The most amazing event in history!

While riding the London tube, I saw this advertisement for an online dating site:

It reads: "The most amazing event in the history of the world will happen in London this summer.  Plus there's that Stratford thing too.  Falling in love.  Nothing on earth can match the feeling."

I saw the ad multiple times during my stay in London, and had some time to think about it during long tube journeys.  It plays on a common trope in American (and obviously, British) culture--that falling in love is a completely unique and rarefied experience.  There is nothing else like it.  I've always felt compelled to say that I "fell in love" with music, maybe to show that I do experience a full range of emotion.  Although, maybe I don't, and maybe that's fine.  I can find people attractive, have crushes and romantic feelings, and love people, but I have never in my life felt obsessed with another person.

But we all have certain things we can't experience.   For instance, I don't have synesthesia.  Since I first heard of synesthesia, I've thought that having it would be very interesting (although I know it can be problematic for people who have it).  However, no one places value judgements on people without synesthesia.  People who don't fall in love, though...that's another story.  Most people seem to accept the fact that some asexuals don't fall in love, but non-asexuals who don't fall in love tend to be portrayed as either callous manipulators or immature people who are scared of commitment.  In asexual visibility literature, it is often emphasized that asexuals can fall in love "just like anyone else".  I think this just perpetuates the idea that "falling in love", out of all other emotions, is put on a pedestal, and that people who aren't ace all fall in love (which is untrue).  No one ever says that "asexuals can make friends just like anyone else".  (And this might actually be relevant as well, since on coming out I've been asked if I prefer to be alone in all cases.)

While I don't have the authority to talk about falling in love with someone from personal experience, I can speak to the messages that I hear about it.  Whether or not they're true, we all hear them, sometimes every day or more, and repeated exposure to ideas affects us.

The idea that people in love recede from the larger world is problematic.  It relates to the idea that we are all broken up into completely independent nuclear family units, and this kind of thinking has really had a negative impact on social policy in America.  I don't think it's a good thing that people in love are expected to completely withdraw from their friends, communities, and families of origin.  It's not good for the people in the couple either, as their support networks may no longer be there once the honeymoon period is over.  Being in love may feel like being on drugs, but people are also encouraged to act like that's the case.  Back when marriage was largely a financial arrangement, did people fall in love like they do today?  Did they experience the feelings but just ignore them?  Maybe they had "falling in love" feelings towards friends, as described in Surpassing the Love of Men.

Right now I'm listening to a totally unrelated book called The Lost City of Z, which is about explorers in the Amazon (spoiler: they're racist).  Some indigenous people were described as being so far from civilization that they "didn't even have a concept of romantic love!"  It was like that fact was the ultimate exoticism.  But to me it makes no less sense than our society does.

Totally Romantic! And yet, not!

People tend to think I'm on drugs, when I'm not ("Duuude, isn't water weird?"). The following thoughts won't help my case, but here goes:

Reading some thoughts on sensuality, I realized that what sensuality is for the physical, romance is for the mind. When you're smelling a flower, sensuality is the smell of the flower, the pleasure that it gives you, and your mindfulness of that experience. Romance is the emotion that the flower brings about, the other places and times that it might transport you to. While sensuality is a full experience of a present moment, romance, in a way, is an escape. It transports you from the drudgery of the everyday, making a simple moment into something you might always remember. Romance is the act of imbuing a sensual moment with special and personal significance.

I feel like I finally understand why someone would fly to Madrid just to weep in front of a painting. She wasn't crying because the painting was beautiful or well-executed. She cried because the painting had become a repository of emotion for her, and to see it brought all those feelings to the forefront. Whatever the emotions, they were ones she wanted to feel. Romance was whatever made her choose that particular painting as the most significant one.

So while I'm barely romantic in the asexual sense, I'm romantic in my own conception. If romance can be genuine rather than Hallmark-holiday, and freely felt rather than foisted upon us, then I have no qualms with it. I'm more interested in romance itself than in romantic relationships, which is why I was able to enjoy having an unrequited crush-- something many people would find painful. So while I'd consider myself a romantic, it's unlikely that at any given time, there's another person who I specifically want to be romantic with.

In asexual discourse, romance is often described as an analogue for sex. This is what gives a logic to the aromantic/romantic distinction. While asexuals are some of the few people who don't conflate sex and romance, we often talk about romance as if it is to us what sex is to everyone else. However, I don't see romance as a parallel to sex. I'm not the romantic equivalent of an asexual with a libido directed towards nothing, because I would guess that to me, romance is more significant than libido is to that asexual.

Dictionary definitions of "romance" are so circular, so I feel happy that I was finally able to come up with my own definition that makes sense to me. Whether it will resonate with others, I'm not sure, but I wanted to put it out there.

(Why yes, I am an enneagram #4--"the romantic"--, how did you know?)

Sigh...Binaries.

Binaries? Yeah, I'm generally not a fan. That's one thing I've come to learn since identifying as asexual. For a while now, I've been wondering if I really had an "affectional orientation" that I would be able to coax out with enough thought. A lot of other asexuals seem to know so easily whether they're romantic or aromantic (and beyond that, which gender(s) they are attracted to if they are romantic). But I recently realized that the reason I couldn't figure it out was because the romantic/aromantic thing is a binary I don't fit into. I'm neither, both, or somewhere in the middle. I am, for lack of a better word, grayromantic. No, it's not a term I'm looking to popularize, but I think it's one that will make sense for those who are familiar with asexuality.

Like the gender binary in mainstream society, the romantic/aromantic binary seems to be intuitive for most people in the asexual community. That it informs so much of our internal dialogue on asexuality can make people who don't fit into it feel like their experiences are even further outside of the ordinary. Just like there is no clear demarcation at the end of "asexual" and the beginning of "sexual", there is no such clear line for affectional orientation, either.

It's a uniquely asexual issue, I know, and maybe not a very important one. But it gets me thinking about our labels-- do we define ourselves by a dictionary definition, how we feel about ourselves, or what most affects our lives? I think that is an important question, for any orientation (or other label), although it might only be able to be answered by the individual. If you went by what asexuals would call a "dictionary definition", I guess I would be hetero-romantic, since I experience romantic attraction towards men (I also like long walks on the beach, candlelight, etc). However, I don't feel hetero-romantic, probably because my romantic attraction towards men has not influenced my life very much. I'd like to be in a romantic relationship, but not just for the sake of being in one. If I ever had a hetero-romantic card, then it has truly expired due to lack of use.

So since I don't try to date men and never really have, what real difference do my fleeting attractions make? Putting a romantic orientation in front of "asexual" would also just sound strange to me, when the "asexual" part is so much more important to my life. The most accurate term for me, I think, would be something describing my confusion with the whole concept of "romance". Now, what was I again?

This post has a second and perhaps even third part, so stay tuned.

(Also, one week until the Pride Parade! Eeee!)