Over the past six years or so, since I started high school, all sorts of nosy people occasionally get really interested in whether or not I’m dating anyone. No, that picture I posted getting boba with my friend Izzi was not a picture of me and my girlfriend. No, my best friend Ash and I are not dating, we were just a little codependent in high school. No, I’ve never dated my dear friends and former teammates Peyton and Hunter (pictured with me), although I did once claim Peyton was my girlfriend so that a random guy at the skating rink asking for my Snapchat would leave me alone. No, none of the guys in my favorite picture from my graduation are my boyfriend. They never have been, and they never will be! And no, I am DEFINITELY not married to any of them, I just had to wear a white dress to my private school graduation ceremony. In fact, I’ve never dated anyone at all! And holy shit, I am so tired of dealing with those sorts of questions. While I understand where people are coming from… Man, can we just give it a rest?
As someone with various flavors of aromanticism and asexuality, I genuinely don’t understand why people can’t separate platonic relationships from romance. In my opinion, it’s always safer to assume that two people are just friends rather than assume that they are together romantically. By considering dating to be the norm of relationships between two people, it actually ends up putting people in a lot of awkward, uncomfortable situations, and there’s really no reason to do that! Now, it sometimes seems like people are at least trying to be progressive. Look, I appreciate that I’m not being shoehorned into ONLY relationships with men; people think I’m in relationships with women and other queer people too. But that still doesn’t actually make things any better. Why exactly are people so comfortable assuming things about everyone around them?
The thing is, I feel the weight of those so-called “dating allegations” within those friendships, and I feel that awkwardness particularly heavily with my close male friends. I want to tell my friends that I love them, because I do; but I don’t want them, or anyone else around us, to misconstrue that as romantic love, particularly in opposite-gender friendships. I also don’t want my friends to think I mean it in a weird way because we’ve also been conditioned by the people around us to think that a guy and a girl can’t love each other unless it’s romantic. For me, it’s purely platonic, and it always will be! Why should it be weird to give my best friend a hug one of the three times a year I get to see him anymore? Why can my male friends tell each other that they love each other in a “bro way” but I can’t do the same? Similarly, I’ve always thought that being aromantic only gives me an even stronger love for my friends. That means I only feel more conflicted between trying to express my care for my friends and worrying about how we might be perceived by outsiders.
I guess the crux of this article is that I just think we should normalize close platonic relationships a little more. Not everything has to be romantic, and it is good and normal to love people that aren’t just your romantic partner! If everyone could just be a little more aware that the way that you perceive someone or their relationships actually does affect that person, I think we would all be a little better off. So, dear reader, the next time you feel compelled to ask someone unprompted if that guy they’re with is their boyfriend, I hope you’ll at least think twice about it.
Finally, since I keep talking about how dearly I love my friends from home, I think a lot of them deserve a shoutout. Here’s to Hunter, Peyton, Ash, Chase, Kolya, Hayden, Lilly, Alex, Caleb, Malia, Izzi, and anyone else who has been sticking it out with me since middle school or early high school. I really do love you guys so freaking much.
Featured image: Norah Owens’29
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