Musings on How I Experience Love
A.K.A. I learned about a queer identity, and it made me have thoughts about my own identity that are only tangentially related, and I didn't want to derail existing posts.
TL;DR at the bottom.
Introduction
Ya'll. I just learned about a thing called aplatonicism. Aplatonic. Does not experience platonic attraction. And it got me thinking.
To be clear, while I am super happy for and very supportive of all the aplatonics out there, I am not aplatonic. I have a number of friends and I feel all my feelings about my friends very strongly. Probably more strongly than most of them tbh.
Buuuuut, learning that this was a thing made me start poking at how I experience ALL my types of connection with people.
So, consider this post an exploration of my queerness and my relationships in general. If anyone has labels they'd like to introduce, please come forth. I find comfort in labels, and they're kinda fun.
BTW, this is all coming from someone who identifies as aroace and/or asexual arospec.
Familial Love:
If I had to list the most important and valued relationships in my life, all the top spots would go to family members. This is reflected in my day-to-day behavior.
My friends will have to wait hours or days before I can build up the emotional fortitude to text them back, and I find myself dreading receiving texts from them. With my family, I will initiate conversation, text them for no reason, open my phone in the hopes of having recieved texts from them, and feel immense relief when I see the text is from them and not a friend.
I can receive calls from my family without immediately panicking and spend literal hours on the phone with them, where I can barely stomach a few minutes from friends (I have phone anxiety).
I will cancel in person meetings with friends IN EXCHANGE for in person meetings or phone calls with family if I am having a bad day.
I trust my family with information I don't trust my friends with.
When I am home and I have the option to, I will spend more hours of the day being around my family than being by myself, despite being introverted. The same consideration does not apply to friends.
My family is allowed to upset me in ways that my friends are not. I still adore my family and easily forgive them after they push certain boundaries and triggers, but I won't even keep talking to a friend who does that.
Large gatherings of people I know well and consider friends are intimidating and draining. Large gatherings of people I have accepted as family, even if we haven't spoken in years and I don't know them too well, are exciting and relaxing.
All of these things combined make me inclined to conclude that I experience familial love much more strongly than platonic love. I progress from "like" to "love" much easier with family than with friends, I feel more strongly about my family than I do about any of my friends, I will choose family over friendship every time. I've developed a couple of friends over the years that I've become exceptionally close to, and I literally refer to them as "my second family" or "like my siblings."
This is. . .interesting to me, and was sparked by learning about aplatonics. I discovered aplatonicism when I stumbled across a couple aplatonic tumblr blogs, and all the ones I happened upon specified that they were "loveless," indivudiuals whi didn't experience familial love either. But, they still introduced the concept of thinking about platonic love and familial love as separate.
I'm wondering if anyone has words to describe feeling familial love really extra strongly, even if you also experience platonic attraction and are decidely not aplatonic? Oh, also, I have social anxiety, but it isn't really triggered by family members, where it is easily and frequently triggered by friends. I have been overstimulated to the point of tears at large family gatherings before, but it was only with people I literally had no memories of and did not mentally consider family.
Also, I'm not really sure how my brain classifies "family." It certainly isn't "people I've lived with," since there are at least 3 of those that don't count, and most of my extended family does. It obviously isn't "people I'm biologically related to," because of in-laws and legal guardian situations that I do count, but it also isn't "people I am/was legally related to," because a lot of legal extended family that I've never met or just don't talk to don't count in my brain, including people that I technically have a closer legal relationship with than people who count as family. It's some combination of a bunch of factors, and I can't even name most of them.
Basically, familial love is much higher and much stronger in my emotional hierarchy than any other type of love, including platonic friendship, and I find that noteworthy.
Platonic Love:
So, as mentioned in the introductory section, I think I feel my feelings about platonic love/attraction more strongly than the people on the other side of those relationships.
However, I don't think this actually has much to do with my attraction level. I think it's a symptom of allonormativity. Almost all my friends are allorose, and I think this influences the way they view friendships in general. Friendships are generally considered a less valuable, less intense, less committed kind of relationship by an allonormative society. They're like an in-between step between strangers and a romantic/sexual relationship, and people don't really consider that they can both give and take just as much as those other types of connection.
