nextstepcake:

(crossposted from wordpress)

(this is the second part of my rather last minute response to the February Carnival of Aces.

Part 1 can be found here.)

One of the big areas in which we in the ace and aro communities find ourselves lacking words is in the domain of relationship terminology. When it comes to sexual and romantic relationships*, we have a wealth of terminology: we have sex friends and boyfriends and husbands and fuckbuddies and hookups and swingers and dates and partners; one can have crushes or infatuation or lust or desire or arousal.

We also have extensive kinship terminology for our familial relationship: one can have cousins and aunts and parents and brothers and step-fathers and step-siblings and biological and adoptive mothers and second cousins and sisters-in-law.

And yet when it comes to non-familial platonic relationships, our language fails us.

But when it comes to platonic relationships,  we have…

“Friendship”

And that’s really pretty much it. Sure, you can modify it: “best friends”, “childhood friends”, etc, but we still expect that one word to cover a huge spectrum of relationship. A “friend” can refer to anything from someone you like to chat with a bit at lunch to someone you would like to spend the rest of your life with, would trust with your life. It’s a single term that can mean a million different things.

And yes, we do have words for relationships of situation: coworkers, classmates, neighbors, etc – but those say more about the origin of the relationship than the strength of it. They say nothing of the level of intimacy or commitment.

And the few other terms I can think of – “buddy”, “pal”, “cohorts”, etc – are more synonyms than subtypes. These probably sound a bit casual to you – and they are, because friendships are something that is often portrayed as casual – seriousness is reserved for romantic-sexual relationships.

I think it’s also interesting to look at the types of phrases that are used to describe especially close friends: “like brothers/sisters”, “practically married”; close and intimate friendships are often described in history as “romantic friendships”. Here, the strength of friendships are emphasized by comparing them to other types of relationships which are generally considered “stronger”, such as kinship and sexual/romantic bonds.

Contrast the phrase “just friends”  – implicitly dismissing friendship as lesser than any other type of relationship.

It is clear that in the mainstream paradigm, platonic relationships like “friendship” are always considered lesser, and thus there is no need to have that many words to describe them.  We actually have a term that can describe a sort of “lower” grade of friend – we call them an “acquaintance”. But other than perhaps the phrase “best friend”, we have no words to differentiate more primary platonic relationships.

And yet, one of the concepts that is strong in the ace community is the recognition of strong, intimate, valued friendships. Calling such relationships simply “friendships” is misleading – one may have many friends, and the relationship one has with them is very different from the kind of relationship we are considering.

And so, we have a clearly delineated concept, but no good word to articulate it. A gap that needs to be filled. And so it has been!

Outside of the ace community, there are some phrases that can sort of describe such a situation – “life partners” and perhaps “boston marriage” are possibilities, though the first is a bit awkward sounding and the second is not quite the same.

Within the ace community, the first word was “zucchini”, as a word for something like a platonic/aromantic soulmate; like a best friend but closer, with more of a sense of commitment. It was quite a fun word to play with, and seemed to quite catch on in the aromantic blogging community. It was was around the same time, if I recall correctly, that “squish” came into use as a term for the platonic “friend crush”.

However, the word that took off the most is also one of my favorite words – “Queerplatonic”. Although I initially saw it in only a few corners, I have seen it popping up more and more, even being adopted by non-asexuals and non-aromantics as well.

Used to refer to a sort of intimate non-romantic (and often non-sexual) relationship, “Queerplatonic” is actually one of my favorite words, both in the way that it lexicalized a very important concept for me, but also just in how it came about and the way that I think it so well personifies the community and our love for language.

