the glossary · word
what does aromantic mean?
aromantic · also called aro
Aromantic means experiencing little or no romantic attraction. Usually shortened to aro. The part that trips people up is this: an aromantic person may still feel sexual attraction, and often does. Aromantic and asexual are two separate things that can come apart in any combination, which is the split attraction model doing its job. Aro people still love people, deeply and permanently. What they tend not to feel is the specific pull toward the romance script, the pairing off, the escalation, the one person who outranks everyone else by default. Some want that structure anyway. Some build something else entirely.
this one has a whole chapter under it. read: which orientation combination are you? →
what to read on this
- Loveless Alice Oseman a novel from inside the spectrum, about a girl finding out she is asexual and aromantic and that a friendship can be the great love of her life. the one i wish i had at nineteen.
- Minimizing Marriage Elizabeth Brake where amatonormativity was coined in 2012. the assumption that everyone should want one central exclusive romantic relationship, named and taken apart. it is academic philosophy, so it reads like it.
- The Other Significant Others Rhaina Cohen people who built their whole lives around a friendship instead of a marriage. the closest thing there is to a book length case for the queerplatonic life.
amazon affiliate links. buying through one costs you nothing extra and keeps this page free. every book i recommend →
also asked
can aromantic people fall in love?
It depends entirely on what you mean by the phrase. If it means the romantic-attraction pull, then mostly no, that's what the word describes. If it means loving someone enormously and building a life around them, then yes, absolutely, and many aro people do exactly that.
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