In this re-released episode, Peter McGraw asks the question, “What if you never felt romantic love – and didn’t need to?” In this eye-opening favorite, Peter sits down with Jessalyn Dean, an aromantic relationship anarchist living a remarkable solo life. They unpack what it means to be aromantic, how Jessalyn got off the relationship escalator, and why autonomy, not romance, is her guiding compass. It’s funny, sharp, and surprisingly relatable – even if you’re not aromantic.
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Listen to Episode #260 here
Aromanticism (Again)
Welcome back. I’m re-releasing some standout episodes for the benefit of all the new readers. While I can’t confirm that this one was a hit, I can say it’s an important conversation with a powerful message. I speak with Jessalyn Dean about aromanticism, the experience of having little to no romantic attraction. Her story is a vivid reminder of how deeply the relationship escalator is embedded in our culture, the assumption that everybody is searching for the one, riding off into a happily ever after.
What happens if you’re not wired that way or you’re simply not in that stage of life? Jessalyn’s journey from searching for love to embracing life as an aromantic relationship anarchist challenges the default settings. It’s a conversation about autonomy, authenticity, and designing a life on your own terms. I think you’ll find it fascinating. Let’s get started.
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Welcome, Jessalyn.
I’m happy to be here.
You know this already, but it bears repeating. People are single for a lot of reasons. Some can’t find the right match. Some are not interested in dating or a relationship. There are a large number of people who are, at the moment, not interested in finding someone. I did an episode way back in the early days of the show about asexuals, people who lack the desire for sex. Hence, the “a” in the sexual. We are here to talk about aromantics, who are people who have little to no romantic attraction to others. I want to make a note that asexuals and aromantics, or asexual aromantics, may still have relationships. It doesn’t preclude them. Is it fair to say it changes the dynamic?
Absolutely.
Are you aromantic?
I am. In some cases, I might use the phrase grayromantic. In others, I might use aromantic. We’ll probably get into a little bit of detail about the difference, but I strongly use aromantic.
Why don’t we get into that difference? It’s a nice tease. Is aromantic little to no interest, or is it no interest?
There is little to no interest. Grayromantic is in the questioning phase. Maybe you’re a little uncertain as to where on the spectrum of romanticism you land. We know that life is not binary. Grayromantic is a nice phrase to say somewhere, not on either end of the extreme.
It is still further out from maybe the average.
That’s correct.
What Does It Mean To Be Romantic?
This is a fair question. It’s one that I don’t have a good answer to. What does it mean to be romantic? I ask that question in part because we know people who are like, “I’m such a romantic,” but you rarely have people say the opposite, and yet they exist.
The way that I start reacting to that question is to first say that there’s a difference in my life. I’m not a psychological expert on this topic. This is coming from my own personal experience and having spoken to other people on the aromantic spectrum. There is a difference for me between romantic love, other love, or non-romantic love, and romantic experiences. For example, I can experience romance, but I do not experience romantic love.
Let’s slow down here. First of all, I have this saying about in the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen, or the one-eyed man is king, or the one-eyed person is king, or however you want to say it. You are my queen or king. It’s surprisingly difficult to find an expert on this because it is not well-studied. It’s less well-studied than asexuality.
You’ll serve the purpose here as a friend, as a member of the solo community, and as the person who planted the seed to talk about this. You made a distinction between romantic love, other love, and romantic experiences. Let’s start with other love first because we’re going to move on from that quickly. That’s the love that I feel for my friends, sister, and so on. That’s pervasive, and it’s common. We’re not here to talk about that.
I can’t speak for the whole aromantic community, but most people who are aromantic would say they experience love or other love. Undisputed, in a sense.
For a person who is aromantic, it is not that they lack the capacity to love. It’s overwhelmingly the case that they feel love for other people.
An even stronger connection to its presence in their life.
I could see that because if that’s the type of love that you experience, and you don’t have the experience of romantic love.
It holds a higher place in your day-to-day life.
If I can editorialize for a moment, my argument is that if I ruled the world, I would elevate other love. I’m not seeking to diminish romantic love, but I would elevate other love with the desire to put it on par in the same hierarchy. There’s then romantic love and romantic experiences.
This is circling back to your original question, which is, What is romance? This is how I distinguish the world when I explain to people what it’s like to be or feel that I’m aromantic. When I wake up every day, I experience love for people. If there’s a person or a friend lying next to me in my bed, I feel love for them when I wake up, but I don’t feel romantic love. I use other love as a baseline for existing. I liken romantic love very much to adrenaline. I do not live in a permanent state of adrenaline. It happens. It’s exciting. There’s a dopamine hit, and then it subsides.
