Romance, Polyamory, & Physical Affection
How the words I have aren't enough, and the reason that's okay.
I have endless capacity for love. It overflows and touches everyone near me.
I recently visited my friend F in New York City. They’re one of those people I only see once or twice per year but it's like we were never apart when we're together again. This was my first time in NYC, and I put utmost trust in them as they guided me through series of subway rides around Brooklyn and walks through Prospect Park. I enjoyed the proximity to so many people jostling to their destinations - I felt nimble as I weaved through crowds like a fish in water. This was a two-night stay that marked the first leg of my journey abroad to Senegal and Germany, and it was a much needed visit to prepare myself for something utterly new.
F always asks me questions about my life in a way that no one else does, and gives me their own thoughtful responses when I ask questions back. We got to the topic of relationships in general - desires for new friends, what we’ve been up to with our partners, and our personal hobbies. Sitting in bright orange subway seats, graffitied concrete streaking by, I explained to them the way I feel romantic towards my friends quite easily, and sometimes it can be hard to navigate because not all people associate romance with friendship. Not everyone wants their friendships to feel romantic. If a friend doesn’t want to be romantic with me, that doesn't mean my love is stifled or we can’t be friends, it is just expressed and communicated through ways that are ultimately sustainable for the relationship. Boundaries and honesty around expression and capacity are important.
Admittedly, I haven't always given romantic affection in a way that makes clear my intentions for friendship. I feel my emotions deeply and want to express them fully. I’ve been learning how to communicate the way romance intersects with friendship for me. In many ways, they are inseparable. I want to make playlists, write love notes, and hold hands. I don’t reserve romantic love for one specific relationship, as what happens in monogamy. If you are my friend, you receive my love in its fullness.
I am polyamorous and the dominant language around love isn’t enough.
Polyamory frees me to pour out my romance: buying spontaneous gifts, writing heartfelt notes, flirtatiousness, cleaning someone's kitchen while I sing songs from a playlist I made for them. The lines are blurry because language attempts to nail down something that is fluid - the words won’t always be accurate. As someone who is trans, queer, and polyamorous, the words we use to describe love feel needlessly boxy. Much of our language is also grounded in monogamous cis-heterosexual ideology, which further isolates me from its use-case. This can be seen by looking at the dictionary definitions of the words platonic and romantic.
Platonic love is a kind of love characterized by lack of physical intimacy, namely not having sex. The definition I linked notes that it’s “especially between two people of different genders.” Here there is an underlying (heterosexual) assumption that platonic love is only between two different genders because only people with different genders are physically intimate. The Merriam-Webster dictionary adds that platonic is “characterized by an absence of romance or sex (a platonic relationship in this sense might simply be called a friendship).” I probably first encountered people using platonic to describe friendships in high school. Straight monogamous people stress when an opposite-sex friendship is platonic so that others don’t assume they are in a relationship. It is a way to signify that they are single, open to romance, or not cheating on their partner. Plenty of queer people use platonic as well, but it always seems to be a way to signify the individual’s relationship status. I haven’t seen two friends say at the very same time, “Oh, yeah, we’re platonic!” It’s more like: “Yeah, I’m really close with that person, but we’re platonic.”
The word platonic is a reference to the philosopher Plato, who believed that “love between people could be so strong as to transcend physical attachments.” This doesn’t suggest that platonic love means there is no physical affection - it’s an acknowledgement of the transcendent nature of love that ties us together in a realm outside of our physical bodies. That doesn’t mean we can’t express it physically. Of course, common cultural uses guide written definitions at the end of the day. To us, platonic is how we describe a certain type of friendship grounded in a monogamous mindset - why else would we casually signify how physically intimate we are with our friends? Even then, platonic can only communicate so much, because the point at which physical affection becomes romance varies from person to person.
The relational definition of romantic refers to “displaying or expressing love or affection,” as well as “conductive to or suitable for lovemaking.” Culturally, we assume romance comes with some level of sexual attraction, physical touch, or is a signifier for long-term partnership. Monogamy dictates that romance must be sexual because you would only express romance towards the one person you have sex with - for the rest of your life. This is where the asexual spectrum adds nuance. Some people are asexual and still experience romantic affection, and some asexual people are also aromantic, or don’t experience romantic feelings. By definition, neither romantic nor platonic love strictly require sex, and neither negate the possibility of physical affection. By cultural understanding, platonic is not sexual or romantic and romantic is associated with sex. When we look at the diversity of sexuality, and the limited nature of these definitions, it is clear that these words aren’t applicable to every possibility of love and its expressions.
A quick Google search of “ways to express romance” brings up the now well-known 5 Love Languages - Gifts, Acts of Service, Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation, and Quality Time. I have taken the “What is your love language?” quiz and I’m sure many of you have as well. This concept originated from The Five Love Languages, a book written by Baptist minister Gary Chapman in 1992. The idea itself is built around a monogamous, heterosexual ideal where a man and a woman are married forever, and is meant to be a self-help book for couples struggling to express/feel their love for each other. It’s telling that asking Google how to express romance only brings up articles referencing these love languages. They have become the gold-standard for how we talk about the ways we express and wish to receive love. The love languages are assumed to be romantic because they were always intended to be, but only in a heterosexual context.
