It’s Just A Word
I spent most of my adult life not knowing what the hell “romance” means on a fundamental level.
I can (and did) enact the romance tropes of buying flowers, lighting candles, getting dressed up and taking a woman out. Proposing over hot chocolate after a sleigh ride in a ski resort’s yurt-thingy by playing the podcast episode I knew she wouldn’t have had time to listen to yet, wherein I proposed in the intro. But all of it was LARPing. It’s what you do because you know it makes the other person happy.
I was sometimes called romantic for doing things that just seemed like normal stuff any sane person would do? Like running after a girl in the rain when she was upset. Or going with her to the doctor when she needed support. Or carrying her up the stairs and laying her down on a bed before sex. These are all things I would do for anyone I cared about, so I was surprised to hear they were romantic.
I couldn’t find any feeling within me that tied these events together. I wasn’t driven by whatever emotion is supposed to motivate such things in excess of the motivation you already have for anyone you care for. I didn’t get an extra glow or warmth that’s supposed to come when these things happen to you, aside from the normal gratitude and happiness of this happening. Good things are good! What is the additional Extra-Good Feeling that comes only with special magical people who you are Romantic with? It was a word that didn’t point to anything in reality! It was like “souls” except for relationships.
Fortunately we have a word for people who don’t feel the “romance” feeling, and it’s “aromantic.” Whew, glad that’s solved.
You Only Think You Don’t Have A Soul
Somewhere around 2016 my then-wife “found” a text chain with a girl I was seeing that included heart-emoji’s. I hold this isn’t a big deal, because I send heart-emoji’s to my close friends all the time, including my same-sex friends, it just means I Heart You, not I Heart Heart You. Baka. Also it’s an extra not-big-deal because we were both seeing this girl. The three of us went out on dates together. She would sometimes spend weekends at our place, and even did things like helping in the garden or with house work. We had threesomes. This should be fine.
But my wife wanted to know if I “had feelings” now. Which, yeah, I know what you’re thinking… everyones’ head just exploded. Just like mine did. Turns out there’s a world of difference between “swinger” non-monogamy and “polyamorous” non-monogamy, and boy was that something we should have found out about and dug into before marriage. But this shouldn’t be an issue, because I was aromantic anyway.
So yeah, duh, of course I had feelings for our lover! She’s our friend, she spends a lot of time with us, I’m really into her! If I wasn’t into her would we be having her over all the time and doing all this stuff together?
Ah, but are they “romantic” feelings?
After much emotional-excavation it is finally uncovered that what my wife wants is for me to have two types of emotions. Happy, warm, excited feelings that I can have with friends (including sexy-time friends), and happy, warm, excited, emotions that are qualitatively different from those. My wife was shocked and appalled that the feelings I had for our lover were the same feelings I had for her, except with different intensity and somewhat different circumstances. That there was no parallel track in my mind that differentiated my friends. My wife was, first and foremost, my friend. My dearest, closest friend. That’s what made her special. Our lover was also a close friend. That I thought of all people (that I liked) as “friends” and felt the same emotions for all of them turned out to be a really big deal.
(even your guy friends? Yes, even my guy friends, though I wouldn’t have sex with them. The emotions are the same, the sexual attraction is what’s different. omg wtf)
My wife was pretty sure that these feelings are actually all in the category of ““romantic”” and maybe I was panromantic rather than aromantic. Which was maybe even worse in her eyes, cuz, you know….
In an effort to save the marriage, the relationship with our lover was nuked. That hurt so much. And also oops looks like I’m obligate poly, I would rather never have a relationship again than not be poly. No, swinging does NOT count! I was unable to forgive her for ripping the core out of my soul, she was unable to live with someone who could have feelings for other people, and the marriage was not, in fact, saved. :(
Unfortunately, I still didn’t have a clue wtf “““romance””” is, and this would continue to be a problem.
Spoiler: It’s Just NRE
Armed with the knowledge I am unwaveringly obligate poly and will lead with that in any future relationships, I stride forth into the dating world. It goes well, at first. But I notice a pattern.
Pattern: I catch the eye of a charming lady. We do the seduction thing, we become great friends, everything is awesome. I still date other people, and it’s fine. They’re excited for me at first. But they never seem to go out on dates with other people, they don’t put a lot of effort into pursuing new partners. (And yes, it’s effort! It’s always effort, monog people are completely right when they say “I don’t have the time and energy to be poly!” cuz it does require a lot of both and if you aren’t driven to it because you’re content being monogamous, why would you add all that extra work to your life?). I try to encourage them to seek out other people. I write fiction about my angst at being the only romantic partner they have, which is good enough to sell and which is quite well-received by my current partner, but whatevs I guess. She’s still happy, who am I to gainsay her?
