If I See One More Person Define Quoiromantic Wrong I'm Going to Scream
When I was a much younger Fey, a friend explained the concept of aromanticism to me.
"But," said I, "How can someone be aromantic? What is it they aren't experiencing? There's no One Thing that romantic love is."
Some readers will now be laughing and shaking their heads at young Fey, who just didn't know he was aromantic yet. Those readers would be wrong.
The term I use to describe myself is quoiromantic: I fundamentally reject the categories of romantic and platonic love. Being quoiromantic says nothing about what sorts of emotions I experience. It's about how I view those emotions and my relationships with other people. Kasumi Nakamura's article "The Quoiromantic Manifesto" is fantastic, and AsexualAgenda did an Ace Journal Club piece on it that gives a slightly more accessible summary.
What makes me want to screech is people defining quoiromantic as "unable to distinguish between platonic and romantic love" or "unsure of the difference" or "doesn't understand romantic love." These definitions cast being quoiromantic as something like being red-green colorblind: "romantic" and "platonic" are two categories which exist and can be distinguished by most people, but I for some reason lack this ability. Charmingly, it also manages to paint being quoiromantic as a kind of immaturity, since being able to identify and categorize one's own emotions is, y'know, a sign of being a grown-up. It also opens up this whole world of people thinking I need their help, or thinking they get to tell me what I'm feeling, the way one might tell a colorblind friend whether the shirt they're wearing is red or not. Delightful.
I understand where the confusion comes in. As the Asexual Agenda post points out, the glossary definitions of Queer Identities tend to treat them all as "intrinsic identities with clear distinctions between them." In Anglo-U.S. circles Queer Identities are focused on inner experiences: what do you feel? for whom? how do you view yourself? We have a major aversion to claiming things as part of ourselves which can't be claimed as intrinsic. (Things that aren't intrinsic are Lifestyle Choices, and Lifestyle Choices can be Immoral, and Immorality can be Outlawed.)
Quoiromantic isn't an identity in that way. Like I said, it's not a description of my inner world. I use the term for myself because it covers a set of ideas I believe are true, and those ideas inform the way I structure my interpersonal relationships.
And the fundamental idea is that romantic love vs platonic love is a false distinction. The categories are incoherent. ("Incoherent" is different than "nonexistent.") You can't fix the problem by adding a "secret third thing."
It's not that there's any particular emotion which doesn't exist. It's that when you look into the distinction between romantic and platonic love, there isn't one. There's love or whatever you want to call it, and it comes in infinite shades and textures and weights, but those two categories are nonsense. Once you start trying to find the actual distinction between them, it's easy to see.
As far as I can tell, all of the following could be considered parts of romantic love:
enjoying Person's company more than anyone else's;
feeling you life would be incomplete without Person in it;
the desire to share a household with Person (meaning shared finances etc, not just roommates);
wanting Person to like you more than they like anyone else and prioritize your needs and well-being over everyone else's (or at least putting you very very very high on their priorities list);
being pathetically attached to Person and feeling you are worthless without their approval;
obsessing over Person (worrying about them, wanting to know all about them, finding them fascinating, etc);
wanting to care for/serve Person and ensure all their needs are met;
wanting to be allies/comrades with Person for life;
being absolute besties who get each other in ways no one else does;
fighting constantly but always making up again;
It's a pick and choose list. They aren't all necessary and there's no magical "romantic if checks this many boxes" number. Probably no one is going to feel all these things for their Person at once. (I left out sexual attraction and oxytocin-induced-infatuation on purpose, and I'll circle back to them.)
Still, feels like a pretty good list, yeah? These are, if nothing else, the sort of things I see people go "there's no platonic explanation for that" about.
Everything on this list is something folks feel about their close kin. These are all things normal people feel about their parents, children, and siblings. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume we agree that none of this would indicate romantic love in those situations. (Which is why I specified close kin, rather than friends.)
I'll go further and say there's almost nothing (again, I'm getting to the sex part) you could add as a necessary element of romantic love which would set it apart from an emotional state a normal person could experience toward a sibling, parent, or child. Because the thing we call "romantic love" isn't a specific, unique thing by itself.
Which is fine. What's the point of setting apart something we call "romantic love" in the first place? How does doing that help us? What benefit do you get out of being able to categorize all your emotions this way? Would it change how you approach finding friends, choosing roommates, deciding who you want to fuck, or raise kids with, or share finances with, if you didn't have the amorphous concept of "romantic" hanging over you? Would you love more easily if you didn't feel the need to grasp at one, imagined category so tightly it shredded you every time someone went away?
I can't see anything to lose by tossing the category, as long as I get to keep the feelings and see how they're actually so much richer and more varied and colorful than I could've imagined. The way they show up in so many more places in my life's tapestry, and the way I get to be so much freer to be honest about giving and accepting love.
That's why I'm quoiromantic.
And why I'm going to bite the next person who says I just can't tell the difference between emotions.
_____
OKAY FINE let's talk about sexual attraction and infatuation, the two things people always bring up when I say romantic love doesn't exist.
Sexual Attraction: Outside the queer tumblr scenes, this is the delineating factor for romantic love generally. It's some combination of things on the list up there + sexual attraction. Honestly? If that's really the entirety of your definition, I'm fine with that. It makes romantic love into something quite trivial when you think about it though. "I wanna fuck you," is quite the mundane sentiment all told. But if you're willing to separate it from everything else, I'll accept your definition.
Oh, but one more thing. Could you tell me. Does all sexual attraction to someone indicate romantic love? If not, you're right back in the same problem as before you brought this one up. If sexual attraction does always indicate romantic love, then you're just made romantic love and sexual attraction the same thing. Which. I guess you can do. But I'd suggest having a good sit-down-and-think before you make any life choices based on who you wanna fuck today.
Oxytocin/Infatuation/Being in Love: This is an interesting one, becuase it does point to a specific emotional state, which we can sorta "measure" (the way we'd measure anger or fear via brain chemicals, not measure subjectively). This intoxicating cocktail of hormones does a number on your brain and yes, is responsible for the "in love with" feeling of infatuation. Do we want to use it as the defining feature for romantic love?
Well, it'd be good to remember that this is the same thing experienced by new parents bonding with their infants. It's the "glue these two humans together because one of them stands to immediately die without the other one" cocktail.* It's heady and exhilerating and absolutely not sustainable long-term. As in your-brain-cannot-physically-manage-that-it-would-be-bad-for-you. With this one again, I'd actually say if this is your whole definition of romantic love, then I'll work with it. I'll also say that if this is your whole definition of romantic love, then you need to entirely rework what place you think romantic love has in your life. Making decisions based on this state of mind is about as reasonable as me making decisions during a manic episode.
*("Caretaker not paying enough attention to me" is a literal existential threat to a baby. Cigars be cigars but it's hilarious to me that "Person not paying enough attention to me feels like an existential threat" remains an effect of this chemical state in adults, and it's considered a Normal Way to Feel.)
