“However, this reminds me, I’ve also been having some thoughts about the word romantic and how I’m inclined to use it in my head — and how sometimes I’m not sure how to make the distinction between “I find this romantic, in the sense of romanticized ideals and cozy, picturesque visuals” and “I find this romantic, in the sense of wanting to share it with a romantic partner”. Not necessarily the same thing in all cases, but I don’t actually know what makes them different for me personally.” – The Ace Theist, 2014
I was following a link trail re: platonism, and found this in a comment, and it really resonated with me. I think that this conflation, of the Romantic – the sweeping visuals, the sappy confessions of mutual affection, etc. which have always had a strong appeal to me, with the romantic – in the sense of being in a romantic relationship, is still one that I haven’t been able to pick apart (as evidenced by my inability to avoid using the word in my definition, but if I waited to be able to define it to post this, it’d never get done). I think that this tangle was one of the reasons it took me over half a a year of being comfortable as Ace before I (somewhat reluctantly) adopted the Aro label.
It’s still something that’s really confusing for me, in that I’m not sure what makes romance romance. Is it a speech-act? If you call something romance, does that make it so? I think it’s probably more complicated than that, since there are certain things which can be considered romantic, and certain things which are generally not considered romantic, so the speech act theory works on the first category but not the second.
It’s not something I worry about too much, since it doesn’t really change anything, no matter how you define aromanticism I’d still be aromantic, but it is a question that it would be nice to have a solid answer to.