# Aromantic Polyamory

**Published by:** [The Work of Wickedness](https://paragraph.com/@theworkofwickedness/)
**Published on:** 2022-09-07
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@theworkofwickedness/aromantic-polyamory

## Content

A small subset of my friends probably knows that I'm aromantic. A probably-very-similar subset also knows I've been non-monogamous for about a decade. The way these two subcultures overlap can be challenging, and if I'm being honest, I need to get a few things off my chest. (Sorry if you don't know much about aromantics, that's going to be a separate post, but you can probably do some googling). First and foremost, the word "polyamory" comes with romantic implications baked in. The definition is "the practice of engaging in multiple romantic (and typically sexual) relationships." To many people, romance and sex go hand-in-hand. Some might even go as far as to say that sex with a romantic partner is a more valid sexual relationship than sex with a friend or sex with an acquaintance. Some people need to feel a romantic connection with their partner before they feel sexual impulses for that person, and that's OK. What I wasn't prepared to navigate as an aromantic person when I was starting out was how to deal with trying to be supportive of my significant other's relationship needs being very different from my own. Their rules for what they thought were "healthy" and "normal" polyamory excluded my experiences of attraction entirely. I would have needed to ask for special rules. In a situation where you are already aware that you fall outside of what your partner deems acceptable, redrawing the boundaries can be hard to do. When I talk with people about their non-monogamous situations, I know I'm not the only person who feels this same tension. It can be just as hard to bridge this gap as it is for people who want to go from being in a monogamous relationship to transitioning into non-monogamy. On the surface, it seems rational that polyamorous relationships follow these two rules when dating other people: 1. You love them and want to be in a dating relationship with them 2. You communicate about the existence of partners to other partners The bottom line is this: I don't experience romantic feelings for other people (with a couple of extremely rare exceptions). I experience friendship, sexual attraction, and the desire to be intensely intimate with other people (sexually or otherwise!) This means I've been in some very intense friendships with people and had observers assume we were in a romantic relationship. This also means if someone is a good friend and hot, I am not opposed to a sexual relationship with that person. It's really that simple for me. Worrying about whether or not we're going to become a couple or if the relationship is going to last "forever," or if they love me or not isn't really a thing I stress out about, aside from my concerns that I may not be able to reciprocate. This means my interest in people seldom fits into rule number 1. How this generally manifests in polyamorous spaces is the assumption that aromantics are unfeeling sociopaths looking to get laid with no strings attached. This manifests more specifically in a "normal" and "healthy" polyamorous relationship because by being in an intense, intimate, sex-free relationship with a friend, there's an assumption that sex MUST be occurring. Therefore, rule number 2 is being broken. Many people don't recognize a high-value non-romantic relationship when they see one because they've been conditioned to think that romantic relationships are the highest-value relationships possible. But what about the other side of the coin? How does an intense, sexually intimate relationship fit into the rules? Well, it's not allowed, based on the existence of rule 1. This rule feeds a lot of slut-shaming mentalities that remove most of the benefits of non-monogamy for an aromantic by being used to discourage casual sex, spontaneous sex, and fooling around without long-term relationship intentions. A point of confusion for someone who can be pretty literal (like me) is that many poly people like to repeat the same irritated maxim to people who don't "get" polyamory: Polyamory isn't all about sex! First of all, this is a bad faith argument. On the one hand, people want to be polyamorous because they know it's unrealistic to be exclusively satisfied by a single person. The goal is to have the freedom to explore the different types of love and the expressions of those feeling when they occur. This tripped me up a bit from the beginning because the people repeating the line about it "not being about the sex" behave in ways that show they are very much interested in having sex with other people. Personally, I find the frustrating part is that wanting to have sex with multiple people shouldn't invalidate a lifestyle. Trying to win people over by burying the lede is disingenuous. I have to say, the only people doing good work in the "not all about the sex" fight are demi/greysexuals. Because they actually AREN'T all about the sex, they can have multiple emotionally satisfying relationships regardless of whether they're having sex with those partners, and that's OK. This is not what allosexuals are doing, and not having sex with all of their partners is often a dealbreaker for them.

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