Having a "partner"

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I think I do get those, but I still can't seem to tell the difference between a platonic relationship/platonic feelings vs. a non-limerent romantic relationship/romantic feelings.

Someone could be antisexual and have a platonic relationship. What is less certain is romantic relationships, and from what I've seen among other antisexuals, there has been no consensus on whether romance without sex can be worth it, or if it still has the problems that sexual relationships do. Another thread mentioned that there isn't such thing as inherently romantic behaviors, so under that definition, it's possible to have a romantic relationship without kissing or other stereotypical "romantic" behaviors.

Another gray area is what if someone is in a sexual relationship, but wants out of it? Are they antisexual for knowing that they never want sex again, and know they want out of it, or do they have to break free from that sexual relationship first?

Pure Life wrote:
I myself even chose to be in hellfire than having a partner so it's says it all. That I really don't want to have any partner. But I do believe in living with a friend or friends.

To me a partner is someone whom you go through life with, so sex is not necessarily part of it (though certainly when people say “my partner” in our society they mean “this person whom I have sex with and also live with”). I find the term “partner” useful to identify someone whom you intend to spend the rest of your life with: a partner is different from a friend whom you happen to live with, and whom you might be largely out of contact with in six months, if your paths diverge. When someone’s your friend but not your partner, if you’re going to Mordor, their response is: “Well, shoot. Do you have to? Anything I can do to help?” and if they’re your partner, their response is: “Well, shoot. Guess I better start packing.”
 
Which is not to say anything against family relationships and friendships where the people aren’t going through life together, which can be entirely loving and nurturing and what the people involved in the relationships need. However, a partnership is also its own thing, so I like having the term.

Pure Life wrote:But as for a "partner" it's like if you own someone and he/she owns you.

I remember something like this being remarked on in Cold Tom by Sally Prue, that it was peculiar how people claimed other people: “my father,” “my wife,” “my friend.” This doesn’t bother me because it seems just a way of naming and acknowledging the relationship between the people. I believe that not feeling they have a legitimate claim to someone is a major pressure for people to have sex: that “mere” friendship is not a “real” relationship, and if you want the person to prioritize your relationship and be partners in life, you have to have sex with them, otherwise they’ll have sex with someone else and, obviously, live with and love that person and prioritize them over you.

Pure Life wrote:I read this on a website "A squish is an aromantic crush (although not exclusive to aromantics), a desire for a platonic relationship with a person. Squishes are the platonic and aromantic equivalent to the romantic crush. A squish is a platonic attraction."

 Me no likey. To me this is, not that this term exists to my knowledge, limerent-normative, with the assumption that a crush is a desirable thing to experience, and a necessary beginning to developing a relationship with someone. Why does liking what you’ve seen of someone so far and wanting to get to know them better have to be turned into a thing people “get”? People “get” crushes because their brain is being hijacked; that’s not how friendships work.

Admin wrote:
Another gray area is what if someone is in a sexual relationship, but wants out of it? Are they antisexual for knowing that they never want sex again, and know they want out of it, or do they have to break free from that sexual relationship first?

Since antisexualism is an ideology and not a behavior, I suppose someone could be antisexual and hypothetically do anything they please. It would be up to their conscience, to determine what behaviors were in line with their values.

Panache

Pure Life
I myself even chose to be in hellfire than having a partner so it's says it all. That I really don't want to have any partner. But I do believe in living with a friend or friends.

To me a partner is someone whom you go through life with, so sex is not necessarily part of it (though certainly when people say “my partner” in our society they mean “this person whom I have sex with and also live with”). I find the term “partner” useful to identify someone whom you intend to spend the rest of your life with: a partner is different from a friend whom you happen to live with, and whom you might be largely out of contact with in six months, if your paths diverge. When someone’s your friend but not your partner, if you’re going to Mordor, their response is: “Well, shoot. Do you have to? Anything I can do to help?” and if they’re your partner, their response is: “Well, shoot. Guess I better start packing.”
 

That makes sense. It bothers me that society as a whole has such a narrow idea of what being "partners" are, that when someone says that they have a partner or relationship, that others will make assumptions about it. Do you think the difference between a friendship and partnership is the level of commitment, or involvement in the other person's life?

What makes that trickier is that some people say that they have closely committed friendships, which may fit closely with the description for partnership that you've given, and there also exist "whirlwind romances", short-lived intense romances without commitment.

Which is not to say anything against family relationships and friendships where the people aren’t going through life together, which can be entirely loving and nurturing and what the people involved in the relationships need. However, a partnership is also its own thing, so I like having the term.