It’s those butterflies and the excitement of life. It’s almost like getting caught up in a whirlwind of sorts. There is an arousal element to it, but not sexual arousal. I do know the nature of romantic love tends to be finite. It often runs a course. I’m not an evolutionary psychologist, but the argument around this is that it serves an evolutionary purpose, which is to get people to have sex and to keep them bonded at least long enough for there to be a child produced, and so on. It probably fits this idea of not rushing into anything. It’s the classic, “Go at least four seasons before you elope.” Romantic love works hard to bond people.
When I wake up each day, I do not feel the romance. I do not feel romantic or anything. If there’s a person lying next to me in my bed, they could be what you would say a friend in normal life. I live in a small apartment. When friends come to visit, I say, “Come sleep in my bed with me.” We are unlikely to be having sex, but I could wake up next to my friends.
I feel love for those people, but I do not feel any romantic feelings for people. I do enjoy romantic experiences. The adrenaline rush is like jumping out of an airplane. I love that adrenaline rush. This is back to my earlier comment, which is that there’s a spectrum of aromanticism. Some people have a complete repulsion to romance. They are disgusted by it.
I feel that way about romantic comedies.
Me too.
I’m being hyperbolic.
I’m not repulsed by the actual idea of romance. Without having studied this, I believe there are some biological components that I lack in my body. That means I don’t experience romantic love, and I miss that. I wish I had it, which is different from being repulsed by it. I yearn to experience romantic love, and I simply don’t.
Why do you want this thing? Have you ever had it?
In my younger years, I would have thought I was experiencing it, but now with 20/20 vision, I can reflect that that was not it. I grew up in the Disney era, where I was sold that this was the pinnacle of a successful life. The marker of a successful life was finding your one and only, falling in love, and dying together. Especially in my teenage years and in my twenties, I was pursuing that because I wanted it.
It’s such a common narrative. You’re not given an alternative narrative. It’s either you do this, or you’re a failure.
Also, that you’re lonely, and you can’t live a life that’s not lonely without that counterpart. I was chasing that in my teens and twenties because I wanted it.
Chasing in my teens, I’m not sure. It was so far away that it didn’t even feel within reach. In my twenties, I wanted a girlfriend, and I wanted to fall in love. That’s something that I certainly wanted to do, and I ended up eventually doing it. I’m not aromantic, although I have my opinions about all of these things and question some of their usefulness. As a younger person, you were pursuing this. You were raised on Disney.
Dispelling Society’s Idea Of Marriage And Attraction
The thing about it is that I make fun of Jane Austen on the show a lot. I have a friend who says, “Peter, Jane Austen is to be admired. She did a lot of things that are great and creative.” I can acknowledge that. One of the insights that I had was that the rise of romantic love is a rise of liberation in some ways, for the following reason. For a lot of human history, when you married someone, you had no say in who it was that you were marrying because these marriages were arranged. This continues in some parts of the world.
It’s a contractual obligation, and someone else has decided that contract for you.
Parents, in particular. I’ll do a little callback. I did a fun episode on Indian matchmaking.
I saw that. I haven’t listened to it yet, but it’s on my list.
You have to imagine that romantic love exists independent of marriage. You might have been put together and bonded with someone who you don’t feel romantic love for, and that person down the street, whether it be the butcher, the blacksmith, or the young maiden, you did feel that. You now live in a world where you’re forced into infidelity if you’re going to do this. The rise of love marriages allowed you to fall in love and marry the person.
You have both.
The alternative, arranged marriage, is incredibly compelling.
You touched on an interesting point. It is this idea that society has told us that who you are sexually attracted to is also who you are romantically attracted to.
For most people, they are one and the same. They ought to be. When I talk about the relationship escalator, one of the hallmarks is this idea of consistent romantic and sexual monogamy.
They can’t be disconnected from each other. In fact, they can. For some people, like myself, the whole romantic part completely falls off. A relationship with another human can consist largely of three components. It’s anyone, not just me. Those are companionship, sexual attraction or sexuality, and romantic attraction. Society has told us that you should find somebody who satisfies all three of those at the same time.
Years ago, in my self-discovery of who I am, I realized that those could be disconnected and taken apart, and where I seek companionship can be different from where I seek sexual satisfaction, attraction, or companionship. It can be different from where I seek romantic experiences because I don’t experience romantic love. I do love a nice little walk on the river, cuddling, and holding hands, and then I brush them off after two hours when that feeling has gone away.
How Jessalyn Discovered Her Aromantic Identity
Let’s talk about this discovery. You were coming out of sorts.
Kind of. Yeah.
At least you realized there was something that wasn’t working. Talk about how that happened.
Some people feel a need to come out and make a proclamation of something. I’ve never done that.
I’ve known you for a long time, and I didn’t know you were aromantic.
I talk about it, and if people pick up on it, they do. It doesn’t define so much who I am that it never needed a proclamation. I also grew up in an environment where being different in this way would never change my family’s view of me. It didn’t feel like it was ever needed.
