I've Grown Weary Of Your Queerplatonic Relationships

On the need for more than just "the queerplatonic umbrella."

Peter Burka/Flickr

Even now, I have a hard time defining my last relationship.

A and I met in 2022. If I’m being honest, we crossed paths because of a classic Ana Valens-themed twist of fate: I was bored and horny, so I decided to search for the term “VTuber” on an adult website. A video of A’s popped up, where she was watching a hentai video, and I was mesmerized.

“Hey,” I thought, “you can just do that? Be an anime girl and comment on hentai during a stream? That’s cool. Why don’t I try making lewdtuber content?”

A quickly became my personal inspiration. I followed her on social media, and to my surprise, she followed me back. When she posted a selfie, I was smitten. Like a true reply girl, I left a flirty tweet, and she responded back. We started talking regularly, as much as time allowed for both of us, and just a few short months later we entered into a Domme-sub relationship.

It quickly became one of the happiest and most important intimate connections of my life.

It’s hard to describe the amount of joy our relationship gave me. It taught me many things. What it’s like to be in a long-term D/s arrangement serving a Domme. What it’s like to have healthy communication with an intimate partner. That trans and cis women can come together and be vulnerable with one another in ways that are beautiful, that can heal old wounds.

But most of all, A taught me that I don’t want normalcy. I am kinky. I am a sub. I need to be involved with someone in an all-encompassing way, where I am always someone’s sub, they are always my domme, and I live to carry out their whim. Whether romantic or something else, I crave 24/7 BDSM in a long-term commitment, where deep love exists between two individuals in a beautifully perverted power dynamic.

A and I ended up breaking things off last fall, but we remain very close. She is special to me, someone I would do anything for, someone who can cheer me up on the roughest day — I love her, she loves me, and I look back with fondness at the special configuration we had for those 12 months.

But even now, even with all this written out, I have a really hard time describing what, exactly, the two of us were.

This isn’t for lack of mindfulness or knowledge. I’m very aware of how our relationship functioned. We were not girlfriends, nor were we romantically involved — but we did love each other. And we still love each other.

“That’s just a D/s relationship,” you may say.

And yes, of course, that’s true. A was my Domme, and I was her sub, and we were in a Domme/sub relationship. But D/s is not a full descriptor of a relationship, it is just a flavor, a texture. It is like pointing to ___ _____ and calling it “chocolate.” Many things can be chocolate; what’s missing is the noun: “ice cream.”

“You two were in love, though?” another may ask. “So weren’t you basically romantic partners?”

Well, no, that’s not true either. I loved A, still love A, but from the start I never wanted to be romantically involved with her. In fact, I loved being in love with her, in this way that blurred the lines between “platonic” and “romantic,” that didn’t quite fit comfortably in either distinction. With A, what I wanted was… its own thing.

“Aha!” the ace reader says, their hand shooting in the air. “Sit down allos, let an asexual handle this one. You, my friend, were in a queerplatonic relationship.”

And to you, only one word.

“Stop”

I don’t want you to say that. I would not use that term. Using that term would be like pointing at soft serve and calling it “ice cream.” It’s close, but it’s wrong. So very, very wrong.

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Women: Very gay for each other, but not always horny

Queerplatonic, or homoerotic? Regardless, women act like this over each other. A lot.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m really glad the term queerplatonic exists. When I read Ace by Angela Chen in 2022, the word unlocked something in me. Slowly, I realized that you could have a partner who was not sexual, not romantic, but something else. A secret third thing.

So we’re all on the same page here, Chen defines “queerplatonic partner” as a term for “the social space between ‘friend’ and ‘romantic partner.’” Per Ace, “the bond between queerplatonic partners is not sexual, nor does it necessarily seem romantic to the people in such a partnership.” Rather, QPRs “transcend the bounds of what is typically found in friendship alone, even when ‘romantic’ as a descriptor seems wrong.”

“Queerplatonic resets from the unspoken expectations of either friend or romantic partner and forces the relationship into a new place, with the ability to build new obligations and new expectations together,” Chen writes (italics hers). “Instead of letting labels like romantic and platonic (or friend versus partner) guide actions and expectations, it is possible for the desires themselves to guide actions and expectations.”

Queerplatonic became a more relevant term in my life when I started to reexamine the ways non-platonic, non-sexual, and non-romantic intimacy permeated through my friendships with other women. Or more specifically, when I became aware of the fact that women are very gay for each other, but not always horny for each other.