And over time they grow discontent and somewhere around year three or four the relationship crumbles.
My current relationship is now in the 3-4 year range. I think we’re very good friends. We have built things together. I love having a very close friend that I have sex with and I have long thought that’s basically everyone’s ideal. The “Up” introductory scene is famous for showing this ideal, right? This is love.
It was brought to my attention recently that we rarely do anything ““““romantic”””” anymore and that’s hurtful1, and I’m like DUDE WTF IS ROMANCE????
Because it’s definitely friggin distinct from LOVE!!!
Well, now I know. And I’m here to spread the news. This is vital knowledge for anyone and everyone, but I think especially for guys.
Guys - Romance is just NRE. That’s it.
And yes, this means we’re all fucked.
For the uninitiated, there’s a concept in polyamory called “New Relationship Energy.” NRE. You probably already know what it is just hearing the name. It’s that excitement in a new relationship that triggers your pursuit-instincts. The "I want more time with this person. I want to talk to this person. I think about this person a lot. I go to great lengths to see/be around this person. The world feels sparkly and extra-bright when I'm with this person. I want to make this person smile when they see me. I smile when I see them. I get excited thinking about the next time I'll see them. When we're out together, I look at other [attractive members of preferred-sex] less. When we're out together, I don't have a compulsion to make new contacts with other people. When we're out together, everyone/everything else fades into the background more. Also, I get horny a lot faster and easier. And my pulse quickens around them."
It feels like "pursue pursue pursue! Yes, this, yes, this!"
It’s NOT just emotional energy. In my experience ladies don’t just care about "amount of emotional energy" in the abstract, they want a very specific kind of emotional energy. There are tons of ways to signal interest in the relationship, and ways to display emotional energy. Kindness, thoughtfulness, protection, providing resources, doing labor, showing dedication, being a good parent. The women I've been in relationships with certainly do want these other things, but they also very specifically want NRE. If these things are done without NRE they are appreciated, but aren’t considered “““““romantic”””””. (Tho they are romantic if motivated by NRE!) They want you to have those pursuit instincts triggered for them.
That’s why the pattern. It’s not that I’m aromantic or panromantic. It’s that I have NRE for everyone when we first meet, and then don’t in later years. Even though I still love them and we’re still friends. At last it makes sense. It was like being Mary and stepping out of the Room Without Red for the first time.
In this light, I understand what my ex-wife wanted. It wasn’t enough that we did all the other things together. She wanted NRE from me, and she saw I had NRE for our lover, and this was unacceptable. Since NRE=romance, it turns out she was right all along, I guess???
The Tyranny of Biology
This presents a hell of a problem. As said earlier, there’s a lot of ways to show investment of energy into a relationship. But the specific pursuit-instinct energy only comes when a relationship is new. That’s what makes NRE different from RE.
If someone wants NRE, they need a relationship in its first few years. That’s the only source for it. I personally think this is kinda a wonderful thing. It drives people to continue to seek out new people and new relationships. It allows one to slowly build a wide network of friends and provides motivation to add another branch to the web every few years. You get to learn a lot about people by dating them, and you forever share something special. Plus getting to feel NRE is great!
But as also mentioned earlier, it’s work! I find myself in situations where NRE is expected from me 3+ years into the relationship. This feels unrealistic and unfair. I don’t actually get to control my biology on that deep of a level. It is really hard to trigger those instincts artificially! I can’t turn desires on or off arbitrarily.
Of course, the biological basis of desire is true for the women as well. They don’t have deep control of what they want either. If they want NRE from me, that’s a biological fact about them, and no amount of me saying “Well, I can’t just feel a feeling on demand” is going to change that. They’re just as fucked by this situation.2
There is a pretty simple way to deal with the romance problem. One can just perform NRE. The great/horrific thing about one's inner state is that no one can see it. The best they can do is look at your outward expressions and infer the emotional state that would cause it. If you simply do a good enough job of acting like you’re experiencing NRE, then your partner is romanced.
This is great because as guys we’re already used to crushing our true emotions way down deep, and doing labor for our loved ones. Problem can be solved!
This is horrific, because it feels like lying, and I have a lot of existential horror about lying. What my partner wants from me is the pursuit-instinct-triggered emotional state. They like the “romantic acts” because they are proof of that emotional state. If I fake the NRE, am I not, in effect, lying to them? I’m faking an orgasm.
Also I really don’t wanna. It sounds miserable.