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*(I am temporarily setting aside the issue of the conflation of the romantic and the sexual in general culture, and the implications of asexuality creating a paradigm that regards the two as independent, which is a whole different issue that needs to be adressed. )

(via fyeahqueerplatoniczucchinis)

Passionate friendship is:

• a nonsexual relationship, meaning sexual activity does not occur and sexual attraction is not present
• a relationship that may or may not include “romantic” attraction, whether one-sided or reciprocal
• a relationship based on love; passionate friends love each other to the core, beyond mere liking or caring
• the emotional intensity of passionate friendship love is equivalent or greater to that of the standard romantic-sexual couple relationship, during phases or moments of (emotional) passion
• in the every day lives of two passionate friends, especially those who have been together a long time, the feeling of passion comes and goes (the way it does in any long-term, stable, successful romantic-sexual relationship) but the feeling of strong warmth and profound affection is constant
• a relationship in which emotional, mental, and spiritual intimacy are at their peaks
• a physically intimate relationship which may include any or all of the following, theoretically at any frequency but usually, the frequency is quite high (distinguishing the passionate friendship from a common friendship): full hugs, holding hands, chaste kisses on the face/body/lips, cuddling, sharing a bed, caressing, massages, dancing, linking arms, leaning against each other, looking into each other’s eyes deliberately, heartbeat listening, touching each other’s bare skin, etc.
• verbal or written expression of love and emotions to each other, for no reason, on a regular basis [EX: “I love you,” “You’re the most important person in my life,” “I’m so happy when I’m with you,” etc.]. This covers text messages, phone conversations, handwritten letters and notes, and face to face talk.
• If the two passionate friends individually create a hierarchy of relationships in their lives, the passionate friendship is either their most important relationship or one of their most important relationships, entirely equal to the other most important. Whether the passionate friendship happens within a relationship hierarchy or not, both friends prioritize each other and each other’s needs.
• The passionate friendship often doubles as the primary partnership of the two friends, and consequently, they either choose to live together permanently or live separately and alone. Being primary partners, the passionate friends carve out protected time to be together on a regular basis, take care of each other’s core needs, may choose to become financially interdependent, may choose to rear children together or combine their families that include other adults, are each other’s caregiver (or one of them) in case of illness or injury, travel together, etc.
• The feeling quality of a passionate friendship is a blend of love, caring, warmth, joy, attraction (emotional/intellectual/sensual), fondness, affection, trust, loyalty, appreciation, and intimacy.
• Ideally–and usually, on account of such a connection being rare in the first place–the passionate friendship is one that lasts until one or both of the friends die. It is a relationship that compels loyalty and commitment because the friends are so strongly attracted to each other, their love intense and their harmony natural, that they simply never find a good enough reason to terminate the friendship. Likewise, because the passionate friendship is the most important relationship in the friends’ lives, no matter what, they do whatever they can to preserve it.
• This is a connection that often begins with an instantaneous and unexplainable affinity: two passionate friends meet for the first time and immediately like each other without reason, wanting to be close to each other and important to each other.  The more they become acquainted, the faster and harder they fall for each other. Their love comes naturally and effortlessly, like the friendship itself. This resonance they have speaks to the spiritual nature of their connection and their love. There’s something about the relationship that can’t be seen with the eye or expressed adequately with words. The passionate friends themselves may not understand why they feel so strongly for each other, why they’re so drawn to each other, no matter how long they’ve been together.
• Passionate friendship is characterized by deep vulnerability and intimacy. Moments of emotional openness are frequent, whether one friend tells the other how they feel about them and the relationship, or one friend comforts the other because of emotional distress that the upset friend shares honestly. Passionate friends can be physically vulnerable, emotionally vulnerable, and intellectually vulnerable with each other. They respond to each other’s vulnerability with great respect, caring, compassion, and love.
• Passionate friendship is a one-on-one relationship. While passionate friends may spend time with other people in a group, most of the time they spend together is spent without anyone else around.
• Passionate friendship is an organic type of relationship. It is not made. It cannot be forced or orchestrated with just anyone. The most definitive quality of passionate friendship is a powerful emotional attraction and love that surpasses that of ordinary or common friendship. There’s a reason that most thinkers who wrote about romantic friendship throughout history characterized it as extremely rare, the rarest of all of human connections. A person doesn’t choose to have a passionate friendship with someone, so much as passionate friendship happens to two people without warning. For this reason, passionate friendship usually only visits a person once in life, although it’s entirely possible to have more than one passionate friend at a time.

(Source: chibiwaja, via fyeahqueerplatoniczucchinis)