You didn’t have to be in the aromantic closet. Can I make an observation?
Please.
I’ve known you for a while now, but this is our first time ever meeting face-to-face. When you said you were aromantic, I wasn’t surprised.
Do tell.
I don’t know. Little surprises me anymore about people’s unconventional life, their proclivities, and what turns them on. There’s so much heterogeneity in the world, and much of it is hidden because of the lack of acceptance. If someone were like, “I like it when someone does this thing,” and people are aghast about that. I’m like, “Right on. It sounds good. Consent, no harm. Go for it.” When you said that, something vibed. It made sense. I also know your perspective more generally about sex, dating, etc. It at least suggested that romance and sexual attraction can be disentangled for you.
That’s a much better answer that you gave than saying, “Jessalyn, you seem a bit robotic.” That has been said to me before. It has been said to many aromantic people before.
It sounds like there may be some behavioral indicators that someone is aromantic. In the same way, there may be behavioral indicators that someone is on the spectrum, like they have Asperger’s, autism, or something like that. Do you think that’s true?
It’s less than you would think. If you go to YouTube and search, “Am I aromantic?” You’ll find very little content. Maybe seven people on YouTube. What most of them will say is, “There’s not a clear way to know, but here are some of our own personal indicators that were sort of flags,” or not red flags, but flags when you look back in time.
The one that made me laugh was Nik Hampshire. That is his name on YouTube. He has a video where he talks about, “How do I know if I’m aromantic?” He talks about his own experience of having treated relationships almost like an equation, where he would try to plug this thing in and see if it would work. He would like someone, and that didn’t work, so he would try a different number and see if the equation would work out.
I had such a laugh when he said, “If you are calculating if you’re in a relationship or not, you’re probably aromantic.” The reason that made me laugh is that I had this relationship back in 2009 with a guy. I rarely ever fought with anyone I dated. We had a big blow-up fight that kept bubbling up. I ended up making a spreadsheet. There were rows, and those were for each of the issues I had identified. Each column was him and me. I sent him this assessment of the argument and what I thought was causing it. When I tried to discuss the spreadsheet with him, he would not discuss it with me.
Did he find it offensive or threatening?
I think it’s this incredibly bizarre experience when someone tries to make a calculated assessment of the argument within an Excel spreadsheet.
You and Charles Darwin have something in common. Maybe the case of Charles Darwin was aromantic because he created a spreadsheet to decide whether he was going to marry or not.
I knew that. Of the few indicators, if you make spreadsheets or calculations, you might be aromantic.
That’s super fascinating. You were having this discovery. Was this in your 30s?
I am 37. Around the age of 30 to 31, I had spent all of my teens and 20s pursuing my future husband and failing. I would date men for three months, and it would not work out. Probably my first ever relationship indicator that something was off was when I was living in Australia. I had been dating a man for 8 or 9 months. We had never said, “I love you.” We just enjoyed each other’s company or companionship. I told him I was moving back to the United States, and he said, “I’m in love with you. I want to come with you.” I looked him dead in the eyes and said, “No.” At the time, I thought it was this feeling that if I’m not 100%, then I’m 0%.
You wonder why people say you’re robotic at times.
I have made that joke about myself, so I can take it. Other people might not be so welcoming to the robot joke. That was in my mid-20s. Around my late 20s, around 30 years old, I met the one. I met that guy. By all accounts, he was perfect. He checked all the boxes. He was a rocket scientist. He was beautiful. I don’t want children, but if I changed my mind and decided to have them, he would be a good dad. He was funny and my best friend.
Sex?
It was great, fantastic.
He passed the interview.
We moved in together. We were on the relationship escalator. I had everything I had been wanting, and then I realized, “This is not at all what I thought it was going to be. This feels uncomfortable for a number of reasons.” I tell that story a little bit to also differentiate. You’ve been witness to this before. You and I were having a chat once with some other people. I mentioned my aromanticism and what that is, and someone else in the room said, “You mean you haven’t met the right person yet.”
I’m glad you brought that up.
I did meet the right person. This isn’t a case of someone having been scorned so much in their life that they gave up, like, “I’ll never find it. It must not exist.” I found it and realized I didn’t want it. It was not serving me in the way that society had told me that it would.
It’s not like you wanted to stop having sex with this person. It’s not like you stopped wanting their companionship.
We remained the best of friends.
It’s this ability for people to understand that these three elements may be correlated. They may be, for the average person, connected. For example, when you’re having sex with someone, you often enjoy their company and companionship. When you’re sexually attracted to someone, that may put you in a place where it allows romance to develop or vice versa. We can talk through all the permutations of it.
I’ve had this experience. I’m going to sound terrible saying it, but it’s true. I’ve had sexual partners who, after we have sex, I want to be alone. I have had sexual partners who, after we have sex, I wanted them to stay with me. Those that I want to have with me, I have more romantic or companion feelings for, in that sense.
