a workbook · riadms.com
the romantic dial
romantic attraction described with the sexual part taken out, and the four things that get mistaken for it. nobody can tell you the answer. this is something clean to measure against.
this is a page to work it out on, not just read. i am asexual, which means i have spent my life with one of these two dials at zero and the other one running, so what i can give you is the romantic one on its own, unmixed. i am not aromantic and i cannot tell you whether you are. hold your own life against each of these and write down what is actually true, not what you think the answer should be.
- 01
the clean description
romantic attraction is a pull toward a position, not toward a body. you want to be their person and you want to be chosen back. it turns the future tense on without you deciding to. and the sharpest edge is that it does not transfer: swap them for someone objectively better looking, kinder, funnier, and you want the original back.
from me it is a pointing, not a ranking.
has anything in your life ever done all four of those at once? write who, and roughly when.
- 02
confound one, limerence
the obsessive stage is not the attraction. dorothy tennov named it in 1979 and its two features are intrusive thinking and an acute need for reciprocation. in 2005 they scanned people who had just fallen in love and what lit up was dopamine reward circuitry, the same machinery as craving. which cuts both ways: having had it is not proof, and never having had it is not proof either.
from me craving with a face on it.
when you think you felt it, was the main feeling wanting them, or wanting to stop feeling like that?
- 03
confound two, aesthetic and sensual
wanting to look at someone is aesthetic attraction. wanting to be physically close with no sexual component is sensual attraction. both are separately measurable, both feel enormous, and neither one is romantic attraction. this is the most common mislabel there is.
from me a sunset is not a plan.
take away looking at them and being near them. write down what is left.
- 04
confound three, wanting to be wanted
being chosen is a genuinely good feeling and it is not the same feeling as choosing. it is very easy to feel someone else’s attention landing on you and file it as attraction going the other way. the test is boring and it works.
from me being chosen is not choosing.
if they had zero interest in you, is there anything still pointing at them? write the honest answer.
- 05
confound four, the obligation
elizabeth brake named amatonormativity in 2012: the assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive romantic relationship and that everyone is looking for one. so at thirteen everyone had a crush and you were supposed to have one, and you picked somebody plausible. that is not a lie you told. it is a form you filled in because a form was in front of you.
from me a filled-in form is not evidence.
which of your evidence was filed before you were fifteen? list it, and then cross it out.
- 06
the four different answers
people ask this holding one box, and there is more than one true answer. never (aromantic). rarely, or only in narrow circumstances (greyromantic). only after a deep bond already exists (demiromantic). or not at all, while still wanting the relationship (cupioromantic). these are words the aromantic community built because nothing else could hold the distinctions. they are not clinical categories and no study validates the boundaries between them, and i do not think that makes them less useful.
from me not a diagnosis. somewhere to stand while you look.
which of the four is closest today? write it in pencil. you are allowed to change it.
what have you been counting as evidence, and would you still count it now?