First, I identified the fact that homoeroticm between women is generally erased and misunderstood in society at large, despite the fact women tend to grow “too close” to one another during formative years (i.e.: a “16-year-old bestie” who suddenly finds herself crazy jealous over her BFF’s new boyfriend). (For a larger history on non-sexual erotic intimacy among women in Western history, and the emergence of lesbophobic anxiety among women in the 20th century, I highly recommend Surpassing the Love of Men by Lillian Faderman.)

Second, I recognized that lesbians (like me!) tend to seek out passionate, intense intimacy with their female friends, often resulting in uniquely homoerotic friendships that, again, straddle the line between “platonic,” “romantic,” and “sexual.” This is best understood as the dyke who has two drinks and spouts out “I’m attracted to all my friends” (just as much a stereotype as it is true!). However, unlike their straight counterparts, many lesbians knowingly engage in these homoerotic relationships and enjoy them. Quite frankly, they are very fun for an ace dyke like me, where everyone knows the rules, and we’re just having fun.

And lastly, I opened my mind to the idea that there are many, many ways to intimately relate to others, that there are many relationships that can provide ecstatic belonging and sheer bliss. You do not simply need a girlfriend for that, and you can discover new and erased ways of relating with others to achieve this end.

This is where I started to identify some, let’s say, “queerplatonic patterns” in my relationships with my friends — and I started to see these patterns among friends and acquaintances, too. This is normal, like homoeroticism among women. It just happens when people become close, and it doesn’t have to be a big deal. But like homoeroticism among women, queerplatonic patterns are often erased, ignored, or misunderstood. If left unacknowledged and unfulfilled, they can balloon into jealousy, resentment, and conflict.

This is where I started to have a problem with queerplatonic, because quite frankly, the line between “homoerotic” and “queerplatonic” is, uh, blurry. As blurry as “homoerotic” and “erotic” (using the traditional allo definition here).

Chen tried to write off the former by stating “the bond between queerplatonic partners is not sexual,” but that just isn’t true. Even queerplatonic’s original coiner, s.e. smith, says “a queerplatonic relationship can be sexual.” As long as the QPR is not romantic, and as long as it involves a deep connection, sex is fair game.

But what about the fault lines between homoerotic and queerplatonic? Between homosexual desire and queerplatonic longing? What resides there, in the murky areas that are not platonic, not sexual, not friendship, not romance, but there is… something… gay happening? It doesn’t satisfy me to claim all that territory for queerplatonic, just as it doesn’t satisfy me to claim romantic or sexual desire is the cause.

Which brings me to my main concern with “queerplatonic.” It has become a catch-all, overly generalized term for “third relationship.” It does not allow me to accurately describe my relationship with A, nor does it allow me to describe that “homoerotic-ish-but-not-sexual” tension I sometimes see among women. Worst of all, it has turned into this bizarre intermediary between “platonic” and “romantic,” instead of emphasizing the fact that there are many, many different kinds of committed relationship structures beyond “platonic” and “romantic” — including ones that will never qutie fit the “queerplatonic” structure at all, or reside between “queerplatonic” and “romantic,” or “queerplatonic” and “platonic.”

This calls for a correction.

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“Aegosexual,” or: “I want to swallow you whole and feel you in my stomach, but I’ll pass on the blowjob”

I prefer sexual scenarios over bodies. Like devouring my fans. (Artist: isthatyourmain)

To get a better understanding of my problem with the queerplatonic umbrella, you need to understand the anatomy of my identity, as well as the beliefs it’s led me to. So let’s strip me bare.

I MEAN, let’s strip my sexual/romantic/erotic identity down bare. I’m keeping my clothes on for this.

So. I am a lesbian. I am kinky, and I cannot be simultaneously emotionally and sexually intimate with someone in a purely equal circumstance. I am alloromantic and ace, more specifically aegosexual. And lastly, being with A taught me that I am also demisexual.