In the same way, I’ve had romantic partners who are great companions, but the sex is fine, and vice versa. These are people whose sex is out of this world, but the other things aren’t there. Recognizing that this is a possibility can be empowering for someone. I’m guessing that when you start to figure this out, you stop feeling crazy.
I stopped feeling crazy. In the world of people with whom I could craft relationships, the sky is the limit. You have an episode about asexuality that you mentioned earlier. Your guest has a YouTube video. He has a TED Talk about asexuality, which I find incredibly beautiful. I am not asexual. I enjoy sex very much. David is almost the opposite of me, not in a clearly binary kind of way, but he desires and seeks romantic relationships that do not contain sex.
He has a family. He’s romantically connected to at least one person in that family. I don’t remember the details of it.
That’s a permutation of relationships that I never even dreamed I could be a part of many years ago. It’s beautiful, with all the different ways I can relate to people, when I realize that relationships can contain those parts, and that different relationships can contain those parts.
Singles’ Unique Opportunity To Choose Their Own Adventure
It’s to choose your own adventure. I feel like singles, especially those who are seeking unconventional relationships, have this choose-your-own-adventure opportunity. It’s nice to hear you say this in this positive-sum world because I don’t think that’s obvious. Here’s why. Many people want to ride the escalator because that’s the only way to do it, in their opinion and experience. They don’t know anyone else who’s not striving for the same thing. There is a subset of those people who would be better served by relaxing some of the criteria for it. What you’re saying is that most of the world wants this, but there are a lot of other people out there who want various permutations, sex, romance, and companionship.
It is something that would better serve them. I have a great example, a friend of mine. When I met him, I was still on the relationship escalator. I hadn’t realized this disconnect between companionship, romance, and sex. I believe they were all the same thing, and I wanted all three things. This individual did not tick all of the traditional boxes, so you discard them. You say, “I can’t have a relationship in the way I want, so they’re friends.” Back then, I would have said, “Just a friend.”
“I’m going to friend zone this person,” is the other one that people say.
It is a discounting. Now that I view the relationships that I have in this different light, I realize I can have that relationship with him in different permutations that serve us. All of my relationships are elevated because there isn’t one that has to tick every box and sit on this pedestal above the others.
Before we go too deep into this, there is a class of people who are single by choice. They’re not seeking a relationship. Since the measurements are pretty blunt, we don’t know if they’re not seeking romance. They may be seeking a sexual relationship or some type of companionship that’s not classic friendship. They’re seeking an intimate, platonic, cuddle buddy or something like that. I do want to point this out. You can imagine the classic loner. It doesn’t mean they’re aromantic necessarily. Romance is not something you need to live. You don’t need it to survive. It’s a value add.
In my twenties, I would have disagreed with you, but I agree with you now.
Moreover, there are a whole bunch of people who are not seeking any relationship. They’ve had romance in their life. They’ve had sexual intimacy. They’ve had the companionship of a “life partner.” For one reason or another, that doesn’t exist anymore. Their partner dies. They get divorced or whatever it is, and they’ve moved on from it.
You wouldn’t classify that person as aromantic. They have the potential for it. Maybe someone would come along and stir that up. What you’re referring to, in the same way that asexual is referred to, is this lack of desire, biological, psychological, and wired in some way, in the same way that someone who is gay or lesbian might say, “I was born this way. I’m wired this way.”
We speak about that from our own experiences. There are few to no experts in this field. It’s not like this has been studied when you speak to people. They are speaking from what it feels like within them.
It’s shocking how little good information there is. It’s a nontrivial number of people. The best evidence for asexuals is 1 in 100. That’s not the highest. I suspect it’s higher. If you go off of that, 1% of people perhaps are aromantic.
Maybe the survey question needs to be, “Have you ever been told you’re like a robot?”
The problem is that it also correlates with other things that are there.
I did get told that. When I was in that relationship that I mentioned, the one that was everything that I had hoped and dreamed for, we were dating together, and we were in a friend group. I bet if you ask those friends now, “Is it surprising to you that Jessalyn is aromantic?” They would all go, “No.” Looking back on those scenarios, I remember we might be in a bar having brunch, and this couple is all cuddled up, and those public displays of affection.
I’ve done that. I’ll admit it.
Even when it’s not a strong PDA, there’s this public display of romance. Even if it’s not physical touch and affection, there are public displays of romance that I rarely display with my partner. People would say, “We didn’t even realize you were dating.” The word robot would be used. If we want to do a survey to find out the 1 in 100, we ask, “Have you ever given the calculator or the spreadsheet? Have you been told you’re like a robot?”
I do like holding hands.
Until my hand gets sweaty, and then don’t touch me.
