The Differences Between Us

This is my entry for Carnival of Aros November about limerence, using the prompt: If you identify as aro or arospec, do you think you are non-limerent? Does limerence factor into why you identify this way?


The Differences Between Us

This month’s topic is incredibly interesting. I discovered a label that very easily applies to me and my experiences, so here I am to introduce myself as a non-limerent.

I have not ever experienced limerence.

I remember a conversation just after I started identifying as aromantic, my friends and I were talking about the feeling of being in love. We were talking about limerence without knowing the term. The emotional highs. The profound romantic infatuation. The involuntary obsession. 

There were four of us, all 26 years old and no one admitted to having ever felt it, yet I was the only one that identified as aromantic.

I wondered what the real differences between us was. Limerence, that Hollywood ideal of love on the big screen seemed to have little to do with being alloromantic or being aromantic. 

But they admitted to having crushes. 

What is a crush but a form of limerence? The obsession, the emotional highs, the desire to collect all the merchandise….but they didn’t see such a crush as love, not real (limerence) true love anyway. Could a crush just be unrequited limerence?

Trying to straighten their logic, the difference between limerence and crushes, the difference between alloromatic and aromantic, is a monumental task. A task I have not succeeded in because I am mostly oblivious to it. They are frequencies I just can’t pick up. 

The only answer I managed to come up with was that I felt comfortable in aromantic spaces and identifying as aromantic, while they desperately rejected the possibility as they strived in their social lives to partner up. 

…personally though, I would say that is amatonormativity raising it’s ugly head again.