For those of you who don’t understand a lick of what I’m saying, let me break it down for you:

1. I am a lesbian: I crave intimate relationships with women for romantic and erotic purposes, as well as sexual ones in the context of my ace orientation

2. I am kinky: I crave power dynamics in my sexual, erotic, and romantic relationships. I prefer to have some aspect of D/s in these, preferably 24/7 (i.e.: I am always the sub, she is always the Domme, etc)

3. I am alloromantic: I experience romantic love and attraction. I want to have a girlfriend that I am romantically involved with

4. I am ace: I do not experience sexual attraction without additional qualifiers. I need to have an intimate connection with someone before I can feel sexual attraction to them. I do not feel sexual attraction to others’ bodies in and of itself

5. I am aegosexual: I am more attracted to perceiving sex, viewing sexual content, and engaging in sexual fetishism than having sex purely out of sexual attraction. I enjoy looking at porn and masturbating to my preferred fetishism (obvious if you know me, giantess, vore, feederism, etc), but without the appearance of these fetishes, I am not interested in having sex just for its own sake. If I choose to have fetish sex with a stranger, it is because of the presence of the scenario, not sexual attraction to the individual

6. I am demisexual: I do not feel sexual attraction to strangers. I feel stunned and amazed by their beauty (aesthetic attraction), sometimes desiring emotional intimacy with them (eroticism). But do I feel this sudden, burning urge to engage in sexual contact? No. I only feel that with people I’m close to

Now, I am not a fan of putting myself into concrete labels. Yes, absolutely, labels are important for expanding our minds and introducing us to new ideas (“you can feel sexual attraction, have a libido, but not want to date?!”). But I believe labels exist to help communicate certain parts of ourselves in a general sense. They should not taxonomically describe queer people. Otherwise, you run into a situation where a person becomes their labels, which ends up dehumanizing them — fitting them into neat little boxes, then placing them on enormous pedestals with tiny platforms they eventually fall off, causing them to plummet to the ground.

That said, we are talking about labels, and in queerplatonic Rome, one must do what the queerplatonic Romans do. Get some labels. And when it comes to the queerplatonic label, it is not just an aroace relationship label. It is the aroace relationship label. It is largely the root term and categorization for all non-romantic, non-friendship intimate relationships that have since been coined, and there are no alternatives to queerplatonic.

So, why do I dislike “queerplatonic”? I actually don’t. What I dislike is how it’s ballooned out of proportion into a bloated, one-size-fits-all mess of an umbrella.

Originally, s.e. smith defined queerplatonic as “relationships that are not romantic, that are also not friendships, and that play an important role in your life.” There’s no doubt in my mind that smith did not intend “queerplatonic” to become “the word we all use.” But it has, and in that state, the “-platonic” in “queerplatonic” has been forced to bench more than it can handle.

Let’s be blunt. When someone hears “platonic,” they think “affection seen within a friendship.” Sure, queerplatonic expands beyond the realm of mere friendship by nature, but the emphasis on “platonic” suggests certain key elements, i.e.: an implication of “non-sexual” and “non-erotic” engagement. In this way, Chen’s incorrect definition in Ace is better understood as a logical conclusion, even if an incorrect one.

The intimacy involved when a woman suddenly turns to me, sticks her fingers down my throat, and calls me a good girl […] it’s not going to be properly communicated under “queerplatonic”

In other words, the QPR is great for describing deep, soul-nourishing emotional intimacy with another person, where social and emotional connection is key, and physical intimacy exists but may be relatively limited. That’s easily communicated by the term, even to those who “don’t get” queerplatonic. When you’re cuddling with the Partner and just want to peck their cheek, QPR is perfect.

But what happens when you’re cuddling with the Partner, and that deliciously sick, diaboloically twisted thought sneaks into your head? The one that makes your girldick twitch, that makes your heart pound, that makes your face turn scarlet? You know the one.

I want my Partner to shove their fingers down my throat.

I want them to smile as I choke on their eager flesh.

I want them to look me in the eye, spit on my face, and call me their pathetic, disgusting slut

In that moment “queerplatonic” feels… like it’s not painting the full picture.

Yes, you may reply, queerplatonic is meant to queer the very definition of “intimate relationship” and “platonic.” It has room for any immensely strong connection (even ones with sexual and erotic elements) as long as these aren’t romantic. So it can and should include “my Person is my everything, and they should stick everything in my mouth right about now.”

But I think I speak for many queer people invested in queering relationships when I say: It’s incredibly hard to use “queerplatonic” for an intensely intimate sexual, erotic, and non-romantic relationship because the word “platonic” is not built to describe this aspect of the relationship. The intimacy involved when a woman suddenly turns to me, sticks her fingers down my throat, and calls me a good girl, that kind of intimacy requires another explanation. It’s not going to be properly communicated under “queerplatonic” (although I guess I could try “queerplatonic mouthfucker.”)

