A while back I wrote some pieces on Queer Platonic Relationships. If you are interested in the topic, please read it here. The topic has always interested me, as I have always wondered if I was doing friendships wrong somehow. Mine have always felt somehow more like relationships, with all the intensity and angst to match. That is despite the lack of physical or romantic connection in most cases. It’s not that I don’t think friendships are relationships, I definitely do, I just never got the memo about them being the casual cousin on the relationship tree!
Recently someone shared with me a newspaper article about Platonic Life Partners. Unfortunately I do not know the title of the paper nor the date or author of the piece, however they referenced that platonic life partners often co-exist with romantic life partners. And when I read this, something about it really resonated with me. The article went on to say things I have spoken about on this blog many times, that we cannot expect one person to meet all our needs and friendships often help carry the emotional load. It touched on aspects of the QPR too, how often friends will marry or raise children together, but went on to say, that it is a myth that they always do. Many times infact, both parties will already be in a romantic partnership. It listed 4 myths about the Platonic life partner, they were: That you want to spend all your time together. You need to tell each other everything. You should be friends with their friends. That they always come first.
When I reflect on my own life, I have one friend who definitely fits the brief. Her and I have discussed this several times over the years, that we are somehow in some sort of relationship that isn’t. More than friends, less than lovers, not quite family but still very important. We tend to just say “whatever we are or whatever this is.” Because how could it be a relationship when I am already married and she is not queer? There has never been attraction, or even much physical affection, although we both feel very affectionately towards one another. We have struggled to define it because we do not spend all our time together, tell each other everything, we have separate groups of friends and we do not always put each other first. That and a lack of physical intimacy has us precluded from considering each other any sort of life partner. We both live with significant others.
However, as I look back over the years, this person has helped me raise my babies. I have been on more dates with her than I have ever been on with my husband, and we talk on a much deeper level too. She calls me almost every day, often twice a day and although I don’t notice if she doesn’t call everyday, I hear the silence loudly if a week or 2 passes without a call or much communication. (Unless I know she is away or whatever and expect not to hear from her, because we don’t expect to hear from each other when we are away etc…) We do operate as a partnership in many ways. If she can’t pick up the dogs from daycare, I will get them for her. When I need a curtain rail installed she appears with her toolbox. (My husband works very long hours 6 days a week, so these things never seem to get done by him!) If I need a break from the kids she takes them for the day or accompanies us to the theme park to ride the rides with them when she knows I don’t want to. She comes on family nights out with the kids, hubby and I, or sometimes tags along on date nights with us. I help her with her work projects, bring her lunch if she forgets and we have keys to each other’s places. I would feel comfortable leaving my kids to her as they have such a strong relationship with her. And as she contemplates children of her own I instinctively know I will be an important person in their life too, and help her to raise them just as she has helped me. I have spent time with her nieces and nephews, they play with my kids. Her mum and I text sometimes. She texts hubby sometimes too. People sometimes ask me if I think they’re having an affair. They aren’t. I know they aren’t. But I’m not sure if I’d mind to be honest, she’s just part of us. I don’t think the revelation would shock me if it happened, and I don’t think it would shock him if her and I were sleeping together either. We aren’t. We never will be. Maybe that’s why it works, because we’re not?
I certainly would not like to live with her, more than a night together and we are sick of the sight of each other. I couldn’t keep up, nor would I want to, with the pace of life she keeps and she would be miserable at my slower pace too. She has friends she calls family and I don’t really know them, and she hasn’t even met some of my closest friends. Most of them actually. We do tell each other most things because of the frequent conversations, but sometimes we do surprise each other with information that was not shared, or turn away from each other for certain topics best shared with other friends. My kids and my husband come first. Her family and her work come first. Yet somehow it works.
My other friendships are perhaps more casual. I expect less of them, less time and less contact. I’m not sure I would say that makes us less close though. They are still more like relationships than friendships, even if they are somewhat more casual in nature. I doubt I could be so casual with them if I didn’t have my platonic life partner and my husband carrying most of the load of me! I can’t even really compare the 2 relationships I have, as I could never foresee a life with my platonic partner the way I do with my husband, and yet I find the idea of a life without her equally painful.
Of course, with it’s highs comes it’s lows. We bicker. We have misunderstandings and miscommunications relatively frequently and the boundaries are always being pushed and pulled and changed to accommodate everything else that surrounds each of us individually that impacts “us” relationally. There is sometimes jealousy, and making enough time for a separate relationship without hurting your other relationships also has it’s challenges!
But what struck me when I read the article, was just that validation of the “thing” that we are. It is a thing. It is possible. It is important. It does matter. It isn’t an affair, emotional or otherwise. And I suspect many more of us may be in this type of relationship we cannot articulate without even really knowing. Thinking we are unique and special. Or that these types of friendships only happen in movies. But they don’t. They are real, they are happening all around us. And I would like to add another myth to the list. That these people have to have been childhood or lifelong friends. They don’t. Mine wasn’t. But I knew almost immediately that I loved her, and she felt it too in a way that was perhaps more scary and perplexing for a heterosexual woman.
Sometimes you meet another one, after you meet the one, a special one. One that you can have right alongside your chosen one. One that you didn’t know you needed until you met them. One that you aren’t married to and don’t want to be. But one that you are committed to and will always be. And now you have the language to describe it and explain it. Apart from saying of course that you found the secret to having your cake and eating it too!
Are you in a Platonic Partnership? Do you have a romantic or primary partner too? Are they comfortable with things? What have been your experiences? Highs and Lows? Comment below or head to facebook, or share your stories here
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