How Jessalyn Handled Relationships As An Aromantic Person
You hand over this calculation. Was that received warmly?
No.
You make your move, and this person doesn’t come with you.
My move?
Did I misremember? You were moving to another country, and he was like, “I want to go with you.”
We’ve covered at least 3 or 4 different relationships in my example. That one did not get a spreadsheet. That was the one where I said, “No.” I looked him in the eyes without any feeling of connecting to my heart in any way and said, “No.” He cried.
That’s because he loved you. There’s a loss there.
I can’t even pat him on the back. I don’t even know how to respond to it. There’s nothing in my core. It’s like I’m a computer program looking for the file that tells me how I respond. I didn’t know. I left the room.
Is that because of a lack of experience or a lack of intuition?
It’s more of a feeling of not wanting to lead someone on. One of the difficult things about dating is that when you tell someone that you are aromantic, many times, they don’t believe you. It’s back to the earlier comment, “You haven’t met the right one.”
It’s hard. If you’re asexual and you tell someone, “I don’t have any inclination to have sex, arousal, and all these things,” or you could even be repulsed by it, it’s hard to know what that’s like because you’ve never experienced what that’s like. The best you can do is go, “Do you know how when you’re stressed with school or work and your libido goes away, so you’re not interested in going on a date, and you need a quiet night to yourself? Imagine feeling that all the time.”
There’s a human component to knowing how to have empathy for people and being able to comfort them. At that age, I didn’t have that. I certainly have that now. There’s a fine line that you’re going through in those dating experiences of wanting to be clear about who you are. I didn’t know that at the time, and I did not mislead that person into thinking there might be a chance.
In this example, I didn’t leave the country for another 2 or 3 months. I still had to finish my contract. During that time, this boyfriend, because we stayed together and kept dating until I left, would start doing these overly dramatic displays of affection. When Valentine’s Day came about, he got the limousine, a teddy bear, chocolates, and a bracelet.
Knowing you, I can’t even imagine thinking that that would work.
It’s horrifying, isn’t it? It was like he opened a book called Things Women Like. It was like, “Page one, try this.” There’s a difference between displays of affection and love languages. You can have a love language with a friend, for example. There’s a difference between that and experiencing romance, romantic love, and those sorts of things. It’s hard to disentangle those concepts. When I tell a lot of people that story about that guy, people don’t relate to my side of the story. They could picture themselves as that guy. As you said, there is no easy way for people to understand what it’s like to not experience it. At the same time, I wish that you did. That’s just me.
There’s this feeling of missing out.
I’m like, “I wish I loved you, and it’s not just you.”
You’re like, “This could not happen with anyone.”
“This can’t happen with anyone, and I wish it could.”
Do you still wish it could?
With that person?
No, in general.
Let’s say there’s a 20% feeling. It still looks like a nice thing. We’re in the beautiful city of Lisbon. Walking around, I see these romantic couples having what looks like a beautiful time. Even when I’m with friends, I will look at that and go, “That looks nice.” I can do those things. I can go on dates, share romantic experiences, and have a little flavor for two hours before I say, “That was enough. I’m filled up.”
Seeing those movies like The Notebook, where these people had this romance all the way to the end, it looks like a nice thing. We also all know that those are rarely the actual stories of the majority of people who enter romantic relationships and romantic marriages. As I get older, it drops more, the desire that I wish I felt that way.
Dealing With And Jumping Back From Heartbreak
Have you had the heartbreak associated with the end of a romantic relationship?
Yes.
I like to talk about features and bugs. A bug might be a lack of romantic love in your life. The feature is the feeling of devastation that can happen when you’re rejected or there’s infidelity. I have experienced both. I experienced the joy and the wonder of falling in love with someone. Honestly, I put this heartbreak on the same scale as the grief that I have felt when I’ve lost a loved one. I’m not exaggerating when I say that. It’s the physical symptoms, prolonged sadness, yearning, and so on. People say that it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. There’s a part of me that goes, “I’m not sure.” There are times when I’m like, “I’m not sure that was worth it.” Maybe I have a different perspective now because I don’t think of the end of a relationship as a failure per se.
We turn to the next chapter.
You said you had that heartbreak.
20/20 vision is fantastic because I can reflect back on a thing now and tell you what I think about it now. At the time, what I felt I was experiencing was heartbreak. Have I experienced heartbreak? Yes, because, at that moment, that’s what I thought it was. When I look back and reflect on it, the times that I felt it were what I know now as a feeling of failure, a feeling of, “When is it going to be my time? When will my turn arrive?” It wasn’t necessarily love that I was feeling heartbreak specifically about that person. I was feeling, “I want romance. Why can’t I have it? When will it be my time?” It is like a mourning and a deep grieving feeling for romance as a concept.
