I have little to no interest in dating anyone or getting married. I've never had a crush that wasn't based purely on physical attraction. The more I think about it, the better "aromantic" seems to describe me. It just feels right.
I think you're a bit young to start sticking labels on yourself and deciding that you will never love anybody for the rest of your life -- not everybody is nearly as precocious as modern pop culture likes to make out.
I had absolutely zero interest in that sort of thing (as in primary-school levels of "that's yucky stuff") until the age of nineteen. A much higher proportion than you would believe of people at university have never had a boyfriend/girlfriend, and high achievers tend to be slow starters.
I had no interest in "dating someone" in the abstract. It wasn't some kind of life goal.
When it comes to a particular person, that's different.
(Are you okay? I've been a little worried, considering there's a pandemic going on and all...)
*sighs deeply* You may be right. I just like the sound of "I'm aromantic" better than "I'm twenty-one and have never been in a relationship." I'm not ruling it out as a possibility, though. It's hard to tell when 90% of the media aimed at young women revolves around romance and I don't find that sort of thing appealing in the slightest.
I'm not ill. I've just been... a bit depressed about my book, after typing up the first chapter and realising there was no way anyone was going to buy a novel based on reading that. Which means at best yet another rewrite, and I've got so little energy left that just giving up is feeling easier and easier. (I've started catching myself literally muttering out loud "I'm so tired" at odd moments...)
On the other hand I showed it to someone who is *not* a romance novel reader or a fan-fiction aficionado, and he -- while concurring with my opinion that the first page doesn't work as an opening -- said that it really picked up on the second page, praised several passages and phrasings, and correctly identified the background as "Phantom of the Opera" without seeming to think it odd that someone should write a novel in a POTO setting. (I was privately immensely gratified that he recognised Christine and Raoul and deduced the setting from that, before asking 'Who's Erik?' ;-P)
I just like the sound of "I'm aromantic" better than "I'm twenty-one and have never been in a relationship."
In a world obsessed with sex and romance more or less as a competitive sport, it can be easy to assume that everyone else has been at it since the age of eleven or so. Actually, a lot of them haven't, but they don't advertise the fact because it's seen as being a 'loser'.
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I had absolutely zero interest in that sort of thing (as in primary-school levels of "that's yucky stuff") until the age of nineteen. A much higher proportion than you would believe of people at university have never had a boyfriend/girlfriend, and high achievers tend to be slow starters.
I had no interest in "dating someone" in the abstract. It wasn't some kind of life goal.
When it comes to a particular person, that's different.
From:
no subject
*sighs deeply* You may be right. I just like the sound of "I'm aromantic" better than "I'm twenty-one and have never been in a relationship." I'm not ruling it out as a possibility, though. It's hard to tell when 90% of the media aimed at young women revolves around romance and I don't find that sort of thing appealing in the slightest.
From:
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On the other hand I showed it to someone who is *not* a romance novel reader or a fan-fiction aficionado, and he -- while concurring with my opinion that the first page doesn't work as an opening -- said that it really picked up on the second page, praised several passages and phrasings, and correctly identified the background as "Phantom of the Opera" without seeming to think it odd that someone should write a novel in a POTO setting. (I was privately immensely gratified that he recognised Christine and Raoul and deduced the setting from that, before asking 'Who's Erik?' ;-P)
In a world obsessed with sex and romance more or less as a competitive sport, it can be easy to assume that everyone else has been at it since the age of eleven or so. Actually, a lot of them haven't, but they don't advertise the fact because it's seen as being a 'loser'.