#they categorize romantic/sexual relationships as different as friendships in a weird way that SOUNDS like they don't want to be friends with

[merlin-wolfgang-trades-hale]

“I may teeter the line between pretty stupid and pretty beautiful, but the important thing being is that I am always pretty!” a very tipsy but not exactly yet drunk, Steve McGarrett stumbling home wanting a smooch from his husband, having just been delivered by the other now out and proud navy buddied who’s op that night was getting Steve home because it’s the only way to shut him the fuck up about his Danno who he obviously missed so damn much, but it’s very much not Steve’s fault that this reunion fell around the same time Danny was getting back from Jersey after visiting for his sister’s birthday. 

Danny’s listening to him ramble about how one of his friends called Steve pretty annoying but Steve corrected him. 

The imagery could be added with Steve tripping and stumbling to the ground before ninja-ing(tipsy) onto the couch desting his head on Danny’s lap. Trying to get comfy and hug Danny while in this position. Telling him about his night, momentarily forgetting his goal before he’s reminded again and trying his best to get a kiss. 

[allos-aro]

hiya. I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this, but I'm a young & confused arospec feeling weird about some shit. basically, I'm feeling kind of strange about the qpr thing? not in the sense that intense platonic relationships are bad in any way. the opposite. it's more the idea that platonic relationships are inherently lesser to romantic ones so they need a specific (queerplatonic) label. also the idea of a partnership, and just having one "most important" person, bothers me. help??

Hi there!

So I will grant that I’m probably not the best person to ask about queerplatonic relationship (QPR) related things because I’m working through some of my own biases related to them. But, I can talk a little bit about reconciling labeling interpersonal dynamics and the concept of “most important” person/people.

So QPRs are intentionally established to be self-defined dynamics, and from my understanding, the morphing of QPRs into this concrete, well-defined type of dynamic that has specific kinds of attraction attached to them is not in the spirit of the original QPR concept. (This isn’t to say that the labels for attractions that have sprung up to explain some QPR dynamics aren’t valid! But it’s more that QPRs are supposed to be nebulous and self-determined instead of predictable based off of pre-established norms.)

The only place in which QPRs are seen as “lesser” to romantic dynamics are when you’re interacting within an amatonormative framework. (Amatonormativity being the idea that monogamous romantic dynamics are “most important” and that everyone is striving for one and that everyone is happy in one.) It’s a pretty common thing because we live in an amatonormative society, and unlearning amatonormative frameworks is really difficult when you’re surrounded by it. And, in practice, in non-aro spaces, it can be REALLY hard to justify QPRs as being equal to romantic dynamics without calling it a romantic dynamic.

Another thing that’s worth keeping in mind is that putting a Label to a dynamic doesn’t necessarily make it more important than your other dynamics. The things that you do in those dynamics may differ, but that doesn’t label importance necessarily. For example, I could have a sexual QPR with someone that has equal weight to my friendships with other people, the only thing that’s different is what I call those dynamics and what I do in them. One thing that might help with better understanding this is reading into relationship anarchy, which originates in the polyamory community but has a lot of applications within fighting amatonormativity. A lot of definitions do use the “love” word, but I’m not sure that I’ve seen an aromantic-specific definition around yet. Link to The Anarchist Library, on Relationship Anarchy.

Ultimately, the final line is: QPRs, and by extention all labelled interpersonal dynamics, are not inherently placing the importance of the person (or people) in that dynamics over others. Our society benefits from telling people they have to categorize people by importance, and while that’s the “norm”, it doesn’t have to be that way. Assuming that people who have labelled interpersonal dynamics are placing one person (or a few people) above everyone else is falling into the amatonormativity trap, and for QPRs it goes directly against the spirit of what a QPR is supposed to be (a self-defined dynamic between at least two people that has specific meaning that cannot be easily summarized within a specific, societally accepted label).

I hope this doesn’t sound too terribly harsh? I know that sometimes I get a little bit intense about things like relationship anarchy and amatonormativity. But I hope this is at least halfway helpful?

ETA: other folks with more direct experience should definitely chime in! I am not the arbiter of aro experience, nor should I be considered one!

[travelingfoxes]

Grace

I dropped my bag of shower shit on a low wooden table and dropped myself onto a couch next to it. My hair was drying in tacky waves against my cheeks and I was dusty already, of course, even though I'd just gotten out of a shower.

It was pushing seven o'clock in the evening, and I was tired. I'd come out to the showers in a staff van after a day of work, accompanied by two coworkers. I'd woken up a little hungover in a bed that wasn't mine, spent the day dealing with people's feelings in a heavily social job, and realized in the middle of the morning that my hair was getting a sticky plastic texture, like Barbie doll hair. The idea of a shower had gotten me through the day, and while a dust storm threatened to ruin everything for a minute, it had worked out. I was warm and clean and grateful, even after a day of too much extroversion and loose-boned fatigue.

There was a man sitting next to me, pulling on a pair of socks that released little puffs of taupe dust with every motion of his feet. I kept my eyes on the ground. There are naked people of all ages and sizes and genders in the staff showers at Burning Man, but it's perhaps the least sexual space on playa. The unspoken rules seem to be 'don't stare' and 'don't ask.' I've never had so many conversations with strange men who look exclusively at my face as I have at the showers.