Let’s continue your evolution because this is useful. As we talk about your story, people are learning stuff along the way. You start to have this revelation. In the last few years, you have embraced this as part of your identity. I assume it affects the way you go about dating, who you date, and how you communicate with these people. How so?
I have a dating profile on Tinder. You’ve seen my Tinder profile.
Not on Tinder.
You’ve reviewed it. You’ve given me feedback.
I’ve done some punch-ups.
It doesn’t say on there that I am aromantic. It’s not a thing that I’m hiding. It’s more that people don’t understand it. It will cause confusion. It’s not worth explaining until I’ve even had a couple of dates with someone and see if it’s worth it.
Also, when I share a perspective about dating apps and profiles, A) Keep it positive, and B) Talk about what you want rather than what you don’t want.
I wouldn’t say, “I don’t want romance,” but I like what I do want.
You would say, “I like companionship.”
Dating is tough in the sense that most people are looking for their one and only forever person.
Their ride or die, their partner in crime, their person, their forever, or even their better half.
You’ve done an episode about Relationship Anarchy before. I’m not going to go into the depths of relationship anarchy because there is an episode for that, but I am also a relationship anarchist, which further complicates dating. We’re going to try to zone in on the aromantic component for now. The relationship anarchy component is the one that makes dating more difficult and being non-monogamous.
For a person who’s tuning in who hasn’t heard that, this is an approach to relationships in which the people involved agree on the rules, expectations, and parameters of the relationship. You get to design. I call it relationship design. I don’t want to mansplain this, but if you’re reading this, and please fill in the details, you get to design. The difficulty in that is you have to have these honest conversations. Most people are not well-versed and not adept at articulating what they want.
We don’t have good language in words to even describe it.
I am pursuing this in my own life. It’s empowering and exciting, but it’s not a script. You and I could have this because we have some experience. We know about it. We have a lot of the language and so on. When you’re introducing a new person to it, they need to be open-minded. They need to be good communicators. They have to have some insight into what they want and what they don’t want.
I have to be in the mood and willing to do the emotional and mental labor to bring them along.
You’re often doing this early, sometimes even before you’re sure that you want something with them, and so on.
I have to decide how much labor to put in. The reason this distinction of relationship anarchy is relevant is because every aromantic person’s experience is different. We’re just speaking about mine. You could meet an aromantic person who’s not a relationship anarchist. Most are probably not. They are seeking a person to be with who is a companion. This aromantic person might be a sexual person, so they might be monogamous. You could have a monogamous sexual aromantic person who wishes to find a person and be married to them for the rest of their lives.
They may like some romantic experiences along the way.
Maybe none. My relationship anarchy and nonmonogamy add another layer of complexity to all the different components.
Approaching Relationships With An Abundant Mindset
One quick PSA, I don’t know the correlations between being asexual and aromantic. Don’t assume that just because someone is asexual, they’re aromantic. If someone is a romantic, don’t assume they’re asexual. Hearing you say this is interesting because you’re pointing out rightly the challenges of doing this, and yet you see the world in a positive-sum way. You think of abundance rather than scarcity. How do you reconcile the challenge and this abundance focus?
I view every relationship as being valuable to me. Due to the relationship anarchy, I have effectively said that there will not be a single relationship in my life that takes priority over all of them. I need to find this one thing that can be put on the pedestal because nobody is put on the pedestal. I have these two friends who are married. They live across the street from me. They are family to me.
I have keys to their apartment. They have keys to my apartment. The man in the relationship even jokes openly that I’m like his second wife. If that were the only relationship I had for the rest of my life, I would be completely satisfied. Any addition to my life or any new relationship is a positive experience. There’s a limited amount of time in my days, so it’s not like I can add an endless number of people to it.
You have a lot of love to give. It is something that I talk about a lot.
It’s not romantic love. I live in Amsterdam. I live in Europe now. I’ve been here for five years. I joke that I’ve fled the United States and that relationship to rediscover myself and my purpose in life, when being married was no longer the purpose. I’ve been enjoying that journey. What I have found, and I’m going to make a generalization that is simply based on my experience so far.
I know exactly what you’re going to say. “The Europeans are better at this than Americans.”
More precisely, though, the Dutch and the Germans are much better at this. This isn’t a thing I say, but other people say, “Dating Germans is like dating robots.” I’m like, “Sign me up.” They’re not like that, but it’s culturally.
We’re not dating Germans, so you’re not going to get a lot of blowback. They don’t need this show as much as my American counterparts do.
I love dating the Germans. There is a more open attitude toward designing relationships in a way that you want, but there’s also a different cultural experience of how people express romantic feelings and romantic experiences with each other. I picked a great part of Europe to flourish.
Did you choose it for that reason, or were you pleasantly surprised?