The Red Pill
The whole point of a “Red Pill” is in the swallowing. You internalize it, and then you grow. You chose the Red pill because you wanted to have an accurate view of the world, right? What are you gonna do with that accurate view, now that you have it? Sit around and pout all day, and say “man, this sounds miserable. I don’t wanna!”
That’s a bitch-ass baby move. Are you a baby? Are women attracted to babies?
So, this is the nature of reality. What are you going to do about it?
Faking romance has been social acceptable since the beginning of time. It’s probably one of those fake-it-till-you-make-it things, where you start out faking it, but after a while you really get into it, and soon you’re legit feeling those emotions again, you aren’t just pretending. Like they always say - “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you've got it made.”
How many times has someone started out not really into sex, but going along for their loved one, and after a fair bit of fooling around actually gotten really turned on? This could very well just be that again!3
Honestly, can’t I do that for someone I love? Can’t I swallow my own fucking neurosis for an evening every month and just give a beautiful experience to someone I say I care about?
The major downside, the thing I keep coming back to, is the conflict with Inner Peace. When I had Inner Peace for a couple months last year, the primary emotional component of that was feeling free to express my emotions honestly, rather than suppressing them to perform an acceptable role. I was, at first, terrified that this sort of NRE-performance was incompatible with finding Inner Peace again. Crushing who I am to please others is the anti-Inner-Peace.
But there are many things one can’t do wily-nilly. One finds inner peace regardless, because one is not a child. We work to reconcile desire with reality, until we transmute our “I don’t wanna’s” into “This is how the world is, now it is my task to alter myself or my situation, or both, until my position is tenable while remaining true.”
So sure, spend a week pouting. Trash your plans for the week, drink way too much, feel miserable and don’t leave the house for a few days. Then dust yourself off, write a blog post, and start again. You unlocked the next level, the game is far from over.
Combing Arms
Also, hey, I don’t have to be the only source of a partner’s NRE. That’s one of the many advantages of polyamory. So if you’re near the West Denver area, and a conventionally attractive male looking for another female partner, perhaps check out my girl’s date-me doc and drop her an email? I can personally confirm she’s totally worth it. :)
She disagrees with this portrayal, and is sure she did not actually use the R-Word. It’s been most of a week and a lot of alcohol since then, so I can’t guarantee I wasn’t over-interpreting or over-reacting. Let it be known that the literal facts of the matter are in dispute, sorta, but that doesn’t particularly matter to the overall point of this post.
Upon further consideration, this may be another reason monog people choose monogamy. Perhaps one is more content to not experience NRE (or be the subject of NRE) if they aren’t witnessing their partner experiencing NRE. Being monogamous may be much easier for folks with different amounts of energy available for pursuing new partners.
Speaking of which, there are chemical assists for sex. If science could craft a pill that would flood you with NRE, creating the equivalent of viagra-for-romance… holy shit. That would be huge. That would be as big as viagra. Get on that, Pfizer!
It's been my experience that women care whether I do romantic actions/gestures, and they care that those actions come from a place of genuine love and desire. And they care that those actions aren't things they have to ask for individually (ie, if she asks "will you do something romantic" and I do X, that might or might not count depending on the woman and situation. But if she asks "Will you do X romantic thing?" Then doing X almost never counts as romantic. You have to come up with X yourself.)
But it's also been my experience that women don't care so much whether the actions come from a genuine NRE emotional state. It's the actions, and the fact that they come from a place of love and desire (and from a desire to maintain and cultivate that love and desire) that are the important things. Women aren't stupid and they know relationships don't stay new and exciting forever. But the action is important because it is a way of putting effort in to show you still care. It's a form of costly signalling, which uses actions that would spontaneously result from NRE as a medium. But the NRE stuff is the medium, not the message. The message is: "I love you and desire you. I want to keep being with you. You are special to me and I don't take you for granted." And if you can honestly say all those things, then it's not a lie, romantic feelings or not!
It might be more helpful to think of romantic gestures as a LARP, or a mutual relationship improv show. Everyone is aware that you're doing the thing because it's romantic, just like improvvers are aware they are saying things because they are funny. Since everyone knows that, neither improvvers nor romancers are lying. And that doesn't make improv unfunny, or make romantic acts unromantic.
It sounds like your ex-wife was not like my experience, and she really cared about the nuances of your internal emotional state. Bummer. But your current relationship person might be okay with just some romantic behaviors plus the knowledge that they come from a place of genuine love of whichever kind is typical for you. (This seems especially likely if you two have talked about you being aromantic before.) Big and much better than lying, if true.