There are sadly several challenges that comes with being aromantic. First you have people who will try to invalidate you, and they can come from anywhere. Family, LGBTQ+, right wing, left wing, young or old, doesn't matter. I have always found people calling aromantic people anything from fake and looking for attention to broken. For some reason, the idea of not wanting to have a romantic relationship is just so hard for some people to accept. Of course, other groups have it worse in that regard, but still. When I have to argue with a lesbian about my right to be a part of pride, then something is wrong.
The other challenge to being aromantic is simply the massive amount of romance in media. God forbid there be a mediocre action film without a shitty romance sub-plot. Stop smooching and start shooting! Not to mention all the terrible romance movies that they managed to make at an almost industrial scale. Of course, not all movies have romantic themes. There are also some movies that has good romance, like "Your name" the greatest movie known to man. Still, too many hours of my life has been wasted on watching bad romance movies.
Movies aren't the only media oversaturated with romance. It's everywhere in books, comics and don't get me started on music. Why does most pop-music need to have themes of romance? Probably the reason I mostly listen to instrumental/orchestral music or heavy metal. Isn't much romance when you sing about German battleship.
The only media I can think of that doesn't have so much romance is videogames. It exists of course, and most times it is well done, but most videogames I can think of doesn't have any prevalent romantic themes. Civilization, Frostpunk, Hearts of Iron, Stellaris, God of war, GTA, Sea of thieves, Kerbal space program, call of duty and so on. All of them good games or game without romance. It really isn't difficult.
This oversaturating of romance in media essentially leads to the last point I want to bring up, and that is representation. For any given group, representation is important. But when you're aromantic and everything you consume is filled with romance, representation can be hard to come by. And the little representation there is can easily be snuffed out whenever a writer decides that an aromantic character just was "confused" It is annoying. Other times, the only representation we have are robotic characters or cold-hearted villain's. Not exactly the best representation. This often leads to the aromantic community clinging onto any character that hasn't yet shown any romantic interest in anyone. Which again makes it devastating when any one of those characters does end up with a romantic interest.
Being aromantic can be challenging, confusing and above all, frustrating. That's why it is so important that there is an entire aromantic community out there. It's a place where aromantics doesn't feel out of place or different. It is a safe space. And one day, I hope there no longer will be a need for a safe space.
Next part, something happier, MEMES!