Me and romance (trying to define it, and of course failing)

This seems like a good time to keep talking about me and romantic stuff, so I guess my last post is becoming the start of a short series. In some of the comments on Laura’s recent Asexual Agenda post, people discussed uncertainty as to how to actually define romance (and of course that’s something that’s been talked about a lot in online ace communities). I don’t know any better than anyone else, but way back before I knew I was ace or had heard of aromanticism (or greyromanticism, or wtfromanticism), the defining feature of a romantic relationship to me was commitment.

As I wrote in my last post, I wanted a romantic relationship, because I wanted commitment. To have a person who I knew would always be there for me; to know that I was their primary partner and that that wouldn’t change. And the only way that I saw to get that, looking at society and the people around me, was a romantic relationship.

So to me, romance pretty much meant a strong, deliberate, committed bond between two people. In my view, you and your romantic partner could not have sex, not even touch each other at all, not sleep in the same bed, not even live in the same house, but still be in a romantic relationship because you had committed to each other. And I think this is really the only defining difference I saw between romance and friendship. Friends often fade away and fall out of touch, because most of the time you haven’t made any sort of promise to each other or even a personal resolution to yourself to keep up the relationship. With a romantic relationship, though, there’s a level of commitment and deliberateness at all stages (at least, the ones I saw modeled in my conservative communities)—dating, engagement, marriage.

And that was always what I wanted, and why I ruled out an aro-spectrum identity for myself for so long (as I also talked about in the last post), because when I first heard of the concept of being aromantic, I thought that it described people who didn’t want that kind of bond. I didn’t know about the idea of queerplatonic relationships until very recently, and it was only through online ace communities that I came across that idea, because apart from family relationships, you just don’t see committed non-romantic relationships in the media or real life (or at least I haven’t).

Finally, though, I am realizing that you can have a long-term, deliberate, committed relationship without it being romantic. But then… what the hell even is romance??

At this point, my idea of it does include some level of physical affection, as well as a certain sweetness—like, doing nice things for the other person, and saying nice things to them, more than you normally would in a friendship. Maybe being a little more forgiving toward the person than you would toward anyone else; maybe being more accepting of their flaws than you would if they weren’t your romantic partner. Not getting tired of them; not wanting to be away from them.

But I bet all those things also apply to certain friendships or queerplatonic relationships, and that many romantic relationships lack some or even all of them. So maybe, “it’s romantic if you say it’s romantic” really is the only definition that works.