Blurring the Lines between Friendship and Romance

Welcome to Creative Encounters!

In this newsletter, I’m going to be exploring creative and outside-the-box ways of relating. We’ll talk about friendship ethics and multiple ways of loving from a (in the broadest sense of both words) queer and non-monogamous perspective.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years experimenting with the lines between friendship and romance, and asking whether our current ways of differentiating friends and romantic partners work for me.

In this newsletter, I want to ask: How can dissolving the lines between friendship and romance help us create relationships that better fit us and those we love, like handcrafted shelves made to hold the unique contents of our lives, instead of relationships that are built like assembly line Ikea furniture from a single set of confusing instructions?

The pressure we place on romantic relationships—that (usually) one person needs to meet all our needs, fulfill us, take us to the heights of love, provide us with domestic bliss, etc.—is not only unrealistic, but also can squeeze us into ethical compromises and uncomfortable places. If we are turning to our romantic relationship(s) for our main source of love and security, our needs and fears can become more important than either person’s flourishing or wellbeing. Of course we feel threatened, of course we act out, of course we get jealous and possessive if we feel like our foundations are being shaken.

We tend to not put these same pressures on our friendships, and I think this gives more ethical clarity to our friendships. We have more room to base our friendships on values, and to leave or make changes in our friendships if they don’t live up to these values. Friendships also leave more room for customizable structures. For hanging out once a week, once a month, or once a year. For living together or in separate cities. We don’t expect our friends to be everything to us; we know some friends fill specific roles in our lives or light us up in certain ways.

But we also tend to de-prioritize our friendships as soon as romantic relationships enter the picture. It’s easy for many of us to channel most of our love, time, and care into romances, relegating our friendships to second place. This prioritizing of romantic partnership works for some of us, but I think it leaves many of us feeling lacking.

I want more romantic friendships and more friend-like romances. I want the boundaries and the rules and norms for friendships and romances to blur and merge.

Having more romantic friendships could look like:

• Bringing a quality of romantic attention, which to me means deep presence and a willingness to learn and change, to more of our friendships.

• Bringing the special-ness and focused intention that we tend to reserve for dates and romantic nights out to activities with our friends.

• Sharing more of the day-to-day responsibilities of our lives with our friends. Running errands together. Turning to our friends for care when we’re sick.

Having more friendly romances could look like:

• Lessening the structural burdens that we tend to place on our romantic partners. Again, outsourcing care to friends—both care that we give and care we receive.

• De-prioritizing romantic connections: they don’t need to be more important than friendships.

• Factoring friends into our major life decisions. Inviting them to weddings, to meet our families, to go on vacation.

• Using friendship ethics when it comes to jealousy, fights, or conflict (more on this in a future newsletter!)

Eventually, for some of us, as our friendships and romances blend more and more, they could fully merge. Differentiating between the two might not be so important. As I started to experiment with de-prioritizing my romantic partnerships and investing my friendships with romance, I began to get confused. What made someone a partner rather than a friend? Did calling someone my partner still mean that they were somehow more important than my friends?

Language is a struggle here; we don’t have many words to describe relationships that don’t fit easily into one of two boxes. But I’ve started to find that that thinking about my individual connections, and asking myself what roles I want each person to have in my life, has been much more fulfilling than putting people into “friend” boxes or “romantic partner” boxes and prioritizing them based on what box they’re in. My relationships feel more fulfilling. There’s less pressure on some of them, and a new depth in others.

This process has mostly felt like uncharted territory to me; like walking through an unfamiliar landscape without a clear idea of what I’m doing or where I’m going. Trying things out and making things up as I go along. I want this newsletter to be the rough sketches of a map. We’ll try to measure the height of mountains, venture into forests, ask questions about what we find, and leave a record for others interested in exploring this territory. It will be a map that’s constantly being rewritten, as landscapes change, rivers move, and people make homes.

Thanks for joining me!