there’s one thing that made me feel very excluded from the aro community and not want to come out, and that is the language used to talk about QPRs.
the community seems to be seeing an increasing polarization between loveless/heartless/etc aros, and lumping all platonic/lovequeer/etc aros into “people who want QPRs”, and the language used is……. not ideal.
everywhere i see people putting a blanket definition on QPRs as “it’s just like platonic relationships but deeper and intimate and more meaningful than friendship”, people defining historical people who had deep friendships as “actually in QPRs”, people calling discussions on platonic life partnership or intimate deep platonic relationships as “QPR erasure/they’re just too scared to say QPR”.
this is reinventing a kind of relationship hierarchy in which QPRs are the new relationship being put up as inherently deeper, inherently more meaningful than friendship, and it is so very isolating as a QPR-averse platonic aro.
part of how i realized i was aro was because of how deeply important platonic relationships are to me. right now i have multiple friendships that i am certain some people in this community would jump to labeling a QPR because it’s “obviously way deeper than friendship”, or the same old friends don’t DO that. i don’t want to be shoved in these boxes- not every nontraditional friendship is automatically a QPR, but these definitions and overwhelming focus on them is simply restricting and undervaluing what platonic relationships can be, just the same as amatonormative society.
i think QPRs are wonderful in that they exist as an option for so many aspecs, but could we use language that defines them as what they actually are- different for every person in them and defined only by the people in them- rather than blanket-defining them as “friendships but deeper and better”?
