romantic relationships and prioritization of relationships is really hard to talk about, because there are multiple models clashing and using the same terminology
so whenever i come across a post talking about the default position of romantic relationships as more valuable than others, it’s... confusing, because what exactly they mean by ‘romantic relationship’ is never clarified, partially because you can’t state exactly what is meant by ‘romantic relationship’? it is an incredibly nebulous term. it gets more complicated once you start looking into queer and non-traditional relationships, but it is not suddenly clearer if you only focus on cis straight monogamous Anglo-American romance, for example.
but the two models that i think are conflicting most (to me, right now, looking at these articles) are romantic relationships as clearly negotiated and categorized, and romantic relationships as a highly prioritized relationship (that doesn’t fall too far outside normativity)
posts that talk about how romantic relationships devalue friendships, or how to dismantle the notion that your romantic partner is automatically the highest priority person in your life, are confusing because they assume that these relationships are different things (romantic relationships as negotiated and categorized) and that they are highest-priority (romantic relationships as ...highest-priority; these parentheticals could’ve been planned better) and therefore, one of these things has to change (and usually it’s the second)
but... this isn’t the case? and this is where things get weird, because i know that the assumption outlined right above is the default assumption in my culture, but it’s also a really bad way to define romantic relationships, because defining relationships is a really slippery thing to do. and also why i opt out of it as much as possible beyond labels that literally mean “??? \o.o/” because i cannot apply that model to my life in a way that possibly makes sense
this is extremely rambly and my thoughts aren’t cohesive on this yet
maybe i’m just confused because the model people critique is a model i don’t actively use. idk