the only forms of courtship he accepts are on the lines of rebelling against the powers in charge of the universe and ripping the script of fate, what do you expect
Well, let’s not forget he told God to shut it in the shower once.
Not only he wasn’t smitten on the spot, but God made him breakfast afterwards.
thank u for being so kind, anon. u r approaching this subject as someone who wants to learn, and i’m sure aromantic people would really appreciate that.
as for your question, dean being aro doesn’t mean he can’t love people. aromantic people don’t experience romantic attraction, and that can mean a variety of things, but the simplest definition is that they don’t “fall in love.” the way i like to imagine it is the difference between how i feel when i have a crush on someone and how i feel about my best friend rachel. there’s nobody outside of my family that i love as fiercely as rachel, but i am not IN love with her. and my love for her almost feels MORE intense by NOT being romantic, so it’s not like romantic love is somehow “better” than any other type. but anyway, aromantic people can still love in tons of different ways (and just as deeply as an alloromantic person), but they simply don’t experience romantic love.
as for dean, i believe he’s aromantic AND an extremely loving person. to me, it seems like dean only really has one setting for love: you’re either family or you’re not. there are different intensities of that–compare how he treats cas to how he treats charlie or kevin or jody, and compare how he treats sam to how he treats literally anyone else, i could go on but the point is that dean thinks of friends as family, he thinks of family as family, he thinks of pseudo families (lisa and ben) as family, but he doesn’t put them all on equal playing field. his love for everyone is different while still staying under the umbrella of family. if u look at his relationships with individual characters, u realize how deeply and uniquely dean loves each person in his life. dean, to me, is so far beyond romantic love that he would probably think “falling in love” is superficial. he loves with purpose, fiercely, with all of his being–there is no “falling” about it.
Dean being aro is just an headcanon, but I personally think that it fits well with canon. I am not mad at you for your message, don’t worry 🙂
Being aromantic means that you don’t feel romantic attraction. Attraction and behaviour are two different things: you can not feel romantic attraction and be in a romantic relationship, because not feeling that particular kind of attraction does not prevent you from enjoying kissing or dating or sex (btw, sexual orientation has nothing to do with being aromantic, which is a romantic orientation) or any other thing featuring a romantic relationship. According to me you just have to be honest with your partner about the fact that you don’t love them romantically, just in case they are not okay with that and/or there are some things that you don’t want from you relationship with them.
As for the way I view those two relationships… I can totally see aro!Dean in both cases, honestly.
With Cassie, from an aro Dean point of view it looked like Dean did care about her, but it was more of a sexual relationship than a romantic one. I didn’t see a difference between the way he acted with her and the way he acted with Charlie, nothing said that he was romantically involved except kisses (that don’t mean there was romantic attraction, anyway, just a romantic relationship). He did care about her, but he didn’t act like someone who was in love.
As for Lisa, again, I don’t see how Dean’s feelings about her are necessarly romantic. Dean wasn’t okay with that life, he wasn’t happy, always grieving Sam, especially at first. It was like he was just pretending, acting the way he was supposed to. He did try, but it looked a lot like a not-so-working relationship between a romantic and an aromantic person (as I have seen people describing them and as I have experienced them).
He never said “I love you” to neither Lisa nor Cassie and generally he doesn’t say it at all. My headcanon on this is that “I love you” is generally considered a romantic phrase, that can be used also platonically, of course, but generally media and society percieve it as romantic (English is ambigous here, in italian we have a platonic “I love you” and a romantic “I love you”). I think that Dean doesn’t love in that way, and he does realise that his love for Castiel is of the same kind he feels for Lisa, just minus sexual attraction. So he doesn’t say “I love you”, because it feels like he’s lying.
When someone is important for Dean, he immediately throws them under the “family” umbrella: Jo and Ellen? Family. Cas? Family. Lisa and Ben? Family.
Everyone is family, because no love is romantic for Dean.
Plus, Dean’s most loved person is Sam, his brother, a platonic bond. There are many researches that show that people who feel romantic attraction (also because of society) usually put their “significant other” above any other bond. With them, they build a new family that comes before friends and other platonic bonds.
For Dean, there’s Sam first. He dumps every romantic bond for being with his brother. When he looks at his future, he sees his family – his friends and brother -, not him settled with a girl. He tried that when he had only Lisa to turn to, and it didn’t work out, he wasn’t fit for that. Dean isn’t looking for a romantic relationship and had like two or three in his whole life, and he is perfectly okay with that. When Bobby tried to justify not telling him that Sam was alive because Dean finally had what he wanted (with Lisa and Ben), Dean said that he wanted his brother.
Dean has a big heart and loves deeply – I just think it’s not in a romantic way.
(Since I am afraid I haven’t expressed myself to well, here you can find some FAQ about aromanticism, here, here and here you can find discussions about aromantics in a romantic relationship)
Do you know what I like about Ghostfacers? We finally get confirmation that Dean Winchester, uncensored, says fuck a LOT, just like we always suspected.
This is Not a Blog 