Part 6 of 36 in the The 2026 Kink Field Guide series.

Aroace means experiencing little to no romantic or sexual attraction.

That's both at once. Not just asexual—not interested in sex. Not just aromantic—not interested in romance. The combination: neither the romantic pull toward partnership nor the sexual pull toward physical intimacy.

For most people, this sounds like a fundamental absence. Romance and sex are treated as the twin pillars of adult intimacy. Remove both, and what's left?

Everything else. Friendship. Family. Creative work. Community. Solitude. Purpose. The things that fill a human life, minus the two specific forms of connection that society treats as the only ones that really count.

The Double Absence

Asexuality and aromanticism are separate spectrums. They overlap but aren't identical.

Asexual, romantic: Many ace people experience romantic attraction—they fall in love, want relationships, feel the pull toward specific people. They just don't feel the specifically sexual dimension. These people might have romantic partnerships that include cuddling, emotional intimacy, even some physical affection, without sex being a central feature.

Sexual, aromantic: Some people experience sexual attraction without romantic attraction. They want sex but don't want the partnership framework. Casual hookups might be appealing; committed relationships might feel suffocating or uninteresting.

Aroace: Both absences at once. Neither the romantic pull nor the sexual pull. The fullest form of not experiencing the attraction types that organize most people's intimate lives.

Aroace isn't just asexual plus aromantic mathematically added together. It's its own experience, with its own community, its own challenges, its own compensations.

What Aroace Life Looks Like

Aroace people build lives that don't center on romance or sex.

This doesn't mean isolated lives. Human connection takes many forms. Aroace people might have:

Deep friendships. The most significant relationships in an aroace person's life are often friendships. These might be more intimate and committed than what allosexual/alloromantic people expect from "just friends." When romance isn't competing for relational energy, friendships can deepen.

Chosen family. Groups of people who commit to each other without romantic or sexual bonds. Living together, supporting each other through difficulty, creating the security usually provided by traditional families—without the romantic or sexual elements.

Queerplatonic relationships. Partnerships that exceed typical friendship in commitment and intimacy without being romantic. QPRs might involve cohabitation, shared finances, even raising children together. The relationship structure fits people who want deep committed partnership but don't experience romantic attraction.

Solo life. Some aroace people prefer solitude. They're not lonely—they've simply organized their lives around activities, projects, and less intensive relationships. Independence is a value, not a consolation prize.

Community involvement. Energy that might otherwise go to partner-seeking and relationship maintenance can go to community, activism, creative work, career. Many aroace people are highly engaged in causes and communities because their relational energy isn't absorbed by romantic pursuits.

The Amatonormativity Problem

Society assumes romantic partnership is the goal of adult life. This assumption is called amatonormativity.

Amatonormativity shows up everywhere:

Media: Stories end with romantic partnership. Happiness means finding "the one." Characters without romance are portrayed as incomplete, tragic, or waiting for love to arrive.

Social structure: Tax benefits for married couples. Health insurance through spouses. Assumptions that your emergency contact, medical proxy, and domestic partner are the same romantic partner.

Conversation: "Are you seeing anyone?" is treated as a normal question. Adult life is tracked by relationship milestones. Being single past a certain age raises concern.

Self-worth: People who haven't found romance sometimes feel they've failed at life. The absence of romantic success is treated as a deficiency rather than a difference.

Aroace people navigate a world built around assumptions they don't share. They're not waiting for romance—they don't want it. But the world keeps expecting them to want it, keeps structuring rewards around it, keeps treating its absence as a problem to solve.

The Loneliness Question

"Aren't you lonely?"

Aroace people get this question constantly. The assumption: without romantic partnership, loneliness is inevitable.

This conflates romance with connection. They're related but not identical.

People can be profoundly lonely in romantic relationships. Romance doesn't prevent isolation—it can sometimes deepen it, if the relationship is unfulfilling or if other relationships have been sacrificed to prioritize the romantic one.

People can be deeply connected without romantic relationships. Friendship, family, community, collaborative work—these provide connection. Whether that connection is sufficient depends on the person, not on whether romance is present.

Some aroace people are lonely. Loneliness happens. But it's not a necessary consequence of being aroace. Many aroace people have rich relational lives—just not the kind that centers on romance.

The Aromantic Dimension

Let's focus on the romantic absence specifically, since asexuality got its own article.

Aromantic people don't experience romantic attraction. This raises the question: what even is romantic attraction?

It's surprisingly hard to define. The pull toward a specific person that includes wanting to be their partner. The feeling that organizes around one person as special, chosen, destined. The emotional texture that distinguishes "I love this friend" from "I'm in love with this person."

Aromantic people describe not experiencing this:

"I love my friends deeply, but I've never felt that specialness, that singling-out that romance seems to involve."