Any friendship involves an obligation. A social contract of things you do for each other. An unspoken agreement that you'll care about and put effort towards each other. They take just as much work and care to maintain as any sort of romantic/sexual relationship will. For people who experience platonic attraction, they also provide connection, safety, emotional fulfillment, enjoyment, happiness, and all the other things that are also affiliated with romantic/sexual relationships.
As an aroace person, friendships and familial connections fully provide all my emotional needs. I don't need or want a "higher" relationship. And when I look at the people in my life who are or were involved in a romantic relationship, some of them continued to put more effort towards and recieve more fulfillment from their friendships than from their romance.
So, I place a lot of importance on my platonic love and affection for my friends, especially those that edge towards that "second family" territory. For those not in that zone, though, I think they would generally consider friendships nice, but far more casual and less important and all-consuming as romantic love. Even if we do experience the same levels of attraction towards and affection for each other, they place less importance on it because they have other emotional needs that are not being met and that society values more.
These thoughts also developed from reading about aplatonics, by the way, and their frustrations with the fact that because friendship is undervalued, people don't extend the same care towards forming and maintaining friendships as they do towards romantic and sexual relationships. People don't ask if they can be your friends as adults, and they don't really do platonic DTRs to determine how much you can reasonably expect from each other. That means an aplatonic who has no interest in being friends with people will suddenly be shoved in this box that comes with all these expectations and they DID NOT sign up for it.
I also have experienced strong queer platonic attraction towards at least one person, and I would use the aromantic term "squish" to define how I feel about this person. If I didn't know that this person is allorose and actively seeking a romantic partnership with someone, I would want to platonically date this person, and we have already acknowledged that our relationship is fully platonic but exceptionally close, and we like it that way.
Romantic Love
In my intro, you may have noticed that I identify as aromantic AND/OR arospec. This is mostly because I am relatively new to identifying myself as aromantic, and I don't have a whole lot of experience with thinking about how I feel about romance through this lens. I only discovered aromanticism was a thing like a year and a half ago, and I have only been exploring the label and identifying with it for a few months.
Before learning about aromanticism, I would hear about romance and crushes and think, "Huh, I've never felt that way. Oh well, I'm sure I will eventually." Now that I know this isn't necessarily true, I have some mixed up feelings.
I have never felt romantic attraction towards anybody. The question comes in my DESIRE for that attraction/relationship. I feel like I could happily live my entire life without a romantic relationship. But, I also wouldn't be upset if I developed romantic attraction for a close friend and entered a romantic relationship with them. That idea isn't bad for me, and I find myself enjoying the thought, even if I don't wish for it and have no desire to seek one out.
However, a lot of the things people consider part of a romantic relationship are things I would do with a QPR. I know I'm not feeling whatever it is they're feeling, and I know I wouldn't behave in the same way, but I can't exactly verbalize those behavioral differences. Just some examples:
Going on dates: I would 100% platonically date someone and actually already do. I also do familial dates. Both these things involve planning a specific time to go do stuff with a specific individual just to be with them because we both like being around each other and we want to spend time together and do things that make the other person happy. If it is a person I have established a touchy-feely relationship with, it will also involve all of the touchy things we do together. With my parents, this is up to and including pecks on the lips and holding hands. With my squish, this regularly goes up to cuddling and laying right next to or partially on top of each other.
Touching each other, even when not on dates. I am a very touchy-feely person. Touch is my love language, but how much I am comfortable touching a person depends.
My parents kiss me, but in the same way you kiss a baby or a puppy. This includes on the lips sometimes. That would feel weird with anyone else, but it feels nice, normal, and affectionate with them.
He never has, but I wouldn't be uncomfortable with my brother kissing my hair or my forehead, which is something my extended family does pretty frequently (aunts and uncles, grandparents, etc.). I don't think I would feel uncomfortable if my squish or my second family friends kissed my hair or forehead, but I'd feel pretty weird if any of my other friends did it.
I don't mind holding hands with my family, my second family, or my squish either, even if that isn't my preferred form of contact (I like something a bit more solid).
I hug everyone who is okay with it. Anybody who likes hugs and has made this known to me gets hugs from me. The same can be applied to cuddling, hair petting, etc.
While I don't tickle other people, I am very ticklish and enjoy getting tickled by people I am physically affectionate with. Anyone who gets forehead kiss privileges gets tickle privileges.
