Challenging Societal Expectations of Friendships & Relationships: Queerplatonic Relationships
Imagine: Bobby and Billy Joe are your very rad neighbors. They live together. They hold hands when they walk down the street. They pay their taxes together. Sometimes, they kiss. You would probably assume that they’re in a romantic relationship, but why is that? Holding hands is not inherently romantic. Neither is sharing a house, and neither is kissing.
But that’s what we’ve been taught to think. Our society holds very specific expectations for what a committed relationship should look like. The relationship should be romantic in nature. It should be monogamous. It should be central to our lives and should take precedence over platonic relationships. It should involve kissing and holding hands. It should involve saying “goodmorning” and “goodnight” and “I love you” to each other. It should involve sex and living together and marriage.
We also impose very specific expectations for what a friendship should and shouldn’t look like. Kissing would be strange; the friendship should not be as important or central as a romantic relationship; living together makes sense until the friends find romantic partners; marriage is out of question.
These black and white ideas about friendships and relationships are so ingrained that it’s difficult to question them without sounding or feeling stupid. “Why should kissing my friend be perceived as romantic?” may appear to have an obvious answer (that kissing is what people in romantic relationships do?), but that “obvious answer” usually does not have a strong basis besides that it is what people have been telling us. Kissing can be romantic, but is not inherently so.
We as a society also perpetuate the idea that platonic relationships are lesser than romantic relationships. For example, people often toss around the phrase “just friends,” implying that friendship is less important and less committed than romantic relationships. We are taught to throw away friendships for romance. We are taught to spend a good chunk of our lives searching for “the one”—a central, romantic relationship to whom we devote all or most of our physical and emotional intimacy. Why is romance the deciding factor of the importance of a relationship? As Kaz (one of the initial people who identified feeling a type of emotional attraction that was neither platonic nor romantic) puts it, “From a very young age, we are taught The Relationship Hierarchy. Which is something like: blood ties and marriage ties trump other sorts of ties. Sexual relationships trump non-sexual relationships. You have only one partner, who shall be your sexual partner and your lawfully-wedded spouse, and no other partners, and they trump all other relationships. Marriages that produce children trump non-procreating relationships, but Thou Shalt Not Be A Single Parent. ‘Family’ and ‘Friends’ are distinctive sets of people, and ‘Family’ trumps ‘Friends.’ ‘Friends’ should mean only people of the same sex, but otherwise, same sex friends trump other sex friends. You shall be emotionally intimate only with same sex friends, unless you are a man, and then Thou Shalt Not Have Emotions.”
In reality, though, there are many different kinds of relationships with many different nuances. But often, these nuances are colored over in an effort to fit societal molds of what a relationship should be. Two friends may want to kiss but won’t, fearing that it makes their relationship romantic. Two people may not experience romantic attraction for each other but may, because of sexual attraction, mistake their attraction for romantic, because sexual attraction is portrayed as an integral part of romantic relationships.
But what if you don’t want to be confined by typical definitions, ideas, and expectations of what a committed relationship should look like? What if you could have a serious, committed relationship without defining it as romantic or otherwise? Romantic love is portrayed as the ultimate and all-fulfilling type of love that we should spend our lives searching for. But here’s a plot twist: it doesn’t need to be.
The term “queerplatonic relationship” was coined to describe relationships more intense and intimate than what is considered common for a friendship, but that also don’t fit into the traditional romantic and sexual couple model. A queerplatonic relationship is characterized by a strong and significant bond or emotional commitment that is not romantic in nature.
Note that the “queer” in “queerplatonic” does not refer to identifying as queer/LGBTQIAP+, but rather the “queering” (challenging/deconstructing) of traditional notions of relationships. People of any gender, sexual orientation, or romantic orientation (and lackthereof) can be in a queerplatonic relationship. (Also, there are a ton of other terms that refer to relationships that are neither friendships nor romantic relationships. The important part is the self-defined aspect of the relationship.)
This broad and encompassing term questions the traditional model of a relationship and breaks down societal expectations of what a committed relationship should look like. It functions on the idea that people can do whatever they want in a relationship and shouldn’t need to fit their relationship into the binary “just friends” or “romantic partners” system. Depending on the specific relationship, people involved in the queerplatonic relationship may consider themselves partners, a couple, a triad, or any other term that implies commitment and intimacy. Queerplatonic partners can choose to live together, celebrate their anniversary, kiss and cuddle, and do anything they want to do. They can also choose to do none of the above. As Aromantic Aardvark describes it, “It’s uncharted territory that has no societal bounds, that has no one making a strange face at what you do or don’t do in your relationship (or at least, not from people who understand the concept).”
