When discussing romantic and sexual relationships, we would be remiss to skip some of the most interesting facets of that conversation: asexuals, or people who do not experience sexual attraction, and aromantics, people who do not experience romantic attraction (UNC-Chapel Hill LGBTQ Center, 2021).
While it may seem obvious in retrospect, these groups of people is often overlooked, even within the LGBTQ community. In fact, in the extended acronym, LGBTQIA, the ‘A’ stands for asexual (and sometimes aromantic), and not “ally”, as is commonly believed. Despite this, both terms have solid history. The term “asexual”, as it is used today, has existed and been recognized by the queer community since the early 1970s (Windsor, 2021). The term “aromantic” is newer, having only appeared in official literature (an Asexual Visibility and Education Network poll) in 2002 (Windsor, 2021).
Despite not experiencing attraction, many asexuals and aromantics do choose to engage in romantic, sexual, and other kinds of relationships with others. Ma et al. (2024) set out to research these relationships using the Investment Model of Commitment, which measures relationship commitment on the triple scales of investment, quality of alternatives, and satisfaction. What they found was that while investment and quality of alternatives were comparable to peers who experienced romantic and sexual attraction, satisfaction and commitment were so highly correlated that the researchers determined that either asexual and aromantic people did not differentiate between commitment and satisfaction, or they experienced them on a 1 to 1 scale.
So what does this mean for the study of attraction and closeness? In their study of human mate preference by biological sex, which sought to measure whether sex differences were replicable in asexual and asexual leaning people, Scheller et al. (2024) found that sexual attraction accounted for preferences in all but physical attractiveness, which aligns with physical attractiveness stereotype: physically attractive people are deemed universally more desirable, even when sexual attraction is removed (Gruman et al., 2017). In fact, Scheller et al. (2024) hypothesized that the differences in mate selection by physical attractiveness could be better explained by romantic attraction.
From there, not much literature exists on the intersection between aromanticism and attraction. However, when considering the relationship experiences of asexuals who do experience romantic attraction and asexuals who are also aromantic, Carvalho & Rodrigues (2022) found intriguing results. Aromantic asexuals reported more sex avoidant behaviors and, interestingly, more avoidant attachment styles, and valued commitment more highly. Contrastingly, asexuals who did experience romantic attraction were more likely to have previous sexual partners and be more open to romantic and sexual relationships in the future.
Overall, the results of these studies paint a tiny picture of what is available to researchers studying sexual and romantic attraction. There is a great deal of space for future research in this field, and asexual and aromantic people provide a previously untapped ‘control group’ when studying this phenomena.
Sources
Carvalho, A. C., & Rodrigues, D. L. (2022). Sexuality, sexual behavior, and relationships of asexual individuals: Differences between aromantic and romantic orientation. Archives of Sexual Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02187-2
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Ma, L., Hatch, H. A., & Clark, E. M. (2024). The investment model of commitment: Examining asexual and aromantic populations using confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis. Psychology & Sexuality, 15(1), 38-53. https://doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2023.2236624
Scheller, M., de Sousa, A. A., Brotto, L. A., & Little, A. C. (2024). The role of sexual and romantic attraction in human mate preferences. Journal of Sex Research, 61(2), 299-312. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2023.2176811
UNC-Chapel Hill LGBTQ Center. (2021). Asexuality, attraction, and romantic orientation. LGBTQ Center. https://lgbtq.unc.edu/resources/exploring-identities/asexuality-attraction-and-romantic-orientation/
Windsor, E. (2021). Asexual & aromantic history. LGBTIQA+ Greens. https://lgbtiqa.greenparty.org.uk/2021/06/30/asexual-aromantic-history/