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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Angela Chen
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February 11 - February 14, 2024
People might not be having sex, but wanting sex is the key to recognizing that feelings are romantic instead of platonic.
Many allos have shared with me their puzzlement at feeling like they were in love with friends despite no sexual attraction on either side.
she has obsessive relationships with women despite being straight.
Sexual desire tricks us into spreading our genes, while romantic love exists to make us feel kindly toward someone and willing to cooperate for long enough to raise those exquisitely helpless creatures known as babies.
Sometimes honored with ceremonies such as ring exchanges, these relationships were considered a middle ground between friendship and romance and were often simply called “romantic friendship,”
If sex isn’t the dividing line between romantic and platonic love, what is?
While reporting this book, I asked everyone, regardless of romantic orientation, how they separated platonic and romantic love.
I know what a friend crush feels like,”
Hating Jane’s eating habits would be an annoyance but not at all hard to endure the few times I see her. Hating Noah’s eating habits would raise the question of whether I can endure this forever, whether I should have to endure this forever, why can’t he be exactly the way I want him to be, why can’t I be less uptight, and on and on. Tiny annoyances snowball. Everything is harder to bear when you might need to bear the situation every day for the rest of your life.
people think of romantic and platonic love as two distinct categories, but, frequently, there is overlap and no clean separation, no one emotional feature or essential component that makes a relationship one or the other.
The idea of queerplatonic partners (or QPP) originated in ace and aro communities.
Romance is higher on the hierarchy of importance and is portrayed as more interesting and essential. Casual phrases like “just friends” and “more than friends” relegate friendship to something less special and less whole. Frustration over the devaluation of friendship is not new; the term QPP is.
“You’re my person” has worked its way into popular culture, inspiring listicles in the vein of “10 Grey’s Anatomy Quotes That Remind You of Your Person”17 and an entire ecosystem of You’re My Person merchandise (mugs, shirts, jewelry) wherever kitschy goods are sold. It has become a shorthand stronger than best friend, a gender-neutral way of saying “soul mate” or “the one I trust most.”
“You’re my person” isn’t tied to official romantic relationship status.
The women didn’t abandon each other once they f...
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“If I murdered someone, she’s the person I’d call to help me drag the corpse across the living room floor.”
Conversations about emotional commitment are uncommon, and if you don’t know where you stand, you don’t know your place.
“I don’t know if my feelings were really different for my husband and QPP. If you’re in the small group of people I care about, I feel pretty much the same about all of you. That’s just how I do relationships.”
These new ideas are meant to provoke, not to prescribe.
Many people are hesitant to say “I love you” to friends, much less ask, “How do you feel about time? What are we to each other?” As Leigh noted, outside of romance, there is no “defining the relationship” talk unless something has already gone wrong. Couples therapists usually focus on romantic couples, and no advice industry is available to help people recover from the loss of a friendship, though friend breakups can be as devastating as the romantic kind. The looseness of friendship and lack of official obligation is a delight for many, but as a general rule, people tend to treat casually
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loves romance novels, loves his friends, and for a while wondered whether he was a sociopath.
The aromantic community is connected to the asexual community, but not everyone who is aromantic is asexual.
a friend told him about aromanticism. He first dismissed it as an “incel thing.”
agreed on politics, loved horror movies and analyzing pop culture and writing fan fiction.
well-intentioned phrases like “You’re so lovely, I can’t believe you’re single”23 imply that single people are lacking somehow.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s much-applauded opinion in favor of same-sex marriage stated that being denied the right to marriage meant being “condemned to live in loneliness.”
Amatonormativity is also responsible for a lack of research on single people,
Social scientists assume that everyone wants to be in a relationship, creating a missed opportunity to learn more about people for whom this is not true and what their perspectives could teach everyone else.
If someone is not in a romantic relationship, they are to be pitied or mocked. If someone doesn’t want a romantic relationship at all, they are heartless like a serial killer. The spinster becomes a pathetic creature, a strange and unwanted woman. The bachelor is either closeted or emotionally stunted. If he’s hot, he’s irresponsible and a rake.
When Graham tried to run for president in 2015, he faced scrutiny over his bachelor status and had to defend himself as “not defective,”
It was always clear that my beliefs—that an aro-allo woman was independent while an aro-allo man was a fuckboy—were gendered stereotypes I should disavow.
spends time on the aromanticism subreddit helping others who wonder whether they’re aromantic or late bloomers or afflicted with emotional baggage and likely to change.
Romantic love within marriage confers privileges that other forms of devotion cannot, including over 1,100 laws that benefit married couples at the federal level. Spouses can share each other’s health insurance, as well as military, social security, and disability benefits. They can make medical decisions for each other.28 Companies grant bereavement leave for spouses, no questions asked, but there will be more hesitation if leave is requested for a mere friend. It is possible to marry a stranger and give them your health insurance but not possible to give health insurance to a parent.
advocates for allowing siblings or just very close friends to “have the same rights as those in civil partnerships.”
the state should recognize and support “intimate care-giving unions”34 even if they are not sexual or romantic in nature.
In the West, couples often pair up, marry, and then seclude themselves into a new, separate unit, sometimes retreating from their prior community of friends and family. With this as the norm, it becomes harder and harder for aros to build the social network they need.
Justice Anthony Kennedy was wrong when he wrote that those who aren’t married are “condemned to live in loneliness.”
unfair that people worry that not having a romantic partner means they can’t take care of themselves in old age.
IF SOMEONE CANNOT SAY NO, any yes that is given is meaningless.
it’s okay to say no to a partner if you’re having a bad day or have come down with the flu, if your job is especially stressful or if they’re a bad partner who is hurting you.
if all humans have a baseline of sexual desire and nothing is currently wrong, saying no on a beautiful, happy day to a beautiful, happy partner means you are selfish and intentionally withholding.
Nearly everyone agrees that there’s no reason to have sex with a stranger if you don’t want to. Add the context of a relationship and this rule is suddenly weakened. Consensus is gone.
The belief that marital rape is acceptable is so widespread that when reports surfaced that Donald Trump’s ex-wife Ivana had accused him of rape, Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen defended his client by saying that “you can’t rape your spouse.”
Marital rape is illegal, but it took a long time to get to that point.
several states still treat spousal rape and non-spousal rape differently.
Conservative lawyer Phyllis Schlafly, for example, has said that “by getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.”10 Phyllis Schlafly may be famous for being anti-feminist, but here she is expressing a doubt that many people across the political spectrum have felt.
The stranger at the bar whom we reject can find someone else, curse us in their mind, and get over it. A partner will feel the pain far more acutely. Rejection is more personal, especially if they believe that we are saying no for no good reason. If we’re monogamous, they can’t have sex with someone else. Their unhappiness is real and enduring.
Low desire is not the problem. Just think: if both partners had equal levels of low desire, it would be no issue. Incompatibility is the problem, and incompatibility is a shared problem that will require a shared solution.
I have watched allo friends go to therapy because of a sexual mismatch, try to work it out, and hold on; I have seen how they remained miserable and counseled them to end the relationship.
If sex is important, let sex be important.
