People tend to classify non-familial love as either romantic of platonic (the terms for which are derived from the medieval concept of Romance and the philosopher Plato respectively).
The Wikipedia page for platonic love describes it as “a type of love that is not sexual” – which would imply that romantic love is sexual in nature. However, as we asexuals know, this is not true. And this is probably why the distinction between romantic and platonic can be so confusing for us.
However, the Wikipedia page for romantic love defines it as “an emotional feeling of love for, or a strong attraction towards, another person, and the courtship behaviors undertaken by an individual to express those overall feelings and resultant emotions.” It does not refer to sex.
This begs the question of whether platonic love would be better defined as “a type of love that is not sexual or romantic.” The trouble is it is hard to define what exactly is romantic. And it becomes difficult to define as we examine all the variations in the asexual and aromantic spectrums.
Even for asexuals, it is difficult to delineate where romantic attraction ends and sexual attraction begins. For example, if your attraction results in a desire to kiss someone but not sleep with them, it seems pretty safe to classify that under romantic rather than sexual attraction; but when you start moving beyond a kiss to more intimate forms of contact and stop short of intercourse, where do you draw the line? In an attempt to tease that apart, we have come up with terms for several kinds of attraction, such as aesthetic attraction, sensual attraction, physical attraction, etc. Some of these terms overlap with or are subsets of other terms; but I digress.
Allosexuals might define romantic love as one that involves a desire for all kinds of physical contact starting from holding hands all the way to intercourse; and the aforementioned “courtship behaviors” are undertaken to achieve these kinds of physical contact. Asexuals might distinguish between romantic and sexual love and where they draw the line might vary from person to person. So then, does platonic love mean love without the desire for any kind of physical contact? That’s not true either. Most people like to hug their friends and I have cuddled with several friends and our cuddling was never viewed as romantic.
I’ve had close friendship sin which hugging and cuddling and holding hands is par for the course, and other close friendships where such behavior is uncomfortable. It depends on the chemistry. None of those friendships are romantic, and none of those friendships are more or less close depending on the type of behavior involved. However, it just does not feel right to lump all of these relationships into the same “platonic” category.
If we are sticking with Wikipedia, let’s look at the Wikipedia page for romantic friendship. The definition is: “a very close but typically non-sexual relationship between friends, often involving a degree of physical closeness beyond that which is common in contemporary Western societies. It may include, for example, holding hands, cuddling, hugging, kissing, giving massages, or sharing a bed, without sexual intercourse or other sexual expression.”
This definition doesn’t sit right with me. If two asexuals are in a relationship and their relationship can be described like the above, then do we call their relationship a “romantic friendship” rather than a “romantic relationship”? My best guess is that, given the term is typically used in a historical context and also typically involves same-gender relationships, it is called a friendship simply because it is not marriage. After all, historically, romantic relationships always revolved around marriage: the only kinds of romantic relationships seem to have been marriages, extramarital affairs, or pre-marital relations that sadly did not result in marriage.
However, it still seems that a romantic friendship is different from a platonic one; and the difference seems to be largely based on physical closeness.
This leads me to the term aromantic. While it is easy for me to understand what it means to be asexual, I struggle a little bit more to understand what it means to be aromantic. Many aromantic folks have explained that people sometimes assume they can’t feel love at all. But they do feel love and they do desire connection with others, just in a different way.
This is when the “platonic” term seems insufficient. Aromantic folks might experience platonic love, but like I described above, this term seems to clump too many different kinds of feelings together. This is why there is an attempt to come up with more terms, such as queerplatonic relationships and alterous relationships. These are not well-defined mutually exclusive terms, however. (Other wiki pages for the above here and here)
But the difficulty still remains in understanding what people mean when they say they are aromantic. Sure, they do not experience romantic attraction, but what exactly constitutes romantic attraction? Is it that aromantics do not want any form of physical intimacy or do they also not want some forms of emotional intimacy? I raise this question because the difference between sexual versus romantic versus platonic all seem to boil down to differences in physical closeness.
Yet, there are other components to romance. Here is an excerpt from the page on romantic attraction on the Aromantic Wiki: “This attraction may involve fantasizing about or being drawn to sharing a romantic relationship or romantic overtures with a specific person. However, the specifics will vary by individual, and the line between romantic and nonromantic may be slightly different for everyone. Commonly, romantic attraction may involve limerence, strong emotions, anxious feelings, and a desire for reciprocation.”
I don’t know if aromantics do not, in general, experience limerence, strong emotions, anxious feelings, and a desire for reciprocation. Because if that were true, how do they experience a “squish” which is an aromantic term for a platonic crush. At the end of the day, just like it is hard to draw the line between sexual and romantic intimacy, it’s just as hard to draw that line between romantic and platonic intimacy.
I know emotions such as limerence and a desire for reciprocation can apply to both sexual and romantic relationships. But what I’m wondering is whether these feelings form the boundary between romantic and platonic; or does physical intimacy form that boundary. It’s probably a combination of both.
Here is a frustrating quote (taken from the book Ace) from CJ Chasin who identifies as aromantic: “Romantic attraction, much like sexual attraction, is something that you know it when you feel it or you don’t. There isn’t going to be a checklist. There isn’t going to be a set of necessary or sufficient conditions because once you get into classifying kinds of relationships, there are just going to be blurry boundaries and that’s okay. That’s the landscape.”
Alas, I still don’t have a way to distinguish my close friendships that involve varying degrees of emotional or physical intimacy. While I wait for more terminology to show up, I’ll just have to file them under “alterous” – the gray area between romantic and platonic.
Tushmit's Stream of Consciousness 