frenemymine

@frenemymine

store-bought is fine

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frenemymine
@frenemymine

I think you only need one true friend to be happy. I have a lot of friends with whom I do hobby stuff, a couple of closer friends with whom I talk about personal things more often, and then exactly one single friend I’ve known for like 8 years where we talk every single day and know absolutely everything about each other including our most evil and cancellable thoughts and behaviors.

I would not care that much about losing most of my friends and would be disappointed but not terribly so with losing my closer ones, but if I lost that one friend the quality of my life and mental health would legitimately plummet. I think for most people they use a spouse to fill this role, but both of us can honestly take or leave IRL romance and sex so this works fine for me and is way less stressful. I do sometimes wonder if it would be emotional infidelity to maintain such a friendship if I ever did get into a serious relationship, because I have a hard time imagining that I would trust or care about somebody I dated more than that. I think if it came down to an ultimatum I would drop the romantic partner every time.

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localvoid
@localvoid

For what it's worth - and I say this as a mostly aromantic asexual - I don't think it would count as emotional infidelity if you had a romantic relationship and this friendship at the same time. I think it's okay to prioritize a friend as much as or even more than a romantic partner so long as the romantic partner in question understands and is okay with that. Romance isn't a description of the extent of devotion or intensity of feeling, it's a TYPE of feeling that, as per your mention of spouses, most alloromantic people use to form the kinds of bonds this post is about, but it doesn't have to be the most important type of feeling in the world.

If you had this friendship and a romantic partner at the same time, it would only be emotional infidelity if you had a romantic relationship with the friend in question, because then you're violating the (presumable) terms of the romantic relationship by having another partner at the same time. But if a romantic partner can't accept that your devotion to a platonic friend is stronger, they probably don't have healthy ideas about friendship especially as opposed to romance.

(Take this viewpoint with a grain of salt and the knowledge that I am incapable of perceiving romance and friendships the same way as an alloromantic allosexual with a straightforward relationship to romance.)

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frenemymine
@frenemymine

I appreciate hearing your thoughts on this, I like seeing how people with different perspectives approach it! I wonder how much of it is unconscious bias on my part from societal encouragement to prioritize romantic relationships over friendships, even though romantic relationships are not something I consider a priority in my own life

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sutempest
@sutempest

I don't like viewing this from the lens of friendship/romance/intimacy, personally. It's all graduated levels of trust. The more I trust you the more I'd be cool with us doing increasingly more important things. Now, important preface: pansexual, polyamorous, sex-positive, extremely non-binary, large web of friends. I'm in a very different position.

Of course what I define as important things varies a lot. Maybe I have exceedingly nerdy interests that would send me over the moon if you had them too. Maybe I need someone who can be there when shit gets hard. Maybe I just need someone to cuddle. No one person can be everything for me, and shared interests aren't a trust test. I value people as far as I trust them, it all depends on... how they are, what they do, if we like each other enough.

The only hopeless romantic part of me is I wish I could trust (and therefore love!) everyone. I just know I can't, so I prioritize. If you need just The One person in your life... I hope, wish, and strongly want you to find them.

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frenemymine
@frenemymine

Even though I wouldn’t want to be part of a polyamorous configuration myself, I think there is a lot of merit to your way of looking at this sort of thing as a unified spectrum of trust rather than completely separate categories of relationship. I would imagine that much of the way we silo the different types of relationship is due to the lingering legacy of sexual relationships as primarily economic and/or political arrangements. I tend to trust very little so perhaps it’s only natural that I prioritize a relationship with one person if I find one I can do that with!

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