Agreed. It's too bad that family relationships and friendships that don't have a lot of involvement with someone's life are glossed over as shallow.

Pure LifeBut as for a "partner" it's like if you own someone and he/she owns you.

I remember something like this being remarked on in Cold Tom by Sally Prue, that it was peculiar how people claimed other people: “my father,” “my wife,” “my friend.” This doesn’t bother me because it seems just a way of naming and acknowledging the relationship between the people.

I feel like when someone is referring to their boyfriend/husband or girlfriend/wife, that it seems possessive. Maybe it has to do with the most glamorized form of relationship being possessive, and maybe also I think about it that way, because the relationship I've been in was very unequal, and I did feel like I was the other person's possession. I hated when others saw us as a couple, because I knew they'd be making assumptions.

I believe that not feeling they have a legitimate claim to someone is a major pressure for people to have sex: that “mere” friendship is not a “real” relationship, and if you want the person to prioritize your relationship and be partners in life, you have to have sex with them, otherwise they’ll have sex with someone else and, obviously, live with and love that person and prioritize them over you.

When you word it like that, it makes it clear that sex itself can be possessive in the relationship, not just any feelings of limerence or jealousy!

It's disturbing that some people use that as leverage over their partner to make them have sex, or they aren't coercive themselves, that idea is pervasive enough that someone feels like they have to have sex with their partner, or their partner will inevitably cheat on them with someone else who will. It really is insulting to both people. Although the partner who wants sex has social leverage due to that norm, that same norm is saying that people intrinsically care more about seeking sexual gratification than they care about other people!

Pure LifeI read this on a website "A squish is an aromantic crush (although not exclusive to aromantics), a desire for a platonic relationship with a person. Squishes are the platonic and aromantic equivalent to the romantic crush. A squish is a platonic attraction."

 Me no likey. To me this is, not that this term exists to my knowledge, limerent-normative, with the assumption that a crush is a desirable thing to experience, and a necessary beginning to developing a relationship with someone. Why does liking what you’ve seen of someone so far and wanting to get to know them better have to be turned into a thing people “get”? People “get” crushes because their brain is being hijacked; that’s not how friendships work.

I see what you mean, and think that squishes and crushes may compel someone to start a platonic or romantic relationship, but ultimately, that relationship must be actively maintained by both or all parties, so once the feelings of a squish or crush fade away, the relationship will last. A meaningful relationship is greater, and more signficant than whatever feelings may have sparked it in the beginning.

Admin
Another gray area is what if someone is in a sexual relationship, but wants out of it? Are they antisexual for knowing that they never want sex again, and know they want out of it, or do they have to break free from that sexual relationship first?

Since antisexualism is an ideology and not a behavior, I suppose someone could be antisexual and hypothetically do anything they please. It would be up to their conscience, to determine what behaviors were in line with their values.

I've wondered if some people have identified as antisexual because they knew that they never wanted sex, or if they did after choosing to never have it again once they realized that option exists. For example, if someone knows that they never want sex, and to never have it would be following their conscience, but social conformity, isolation, or lack of affirmation of their deals are obstacles to following their conscience. Those people are at risk of caving into sex which they know they don't want, if they haven't already.

Admin wrote:Do you think the difference between a friendship and partnership is the level of commitment, or involvement in the other person's life?

That’s an interesting question. I guess ultimately the distinction is subjective and not absolute, and it’s up to the people involved in a relationship to name it the way they want. That’s probably generally the case, though. However, I can imagine two people could be separated by war for 10 years and still feel like and be partners in life throughout that whole time, even if they didn’t even know whether the other person was still alive – and then go right on back to living together and sharing their lives together when they were no longer separated. I could also imagine someone could go off to a foreign country to make more money and send almost every cent back to their family, and that would be an extraordinary demonstration of commitment, but probably not partners in life.
 
I remembered this passage from some old book I’d been glancing through at some point, and (*drumroll*) after a certain amount of searching, I found it again! This is from the turn-of-the-century book What a Young Woman Ought to Know by Mary Wood-Allen (page 178): “I have a friend from whom I may not hear once a year, yet I know just where she stands in her relation to me, and I would have no fear of finding her cold or unresponsive should I at any time call on her for a friendly service. I may never see her, or even hear from her again in life, and we may live long years yet on the earth, but I would as soon think of doubting the return of to-morrow's sun as to doubt her love. There is no need of words, of caresses, even of deeds. We are both busy women. Our daily cares absorb us, yet we know that we are friends, and in the great hereafter we hope to find a place where we may pause and look into each other's faces and enjoy an interchange of thought. But now other interests than self-seeking claim us. We work on, cheered by the thought that time cannot alienate us, for true love is eternal.” So perhaps people can consider a relationship to be entirely committed and a partnership, and yet have no contact with each other whatsoever?(!)

