selfihateyouithink reblogged
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. This is why language is so important. This is why words and labels matter. How can you have the kind of relationships you want with anyone, if you don’t even have the words to accurately express how you feel? Hell, half the time, people don’t even understand their own feelings and relationship desires because what they feel is not simple at all, but the only relationship framework they know makes everything seem simple and clear cut: romance and sex go together, friendship is separate from both of those things, couplehood/primary partnership is exclusive to romance and sex, etc.
But if we are to accept the possibilities and realities of asexual romance, primary nonsexual/nonromantic love, nonromantic sex and sexual friendship, romantic (nonsexual) friendship, queerplatonic nonsexual relationships and sexual relationships, etc…. we have to drop this way of thinking and speaking about relationships and love in a romantic-sexual/platonic dichotomous way. None of those “complex” relationships fit into that model.
#Quote#'Platonic love' is a problematic term#Romantic attraction#Sexual attraction#Platonic attachment#Labels#(I wonder if this might have fucking anything to do with the fucking dichotomy of queerbaiting vs. cardboard [hetero]sexual relationships)#(For me it was never this way because my sexual/romantic orientations REQUIRE the emotional bonds habitual of friendship to feel romantisexu#romantisexual stuff)#(So they've always gone one after the other for me)#GSRD#Asexuality#Ace erasure cw#Allosexism cw#Human sexuality#Human equality#Human decency#I need this because humanity#They're works of art#Life philosophy#Same#Hi yes this is me#Love#Relationships#Random