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Im remembering an experience I had at around the start of the year where I started feeling like I wanted to try being more close with one of my best friends, who I have known for a good few years at this point. They're alloromantic and I was only just starting to understand my feelings on aromanticism more concretely. we'd tried this before and it didn't even last a week, but we figured now that I have a better understanding of what I actually want maybe it would work a bit better.

About a month in I ended up losing basically all sparks of any feelings I originally had for them, and looking back on the situation I've concluded that it felt "too romantic" for me

I felt horrible that I couldn't have the same feelings for them that they supposedly had for me, and they felt horrible because they felt bad about anything that might be thought of as not loyal such as finding a different person at their work somewhat attractive, and about constantly worrying if they were pushing boundaries with being too romantic.

I've since learned that I really don't care about anything like loyalty or commitment, but those are for a different topic for another day. We cut off our "qpp" relationship and decided to just stay friends with benefits, but from my perspective nothing really ended, it just became more of what I wanted out of a relationship rather than something I was uncomfortable with. The only difference now is that we don't use labels to define said relationship, even though it very much still exists to me.

I'm not sure how I'd go about telling my friend any of this, or how they would take it, so i have decided for now i dont need to, itl just be a me thing. To them there was a very definite end to our relationship, but to me that didnt happen, to try and explain it better, were still qpps in my head, we just dont say it out loud, and we dont try to pretend like its something its not. We don't set romantic standards for a platonic relationship, we dont commit our lives to each other like were going to get married someday, we dont fantasize and have chats about "wish we could" or "love you more" games.

it feels surreal and somewhat existential thinking about it, because seemingly the only way for a platonic partnership to "end" is to cut off all contact with a person and thus end your friendship together entirely. I'm curious what other people's thoughts are on this.

Edited by Poppy
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Posted

I suggest you read THE OTHER SIGNIFICANT OTHERS by Raina Cohen.  She talks about the end of a qpp with a woman named M.

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Posted
3 hours ago, alto said:

I suggest you read THE OTHER SIGNIFICANT OTHERS by Raina Cohen.  She talks about the end of a qpp with a woman named M.

I'll look into it definitely 

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