Loveless Aromantic

**Loveless Aromantic**, or **Loveless Aro**, is a term that describes someone on the aromantic spectrum who is disconnected from the concept of love in some way. One may not feel love, may doubt that they feel love, or reject the idea of experiencing love. One may feel uncomfortable with the concept or may not believe any form of love is personally relevant or important to them.

Due to the fact that "love" is usually synonymous with "romance," aromantic individuals are often forcibly disconnected from love due to their inability to feel romantic attraction. Someone may also have a form of neurodivergence or trauma that cause their disconnect.

Even though they may appear to "love" those close to them or "love" their hobbies, they do not feel that it is love, rather it may be compassion, mutual understanding or respect, enjoyment or other such emotions depending on the context.

Though someone who is loveless may experience limited empathy, that is not always the case. It also does not mean that someone lacks all other emotions.

Loveless aros might feel other attractions and use the split attraction model, but do not equate their attraction to love.

Some individuals outside of the loveless community may try to broaden the definition of love to include tertiary attractions, rather than challenging the idea that "love is what makes us human." This is known in the loveless aro community as the "unhelpful broadening of love," and some may continue to feel alienated and ignored or feel that love is inescapable as a result. Those who do not experience any tertiary attraction are left out of the broadening of love, although unintentionally.

While all aspec individuals are harmed by amatonormativity, loveless aros are especially harmed by it. This may come from some alloromantic asexuals trying to "humanize" themselves to alloromantic allosexuals by saying 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 use examples of tertiary attraction instead, which enforces the belief that experiencing any love makes someone human if it is "close enough" to being romantic. As a result, loveless aros typically disregard the idea that love is necessary.

Loveless aros reclaiming their disconnect from love is similar to voidpunk individuals reclaiming their disconnect from humanity, the two communities often overlap as well.

## History & Coining

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 with "lovelessness", the term "loveless aro" didn't appear on the blog until August 12, 2019.

## Flags & Symbols

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

## Resources

https://aroworlds.com/2019/07/16/i-am-not-voldemort-an-essay-on-love-and-amatonormativity/

https://aroworlds.com/2019/08/12/poetry-collection-aro-and-loveless/

https://aro-punkwave.tumblr.com/post/643772618716086272/proposal-for-a-loveless-aro-flag-the-grey-stripes