Queering “platonic” simply seems better suited for things like, you know, stressing non-romantic and non-familial commitment in one’s life, engaging in rich (even sensual!) physical intimacy, or having “unionship commemoration” ceremonies with a life partner. I am not disparaging these things or making fun of them, by the way. I want a queerplatonic partner. I see myself getting involved in queerplatonic relationships. I am built to live queerplatonically. I know what it’s like to love queerplatonically.

But.

BUT!

I just can’t say, in good faith, that “I need A to come to my apartment, kidnap me, and never let me escape her clutches” is a queerplatonic feeling. Under smith’s definition? Yeah, it technically can be. But calling it a queerplatonic vibe feels like a band-aid solution. It prevents me (and others) from coming up with new, better words that get to the heart of the matter, which is:

Sometimes ace people are kinky, have sex, have erotic urges, and want hot women to beat the shit out of them for filthy perverted reasons

An umbrella is an umbrella. But if one word is doing heavylifting for 3,942 various configurations, if everyone is forced to use “queerplatonic” and derivatives that point back to “queerplatonic,” if everything that’s “more than friends, but not romantic” is “queerplatonic,” then… what even is queerplatonic?

It’s everything, so it’s nothing.

Leaving queerplatonic to this fate waters down its strength. It makes “queerplatonic” into a catch-all for a “third relationship” structure. This hurts the ability to meaningfully communicate and describe how queerplatonic relationships are rightfully queerplatonic. And it prevents us from accurately conveying all the different ways that people relate to each other (and expect things from one another) beyond “platonic” and “romantic.”

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Plato: “You define eros as WHAT?!”

I experience love in many different ways. I have love for my friends. Love for my family. Love for romantic partners. Love that fits neatly into the queerplatonic label. And love that defies labels, like my love for A. Love that can best be described as “undefined.”

Five different kinds of love, all with some similarities, but all distinctly different. That struck me as curious. I needed language to better describe love, to compare and contrast these different kinds of loves, and to find some words to define the undefined.

So I turned to Plato.

Why? Plato’s conception of love is far more complicated than simply “romantic affection.” And while anyone familiar with the Athenian philosopher knows there are many parts of his work that do not stand the test of time (let’s be frank, a core part of his philosophical writing on eros has to do with pederasty in ancient Athens), we can learn a lot by correcting the record on what Plato’s “erotic” actually is.

The original Platonic iteration of “eros” isn’t about seeking out and celebrating sexual desire. Yes, for sure, “eros” had connotations of sexual longing in Ancient Greece, just as it does now. But Plato looks down upon relationships involving sex for sex’s sake. Rather, his conception of “eros” has more to do with passionate desire brought about by overwhelming beauty, where one seeks out the cause of their erotic feeling to obtain human happiness and fulfillment.

In other words, Platonic eros guides the individual to spiritual ascension, so one must choose to desire that which lifts them to the heavens (i.e.: philosophy!!), not that which drags them down to Earth (i.e.: meeting people just to get laid).

“I think if we think about eros as referring really to any sort of intense or passionate desire, then we can at least begin to get a sense of why Plato considers such radically different objects in the Symposium, for example, to be objects of eros […] beautiful bodies, beautiful laws and practices, and even a form, an ideal intelligible object,” Frisbee Sheffield says in “History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.” “[W]hat we're sort of groping towards in that kind of desire is a desire for happiness. That's the real aim of this desire. And the desire for happiness is a desire that can be manifested in many different activities in life.”

If we divorce “erotic” from its contemporary use (“of, devoted to, or tending to arouse sexual love or desire”) and instead use “eros” or “erotic” to describe any relationship in which immense emotional, physical, and/or sensual intimacy with another provides meaning and fulfillment, then we can use “erotic” to relieve some of the pressure that “queerplatonic” is forced to take on.

Even better, the Platonic definition further reinforces the concept of ace erotics, decentering romantic love and sexuality from the equation, all while building off Audre Lorde's definition of the erotic ("the sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual,") and Cristina L.H. Traina's "eroticism" ("a quality of attraction to another person that desires intimacy with her on multiple levels: physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual," where sexual desire can exist, but isn’t necessary).

Hate Plato’s eros? That’s fine. Ancient Athens isn’t the only inspiration we can turn to for new terminology. We can look at queer sociologist John Lee's "Color Wheel of Love," which views love as a spectrum with various intersecting parts (for example, you can engage in Eros, Storge, and Storgic Eros). “The Triangular Theory of Love” by Robert Sternberg provides similar complexity to pick apart, alllowing us to view love and desire as complex, multifaceted, and up for interpretation.