To me relationships and sex are so intertwined that it would be near impossible for that to work.

Nonamory61 wrote:To me relationships and sex are so intertwined that it would be near impossible for that to work.

I assume by relationship we're talking about partnered relationships here, and not any relationship.

If you're speaking in general, yes, I know exactly what you mean. I used to think about it the same way. For example, I'd ship characters whom I wanted to be in a partnered relationship as being in a sexual relationship, because, obviously sex = love and commitment, and people can't be in a committed relationship without having sex. In the process of becoming antisexual I realized I actually shipped characters because I wanted them to be partners in life and love and protect each other and all that good stuff, and I actually couldn't care less whether they had sex or not.

Now that I'm antisexual and continent, I generally anti-ship (if I may?) even canon relationships I support. "Ew, no, don't kiss! WHY? You were so much stronger as friends! Great, now the plot's going to be ruined." Most canon relationships I emphatically don't support anyway (Why, crazy authors, why?!), so then it's just heaps of no. Looking for media with strong family relationships and friendships has definitely become an important factor in my reading choices, and it's a gem when I can find a partnered relationship that's not also limerent-sexual.

If you were speaking about you personally, what if the person wasn't sexually attracted to you? - if you're a woman, a straight woman or a gay man, for instance - or what if they were a family member? Would you not want to have a partnered relationship unless there was sexual attraction, or...something else? (I hope this doesn't come across as interrogatory; I'm trying to understand).

"Looking for media with strong family relationships and friendships has definitely become an important factor in my reading choices, and it's a gem when I can find a partnered relationship that's not also limerent-sexual."

Doing that is quite a trial.  It's one of the reasons I don't watch television. 

Writing fiction happens to be a favorite hobby of mine, and I too am irked that platonic relationships are difficult to find in media.  So, I write my own platonic stories.  Here's one of them that is loosely based off a Greek myth:  http://www.fanstory.com/displaystory.jsp?hd=1&id=588897

Panache wrote:

Nonamory61 wrote:To me relationships and sex are so intertwined that it would be near impossible for that to work.

I assume by relationship we're talking about partnered relationships here, and not any relationship.

If you're speaking in general, yes, I know exactly what you mean. I used to think about it the same way. For example, I'd ship characters whom I wanted to be in a partnered relationship as being in a sexual relationship, because, obviously sex = love and commitment, and people can't be in a committed relationship without having sex. In the process of becoming antisexual I realized I actually shipped characters because I wanted them to be partners in life and love and protect each other and all that good stuff, and I actually couldn't care less whether they had sex or not.

I felt similarly about pairing or shipping characters together, and used to be involved in some communities where that was a big part of it. I shipped characters that I thought would be a good couple together, but I never saw anything sexual to it. I wasn't thinking about sexual relationships at all, and I felt repulsed when others in the community talked about how they shipped characters sexually. To me, it didn't make sense for sex and love to go together.

Now that I'm antisexual and continent, I generally anti-ship (if I may?) even canon relationships I support. "Ew, no, don't kiss! WHY? You were so much stronger as friends! Great, now the plot's going to be ruined." Most canon relationships I emphatically don't support anyway (Why, crazy authors, why?!), so then it's just heaps of no. Looking for media with strong family relationships and friendships has definitely become an important factor in my reading choices, and it's a gem when I can find a partnered relationship that's not also limerent-sexual.

I can relate to that too. It seems like a downgrade from when they were friends. In a lot of cases, one or both characters also get derailed for the purpose of pairing them together, or there's too much emphasis on it that it gets in the way of the plot. I especially dislike "shallow love interest" characters, or when an established character gets derailed into being one; those that have no characterization of their own, and were obviously created just to be the love interest for another character.

SCH0206 wrote:"Looking for media with strong family relationships and friendships has definitely become an important factor in my reading choices, and it's a gem when I can find a partnered relationship that's not also limerent-sexual."

Doing that is quite a trial.  It's one of the reasons I don't watch television. 

Writing fiction happens to be a favorite hobby of mine, and I too am irked that platonic relationships are difficult to find in media.  So, I write my own platonic stories.  Here's one of them that is loosely based off a Greek myth:  http://www.fanstory.com/displaystory.jsp?hd=1&id=588897

That's awesome that you write your own stories! I'll need to read through them.