What kind of feelings should I feel to be truly human ?

I identify myself as aromantic. I know it’s a weird word but it’s also a word that I like very much. It’s a word that helps me to figure out what I feel. Or rather, what I don’t feel.

This word accounts for the fact that I don’t fall in love.

It accounts for the fact that I don’t really know what is it all about when someone talk to me about romantic feelings. Because I don’t feel them. I never feel them. I don’t have crushes. I don’t know what it is to have one’s breath taken away or to have one’s mind engrossed in the thoughts of your love one. And that’s it, that’s how it is. Deal with it, as we say.

Let’s be specific here : I don’t have a negative attitude toward romantic stuffs. I don’t have anything against people who are in love. I don’t have anything against romantic feelings. I don’t have anything against small and usually heart-shaped pink objects. Nothing at all.

But what I do have a problem with, is a certain idea of romantic love. An idea that everyone seem to agree with. An idea that everybody knows. An unanimously acclaimed idea.

In fact, it’s more a story that an idea, a story of romantic love. And we cannot help but to tell that story, again, and again, and again. Up to the point of nausea.

This story tells you that (heterosexual) romantic love is this experience without which you cannot really accomplish yourself as a human being. It’s also through this story that you learn that the real goal of your life is to find a partner with which you’ll engage in a long and everlasting romantic relationship.

And it’s not over. Do you know why this experience of love is of such great importance to become a « real » person ? It is because it is through this experience that you will express the innermost aspect of your self, your real self. Let’s be clear : without this experience, you cannot know who you are and what is the meaning of your life, without it, you cannot experience happiness. No less.

You want to know something ? This is a really boring story. First, there’s a lot to say about the heterosexism and the monosexism in this (it is ONE man and ONE woman) but it has already been done and by better writers than me, so I’ll say no more.

But beyond that : what is your place in this script when you don’t feel love ? Or when you can’t have access to this kind of relationships ? Is there something planned ?

If I don’t feel any romantic feelings, does it mean that what I feel has less value ? Does it mean that the really important feelings are out of my reach ?

Does it mean that I miss the meaning of my life ? Does it mean that my relationships are of less importance ? Am I less human ?

How am I to explain to the person I have a relationship with that I feel love, even if it’s not romantic love ? And what word am I to use, given the fact that there is none ? How am I to explain that our relationship is indeed important, even if it’s not romantic ?

I’m wondering : what kind of feelings should I feel to be truly human ?

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French version