Possibilities Project 5: The QPP/Passionate Friendship

This is almost certainly the most talked about model among ace communities. The model for this relationship has a few possible manifestations:

Kitchen	?	Common Bed	Art Studio/ Office
A (Me)		Living Room/	Dining Room
B

and

Kitchen	?	?	Art Studio/ Office
A (Me) + B		Living Room/	Dining Room

This model is probably closest to the romantic/sexual norm, but I can see that normativity (norms aren’t inherently bad, and I don’t think the romantic/sexual norm, as an option is inherently bad.) giving this kind of relationship strength and stability, and while I’d love to be a rebel against the romantic/sexual machine, strength and stability are two things I might be willing to trade for.

In regards to the common bed, I modeled this relationship both with and without it, since I think that the individual bedrooms would be in question in this kind of relationship and haptics could be achieved by having a shared bedroom.

I think that both the strength and weakness of this model lie in its closeness to the norm, since the norm offers more certainty than the less charted roads of larger chosen families, this model is more stable. But at the same time as The Thinking Aromantic points out (in their characteristically aroace-supremacist way) “Romantic-sexual people, whether straight or queer, are very attached to the fantasy they have of that romantic-sexual happily ever after, and they cling to it even when it fails them continuously over the course of decades, even though they all know several people who have also had no luck with that fantasy.” Just because the norm is better explored does not mean that the norm offers more certainty of long term relationship, the normative lifestyle is prone to collapse right alongside the more inventive one.

Possibilities Project 3.5: Forums of Address

Something I’ve been thinking about in regards to the first model is what you call someone in that kind of a relationship. So let’s go through the options, and if don’t mention a label you think might work, please let me know:

Friend: this term is good, and should be applicable, but it doesn’t quite carry the weight of the commitment you’ve made to the person. It also can have oblique implications of romance as people might just assume you’ve dropped the gender label from boyfriend or girlfriend. Overall it might be a good way to introduce someone to a person who you don’t know very well/non-accepting family, but for specificity it leaves a lot to be desired. 8/10

Housemate/Flatmate/etc.: This is similar to friend in the understating of the relationship, but it is, in my estimation, less likely to imply romantic/sexual relationships. Again, this might be a good way of explaining the relationship to someone who you’re not very familiar with, but still leaves a lot to be desired in expressing the full nature of the relationship. 7/10

Partner: Very strong implications of romantic/sexual relationship, but it gets closer to the level of commitment and mutual care that should be present in the relationship. It is vague enough that it might work as a somewhat ambiguous form of address. This does have an implication of exclusivity, so it might be somewhat confusing on that count. 5/10

Sibling/Familial Terms: These are good in terms of the strength of the bond implied, and the non-sexualized nature of these terms of address, but there are obvious drawbacks in terms of the literal interpretation and the monastic feel of brother/sister. Blood sibling is a bit melodramatic, but I think it might work the best out of what I’ve been able to think of so far (plus, I am a bit melodramatic). 8/10

QPP/Passionate Friendship: I’m really not a fan of the word platonic, since I think Platonism has done a lot of harm, especially in the realm of sexuality, so by extension I’m not a fan of queerplatonic as a relationship term, but TAA’s Passionate Friendship is so niche I don’t think that would be very useful either (and my philosophical beef with TAA is almost as big as my problems with Plato). 6/10

Comrade: Live together, bring down capitalism together. 10/10