🍑Peachi✨️ @peachibon - Tumblr Blog

bella sara ancient lights card collection (2007)

Hate how people treat friendship like it's nothing more than the training wheels version of romantic love.

Children's cartoons are full of the power of friendship, but as soon as you get to media for teens or adults it's all about "true love" which is almost exclusively used to refer to romantic love. Children's media focuses on friendship and holds it up as a deep and valuable bond, but once romance is involved friendship is relegated to a nice side garnish if it's acknowledged at all. And as soon as the target audience is old enough to be interested in romance it's nearly impossible to find any stories without it as at least a subplot.

When someone starts dating it's not only normalized but near-universally expected that they'll put their friends second to their partner, regardless of the length or depth of the respective relationships. The "friendzone" is where you hang out when you're hoping for a "real relationship." When there's a romantic or sexual aspect they're "more than friends."

I'm going to end up on the news.