For a good chunk of my life I disliked romance stories, but lately I found I don't actively dislike romance... I dislike the romantic notion of romance.
So many stories have painted this super strange notion that romance has to be a 'certain way', like first was 'love at first sight' and pure raw phsyical attraction, when people realized that was too superficial it became 'he is a gentleman of nobility looking for bride' or 'she is a quiet and smart girl from a small villagel' it shifted from physical to mental fetishization.
Nowadays the thing that drives romance is basically archetypes dating, 'tsundere likes a shy guy' or 'emo boy can't confess his feeligns to his senpai because life is just too hard'... I wouldn't call it low effort, just uninspired, romance tends to move from trend to trend, but still fall into the same traps.
Objectification and simplication of the matter of falling in love.
Romance in real life is about people connecting in a more than just physical way, anyone can dock body parts and have sex, or look at a person and call them pretty, but romance?
Actually loving someone and moving past our ego for the sake of another that isn't blood related to you?
Dealing with anxiety that comes from the differences between personalities and culture?
Enjoying the presence of another person that is just as flawed as you are?
Activelly trying to make a relationship grow without growing stale or boring?
Creating a safespace to share feelings and buld trust?
That shit is hard!
And the romance genre runs away from these concepts like the plague... If a romance becomes 'too real' it stops being objectifiable and so a lot of people lose interest, because it lacks 'the thing' the came for... Kind of like people lose interest in porn when it doesn't have the right tags they are looking for at the moment. (sorry for the gross analogy, but it is basically the same thing)
In my opnion it's no that romance itself is bad, just that there is a lot more 'bad romances' than 'bad any other stories' because they fail to move past the objectification part of the romance, they play it too safe... Safety is an thing that doesn't have place in romance!
Trusting people is hard, loving people is hard, it's a risk!
worth it no doubt, but hard nonetheless.
So how this relate to the topic?
Well... as a demi who hated romance for most of his life, what I'm trying to say is... Romance is actually good!
Love is a fun thing to read about and see! But it's rare to find it done just right.
If you like characters and want to see them happy... Romance is just a way for them to be happy! Even if you yourself don't need that in your life, you can still appreciate the happiness of others right?
Then there is no reason for an aroace to not appreciate romance... Other than just not feeling the story itself has enough pull, but that has nothing to do with the romance.
And maybe... Just maybe... They only don't like it because they never saw 'the real thing'
Which is why I think we need more real romance, less of the objectified stuff, and more of the actual emotional growth that we genuinely want to see.