I was destined to be a love expert.
My name, “Amy,” traces back to the Latin verb for love, amare.
I’m love’s fiercest defender. I get angry when we reduce it to Valentine’s hearts and wedding rings.
Because love is too wild and powerful to fit neatly into boxes. It’s so much more than romance. It’s connection, adoration, care, and joy. You can have a life filled with love even if you never marry.
But I’ve always felt like a bit of a loner for saying this.
Then I discovered amatopunk.
Amatopunk is the belief that who and how (and whether) we love is entirely up to us.
There’s no one right way to have a relationship. All types of relationships are equally valid and worthy, including friendships.
It was developed as a reaction against a deeply entrenched belief system, amatonormativity.
Amatonormativity is, in Elizabeth Brake’s words, “the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship.”
It’s the force behind the Relationship Escalator. It’s why staying single carries such stigma.
And it’s why a dating coach can claim that a woman who doesn’t want to date will end up alone…
As if her friends, her family, and her community don’t count at all?!
When I look back on my own life, I see traces of amatonormativity everywhere.
I was raised traditionally: told that my purpose was to marry and have children. There was no world in which my mother could picture a bright future for me if I stayed single. That’s amatonormativity.
Amatonormativity shrinks our choices. It forces us onto the Relationship Escalator… or else.
Amatopunk says: No way.
It says, “I’m filling my life with love MY way.”
Through beloved friendships. Through family, chosen or biological. Through community, children, work, or a “man friend” who stays happily on the outskirts of your life.
What matters is that you’ve built something that fills you up with so much love you can’t stop smiling, even if that love doesn’t fit conventional boxes.
What do you think? Does this resonate?
Let us know what you think!