"I understand romance intellectually—I see it in media, in other people's lives. But I don't feel it. It's like being described a color you've never seen."

"People talk about crushes and butterflies and I've never had that. I wondered for years if I was just doing it wrong."

The aromantic experience is not hating romance or rejecting it ideologically. It's simply not experiencing the pull that romance involves.

The Spectrum

Both asexuality and aromanticism are spectrums. Aroace, as a combination, can mean:

Fully ace, fully aro: No sexual attraction, no romantic attraction, consistently.

Gray-aroace: Rare attraction on one or both axes. Might occasionally experience attraction but identifies more with absence than presence.

Demi-aroace: Attraction on one or both axes only after significant bond forms. Rare and conditional.

Flux: Varying over time. Sometimes feeling more aroace, sometimes feeling slight attraction. The orientation isn't static.

The label accommodates variation. What unites aroace people is the experience of being toward the low end of both sexual and romantic attraction, such that romance and sex aren't organizing forces in their lives.

Finding Community

Aroace communities exist primarily online, where geographic dispersal doesn't prevent gathering.

These communities provide:

Validation: Proof that others exist. The experience of being aroace can feel alienating in a world that assumes everyone wants love and sex. Finding others who share the experience is grounding.

Language: Terms like "queerplatonic," "amatonormativity," "squish" (a platonic crush). The vocabulary helps articulate experiences that mainstream language doesn't capture.

Strategies: How to navigate a world built around romantic assumptions. How to explain to family why you're not dating. How to build fulfilling relationships outside romantic structures.

Humor: Aroace memes about not understanding romance, about the puzzlement at allosexual/alloromantic behavior. The shared jokes build community.

The aroace flag (orange, yellow, white, blue) provides visible identity. Aroace rings and other symbols help people find each other in the wild.

Aroace people face specific challenges in relationship contexts that society doesn't prepare for.

Dating when you don't want romance or sex. Traditional dating makes no sense. Dating apps are built around romantic and sexual attraction. Meeting people "to see if there's chemistry" presumes chemistry of a type that aroace people don't experience. Some aroace people date anyway, seeking partnerships that work differently. Others skip dating entirely and build relationships through other channels.

Explaining to family. Parents ask about romantic partners. Family gatherings include couples. The pressure to partner is constant. Explaining "I'm aroace" requires educating people who may not have heard the term. Many aroace people face disbelief—"You just haven't met the right person yet." The invalidation is exhausting.

Friendships becoming primary. When you don't have romantic relationships, friendships carry more weight. But friends often prioritize romantic partners over friends. The aroace person's most important relationship might be a friendship that the friend sees as secondary to their romantic partnership. This asymmetry creates difficulty.

Building chosen family. Some aroace people create family structures with other aroace people or with alloromantic/allosexual people who value non-traditional relationships. These chosen families might involve shared housing, shared finances, shared caregiving—all without romantic or sexual dimensions. Building these structures requires intentionality since society doesn't provide templates.

Legal and financial structures. Marriage provides tax benefits, health insurance, inheritance rights, medical decision-making power. These legal structures assume romantic partnership. Aroace people who want similar protections with non-romantic partners face barriers. Some aroace people marry platonically for legal benefits. Others advocate for legal structures that don't privilege romance.

The Attachment Lens

Aroace and attachment styles interact in interesting ways.

You might expect aroace people to be avoidantly attached—avoiding the intimacy that romance and sex provide. And some aroace people do have avoidant attachment, where the aroace orientation and the attachment style reinforce each other.

But aroace people can also be anxiously attached. They might crave connection and reassurance—just not through romantic or sexual channels. An anxiously attached aroace person might have intense, needy friendships rather than intense, needy romantic relationships.

And aroace people can be securely attached. They can have stable, confident relationships with friends and family, feel comfortable with intimacy (non-romantic, non-sexual intimacy), and not experience their orientation as a source of anxiety.

The orientation and the attachment style are separate dimensions. They interact but don't determine each other.

The Possibility of Completeness

Perhaps the most important thing aroace people demonstrate: romantic and sexual partnership aren't necessary for a complete life.

This challenges deep assumptions. The romantic comedy promise. The finding-your-person narrative. The idea that adult life is about building a family with a romantic partner.

Aroace people opt out—not as rejection, but as recognition that those particular experiences aren't part of their wiring. And in opting out, they demonstrate that human flourishing has many forms.

A life filled with deep friendships, meaningful work, community engagement, creative expression, and solitary contentment can be as full and rich as a life with romantic partnership. Different, but not lesser.

The aroace experience reveals that romance and sex are one path to fulfillment, not the only path. Some people don't walk that path—because they don't experience the pull that would draw them to it.

And that's fine. That's a life.

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