My QPR
Diving into ace-aro books, wikis, videos, and podcasts have really helped me better figure out my feelings for other people and my relationships with them, including new terms for things I’ve felt but didn’t have the language to describe and define very well.
Like queerplatonic relationships.
When I refer to Diana as my “bestie”, it never really feels adequate for expressing our relationship. We went very quickly from being new friends to “besties”, with a rush of strong emotions that I usually associate with a budding romance. But from the beginning we established that we weren’t looking to date, just friendship–and yet, there was hand-holding and cuddling and even mushy texts that if someone were to read them, they’d probably think we were dating. I’ve gotten self-conscious about it at times because I talk about her a lot in gushing ways, I love showing people pics of the two of us looking cute together, my feelings for her feel “bigger” than my other platonic friendships, but it’s hard to explain that even with all of that, we’re not romantically involved. I’ve gotten frustrated trying to parse my own heart and explain my feelings to myself, not to mention other people (including Diana).
And then a few years ago I came across the term “queerplatonic relationship” (or QPR)–something some aromantics use to describe friendships that aren’t romantic but aren’t 100% platonic the way we usually view friendships. The people involved don’t have to be queer, it’s more of a queering of traditional, heteronormative, amatonormative friendships. Some queerplatonic partners live together like a romantic couple might, and some don’t. Some explicitly commit themselves to each other, like people getting married would, and some don’t. There’s no one way to have a QPR, it’s one of those “you know it if you’re in it”–or if the people involved decide that’s what it is. When I first learned the term and showed it to Diana, her response was “Oh, that’s us!”
Even with the term, it’s not easy to express to other people what our relationship is. It’s not like “queerplatonic relationship” is a common term or one that’s simple to describe. Especially because our society still mostly views relationships — especially between men and women — as a binary of platonic/romantic. The idea of people being platonically smitten with each other isn’t something mainstream society really considers. It can feel a bit awkward for me when I’m getting into a romantic relationship and I have to tell the person “I’m not polyamorous, Diana and I aren’t romantic, but we’re a package deal, you don’t get me without her, and my relationship with her won’t come second to any romance I’m in.” (One of the reasons it was easy for Natali and me to make our relationship romantic again was because she knows about my relationship with Diana, she and Diana are friends, and she’s totally on board with friendships and romantic relationships holding equal importance. It was Diana’s encouragement that got me to confess to Natali that I’d never stopped having romantic feelings for her.)
So why am I writing about this now? I’d like for QPRs and other forms of “non-traditional” relationships to be more seen and recognized. I want to acknowledge my important relationships, romantic and non-romantic, equally. And maybe someone I know is in a QPR but hasn’t had a way to sort out what the relationship is. Or maybe it’s a kind of relationship you want and now you have a name for it.
(I originally posted this to Facebook in November, 2024.)