Many monogamous couples are okay with affectionate acts happening outside of their relationship as long as a certain physical or emotional line isn’t crossed. I would argue that straight monogamous women express a lot of affection towards each other that could be described as romance - cuddling, holding hands, dressing up together, etc. Of course, how someone describes their affection is up to them. Just because something looks romantic to me doesn’t mean it’s romantic to someone else. There are plenty of non-western cultures where physical affection such as hand holding is normal amongst straight men. In America, straight cis men do not usually hold hands, and barely touch at all outside of a sports context. Although, I could write an entire essay around the sexual bonds straight, cis men have for each other. Something that is a normal expression of friendship in some places, is a hard boundary against romance in others. Cultural and relationship context matters.
The well of love in me is bottomless: to bring someone to deeper depths through sex is an act of intense vulnerability.
I don’t know about you, but I spend quality time with my friends and at least gift them something on their birthday. I give my friends words of affirmation when they call me with something they’re struggling with, and I go out of my way to help them out if they’re in need. I may not kiss all of my friends or hold all of their hands, but there are plenty of hugs and cuddles if that’s what we want to do together. The five love languages can be helpful for labeling the things I do to express love, but they aren’t helpful for drawing a romantic line in the sand. There are strangers, acquaintances, friends, and partners. The distinction between acquaintance and friend is the time and energy I put into expressing my love for them.
Some people need some level of physical touch in their romance for it to be romance at all, but that's not necessarily the case for me. I feel romantic towards people that I don't express through physical touch. I get particularly excited when I’m drawn to express physical affection with someone because that’s not always the case. Once I recognize that desire, a conversation opens around boundaries and consent. Everyone I know, including myself, has been taken advantage of and hurt physically. Many of us over and over again. We live in a touch-starved society where the dominant narrative is negative towards people seeking physical intimacy outside of straight, cis, monogamous love. Of course, it feels intense to touch someone in intentionally loving ways, especially when you have not always received touch in an intentionally loving way.
Ultimately, I fall on the demisexual spectrum - I prefer to have sex with people I already have a close emotional bond with. I still experience sexual attraction, but having sex and being attracted to someone are two very different things for me. In my experience, casual sex fits best in the most casual of environments, like a bathhouse where I go by a different name. In my day-to-day life, I find many people in this world sexually attractive, but that doesn’t mean I want to take any action towards having sex with them. I simply don’t trust strangers with my body unless the environment is structured around consent (like a bathhouse or play party). Even then, utmost care and communication is taken.
Everyone I love is so beautiful - I trust myself to reach out and hold them close. I trust them to tell me what is okay.
Language is a useful tool for us to understand and shape reality. In English, we are stuck with precious few words to describe love and the ways we express it. The words we have resonate with a monogamous lifestyle between cis and straight people. Something I’ve come to realize is I don’t need a label for every type of love or expression of affection I enact. If it works for all involved, and everyone is on the same page, then why is more language needed than that? The way we talk about our love tends to be oriented to those outside of the loving relationship at hand. I have two partners, a solid network of friends, and countless acquaintances. The only thing you’ve gained from that information is the time and energy I dedicate to those people. You don’t need to know who I have sex with, why, or how. Of course, I may share more details if that interests me or matters to our relationship. You may always ask questions, as long as I can always say no.
Moving away from the need for language allows me to center my embodied feelings of love. Sometimes they are intense and painful. I yearn, I salivate, and I ache. I am euphoric and overcome. I exchange sleep for it, I vibrate in a particular frequency. I lose my mind and I find everything I need. I am laid down gently and thrown as hard as I can take. I am lost in the music of it. My love is not pathology, it is human. Your love is just the same, no matter how it’s expressed and felt. My goal here is to break free from the obligatory need to name so that I may better feel. The more I feel, the more I can resonate with love, and the more love I can send to every person who crosses my path. I am feeling love now - I wrote this down here because I love you, too.
Afterwords
After I wrote the majority of this essay, Ana Valens posted an essay about the limitations of the word Queerplatonic that pairs perfectly with what I’m talking about here. I’d highly suggest giving it a read!
QStack, the Queer Directory of Substacks is officially out! Check it out and join the list:
Another up-and-coming library is SmallStack, centered on Subtacks with less than 1,000 subscribers. This will officially launch in September. Check out what they’re growing and get listed:
I didn’t end up explicitly going into astrology with this essay, but I was right about the Gemini/Sagittarius axis helping me navigate the thoughts and feelings I was having around the topic. I’ll probably end up writing more about that axis in relationship to the moon cycle. Stay tuned :)
Don’t forget to read my poetry that serves as an introduction to this piece!
I fully support you writing a deep dive into the sexual bonds of cis men
There is so much here that I resonate with. I am still dipping my toe in polyamory, breaking a lifetime of believing I should and could only love and have sex with one other person.