"Real" Relationships

TW corrective rape, abuse

Sometimes people say, "You just identify as asexual [or aromantic] because you haven't been in enough relationships yet."

Sometimes people say, "You just identify as asexual [or aromantic] because you haven't been in real relationships."

And sometimes people say, "Anyone who identifies as asexual [or aromantic] just hasn't been in real relationships."

Besides the ignorance and arrogance inherent in these statements, they upset me for another reason.

They upset me because I've been in "real" (romantic/sexual) relationships and I've paid the price for it. I know, too, that I've been much luckier than other aces and aromantics. No one ever raped me to "fix" me, or raped me because I didn't want sex enough, or tried to force me to get medical treatment. No one ever decided that my being asexual or aromantic meant I didn't love them and that a ten-year marriage was worthless.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have stayed quite as long as I did, at the end, if I had known I was aromantic. Sometimes it felt like there was something missing, some rush, some sense of warm fuzzies… and I just kept waiting for it. Now I know that's just not me, that I don't experience those things, and I wish someone had told me then.

I'm an adult. I've been in some good (romantic/sexual) relationships and some bad ones. I've had experiences that I can't quite bring myself to call abusive, but that I would call so if someone else told me about them. I've had my head, my self-worth, and my dignity screwed with in these "real" (romantic/sexual) relationships.

So don't you dare tell me that never happened. Don't you dare erase my experiences, or the experiences of those who have had it so much worse than me.