A Better Explination for Queer Platonic Relationships
This post is gonna be very 101, so if you’re already pretty familiar with aro terms and don’t want to sit through all the definitions and explanations I have another post here that’s basically a very condensed version of this one.
Anyways, I think the reason that a lot of non-aromantic people don’t understand queerplatonic relationships is that qpps as a concept are not just a type of relationship, but also a response to amatonormativity.
For those who are unfamiliar with the term, amatonormativity is the societal view of romantic monogamous relationships as both the most important relationships you can have and as the end goal for happiness. While this norm disproportionately affects aromantic and non-monogamous people, it also has some very negative effects on people outside of these groups. If you’ve ever experienced peer or familial pressure to get a romantic partner when you didn’t want one, lost touch with a friend because they got a partner and stopped putting as much time into maintaining your friendship, or been told by a romantic partner that you needed to stop interacting with a close friend because they felt threatened by your friendship then you’ve experienced the negative effects of amatonormativity. This is not an aromantic specific issue, however, in this post, I will be discussing it within the context of aromantic terms and experiences.
For many aromantic people, there is a fundamental fear that all of their close friends will pair off into romantic relationships and they will be left alone. This fear comes from amatonormativity. If there was no expectation that people would prioritize romantic relationships over friendships then there would be no real need for people who don’t want/can’t have romantic relationships for whatever reason to fear being left alone and isolated from the support of other people.
I think this fear is one of the main reasons queerplatonic relationships exist in the first place. Sure, there are different types of platonic relationships with varying degrees of intimacy and commitment that aro people could participate in, but I think that if you look at how queerplatonic relationships are talked about you’ll find that aromantic people lean towards qpps because they are more then just another type of platonic relationship.
Qpps come in all shapes and sizes. They can be monogamous or polyamorous, involve lots of physical intimacy or very little, include lots of romantically coded things like dates, marriage, and living together, or be closer to the traditional view of friendship. The spectrum of what counts as a qpp is in fact so big that the term becomes almost impossible to define. The one unifying thread that I can see among all these different types of qpps is that they’re platonic relationships that still involve a high level of commitment.
Essentially the only agreed upon factor here is that the relationship is platonic, but a commitment has been made somewhere along the lines to not abandon one another for a romantic partner, everything beyond that is pretty up in the air. This isn’t the definition you’re likely to get from those “what is a qpp” posts, but spend 5 minutes scrolling threw some popular aro blogs and it becomes incredibly apparent. I’ve seen people joke that “queerplatonic partners are like friends that don’t abandon me for their boyfriends” or that “all my friends got dates so I had to find a qpp”. These statements, while kind of morbidly funny on some level, do point to a larger trend. While most relationship categories are defined by level of intimacy, qpps are more of a commitment to break amatonormative social norms with someone you’re close to.
And if we’re going to agree that that’s what a queerplatonic relationship is, and for the purposes of this post we are, then it suddenly becomes very clear that the aromantic community is doing ourselves a huge disservice when we try to define qpps without talking about amatonormativity, or in some cases, even mentioning the aromantic community at all.
There is a reason that queerplatonic originated in the aromantic community. There is a reason that qpp is an aro term. Non-aro people simply don’t have the same experience with relationships that aro people do, so they don’t have the context necessary to understand why we would need qpps in the first place.
I think this is where a lot of the “aren’t qpp’s just friendships?” questions come from. Sure, there are people out there who just want to make fun of every aro/ace term and identity, and that is part of why the ‘don’t you mean friends’ response has become so popular, but in this case I really think a lot of it’s due to the fact that we’ve explained qpps so poorly. Someone who isn’t aro, and who hasn’t felt the devastating effects of your friends drifting away into romantic relationships while you can’t have one/ don’t want one, isn’t going to understand why aro people would need a whole new type of close, emotional, platonic relationship when just plain old friendship has worked fine for them. Without the context of amatonormativity and the experience of being aro, qpp’s becomes almost nonsensical, and when we leave those things out of our definitions of qpps people aren’t going to understand what we’re talking about.
We need to do a better job of explaining queerplatonic relationships because otherwise, people are going to continue misunderstanding what they are.
