Aromantic (often shortened to aro) means someone who does not experience romantic attraction. Aromantic people do not have a desire to be in a romantic relationship, but still, aromantics are capable of feeling love - platonic love such as that between a mother and child or best friends is still love. They might also feel disconnected from the idea of romance.
An aromantic person may or may not experience sexual attraction. Aromantics can have any sexual orientation including asexual.
A common misconception is can aromantics lack emotions and social connection. In reality many aromantics do have emotional needs, these needs are often met through friendships, familial relationships, queerplatonic relationships, or other non-romantic relationships. Some aromantics get platonic crushes or "squishes". Other aromantics may not feel any desire or need for emotional closeness, making them aplatonic.
Some aromantic people may seek out romantic relationships despite that lack of attraction, making them cupioromantic. Others may be romance repulsed.
Aromantic can also be used as an umbrella term, referring to anyone on the aromantic spectrum.
Romantic Attraction
Due to the ambiguous nature of romantic attraction it can sometimes be difficult to identify when one is aromantic. Romantic attraction is sometimes defined by the actions that one takes during a relationship, such as holding hands, kissing, or cuddling. However, none of these activities alone indicate romantic attraction. An aromantic person may enjoy some or all of these activities in non-romantic contexts, but does not like them in romantic context. Because of this a romantic relationship can closely resemble some queerplatonic relationships or close friendships, therefore, the nature of a relationship is mostly defined by the intentions of the participants. If one or both partners feel romantic attraction and both partners agree to a romantic context then the relationship can be considered romantic.
This can make it difficult to identify when one is aromantic, especially when one has trouble distinguishing between romantic feelings and platonic feelings. If this is the case one might identify as platoniromantic, idemromantic, nebularomantic, or quoiromantic.
History
The term aromantic was first coined in an AVEN thread titled 'Relationship Definitions' in June 2005[1]. While this is not the first use of the split attraction model it is one of the first mentions of the term aromantic. After this there is very little mention of aromanticism until 2010, when aromanticism begin to gain a community on AVEN.
Aromantic Flag and Symbols
The first proposed aromantic flag had four stripes. Green, because it's the opposite of red, the most commonly associated romance color. Yellow, representing platonic love, because yellow roses represent friendship. Orange, for greyromantics, because it's in between red and yellow. And black, representing alloromantics that 'reject traditional ideas of romance'. This flag as later changed because it closely resembled the Rastafarian flag, and because it had a stripe representing alloromantics.
The second proposed aromantic flag was a five striped flag. With dark green and light green representing aro-spec identifies. A yellow stripe representing friendship. And a grey and black stripe representing the spectrum of sexual identifies in the aromantic community. The design was later altered; changing the yellow stripe to white; due to it causing sensory problems for certain individuals. The meaning of the stripes was kept the same during the redesign.
There are several other symbols used to represent aromantics and aromantic love. One is an arrow, due to aromantic often being shortened to aro, which is pronounced the same way. Like asexuals, aromantics also use the symbol of the spades to represent themselves, aroace people especially use the ace of spaces. Also similar to asexuals some aromantic people where a white ring on the middle finger of their left hand (the opposite hand of the black asexual ring). Aromantics have also started using the symbol of a green heart, representing non-romantic love. An older, lesser used symbol is an aardvark which seems to have originated from a meme.
Etymology
The term aromantic uses the Latin prefix a- which means 'a lack of'.