us, but it’s unlikely at this point any of us will seek out a diagnosis. But I do get ticked off thinking about who is it gets to define normal in the first place.. like the folks who can’t survive without external validation from their peers, and who thrive on an active social life, and feel more comfortable comforming to the group because they have a need to fit in, decided that was actually normal behaviour… yeah…
Thank you for this post. I’ve been learning a lot more about myself in the last couple of years and I’m reasonably sure I’m asexual. I’m not sure about the romantic part. Maybe?
I really appreciated getting a glimpse into the mind of someone who is (kind of?) on the opposite end of the spectrum from me. It helps me to be able to compare and contrast my situation with someone else. Your openness and the way you described your point of view were very helpful.
Reading the comments about boxes vs. spectrum activated my archivist senses. In processing a collection to ready it for being open to researchers, there are varying levels of description for both the content of the collection and how it is physically organized. There is the collection level description: These are the papers of This Person. The content of the collection can be broken down into Series (generally categories), Sub-Series (categories within categories), Folders, and Items. The level of description used depends on the collection itself. I haven’t encountered a collection yet that was described only at the collection level, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. However, that’s probably to general to be of use to a researcher. A Series description might be just Correspondence, and it will likely be organized by date. You could organize it further by correspondent, again, depending on the collection.
All that to say that some people may need extra levels of description when thinking about themselves. It really helps them to see where they are and understand why they do the things they do.
Others may not need the same levels of description. For them it works better if, when they learn of a particular attribute, they can put it into a more general group of attributes that they feel belongs to them.
Either approach, or infinite combinations of the two, are correct for that person. It’s important to have all the descriptors available for the people who want them. If someone doesn’t want to use that much detail, that’s fine, too. For some people it’s enough to say I’m an archivist. For others, I may include that I’m a processing archivist for this specific archive, that library, at that one university.
Adam L. Thank you. It definitely helps to think about internal as opposed to external categories. As in I am this person, and have these traits and abilities. Perhaps it’s about having personal autonomy, and not being assigned boxes or labels by others.
Archivist, my dream job. Not that far removed from patent searching.
Thanks Bill. For a few paragraphs of this interesting post, I thought I was a bigger idiot than I’m known to be. Your post helped me realize that there was a typo in the first use of “aromantic” as “aromatic”. My brain kept seeing “aromatic” even though it was written “aromantic” for 3 more paragraphs until I realized I must be missing something. Hey I’m a 66 year old idiot that is trying to keep up with what’s going on in the world. 😂
FNS – This is a really interesting post. I suspect that there are many people that have struggled the way you have, and taking the time to post this will be helpful to those struggling and those wanting to understand. In my opinion, there are very few “Non-Normal” people in the world and most of them are criminals. We are all human, trying to figure out how we can be happy.
Cheers to All –
I loved this post. I’m also somebody who has never (until now) had any motivation to date. Trying to figure out what attraction is supposed to feel like is super confusing, especially since when I was younger I was actively trying not to feel any sexual feelings at all (I was taught that those feelings/thoughts were a sin, even if they weren’t directed towards anyone in particular). I’ve always been very certain that I did not want to marry a man. Recently, though, I’ve realized that I would like to marry a woman someday, and my romantic feelings have started to emerge somewhat. So I guess I’ll see where things go.
Thanks so much for describing your emotions and thoughts concerning romance. I learned something I’d never been aware of in reading this.
I’m really impressed how you have so much self-awareness, and have apparently been able to connect to your own emotions, even as young as preteen.
My own experiences have clouded my ability to relate to my own feelings about romance. I guess it’s because I’d experienced quite a bit of trauma growing up. I think I was just too overwhelmed by life to be able to relate.
I was impressed how your interaction with your dad went. It was very telling how your family allowed for your growth.
I’m very happy you were able to find a beautiful solution to your situation and that you have a great relationship with your spouse now. Your children must feel exceptionally secure in the knowledge of your family relationships.
Thanks again for sharing your story with us.
Shirley
I don’t know what to think about this. Even after reading your post and all the comments, I remain unsure what romance is. I always had the impression it was about remembering occasions and flowers and candy etc. I was never really into any of that. I really hate sentimentality, which is odd because I hate almost nothing. I love friendship, partnership and sex with my spouse, but probably not romance… whatever it is. It’s not that I don’t love or care for him…
I am probably somewhere on the autism spectrum. I do have a diagnosed autistic adult kiddo, and I recently discovered in reviewing the DSM-5-TR that I meet the criteria for ADHD on the hyperactivity side only. I do/did have crushes. Still not sure what is meant by romance.
I’m not an authority but it definitely sounds like you’re on the spectrum. I hope you choose to research that for yourself. To me, as a parent of an adopted spectrum child, I see it as having a different language. You just need to find someone (a professional) who speaks your “language”, so he/she can fill in the blanks for you. Sort of like being blind, and “understanding” what the color blue is like. That way, you’d be able to fully comprehend and communicate in “our foreign language”. Hope that makes sense. That way, you’d never feel short-changed because you’d understand it differently. Best of luck to you. (And a hearty congrats to you both for being your best partners!)
