Romantic vs. Platonic

This whole year I have been grappling with the rather confusing question of what is the difference between romantic love and platonic love. I spent many hours thinking about it, theorizing about it, discussing it with others, and even trying to read up on it. Nothing yielded satisfying distinctions.

The book Ace by Angela Chen dedicates a whole chapter to this distinction and a big thanks to the author for finally helping me make sense of this distinction. I would highly recommend everyone read this chapter, but to summarize my takeaway: I couldn’t come up with a satisfactory distinction because there isn’t one. There isn’t a universal distinction that separates the two. One person might come up with a set of criteria that they use to personally distinguish the two for themselves, but these criteria may not apply to others. Hence when I tried to come up with any criteria, I could always think of a counter-example.

Basically what this means is that this distinction can vary at the individual level. We each need to think about what this distinction is for me – not what this distinction is in general. Even then, it’s not as clear cut: as the book outlines, sometimes people cannot come up with clear cut distinctions even for themselves; sometimes the same person might try to describe their romantic love for one person and platonic love for another and come up short as to where the difference is.

Personally, I don’t think I have an answer for what distinguishes romantic and platonic love for me. But I think I can distinguish between what a platonic relationship vs. a romantic one might mean for me. A platonic relationship is one I share with someone I love deeply, but I do not wish to share my life and everything about my life with them or to commit to them in that way. A romantic relationship is one I would share with someone I love deeply, but I would want to share my life and everything about my life with them and to commit to them in that way.

I understand that many people – maybe even most people – cannot relate to this. After all, I know so many people who share romantic relationships with persons they are not sure they love. And that is something that I cannot relate to. For me, there is very little in between. A romantic relationship is a serious partnership; anything less than that is platonic.

Of course, there is the question of where sex or physical intimacy factors into this. I recognize that many people separate platonic vs. romantic based on whether they wish to have sex with that person or not (which is of course, not universal, because there are people who like to have no-strings-attached sex with their “friends with benefits”). Given my asexuality/demisexuality, sex is not a determining factor for these things. This is something people struggle to understand about me. They think I must be looking for someone with a low sex drive or a relationship that will have very little sex or something like that. In reality, sex is not a criterion that I would want to use to make decisions. Sex is not what distinguishes romantic vs. platonic for me. Whether I want to share my life or commit is what distinguishes it for me.

At the same time, it’s highly unlikely that I would consent to sex in a platonic relationship. I think of all the things I wish to share, my body is likely to be one of the last. So by the time I feel comfortable enough for a physical relationship, the relationship will need to already be a serious partnership. Some might look at that and say there is still a sex-based distinction between platonic and romantic, but there is a difference. And it is basically the difference between correlation and causation. Sex is not causing the distinction, but is correlated with it. And that is key to understanding what makes me tick.