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alterous attraction vs queerplatonic


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One definition I found for queer platonic:

Queerplatonic, Quasiplatonic, or Quirkyplatonic is described a relationship which is more intense and intimate than is considered common or normal for a "friendship", but doesn't fit the traditional sexual-romantic couple model. It is characterized by a strong bond, love, and emotional commitment, yet is not perceived by those involved as "romantic". The relationship may or may not have some elements or degree of sexuality/eroticism at various times, or none - it doesn't matter, because sexuality/sexual exclusivity is not what the relationship is organized around. It's defined by the intensity and significance of the emotional connection. It’s a popular term within the aromantic community, but not all aromantics feel queerplatonic attraction, and not everyone who feels queerplatonic attraction is aromantic. Similar to alterous attraction but not quite the same.

Definition for alterous attraction:

That "gray zone"between friendship and romance. You feel a powerful bond with someone, but that doesn't mean you see them as a romantic partner.

So is there a difference here, or again, did this just happen upon the "two words, same meaning, beyond nit picky" type things?

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I really don't get what all those blogs have with "queerplatonic attraction". "Queerplatonic" used to define a type of relationship that looks based on attraction from the outside (because people can't help but think that if you love each other so much, it necessarily means attraction), but that's actually very deep friendship, emotionally speaking. Why, if a bond is so deep, it's necessarily more than friendship ? Is friendship supposed to be that shallow, so shallow that it can't be deep and committed ?

"Alterous" seems different. Like some sort of attraction mixed with a tiny bit of repulsion to traditional romance. Like, a crush that doesn't want to be expressed like one.

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Yeah I think queerplatonic is just an unusual frienship that can have some romantic and/or sexual elements but the people in it just consider each other as just friends.

But with the other one it's like they can have some romantic and/or sexual elements and they feel like they are in an "almost relationship" instead of just a special frienship.

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Dodecahedron314

Romance-repulsed aro who's in an actual QPR here.

I really don't get what all those blogs have with "queerplatonic attraction". "Queerplatonic" used to define a type of relationship that looks based on attraction from the outside (because people can't help but think that if you love each other so much, it necessarily means attraction), but that's actually very deep friendship, emotionally speaking. Why, if a bond is so deep, it's necessarily more than friendship ? Is friendship supposed to be that shallow, so shallow that it can't be deep and committed ?

"Alterous" seems different. Like some sort of attraction mixed with a tiny bit of repulsion to traditional romance. Like, a crush that doesn't want to be expressed like one.

No, no one is saying that friendship is "shallow"--much of society considers it as such thanks to amatonormativity and allonormativity saying that the only meaningful relationship it's possible to have is a traditional monogamous romantic-sexual one, but this is most definitely not the reasoning behind the distinction between a QPR and a friendship. I love and care for my friends deeply, make no mistake about it. I wouldn't even necessarily call it a difference in goals between said relationships, because I would be just as eager to live with my friends for the rest of my life as with my QPP. However, there's a subtle difference in what I feel for my QPP versus what I feel for my friends--not just a higher degree of commitment, but sort of a different quality to the emotion, a bit more...I'm not quite sure how to describe it. Warm? Enveloping? Light? None of these adjectives actually make any sense, but it's sort of a thing where when I'm with my QPP, it just has a different and more pronounced effect on me than when I'm with my friends. It's definitely in no way romantic (trust me on this, if it smacked even the least bit of romance I would be out the door and across the county immediately because I'm *that* romance-repulsed), but I do consider it to be on a separate level from normal friendship--perhaps not above, but adjacent. Not superior, just different.

I can't really speak for alterous attraction because I don't identify with the term myself, so I'll leave that part of the response to someone who's more qualified in that area than I am.

Yeah I think queerplatonic is just an unusual frienship that can have some romantic and/or sexual elements but the people in it just consider each other as just friends.
But with the other one it's like they can have some romantic and/or sexual elements and they feel like they are in an "almost relationship" instead of just a special frienship.

Just as a side note, QPRs generally don't include sexual elements, because that would contradict the definition of the relationship as strictly platonic--however, quasiplatonic relationships (QSPRs) can. Also, the phrase "just friends" is kind of problematic, because it does sort of have the connotation that Rising Sun was talking about with implicitly devaluing friendship, which I will emphasize again is not what's going on here.

