Decentring romance

ATLAS CHANGULANI CONTRIBUTOR

As Valentine’s Day draws near, I always brace myself for the inevitable onslaught of disgustingly saccharine heart-shaped decorations and tasteless memes about not having a partner, and all I can think about is how I wish I could spend the entire month in an alternate timeline where the holiday doesn’t exist. Love is in the air—you see—and I’m allergic.

My identity consists of the oft-forgotten A of the LGBTQIA+ acronym. I’m aromantic and asexual, which means that I experience neither sexual nor romantic attraction. I have no interest in dating, having sex, getting married, or settling down; this is something I have known about myself since I was ten years old. I would much rather spend my life with my best friends, studying astrophysics, and working to dismantle capitalism. A romantic or sexual partner would very likely only end up making me miserable, even if they were an objectively amazing person. Yet, nearly every time I express this fact about myself, I’m told that I’ll grow up and change my mind. I’m told I’m just being immature, that I simply haven’t met the right one yet, and that surely I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. As if it’s simply unfathomable that someone could want to live without a romantic partner, wish to prioritise anything else above finding the love of their life, or imagine a fulfilling future for themselves not centred around romantic love.

Much of what I’ve recounted here is based on good old-fashioned sexism. I look like a girl, so of course my entire life must revolve around a boyfriend or a husband. However, other beliefs hide beneath these words, which are the ideas that everyone, regardless of gender or sexuality, desires and prospers within a monogamous romantic relationship and that every other form of human connection is inferior and less valuable compared to romance. This is called amatonormativity, and it is everywhere. You see it in every movie that has shoehorned in a romantic subplot, in every internet meme about dying alone, and in phrases such as ‘they’re just friends’ which imply a hierarchy where friendship is relegated to a position below that of romantic relationships. Amatonormativity is why I spent much of my teenage years thinking I was broken for not feeling attraction and why I faked crushes throughout high school so that no one would tease me when I told the truth. Amatonormativity is why I got laughed at that one time I told my parents I had no intention of ever getting married and why I still sometimes feel as if there is a vast canyon that alienates me from my peers, which is a canyon that I’d easily cross were I not missing out on what so many perceive to be a fundamental human experience.

Of course, amatonormativity doesn’t just impact aromantic people. Amatonormativity pushes the ideas that romance is the ultimate key to everyone’s happiness and fulfilment, that all people are somehow incomplete without a romantic partner, and that any life without romance is one filled with loneliness and longing. Of course, none of that is even remotely true. We are all complex and whole individuals, perfectly capable of finding joy and contentment in a variety of other pursuits. Yet our culture still adheres to these beliefs. Amatonormativity romanticises the very idea of romance, and that is dangerous. We are taught that being single is a flaw, and so we hinge our self-esteem on our romantic relationships and hate ourselves more with each moment spent not being the object of someone else’s desire. We are taught that the only true way to achieve happiness is through romance, and so we pressure ourselves into being in relationships that are neither healthy nor meaningful, even when they come at the cost of our friendships and our passions. We are taught that platonic relationships are only a cheap supplement to romance, and so we trap ourselves within an artificially created scarcity of love, never realising that we would find love all around us the moment that we take a minute to redefine what kinds of love we consider valuable.

Amatonormativity goes beyond just culture. Although marriage is seen mainly as the ultimate declaration of romantic love and a promise of a lifelong commitment to one’s partner, it is primarily a legal structure, in that it confers a plethora of legal benefits with regard to taxation, housing, and healthcare to abled middle-class couples. These benefits are kept entirely out of reach of nonpartnering, polyamorous, and until very recently, gay people. As of late, capitalism has weaponised marriage in order to break apart communities into isolated units of nuclear families and tear down larger networks of kinship and mutual support by devaluing all forms of human connection except romance. Individualism is perhaps the last word that comes to mind when thinking of marriage, but individualism is precisely the mindset that marriage upholds when amatonormativity leads us to believe that we are meant to devote all our resources into supporting only our partner and our immediate family and that the communities we belong to are entitled to nowhere near the same amount of compassion.

To be clear, I’m not arguing against romantic relationships; romance can absolutely be a wonderful, fulfilling, and even life-changing experience for many and should, of course, be celebrated. However, it is time we do away with the idea that everyone requires romance to be happy and that being in a monogamous romantic relationship is some magical panacea for unhappiness. It is time to dismantle relationship hierarchies, acknowledge that romantic relationships are not inherently superior to platonic or sexual ones, and cherish all forms of human connection equally. Moreover, it is time to embrace the vast diversity of our bonds with each other and celebrate unconventional relationships such as polyamorous arrangements and queerplatonic partnerships. It’s time to recognize that none of us are required to conform to the narrow, normative model of monogamous romance that we’re told to idolise by Western society. We are the ultimate arbiters of our relationships, what they should look like, and once we let go of the constraints of amatonormativity, there will be no limit to the diversity and beauty of the bonds we could forge with each other, romantic or otherwise. Lastly, it's time to reaffirm that there is nothing wrong with being single, regardless of whether you’re aromantic or not. There is so much more to love and so much more to life.