depressedaro:

I see a lot of people talking about encountering therapists and counselors who treat aromanticism like it’s an emotional problem. I’ve read stories about how certain therapists will tell you than your avoidance of relationships is about fear or depression or anxiety, and that being aro isn’t “real.”

Just to offer a more optimistic story, I kinda want to tell you all about my therapist. She and I already talked about sexuality and identity a lot, since I specifically found a queer-friendly counselor at my university and spent a lot of time talking about bisexuality. When I began to question whether I was aromantic, I was still feeling very uncertain about actually using the word. 

So in a session with my therapist, I was talking about avoiding romantic relationships, and how I had gone on a date that made me feel suffocated really quickly. I was kind of trying to work my way towards mentioning aromanticism, but I felt really weird about it. She noticed. She asked me, a little hesitantly, if I visualized a future, a life, where romantic relationships would be fulfilling for me. I basically said I only really visualized living in a small house with my two cats and a dog. And she asked me about if there was identity word for that. 

She gave me an opening to talk about aromanticism, and I immediately jumped on it, telling her about how I’d been researching it, how I’d been reading about other people’s experiences, and how much it resonated with me. We spent the rest of the session discussing the cultural divide between romantic feelings and platonic feelings, and how ingrained romance is in our culture, how romance is so central to fiction and to what people see as an ideal life. I told her about the word “amatonormativity.” She asked me if learning about aromanticism felt freeing, if it took the pressure off me, because she already knew about how negatively I felt about romantic relationships when I was involved in them. It was a really, really productive session, and I felt so relieved afterwards. 

My point in all of this, my point in telling this story, is that I wanted to share a positive experience here. I get sad when I see aro people sharing their negative experiences. It’s just so disheartening, like those interactions are just a fact of being aro. But they shouldn’t be. My experience shouldn’t be unusual; it should be the default.