I’m in an aromantic relationship.

Before you ask, no I can’t tell you exactly why the feelings I have for Joyce aren’t romantic. Can you tell me exactly why your feelings are romantic (if they are)? If you actually can, by all means let me know. But I haven’t found anyone yet who could.

English, and every language that I’ve studied a bit and heard about, is very bad at defining relationships. We have friendship. Okay, that’s typically platonic. Then there’s love. Which is often romantic, but also platonic because of familial love and friendship love. But, in all the potential for human feeling and experience, are we to assume that romantic love and platonic love are really the only kinds of love we’re capable of? We can love activities, hobbies, pets, right? And the love we feel for each of these things varies a little. So why can’t a love exist that’s neither romantic nor platonic?

Basically, there’s no word for the relationship I have. I don’t even have words to describe it that differentiate it from a “typical” sexual/romantic relationship even though it is neither romantic nor sexual. It’s under the “love” umbrella, but it doesn’t fit under romantic or platonic.

And if you go to my school and have seen us around campus, you probably assumed we were just another gay couple. We hold hands. We kiss each others’ cheeks and hands. We hug a lot. We put our arms around each other. By all means, we look like just another homosexual couple. But we’re not. It’s not your fault for judging this way, so don’t feel bad about that. Our society isn’t even 100% aware of asexuality as it exists outside of hyposexual disorders, let alone aromanticism. Just realize that sometimes what you assume to be correct about people is actually quite wrong. And if you can try to stop jumping to conclusions about people, or at least recognize that what you see may not be all there is, then that would be nice.