As weird as it sounds, I am an authority on the topic, but have chosen not to be diagnosed. As a Parent Advocate, I have NvLend certification of 325 hours of interdisciplinary training in serving people with neurodivergence and disabilities. I also am working as a counselor in practicum for my Masters in Counseling and Human Development from Walsh University. However, to give context, my entire family is sort of on the spectrum, so I don’t define it as weird, or needing pathologizing or diagnosing. I don’t need any help with being myself. I don’t feel short changed, it’s just my reality, as good or better than anyone else’s. But it is weird to me to hear it described as it is by the original poster.
My kiddo who is diagnosed struggles with speaking, and seeking treatment for them as an infant with sensory problems opened my understanding of the rest of my family. Thank you for sharing your perspective as a person who adopted an autistic child. It certainly provides a perspective I am blind to living in a family of neurodivergent people.
Wow, the more I read your story, the more I’m impressed and convinced that you are super unique (in an awesome way) and that your uniqueness is so timely for this age we live in! Having lived in your family, with all of their “uniqueness”, the formal and personal education you’ve been given, gives you the opportunity to really make changes in the way your “community” are shaped. You are amazing! And your skills are so valuable right now. Thank you for all the work you’ve done. I’m so glad to have met you. Blessings to you and your family. 🙂
It’s good to see I’m among so many other people like me and I’m glad that I’ve been able to inform some of you about this topic. I’ve appreciated a lot of the comments and I’d like to respond to a few of them.
aromatic
I proofread like 12 times and still missed this typo. Sorry for the confusion. This is only the second most embarrassing mistake; somehow I managed to combine the link to my previous post and the link to Janey’s post about being asexual into one unified link that doesn’t make sense as either. I wanted to put a paper bag over my head and run away when I noticed that.
labels
One benefit of labels that I didn’t see mentioned was community. This is true both in the abstract sense that if you find a label that describes you you know you’re not alone and in the sense that if you know a label you can use it to find other people like you online and in the real world. I spent my entire childhood not knowing for sure if other nonbinary people like me existed, so that aspect is important to me.
There is the risk that people will take labels as prescriptive. I don’t think that taking away labels would fix that problem; the prescription for everyone would just be whatever is “normal” if you did that.
The aromantic community is full of labels. There’s probably a half dozen common ones and a hundred more obscure ones. Every once in a while you’ll run across someone policing their hobbyhorse definition but In general there’s an expectation that no one ever matches a label perfectly and that if nothing fits it’s valid to create your own. The existence of aroflux people like me also means there’s no expectation that people stay in one box. I’ve fit several at different points in my life.
For simplicity I’ve left most of those labels out of this post but if you suspect you’re aromantic I recommend you find a list of aromantic labels (often referred to in the community as “orientations”) and see which ones fit.
romantic attraction vs. romantic behavior
The aromantic community follows the lead of the asexual community and defines “aromantic” in terms of attraction. While not all romantic attraction takes the form of crushes, if you’ve had more than a few crushes and they didn’t make you nauseous or otherwise not want to do anything with that person, you’re probably not on the aromantic spectrum. That said, it’s not unheard of for aromantic people to mistake other emotional reactions for crushes and after hearing a description of what crushes are like for alloromantic people realizing they’ve never experienced anything close to that. The aromantic community has words like “squishes” and “lushes” to refer to those other kinds of reactions.
Romantic attraction seems to be biological and in alloromantic people to drive them to behave in ways they don’t with other people, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of biological basis for exactly what that exclusive behavior is. It’s very culturally and individually defined. Following that definition, if you do something with a special someone you’ve felt that attraction for that you wouldn’t do with someone you haven’t felt that for then it’s romantic behavior.
And yes, I’m aware that’s probably the least romantic definition of romantic behavior possible.
autism and ADHD
A large survey of people on the aromantic spectrum showed a much higher percentage of people identified as neurodivergent than you would expect to see from chance. However, most respondents did not mark that they were neurodivergent. The usual caveats about survey research apply.
Janey – your story about praying to be a lesbian sounds interesting and I’d love to hear it sometime if you’re ever in the mood to share it. I once was hopeful that I’d discover I was bi because people conflated gender identity and sexual orientation enough that I thought it could explain why I sometimes had feelings associated with me being one gender and sometimes the other. The problem was that I’m not even the least bit bi. This frustrated me.
S. M. Ulbrich – I’m not in general a very observant or self-aware person, but I knew there was something different about me that had something to do with gender from a very young age, and that made me pay a lot of attention to gender-related things because I didn’t know what to expect other than it probably wouldn’t be like anyone else. Romantic and sexual attraction seemed gender-related to me, so I analyzed them a lot more than most of the people my age.