Loveless Aromantic

Loveless aro flag by aro-punkwave

Alternate Loveless Aromantic Flag

Loveless Aromantic, or Loveless Aro, describes someone who is on the aromantic spectrum that is in some way disconnected from the concept of love, does not feel love, may doubt that they feel love, or rejects the idea of experiencing love. Due to the fact that "love" is usually synonymous with "romance," loveless aros are often forcibly disconnected from love due to their inability to feel romantic attraction. Some loveless aros may also have neurodivergence or trauma that cause their disconnection. They may feel uncomfortable with the concept or may not believe any form of love is personally relevant or important to them. Even though they may appear to "love" those close to them or "love" their hobbies, they do not feel that it is love but rather it may be compassion, mutual understanding or respect, enjoyment, or other such emotions depending on context.

This does not necessarily mean one lacks empathy or other emotions, and is not to be confused with panaspec or nonamorous, though someone who is loveless may also experience limited empathy, and/or identify as panaspec, and/or be nonamorous. Loveless aros will oftentimes feel other attractions and use the split attraction model, but just not equate their attraction to love.

Some individuals outside of the loveless community may try to broaden the definition of love to include tertiary attraction in addition to romantic attraction, rather than challenging the idea of "love is what makes us human" and allowing individuals to identify or disidentify with love as they choose. This is known within the loveless aro community as "the unhelpful broadening of love," and loveless aros may continue to feel alienated and ignored or feel that love is inescapable as a result. Some loveless aros may experience tertiary attraction, but do not feel that their attractions equate to love, making them feel forcibly included in the broadened idea of love. Those who do not experience any tertiary attraction are left unintentionally excluded altogether.

While all aspec individuals are harmed by amatonormativity, loveless aros are especially harmed by it. This may come in the form of some alloromantic asexuals trying to "humanize" themselves to alloromantic allosexuals by claiming they can "still love." This not only alienates arospec individuals who do not experience romantic attraction, but also enforces the amatonormative belief that romance makes someone a normal, appealing human being. Similar messages may also be parroted by using examples of tertiary attraction instead, which enforces a belief that experiencing any love makes someone human if it is "close enough" to being romantic. As a result of this alienation, loveless aros typically disregard the idea that love is necessary. Loveless aros reclaiming their disconnect from love is similar to voidpunks reclaiming their disconnect from humanity and the two communities often overlap.

History

The concept of lovelessness originated from an essay written by K.A. Cook and posted to the blog Aro Worlds on July 14, 2019. The post was tagged "lovelessness", however the term "loveless aro" didn't appear on the blog until August 12, 2019.

Flag

The loveless aromantic flag was designed by Tumblr user aro-punkwave on February 22nd, 2021. The grey stripes represent lovelessness and not needing/wanting any form of love, while the green stripes represent aromanticism and being a complete individual on one's own.

The alternate loveless aromantic flag was created by Rowan of the Cringe Collective (FANDOM user CasualChaos) on December 12th, 2021. The green represents the lack of romantic attraction while the black represent being loveless. The knife through the heart represents the denial of love due to its association to romantic.