The guy was about my age, tan and fit, with soft blue eyes. Back in the real world, he would be the kind of man I automatically distrusted because of how often men like him know how pretty they are. But I liked his voice.

"I dunno what to do with it, man," he was saying to another guy. "It's been really intense."

'Intense' was a word I was using to describe my experience on playa this year, too, so of course I started listening in.

"I don't know how to feel about it. She's like--I feel all these things for her, you know, but it's not--I don't want her to be my girlfriend."

Ah, the playa romance. Across the barren stretch of dust and stone, this might be the only thing that bloomed perennially. I smiled.

"I mean, she's from fucking Estonia. I just picked her up in Montana and we drove forever to get here, and now we're going to be here together for like six weeks, and--I thought it would be shitty, you know, but it's not. It's been really great."

His eyes were on a line of women getting dressed by the woman-only shower trailer. He could have been talking about any of them--the chunky blonde with the thigh tattoos, the older woman laughing as she laced up knee-high boots, the slender one with a cap of dark hair that made her look like a seal.

"How'd you pick up a girl from Estonia in fucking Montana?" I asked. "Sorry, I'm eavesdropping."

"No, it's cool." He smiled at me. "I met her on Craigslist. It's both of our first year, and I picked her up while I was driving from Maine. We just agreed to do Resto together."

Personally, I thought spending days in a car with a stranger and committing to spend six weeks on playa with them sounded fucking nuts, but maybe that's just me. "And you're getting along with her? That sounds like a good thing, yeah?"

"Yeah, I just--it's weird, okay. It's been really... easy. Like, it shouldn't be this easy. We get along great, even when stuff is going wrong it seems like we've just had each other's backs from the beginning. We're really good friends, and we haven't known each other that long, there was just this immediate sense of... I don't know."

"Camaraderie?"

"Yeah, camaraderie."

He didn't know it, but he was describing an experience that mirrored my own, minus the part about Craigslist. I had woken up that morning delighted to see someone I barely knew. I had rolled over and slid my cheek up against his chest and felt the long bones of his arms curl around me. In the last week, we had seduced each other, laughed at each other, shared meals and childhood stories, fallen asleep talking, cried over dead friends and exes, kissed each other goodbye in the morning and hello at dusk. I didn't know his birthday, or his favorite color, or his last name.

It wasn't a romance, exactly. I'd raised the idea of forming a romantic connection, maybe dating when we were back in the default world, and been gently rebuffed. He wouldn't ever want me to change, he said, but he was never going to stop being monogamous, and if we got serious he'd want me to be monogamous, too.

Ironically, my inclination toward polyamory is what made a two-week playa fling possible for me. If I think about it right, I can fall into and out of love like a rain shower.

"Sounds like you're having feels." I said.

"Feels?"

"You know!" I touched my chest. "Heart feels."

"Yeah, but--it's not though! It's not romantic. It's just--I've never felt a friendship like this before, okay? I don't know what to do with it."

I sat back against the cushions. The sun was going to set in thirty minutes or so; we were right on the edge of another endless playa twilight and the light was distilling into thin honey. A breeze blew from the southwest, another sign of incipient night, and it was warm and dry and spacious.

Earlier that day, I'd biked across the city to spend three hours catching up with someone with whom I'd once been in love. We'd drunk a beer and fallen into conversation like it hadn't been two years since we'd seen each other face to face. We talked about everything we normally do--polyamory and books and the tech industry and consciousness and traveling. He'd told me about rekindling a romance he'd thought was gone beyond recovery, and I'd hugged him with delight. He'd introduced me as "my good friend, Sarah" to the other folks in his camp, and we'd kissed on the cheek to say goodbye.

If I'd still been in love with him, I'd thought as I biked away, the interaction would have made me wistful. But loving him as a friend, the same friend he'd been to me for years, it was simply joyful, and easy, and sweet.

"Maybe you need to look up the different kinds of love," I said. "It's a Greek thing. There's five of them? I think? Or seven? But it's a way of categorizing all the different types of love you can feel for someone."

He looked astounded. "Like, there's eros," I continued. "That's sexual love. Pants love. The kind of love that makes you fall in love with someone and get stupid about them. But there's also agape, unconditional love, the kind of love from a long-term relationship or friendship. Seeing someone completely and accepting them for who they are."

"Whoa. That's awesome. I've never heard of that."

"Yeah, well I'm glad you think it's awesome, because that's all I can remember about it, so that's all you're getting."

We both laughed. A thread of thought spooled around me, and I tried to grab it; something about connection, and friendship, and seeing what was, rather than what could be. Loving immediately, I thought, and immediately forgot.

Across the shower yard, my playa fling let himself out of one of the shower trailers, took a reflexive look at the naked people, caught himself, and dropped his eyes to the ground.

"Yeah, so--maybe you love this person, right, just not in a way you're used to. Maybe you're experiencing a different kind of love."

"Yeah." He sat back against the cushions, cradling the weight of a realization in his lap. "Thanks, you've given me a lot to think about."

"Totally! Hi, by the way. I'm Foxes."

"I'm Grace."

"Of course you are," I said, and we hugged.