re: “aromantic relationships” and marriage as “the New Platonic Ideal”
…as much as i love this thread of posts in theory, my tired ass can’t help but sit here wondering why anyone need even get married at all to do or have any of the above things, the few actual legal matters that were mentioned aside.
also, this uplifting of “aromantic relationships” and marriage as “the New Platonic Ideal” feels incredibly uncomfortable…
@queerascat I agree I think a lot of those things could be achieved by simply being roommates.
It’s pretty funny that what they’re dubbing as “the New Platonic Ideal” already has a name, it’s called “friendship”. Aromantic relationships could be called friendships if that’s how you want to label it but personally as an aro I would consider a relationship with another aro as queer platonic.
Our relationship may not be romantic but I wouldn’t say that my QPP(s) and I are just ‘friends’ who live together because the relationship is different from the relationships I have with my friends. There is always a distinction made between friends and your SO – usually romance – but for aros in an aromantic relationship their SO isn’t distinguished by romantic feelings so that also needs to be acknowledged.
Not to mention that by using aromantic relationships as the ‘base’ for a romantic relationship it’s like saying that aro relationships are not complete and are missing the “romance”.
So yeah what I’m trying to say is that to compare yourself to aromantics when you aren’t aro yourself is kinda problematic as you don’t experience an “aromantic love” just by loving someone non-romantically. Aromantic attraction is experienced by aromantic people and although there may be overlap in some things, it is overall different from the attraction romantic people have.
thanks for the commentary. 🙂 while i agree with some of what you said, i don’t agree with all of it (the idea that there is a type of attraction that only aromantic people experience, for example) and i feel like you’ve gone in a different (but no less important) direction than i was halfassedly going in last night.
now that i’ve gotten a little sleep, i guess i’ll elaborate on some of the thoughts that i had last night before rushing off to work. please note that the following is not directed at you, @minamina0013. i’m commenting on this entire thread of posts and how some people (not just yourself) may have interpreted my previous reblog.
first and foremost, i was not trying to ‘reduce’ (as that’s what it often feels like when people do this kind of thing) the things mentioned in the above posts down to “friendship” or otherwise suggest that these things are as achievable as “simply” having a roommate. i also don’t feel like anyone in the above thread was trying to undermine the distinction that many people make by using the term “queerplatonic” rather than “platonic.” hell, if anything, i’m not a fan of how “platonic” is often treated as synonymous with “friendship,” but whatever.
the reason why i put “aromantic relationships” in quotes is because i question what that phrase even means, especially as it’s being used and portrayed in this post. in the above post itself, but even more so in the reblogs and tags, “aromantic relationship marriage” and “aromantic platonic lifemate” has become synonymous with not only “romanceless” but also “sexless”, “best friend”, “relationship goals” etc. not only does this brush aside the fact that such relationships are not inherently “aromantic relationships,” it blatantly ignores the fact that some aromantic people have relationships that do involve sex and / or romance, that are not that of “married best friends” or that otherwise do not fit the above image that is being painted of “aromantic relationships” and that those kinds of ”aromantic relationships” (ie. relationships involving aromantic people) are being ignored in order to uplift one particular narrative of “aromantic relationships”– and a very amatonormative one at that– as being The Measuring Point for any and all marriage.
i realize that the entire point of this post was to talk about “convenience marriage” and that is why marriage is so heavily talked about in this post, but i can’t help but question the romanticization of marriage that is happening on this post, not least of all because it feels incredibly ironic to me that this is happening on a post about relationships involving aromantic people.
it is, without a doubt, society’s fault that marriage is seen as a means of injecting long-term commitment and stability into a relationship in a way that ought to be celebrated and validated to a much greater extent than “playing house” in the exact same way without the legal status of marriage. i understand that some people, aromantic or not, may just really want to get married aside from needing or wanting the legal benefits that come with marriage.
at the same time, whenever people romanticize marriage in this way it feels like marriage is being viewed as a means to achieving something that it is not. there are lots of marriages that do not look like the above depiction of marriage, be it between aromantic people or not, and it is not because they don’t meet some arbitrary golden “aromantic platonic lifemate” standard. there are also lots of relationships that are not marriages that do fit the above depiction of marriage, be it between aromantic people or not, and it has nothing to do with meeting some arbitrary golden “aromantic platonic lifemate” standard. don’t even get me started on the whole “does you’re relationship stand up to “the aromantic platonic lifemate” standard, because if it doesn’t YOU SHOULDN’T GET MARRIED” bullshit, because ugh.
while this is the fault of no one on this post, why is it that i never see aromantic people being upheld in such a positive way unless amatonormative relationships or marriage is involved…? why is it that everything else aromantic people do that does not involve relationships or marriage never gets the kind of spotlight that this post has gotten with over 44k notes…?
Thank you @queerascat for your response, I think I did misinterpret some of what you said earlier but your latest reply above has made it much more clearer what you were getting at.
I’m sorry for being misleading by suggesting that only aromantic people experience a certain type of attraction, as I wasn’t trying to imply that there exists a unique attraction only for aros. I was trying to say that the attraction that aros feel is not always the same and not necessarily just “non-romantic”, which is often what non aros perceive it to be; and how relationships with aros should not be considered a “platonic ideal” as aros do not always fulfill a platonic requirement when in a relationship. My point being that an aro in a relationship may experience attraction which is romantic and/or non-platonic and therefore their relationship is different from the “platonic ideal” that was being suggested in this thread.
I definitely agree with you on the assumption being made that “aromantic relationships” are platonic/sexless/without romance and that ignores relationships with aros which do not fit the “platonic spouses” set up.
I think that trying to compare relationships to an “aromantic platonic lifemate” standard dismisses the various types of relationships that do exist which do not fit this standard. The whole concept is rather bizarre in fact as it suggests that romantic attraction in a marriage must be validated by platonic attraction (or whatever aros “supposedly” feel) and if not, the marriage is incompatible, when some relationships exist outside of the platonic and romantic norm, as does attraction.
I can’t really say much on how aromantic people are represented, as there is so little to begin with, if we are mentioned at all. Not that I agree with this but I think the assumption is that our aromantic identites only intersect with our relationship experiences and fail to influence any other aspect of our lives, therefore there is little mention of aromantic people outside of relationships, and if spoken about, it is not taken seriously.
@minamina0013 sorry for misinterpreting some of what you said in your previous reblog. i agree with everything you’ve said in this last reblog so it definitely sounds like we’re on the same page, although i feel like you’ve pointed out some things more eloquently than i did lol.
as for the last thing you said, i didn’t expect anyone to respond to the rhetorical questions i posed at the end of my last post, but i think that you’ve definitely hit on part of the problem. the same can be said of asexual representation, sadly…