Since queerplatonic relationships are all different from each other, they are best described by (a variety of) people with personal experience. Here are some insightful perspectives on queerplatonic feelings/relationships:
I’ve stopped classifying things as “love” or “friendship” according to arbitrary superficial details—the feelings I share with certain friends are so intimate, so beautiful, that it’s ridiculous that I don’t call them lovers just because we don’t sleep together. It’s fucking absurd that sex should be the dividing line between our relationships, between which ones take precedence, between who we play with, live with, sleep with, who we take care of first, who we die with at last. (Darling)
The more commonly known types of relationships: “…may cause a lot of pain that’s not obvious looking in from the outside. It does not work for me. At all. In fact, sorting my relationships into these categories simply does not work for me. At all. The types of relationships I want? The types I already have? Are too cool for your puny boxes…friendship doesn’t have to be “just”, and that there are more options than friendship or romance.” (Kaz)
Queerplatonic is a word for describing relationships where an intense emotional connection transcending what people usually think of as ‘friendship’ is present, but the relationship is not romantic in nature … The ‘queer’ is a reference to the idea of queering relationships and ideas about relationships, not for describing the orientations or genders of anyone in a queerplatonic relationship. (Smith)
Love is not inherently, exclusively romantic. A primary partnership is not definitively romantic. You can have sex with a nonromantic partner, you can be committed to a nonromantic partner, you can kiss and cuddle and hug a nonromantic partner, you can live with a nonromantic partner, you can raise kids with nonromantic partners, you can mutually put each other first in a nonromantic relationship. Everything and anything you could possibly do or feel can be experienced in friendship and nonromantic partnership, except for romantic attraction. (The Thinking Asexual)
A commitment to live together forever, to raise a family together, to put each other first just like any pair of primary partners would, sharing the highest level of emotional and/or physical intimacy you’re willing to share with anyone, spending more time with each other than you do with anyone else, buying a house together, signing on as each other’s power of attorney in case of medical emergencies, pooling finances, etc., are all things that ordinary, common friends don’t do because they’re doing it all with their respective romantic-sexual partners instead. A pair of common friends in adulthood generally don’t live together, don’t share a great amount of physical intimacy, don’t go to each other first for financial support/emotional support, don’t have any expectations of each other that go beyond talking on the phone or getting together for coffee or whatever. A pair of common friends have a mutual understanding that they’ll drop each other in favor of their own romantic-sexual partner, if they have to or want to—in big ways or small ways—and this is especially true if one or both friends is married and/or seriously committed to a long-term romantic-sexual partner. “Friendship” is an inadequate word to describe nonsexual-nonromantic relationships that function as primary partnerships or otherwise go far beyond common friendship in expectations, emotions, and behavior.
No behavior is inherently romantic. In a perfect, free world, you could be romantic monogamist but still have physically affectionate/sensual friendships with people you are not romantically interested in but do love, even while participating in a monogamous romantic relationship. You don’t have to want to fuck someone, in order to want physical intimacy and closeness with them. If you do want physical closeness with a friend, you don’t have to feel obligated to fuck them in any way, if you don’t really want to. Or date them. Ever.
The “romantic-sexual/platonic” love dichotomy leaves no room for the real emotional nuances people experience in their attachments, and I think that it often causes us to live with simplified relationships not because we want to or because we have simple desires and feelings but because we have no experience, cultural context, or language to accommodate a complex social life or set of relationships. (The Thinking Asexual)
Queerplatonic to me means the breaking down of narratives. It means no rules. It means doing, essentially, whatever you are comfortable with. If you want to be best friends for all intents and purposes but also get married, that’s okay. If you want to kiss sometimes but don’t want to feel obligated, that’s okay too. This is why every person in a relationship like this has a different definition of it, because there are no rules. Queerplatonic means forging your own definition, saying “neither platonic or romantic is right”, and just doing whatever feels comfortable in the moment. It means making your own structure, mix and matching what you and your partner feel comfortable with. Queerplatonic is the breaking down of boundaries, or at least, that’s been my experience. It’s uncharted territory that has no societal bounds, that has no one making a strange face at what you do or don’t do in your relationship (or at least, not from people who understand the concept). Queerplatonic means mixing and matching, saying “I want to do this platonic thing, and this romantic thing, but not this romantic thing”. (Aromantic Aardvark)
Kaz. “Discretion Advised.” Discretion Advised. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.
Aromantic Aardvark. “Aromantic Aardvark.” Aromantic Aardvark. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.
Darling, Gala. “Infinite Relationships.” Gala Darling. N.p., 04 Apr. 2009. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.
The Thinking Asexual. “The Thinking Asexual.” The Thinking Asexual. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.
Smith, S.E. “Word of the Day: Queerplatonic.” Wandering Stars. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.
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