why am I not allowed to be happy alone - or at least, for my sadness not to be about me being single?

thoughts on amatonormativity, toxicity, and asexuality

When I came out as asexual at fourteen, everyone had an opinion.

I was just straight really.

I would change my mind when I found someone.

It was my hormones, or slightly later, my about to be discovered autism.

I spent my teenage years unbothered and unmoved on my position. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, but I wasn’t inherently against one.

I’ve always been sex positive - growing up with a liberal mum and reading a lot of books too young - and was never really uncomfy in discussions, but could rarely put a finger down during Never Have I Ever.

(Here, we must note that sex positivity and the scale of sex repulsion to sex favourability are completely different things, something that is commonly misunderstood.)

At twenty, I entered my first - and still only - relationship. I would spend the next two years believing that somehow, the world had sent me someone who was like me in almost every way, and that I should never let it go. Until.

Until, I was crying every night and having more panic attacks than I’d had in years, and I didn’t know up from down anymore. My brain was scrambled by the words spat at me and the confusion of what was real and who even was I anymore, and what had I done wrong?

At twenty-two, I would leave - the first time, anyway. Months of confusion and back and forth would follow, tears flowing in a university toilet one day and sobbing in my studio with the tiny window another (“Charli, you look like you’re in a bunker”, my therapist says as he peers at me over Zoom one evening).

Amatonormativity is a fascinating systemic norm to me, because it’s everywhere, but it isn’t talked about as much as some of it’s counterparts. This is a term which was coined by Elizabeth Brake, referring to the assumption that all people are better in an exclusive, romantic, and long-term relationship, and that everyone is automatically seeking such a relationship.

We see it everywhere. Singles tax, where it costs us more to live when we aren’t in a partnership. Hotels that don’t have a room with a twin bed. Plus ones for events that are only for romantic and/or long-term couples. Adoption and fostering being far more difficult for individuals.

And, of course, away from the physically noticeable things, the way we talk.

The assumption that you will have a partner eventually, that you’re in waiting for that in order to really start your life, to have kids, to be happy. That your problems will change when there is someone else around.

We bring kids up through media that emphasises the happily ever after, call little kids who are close friends “boyfriend and girlfriend”, talking about them getting married when they grow up.

Ultimately, the belief that you must have someone to “share your life with” in order to be fulfilled, to take part in so much society, so much life, is king, and it is so, so limiting.

Society preferred me when I was in a relationship that hurt me, than where I am, consciously and easily uncoupled. It saw me as more valuable, more aligned to the rest of the world, fundamentally more normal.

This is particularly true for me as a disabled person, who needs more support than most. Although I am happier uncoupled, it would be simpler for society if I had a partner again, who could fulfil many of the tasks and needs that the system does not want to have to pay and find capacity for.

I don’t see it the way everyone else does. I wouldn’t even say I identify as “single”, particularly, even though I am - because how can something be part of your core identity when it isn’t something you care for, when I am not looking to be coupled again?

It’s strange, having grown up knowing I was asexual from such a pivotal point in my development. Not only did I know I was fundamentally different from an even younger age, but I found that language so much younger than most (thank you, tumblr.com, even if you did utterly change my development in many other less positive ways).

I’ve been more comfortable in that facet of being different than many, but you could also argue I’ve spent more time noticing and being chipped away for it, too.

Before I came out, there was a girl in my form who was told about asexuality, and I overheard her snort and say “those people just need to have sex then” (we were thirteen and all as inexperienced as each other at this stage, but let’s not ignore that - this the narrative we are pushed and fed and will parrot back from such a young age, and that’s the whole point).

But when I was in my relationship, people didn’t acknowledge my asexuality - even though we were both asexual, and to us, that was so fundamental to our identity. Where before I was in that relationship, everyone wanted to talk about that aspect of my life, but as soon as it manifests itself, it becomes taboo and private.

Being autistic has never been compatible with amatonormativity, for me, because just like lots of social norms, I’ll never quite be able to grasp why it works and why society is so embedded in it. Whilst I don’t see my asexuality as so intrinsically linked to my autism as I do my gender, I know my ability to lean into it and my lack of care for assimilating is certainly linked.

For me, being in a couple is never going to be my priority, but society is desperate for it to be. I am asked about romantic relationships when I visit my psychiatrist, it’s often the first thing new people ask me about, it comes up in a work context in whatever the work from home version of a water cooler moment is. Even my GP has previously asked about whether I am in a relationship when they are actually asking if I’m sexually active (which is a problematic framing for many other reasons, too).

It doesn’t make sense to me. I want to be able to navigate the world alone and for that to be okay, for that to not fundamentally disadvantage me if I decide that’s how I want to live for the next fifty to seventy years.

I’m tired of not being allowed to be happy alone - or at the very least, I want for my sadness or anger or exhaustion to be able to be completely detached from my partnered status.