I was in scouts and speech and debate and consider sleeping in the same bed a non-intimate activity. It would feel weird if they're significantly younger or older than me and not family, but as long as we're similar in age, I'll share a bed with a total stranger. We'll probably even end out cuddling in our sleep since I'm a little heat leech when I'm sleeping.
Dancing: I'll happily do anything from formal waltz to intimate tango with family, second family, or squish. I will feel only sort of weird about doing it with friends, acquaintances, and strangers at events that are made for that kind of thing. The more formal the dance, the closer to sort of weird we get. Intimate latin tango? Kinda weird, but not awful if nobody MAKES it weird. Old timey jig? Honestly, it's pretty normal.
Buying Gifts: I don't really buy gifts for other people unless it's their birthday or Christmas, but my friends get handmade presents all the time.
Flirting. While I'd feel really put off by a stranger flirting with me, my friends and I jokingly flirt all the time. In high school, I had a friend who would greet me every day with variations of "Hey sugar lips, nice eybrows." While I have only engaged in this behavior with my straight female friends (I'm a woman), I wouldn't feel uncomfortable if my female-attracted friends of any variety did this too. It would be really, really weird if anyone did it seriously, though.
Sharing drinks/food. I already do this platonically all the time. The only reason I don't share straws with friends is because we're all the age where none of us can guarantee we don't have mono unless we've been recently tested. I do share straws with my family if none of us are currently sick.
Marriage. I would marry my QPP and/or best friend. I know I would like to raise kids if I am ever emotionally capable, and I want to do it with a partner. I would love to live with someone I'm platonically attracted to until the end of time and would appreciate the benefits of legal civil union. That opening sequence in Up called "Married Life?" Apart from the actual making out and implied sex, I would do literally all of that in a platonic relationship. I don't think I NEED it to be happy, but it certainly feels like something I WANT (as opposed to an actual romantic relationship).
So basically, I have no desire for a romantic relationship, but I am not repulsed by the idea, and a lot of the trappings of a romantic relationship are actually something I'm interested in platonically. People with labels come forth!
I also am not freaked out by other people in romances. I have no issues with my friends being lovey dovey with their partners around me, although unless they're really REALLY obvious about it, I won't be able to tell their dating without verbal confirmation. I dislike most romance plots and subplots in fiction, but I can also think of a lot that I enjoy (almost all of which lack sexual elements as well).
Sexual Love
I am very VERY ace. I have absolutely no desire or interest in sex. I have never had a desire. I can't picture myself EVER having a desire. I am disgusted by the thought of myself ever having sex by any definition of the word, including just kissing in a mildly erotic manner. I feel uncomfortable seeing people lingering kisses in front of me, including fictional people, and I skip anything in books that could be remotely classified as sexual. Multiply any squick by like a thousand if it's non-consensual.
I am, however, fine with the idea that other people have consensual sex with each other, as long as I'm not given details. My roommate could look me dead in the eyes and tell me every fictional character she desperately wants to bone, and that she and her boyfriend boned in our room last night, and I would be absolutely fine. The minute she starts describing details, I'm like, "No thanks." Fade to black fiction scenes are great. Implied/referenced sex is fine, even implied/referenced rape in works of fiction as long as it's treated with the necessary gravity (obviously, it's never okay that real people go through that).
I should also add that when spoken about in a purely biological context with clinical language, you can give me as many details as you want, and that I also find my irl horny friends funny during their horny episodes.
But yeah, no sex for me ever, thanks.
TL;DR
I read about aplatonicism, and it got me thinking about all the different types of attraction and love and how I, as an arospec asexual with social anxiety, experience them.
I experience intense and powerful familial love that is far more important to me than any other relationship can hope to get.
I experience platonic attraction, including queerplatonic attraction, but feel that the people on the other end of those relationships don't value them as much or feel they take as much effort as I do because of allonormativity.
I don't experience romantic attraction, but am perfectly fine with the idea of a romantic relationship, even if I don't actively seek it out. I also have a lot of confusion about if a romantic relationship would even look different than a platonic one for me, since a lot of things people DO in romantic relationships are things I do platonically, up to and including kissing and marriage.
I don't experience sexual attraction, don't want to, and am generally grossed out by sex. I'm fine if other people do it, I just don't need details and I don't ever want to think about having any kind of sex myself.
Anyone who has labels to offer is welcome!
