i'm currently suffering and sick in bed, so with the release of the new season i've used my time to rewatch all three seasons of heartstopper, and both tao's reaction to nick and charlie in season one, and isaac's reaction to elle and tao in season three have got me thinking about the value i place on my own (platonic) relationships;
does anyone else know what i mean when i say that you can be fully, wholly, entirely in love with someone without any desire to make the relationship sexual or even romantic?? because like
my best friend is the actual LOVE of my whole entire LIFE
(don't worry they know all this this isn't some dramatic love confession i'm keeping from them but regardless,,)
'cause like i've always been someone who greatly values platonic love, but until the past couple years i always thought that romantic love was inherently stronger than platonic?
i'm in one of those stereotypical queer friendships where literally everyone is convinced that we'll either end up together, or are already together, or are at least in an unrequited love situation (either way around lmao it varies), and when i say everyone, i mean everyone, as in like especially my dad? he's convinced we're meant for eachother and that we'll never meet anyone else that gets eachother the the way we do one another, and my mum's convinced that anyone either of us date will undoubtedly have a problem with how close we are, even though it's a well established fact that anyone that has an issue with our friendship will not be a candidate for someone i'd be with, and to top it off they were the first person i 'dated' at the fresh-out-the-womb(or closet sidfjhs) age of 12/13
and because we then broke up it was obviously awkward for a little while, and we weren't as close for two or three years after that, but shared social circles meant that we remained at least partly friends, and then come year 10 (14/15 years old for anyone not british lmao) we became decidedly best friends again, but even then it was just your average, secondary school, best-friendship. my love for them continued to grow across our gcse years and sixth form, but it was across our first year at university (seperate unis!!!!) where i truly fell in love
we'd made jokes about our 'unhealthy closeness', and 'codependence' for a while, but when i say i made a total of zero friends that first year, because i was perfectly happy spending every spare minute on the phone to them, i am being completely serious, and i'm not even mad about it
either way, i'm sick and getting bored of typing so i won't go on about just how much i love them, but i assure you that they are my best friend for life, regardless of who else i meet in my future, and i can't help but refer to it as a platonic relationship rather than 'just' a friendship, because at the end of the day we are in love! and it'll never be romantic or sexual in any way because that's not what either of us want, but that doesn't diminish the strength or importance of the relationship we're in
(also we have discussed how we probably could fall in [romantic] love without much difficulty if we only tried, but we aren't feeling that way naturally, and we have no desire to change our dynamic as it is now so why would we ?! <3)
anyways where i was meaning to go with this was that part of me has been secretly terrified that i'm just in denial of my 'true' feelings, and that how much i love them can only be justified by a secret desire for romance. i was genuinely so stressed about them (or me for similar reasons) getting into a [romantic] relationship, and me suddenly having a realisation that i'll never truly be happy without being with them like that, but they recently HAVE gotten into a new relationship, and i am pleased to say that i am genuinely nothing but happy for the both of them
sidenote going back to the intro of this post lol: i was also terrified that in the event i'm not in [romantic] love with them that i'd end up acting exactly like tao, or isaac, as in like mad, or bitter, or jealous (not that i think their feelings were invalid, but they still hurt their friends by feeling that way and that ain't what i wanted), but i'm not even feeling jealous so i think i'm acting okay lol