Romantic vs. Platonic

“[Romantic love is] 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.”

Wikipedia

“Romantic love is] an intensity and idealization of a love relationship, in which the other is imbued with extraordinary virtue, beauty, etc., so that the relationship overrides all other considerations, including material ones.”

Collins Dictionary

Alternatively, platonic love is:

“1) Love conceived by Plato as ascending from passion for the individual to contemplation of the universal and ideal or 2) a close relationship between two persons in which sexual desire is nonexistent or has been suppressed or sublimated.”

Merriam-Webster

 “In common speech, platonic love means a supremely affectionate relationship between human beings in which sexual intercourse is neither desired nor practiced. In this sense, it most often refers to a heterosexual relationship. By extension, it may be used to cover that stage of chivalrous or courtly love in which sexual intercourse is indefinitely postponed.

From the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century, the term platonic love was also used as an occasional euphemism for homosexual love, in view of the comparatively tolerant attitude to such love discernible in Plato as well as in other Greek authors.”

Brittanica.com

Queerplatonic relationships

The term queerplatonic relationship (QPR) was coined in 2010 and arose from a need to fill the language gap for the desire for an aromantic relationship that was not strictly defined to one of two categories: romantic or platonic.

Since this term was coined by and for queer people and relationships, the alternative term for using to describe a cisgender and heterosexual relationship not defined by the two categories is alterous relationship.

Both QPR and alterous relationships are:

• Describing non-romantic relationships.

• Both coined by the queer community.

• Both able to contain sexual activity.

• Both very connected to the concept of relationship anarchy.

• Both can describe either a long-term partnership or something more short-term.

Some people use the terms interchangeably and others do not. Alterous relationship can be and is used for anybody and anyone, while queerplatonic is reserved for those who identify as queer.

Both of these terms are important to know in order to more fully understand the range of important relationships that people can have besides simply romantic or platonic ones. It also goes against the stigma that romantic relationships are “more important” or “better” in some way that non-romantic ones.

Image credit to Disabled And Here.