I was pleasantly surprised. This is quite complex because of the relationship anarchy component, but I’ve been quite pleased to find in Europe that the fact that I’m aromantic is a non-issue. I’m not criticized for it. It doesn’t come up. Nobody says to me, “Jessalyn, I need more romantic attention from you,” or, “I don’t feel that I’m getting this thing from you.” It works fine.
It certainly works better if you’re non-monogamous. A lot of monogamous people are looking for that one person to do those three things. Companionship, sex, and romance. If you’re non-monogamous, then you can have some people for the sex, some people for the sex and romance, and maybe even some people for just the romance, in a sense. It removes some of the pressure. You’re like, “You’re going to be this connection in my life.”
I have a relatable, funny story about the one you told earlier about the women gathering together that you had and how you’d been romantically or sexually attached to a number of them before.
Briefly, but yes.
I was at a get-together at the apartment of a man whom I dated in the Netherlands. We were staging it because of COVID. I forgot what the reason for the gathering was, but I had a lovely couple of hours with him and these four other women. As I was riding my bicycle home, I laughed to myself when I realized the composition of the women who were in that room. There was this man with whom I had a sexual friendship. There’s no romance attached to that relationship.
Two of the other women in the room are lesbian friends of his who were pregnant with his baby or his spawn, as I say. He has no parental rights. He’s just the contributor of the sperm. There is that lesbian couple, and one of them was pregnant. There was another woman in the room, who was his girlfriend with whom he shared romance and sex, and there was another woman in the room who was his ex-girlfriend. There is no more sex or romance. I’m like, “All flavors are in the room together.” It didn’t even occur to me until I was leaving.
I bet he’s a charming fellow.
He’s very charming. I love that I live in a world where it didn’t even occur to me. It’s beautiful.
What To Do When You Discover Your Aromantic Self
The word that comes to mind is liberating. Let’s talk through a little bit of the blocking and tackling. Let’s set aside the anarchy stuff. That’s the next-level type. For the aromantics that are tuning in, and I’m sure there are some, some of them might be realizing for the first time that they are aromantic, not even knowing that it was a possibility. They always thought there was something wrong with their wiring. What advice do you have for them? Where do they begin as they contemplate this part of their persona? There are seven people on YouTube.
They can find 1 of the 7 people. Nik Hampshire is one I enjoy. He has only ten videos. They’re quite short and informative. He’s warm and welcoming to the idea that even though we don’t experience romantic love, we still know what society expects of romance. When somebody is feeling a certain way, where maybe they have romantic feelings for us, but we don’t feel them back, we understand how that feels for them and why they would be sad about it. It’s not like we have some complete ignorance.
There are enough stories out there to know that they could feel rejected.
It’s a thing I wanted at one point. Hearing the word aromantic was already enough. Something clicked for me. There are some interesting websites. In your episode on asexuality, there may have been a reference to this website. It’s AVEN, Asexual Visibility and Education Network. Somewhere within that content, you can find references and content to aromanticism.
I am sexual and aromantic. Some people might be asexual and aromantic, or they might be asexual and romantic. That website touches on a lot of that. That’s where I spent a lot of my time. I was reading through other people’s experiences, and this checkbox is going off. I was like, “This is all relatable. That is exactly what I’ve experienced.” Every person’s story is different, so it’s not like a complete replica. That was where I spent a lot of my time and started becoming comfortable that aromantic was right. You’ll also find on those websites a lot of other terms.
I have a bunch of them listed here. I’ve been reluctant to go through them all because you can get your head spinning.
I felt that. You know this. There was a period of time when I thought, “Maybe I’m bisexual. Maybe I’m a lesbian. Maybe it’s because I’ve been dating men. Maybe that’s it.”
As a younger man, when I was struggling to make the relationship escalator work, I never felt an attraction to men. I never thought about a man while I masturbated. I sat down and thought about it. I was like, “Am I gay?” I owed it to myself. I was like, “Should I explore this idea because I’m ‘failing,’ according to the norms of the world, with these women?” It’s deep down inside me, and I’m pushing it down. I’m suppressing and whatever. The answer was no. I allowed myself to contemplate it. The triggering factor was the challenge.
I wish I were a lesbian or bisexual. Women are babes. I wish that I were attracted to them, and I’m not. I’ve tried.
What about talking to your partners, talking to your friends, or perhaps telling your family if it’s relevant? You were saying that your family is accepting of whoever you are. You have that fortunate state.
I randomly talk about stuff.
You could give people this episode. It wouldn’t be a bad place to start.
Talking to your partner is interesting. When I was having this discovery, I was in a relationship with the one that, by all accounts, should have been the outcome of one and only forever or my better half.
In your case, the other half.
That conversation is difficult. When you’ve been in a relationship with somebody where you’ve been saying, “I love you,” I don’t want to say it’s a performing romance, but in a way, it’s a display. Performance seems like you knew that you were faking it at the time, which I didn’t. I was following the romance script that society had given me.
