My partner and I used to spend long periods of time feeling distant, out of sync, as though we were falling out of love. Like we were just roommates, except with a kid. Until, in time, we’d seem to come back into alignment.
We didn’t know this at the time, but this was far from what was happening. We were just unaware that we’re both on the asexual and aromantic spectrums. My partner and I didn’t fully know ourselves, or each other.
Our journey started thanks to the increasing visibility of the many expressions of queerness.
By understanding and learning to embrace our transness as an early step, it ended up opening the floodgates for learning more about ourselves.
I soon came across the term ‘demisexual’, and later aromantic spectrum labels.
Asexuality was easier to identify in myself than being aromantic. I could quantify valuing and needing emotional connection, to the point of casual sex being a personal turn-off.
The hazier area of being grey-romantic proved trickier to define.
We both learned its boundaries and definitions for us through our relationship struggles. Another element of friction had been my yearning to explore polyamory, while my partner wanted to stay exclusive.
We’ve since had some challenging conversations, arguing when, if or how to start dating together. Worrying either of us might sometimes feel sidelined, or an emotional burden because of the fluid romantic feelings we were discovering. Anxieties based on jealousy, harmful possessiveness, low self-worth, and likely needing to unlearn how our culture values monogamous love above any other form because of mononormativity.
In the end, we decided we want to feel more secure and settled - as individuals and as a couple - before looking for someone else. We’re focusing on learning to nurture our aromantic love, after realising we’d misunderstood our feelings for each other.
So now, we’ve learned our love isn’t romantic all the time, and that could be okay.
Our relationship and family dynamics are changing as we learn, and might always be works in progress. But ever since that shift, we have been okay.
The natural movements of our attractions and emotions aren’t flaws in our relationship. They’ve never meant we aren’t right together or don’t love one another.
Knowing we’re asexual and aromantic has helped us feel closer. Able to better understand and support one another, as lovers and parents. We’re stronger now than we ever were.
Our story shows why visibility for all identities is important to our relationships – romantic, sexual, in family and friendship, and with community.
All kinds of love can be fluid, grow or change with time. That’s true in long-term monogamy too. Yet in Western culture we’re taught that, when you’re with ‘the one’, love must conform to a strict set of rules.
There’s so much pressure to be in love and prove it every day that perhaps we forget the importance of exploring and acknowledging our true feelings.
Or maybe, when our experience of love doesn’t fit the norm, we feel obligated to end a relationship that could simply be transforming.
Many relationships end for valid reasons. But for me and my partner, learning we just love differently kept us from losing each other.
What if more of us truly followed our hearts, with a better vocabulary for knowing ourselves? How much happier and stronger could we all be?
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And in the newsletter where this was first published, there was actually a bunch of positive news to celebrate. It shows me that despite the headlines knocking us down, we're getting right back up again and using our anger to fuel our fight.
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