In figuring out how to fix the queerplatonic umbrella issue, we first have to accept that love, desire, and intimacy do not exist in simple binaries. It is not “romantic or platonic,” “sexual/erotic or non-sexual/non-erotic,” nor is it “queerplatonic or platonic/romantic.” There must be room for flexibility, for the creation of new vocabulary to better describe the different kinds of non-romantic intimate relationships out there (or aro and ace relationships), and we must allow for alternatives that break from “queerplatonic” as the only categorization. In the long run, this will help everyone better describe their needs and desires without confusion.

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Activity time! Create a word to describe whatever is going on with these two fruits:

(Honestly I love how you can read them as queerplatonic as well)

Ace theory work is stil pretty cutting edge, so I think it’s important to provide a sign post for where we may be able to go next. Here are some terms I’ve come up with after looking at some of these psychological and philosophical works. They’re more of a starting point than an end. If you like something here, use it, break it, improve it.

I think some of these terms can neatly fit into queerplatonic. No problem with that in my opinion. I just want to make sure someone can sit down and say “I consider myself more eroqueer than queerplatonic,” while another can say “I’m in a queerplatonic relationship, more specifically an eroplatonic one.”

To that end, it’s also important to let people debate and disagree on whether a word does or doesn’t fit into the queerplatonic umbrella, as this is part of making meaning and figuring out how to create effective categories that communicate who we are as individuals.

Ace erotic terms

• Erotic relationship: Umbrella term for any relationship with intense intimacy in a spiritual, emotional, and/or physical way that does not have a romantic component. Not necessarily sexual (although it can be)

  • Challenges: We run into the same problem as “queerplatonic,” i.e.: a prior definition already exists for “erotic” that would have to be challenged, expanded, and could become bloated

    • Also, many people already use “erotic relationship” to mean “any relationship with sexual undercurrents, esp subconsciously”

• Eroplatonic: A relationship characterized by an intense non-romantic love or affection, particularly as it pertains to seeking significant spiritual, emotional, and/or physical intimacy. Implies more of a sensual element than “queerplatonic”

  • Challenges: “Platonic” may still imply “friendship-adjacent” in a way that doesn’t feel “quite right” for some

• Erophilic: A descriptor for an erotic friendship, or a behavior related to an erotic friendship. Might not necessarily have a component of “love,” but there’s a desire for intense intimacy in a spiritual, emotional, and/or physical way

• Eroqueer: A relationship or relationship structure that defies traditional conceptions of the erotic and of physical intimacy. This involves a desire for intense physical, emotional, and/or spiritual intimacy, engagement in sensual physical behavior, and arranging one’s life and behaviors in ways that go against traditional heteronormative norms

  • Examples: A “Boston Marriage” relationship between two women who engage in sexual intimacy, but are not romantically engaged. A non-sexual D/s relationship between two men with non-sexual physical elements. A polycule where people cuddle and make out but would not define their interactions as sexual. Two individuals in a committed relationship who have sex regularly, live together, and have a sexual subtext to their relationship, but are not romantically in love

  • A similar version of this already exists under “Queerotic,” albeit under the queerplatonic umbrella

• Storgic relationship: A relationship characterized by intense love between two peers / equals / sibling-like individuals — one that is not a friendship, but neither romantic nor erotic

  • Challenges: “Storgic” already exists in Color Wheel Theory, and “storgic” is generally used for a specific kind of familial, friendship-like love

• Erostorgic relationship: A relationship characterized by an intense love between two peers / equals / sibling-like individuals — one that is not a friendship, but desires intense physical, emotional, and/or spiritual intimacy. May be sensual or sexual in nature, but neither of these are necessary

It’s also important to stress that a label is not, in and of itself, necessary for a relationship. When it comes to A and myself, I admittedly don’t really want nor need a label. That is not the problem. The problem is that I have no true point of comparison to communicate our former D/s structure beyond “queerplatonic.” And “queerplatonic” leaves too much unexplained, unsaid.

Additional terminology is necessary to accurately compare and contrast what occurred. Aesthetically, linguistically, sexually. And diversity in word choice never hurts. Let 3,000 different erotic aro, ace, and aroace relationship structures bloom, that does no harm to me.

Special thanks to Ashley Louis Yeo Payne and Jacqie for their generous Sex-Haver tier contributions.