Anyway, whether the people in the QPR consider it closer to an extremely close friendship or a "relationship-relationship" is very much dependent on the people, and can evolve over time. The entire point of the concept of QPRs is to offer a term for those whose relationships aren't described by the traditional romantic/sexual model to describe their relationships on their own terms, and that's why the definition seems so nebulous and varies a lot depending on which source you're looking at. There are certain commonly shared characteristics between one QPR and the next that are usually the ones that get adopted into the definition (e.g. strictly platonic, not the same as "best friends", often confused for a romantic/sexual relationship by others, etc.), but ultimately, a QPR is what the people in it make it.

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quote name="Dodecahedron314" post="1061929473" timestamp="1476141739"]

Yeah I think queerplatonic is just an unusual frienship that can have some romantic and/or sexual elements but the people in it just consider each other as just friends.

But with the other one it's like they can have some romantic and/or sexual elements and they feel like they are in an "almost relationship" instead of just a special frienship.

Just as a side note, QPRs generally don't include sexual elements, because that would contradict the definition of the relationship as strictly platonic--however, quasiplatonic relationships (QSPRs) can. Also, the phrase "just friends" is kind of problematic, because it does sort of have the connotation that Rising Sun was talking about with implicitly devaluing friendship, which I will emphasize again is not what's going on here.

Anyway, whether the people in the QPR consider it closer to an extremely close friendship or a "relationship-relationship" is very much dependent on the people, and can evolve over time. The entire point of the concept of QPRs is to offer a term for those whose relationships aren't described by the traditional romantic/sexual model to describe their relationships on their own terms, and that's why the definition seems so nebulous and varies a lot depending on which source you're looking at. There are certain commonly shared characteristics between one QPR and the next that are usually the ones that get adopted into the definition (e.g. strictly platonic, not the same as "best friends", often confused for a romantic/sexual relationship by others, etc.), but ultimately, a QPR is what the people in it make it.

I agree with that last thing, but yeah just to be clear when I said "just friends" I didn't mean to imply that friendship was less valuable than romance or anything, for me personally I'd think friendship was much better and desirable. I just meant that it would be different to consider each other "only friends" as opposed to "friends who are also romantic partners", not that friendship isn't as good or close or significant as romance just that in a queerplatonic relationship they would be simply friends without the romance. Hope that makes sense.

And about the first thing.. I get that for most people a QPR normally wouldn't include sexual elements, but for me at least I see the "queer" in it as meaning that really anything goes, it's just that the people involved don't consider that "anything" as being part of a typical "relationship". I guess I think of the word platonic as referencing more the absence of romantic attraction and intimate erotic attraction to another person, so for me even sex could be "platonic" in this sense like two friends who don't love each other romantically and don't find each other attractive having sex just because sex is fun or whatever.. But since platonic does technically mean not sexual I realize I have an unusual connotation for it, so sorry about that.

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Other than QPRs factually not being able to include sexual things by definition/use of the word platonic, the term alterous was created because someone insisted that their feelings were different from QP, when i think they just didn't properly comprehend what QP meant.

And there actually is no such thing as "more than friends" because they are still friends; that's where the terms girlfriend and boyfriend came from.

But with the other one it's like they can have some romantic and/or sexual elements and they feel like they are in an "almost relationship" instead of just a special frienship.

That's not the word's definition.

According to its vague creator given definition, alterous can mean 5 things; all of which already have titles. Here’s a link to that definition.

Creator’s definition slightly reworded for better clarity:

Alterous is desiring emotional closeness with someone specific; nothing more, but the person feeling so is not comfortable with calling the feeling romantic or platonic for whatever reason.

(So it's not necessarily being between the two; it may be between the two, or they may feel romantically/ platonically but not want to use those words, or they may feel something they associate with romance because they don't know about the following words or other attractions. And the creator never mentions that any other attractions can be felt under it. The other definitions you see of alterous are not the creator's definition and exist through the grapevine effect.)

