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 that they need to experience love.

This may be as a result of neurodivergence or trauma, but isn't always. Many loveless aros may also identify as amatopunk.

Alternate Names

 * Loveless aromantic

Pronunciation
/luhv-liss-ay-roh-man-tick/

Definitions

 * Loveless aros are aromantic people who are opting out of the idea that we are only acceptable if we love in other ways, strongly, and as if to replace the attraction we don’t feel. - aro-culture-is, 2020
 * an individual on the aromantic spectrum who, in some way, feels disconnected from the concept of love. - pride-flag-fag, 2021

Many aromantics feel uncomfortable with the concept of love, 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 may not feel it is "love" but rather compassion, mutual understanding or respect, enjoyment, or other such emotions depending on context. Loveless aros often identify as such to reject the idea that aromantics must feel platonic love to make up for not feeling romantic love. A common form of arophobia is allo-aces saying that "they can still love," or even aromantics trying to prove their humanity through their ability to love otherwise. Loveless aros reject this idea, and reject love as an indicator of humanity and worth.

A loveless aro may experience love in some form, but do not hold it as central to their identity and do not feel a need to use it to justify their orientation.

History
There is no official coining for the term loveless aro, but the concept was first mentioned in an essay tagged "lovelessness" by K.A. Cook and posted to the blog Aro Worlds on July 14, 2019. The idea of loveless aromanticism comes from the fact that "love" is usually synonymous with "romance", and therefore loveless aros are often forcibly disconnected from love due to their inability to feel romantic attraction. The term appeared on the blog later in the year, August 12, 2019, in a post containing various poems with the ideas of lovelessness.

On February 22nd, 2021, aro-punkwave on Tumblr proposed a loveless aro flag.

Statistics
From May 19th to May 20th, the organization Aurea carried out a survey on loveless and arospec stories.

Another survey was carried out between July 23rd to August 13th by aro-and-tired on Tumblr. The survey was open to any aro-spec induviduals to gather information on people who use the loveless aro label, as well as the opinions of non-loveless aros on the loveless label. Of the 1330 participents, 57.5% were not loveless aro, 28.1% were questioning using the term, and 14.4% identified as a loveless aro.

Flags
The grey stripes stand for lovelessness, and not needing/wanting any form of love. The green stripes symbolize loveless aros being complete on their own/as they are, and aromanticism.