If all of a sudden, one day, you say to your partner, “I don’t have this type of love for you,” that could be heartbreaking for someone, especially if the whole time you’ve been saying this other thing or displaying things in a way. That was the most difficult conversation for me. I found it easier to talk to friends who were in the LGBTQ community who have gone through what we described as these periods of uncertainty, exploration, and questioning.
New identity-building.
They may not be people who arrived at an outcome of being a romantic, but they know what it’s like to cycle through, “Is it this?” Those are good people to reach out to. You don’t want to burden a single person with their emotional labor, but I do find that a lot of people who have been through this before enjoy sharing that experience with other people to help them.
How To Support An Aromantic Individual
It’s to pay it forward. They had people who advised them. Two other things. What’s more likely to be the case than someone being aromantic is that you know someone who is. If you’re reading this, how do you go about supporting an aromantic friend, lover, or family member?
If somebody is aromantic, and I’m not speaking for everybody, there’s a greater likelihood that they have elevated your relationship together. It is an incredibly high value to them. It’s probably of high value to you as well. The best way I can describe this is with an example. When I tell people, “I’m doing this thing. I’m having this event. I’m celebrating this thing, and I want you to be there,” it means a lot to me that you do come. Many times, people are dismissive or dispose of invitations to things that aren’t from a romantic or sexual partner.
The times in my life that I’ve felt the worst being aromantic were those times that I told people, “I want to celebrate this thing. It’s important to me that you’re there to celebrate it with me.” If they said they couldn’t come, I can’t be mad later, but they’re saying they can come, but something better came along. They’re like, “My husband’s parents are coming.”
It’s the flakiness factor.
Those are the moments when I feel the worst, and I’m like, “I wish I were a romantic person so I have that one reliable person.” Somehow, being romantic is the one thing that you have to have in common to be a reliable person. If you have any aromantic friends, understand that there’s a heightened level of being let down if you’re flaky.
In part because of a flatter hierarchy.
To me, that is the way my friends can support me. The other one, we touched on a few times. Don’t say things like, “You haven’t met the right one.” It’s insensitive. You can ask questions. Those are always fine. I don’t mind being asked, “Did you ever consider that this was it? How did you figure out that that wasn’t it?” That’s a valid question. It’s asking about my experience of discovering from A to B.
I’ll add one, and this works for almost anything. You say, “Jessalyn, how can I support you?” There are different ways to support people. They might say, “I need someone to talk to,” or, “I don’t need anything. I just wanted you to know,” or, “Can you help me get some help?” It is asking someone that.
There’s a related point that I want to briefly touch on. This comes up in the discussion, which I don’t think we’ll get into in-depth. Some people will ask, “Are aromantics LGBTQ?” Nik Hampshire has a video about this on YouTube. You can go watch that. Many people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans have experienced oppression in their lives, like societal oppression, and many things that they’ve needed to fight back against. I don’t know every aromantic person in the world, but the people who do put out content about this will largely say, “I’ve never felt oppressed or in any way made less than in society because I’m aromantic.” That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. There’s this weird feeling.
We might be on an island for a little bit. It’s a big tent. There’s little known about this relative to these other identities and experiences. There’s still a lot unknown.
I don’t seek out community. I don’t need a group of people, but back to the oppression part, it’s cool to talk to people about it.
You might fit or might not fit with that community if you’re seeking support.
I do talk to that community and my friends about aromanticism.
My guess is that the community is more supportive than the escalator.
Back to the point about if you’re unsure, that’s a great community to talk to because they’ve been through the experience of questioning. My point to your question about how someone can help is that sometimes, it’s not the help that I need, per se, or feeling like I’m less than in society. It’s the way that I am. I love that we had this conversation. We’ve covered a lot of great points.
I brought this up to connect the earlier episode to this one because they’re both understudied and important. Also, single people are more likely to be aromantic or asexual because it can inhibit the typical progression that happens or that is there.
They might be feeling rejected by partners or society, so they typically could be single.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Cheers.
Important Links
- Jessalyn Dean on LinkedIn
- Asexuality
- Relationship Anarchy
- When Single Is Not An Option: Indian Matchmaking
- David Jay | Asexuality
- Nik Hampshire on YouTube
- “LGBTQ…A?” | Being Aromantic (While Not Asexual)
- The Asexual Visibility and Education Network
About Jessalyn Dean
Jessalyn Dean is a financial literacy and tax consultant currently based in Amsterdam. She spent her teenage years and 20’s searching for “the one” only to realize once she found him that it wasn’t what she was meant for.
Jessalyn got off the relationship escalator in 2017 and now lives her life as an aromantic relationship anarchist by using autonomy as a compass and removing hierarchy from all of her relationships. She is currently working towards early retirement and traveling full time as a solo nomad.