1) a desire to further know/befriend someone; this desired bond can vary from friends, to close friends, to best friends, and can include nervousness

(a squish)

2) desiring or having closeness/importance stronger than the best friend norm

(a type of QPR or queerplatonic squish aka queerplatonic crush)

3) not being comfortable with calling things romantic or platonic

(a relationship anarchist)


4) having romantic attraction, but either the desires for the relationship are close to platonic/sparsely romantic, the feelings aren't intense, or involve no sensual desires

(hyporomantic, gray-romantic, or asensual alloromantic)

5) someone who can't tell the difference between romantic attraction and platonic attraction; which can possibly be fixed by better explanations

(quoiromantic aka wtfromantic)

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Okay but then if something includes sexual elements, but can't be queerplatonic, but the people involved don't consider it romantic, what would it be? A friendship with some romantic and sexual elements? I thought that sounded like too much so I just considered it QP because it was close enough for me at least.

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To normal people it would just be a relationship; even if they're informed that neither feel romantically.

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Well yeah, but what if to the people involved it's just not? What would you say it is then? Friends with emotional closeness that isn't romance and sexual benefits that don't include intimate sexual attraction to the person per se? That sounds so complicated and like they should be able to just use QPR if they felt like that was what it was rather than a relationship.

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That sounds so complicated and like they should be able to just use QPR if they felt like that was what it was rather than a relationship.

No, because that slurs what QPRs are and factually goes against the very words that make up the term.

Quasiplatonic also does not suit this.

Quasi literally means "as if", but it's also used as:

resembling/seeming but not actually being

virtually/nearly/almost

partially/to a degree but not completely

(which all basically amount to the same thing)

Which boils down the term to a normal rendition of FWB. The correct term in this case would actually be Quasiromantic.

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Romance-repulsed aro who's in an actual QPR here.

I really don't get what all those blogs have with "queerplatonic attraction". "Queerplatonic" used to define a type of relationship that looks based on attraction from the outside (because people can't help but think that if you love each other so much, it necessarily means attraction), but that's actually very deep friendship, emotionally speaking. Why, if a bond is so deep, it's necessarily more than friendship ? Is friendship supposed to be that shallow, so shallow that it can't be deep and committed ?

"Alterous" seems different. Like some sort of attraction mixed with a tiny bit of repulsion to traditional romance. Like, a crush that doesn't want to be expressed like one.

No, no one is saying that friendship is "shallow"--much of society considers it as such thanks to amatonormativity and allonormativity saying that the only meaningful relationship it's possible to have is a traditional monogamous romantic-sexual one, but this is most definitely not the reasoning behind the distinction between a QPR and a friendship. I love and care for my friends deeply, make no mistake about it. I wouldn't even necessarily call it a difference in goals between said relationships, because I would be just as eager to live with my friends for the rest of my life as with my QPP. However, there's a subtle difference in what I feel for my QPP versus what I feel for my friends--not just a higher degree of commitment, but sort of a different quality to the emotion, a bit more...I'm not quite sure how to describe it. Warm? Enveloping? Light? None of these adjectives actually make any sense, but it's sort of a thing where when I'm with my QPP, it just has a different and more pronounced effect on me than when I'm with my friends. It's definitely in no way romantic (trust me on this, if it smacked even the least bit of romance I would be out the door and across the county immediately because I'm *that* romance-repulsed), but I do consider it to be on a separate level from normal friendship--perhaps not above, but adjacent. Not superior, just different.

I can't really speak for alterous attraction because I don't identify with the term myself, so I'll leave that part of the response to someone who's more qualified in that area than I am.

Yeah I think queerplatonic is just an unusual frienship that can have some romantic and/or sexual elements but the people in it just consider each other as just friends.

But with the other one it's like they can have some romantic and/or sexual elements and they feel like they are in an "almost relationship" instead of just a special frienship.

Just as a side note, QPRs generally don't include sexual elements, because that would contradict the definition of the relationship as strictly platonic--however, quasiplatonic relationships (QSPRs) can. Also, the phrase "just friends" is kind of problematic, because it does sort of have the connotation that Rising Sun was talking about with implicitly devaluing friendship, which I will emphasize again is not what's going on here.

Anyway, whether the people in the QPR consider it closer to an extremely close friendship or a "relationship-relationship" is very much dependent on the people, and can evolve over time. The entire point of the concept of QPRs is to offer a term for those whose relationships aren't described by the traditional romantic/sexual model to describe their relationships on their own terms, and that's why the definition seems so nebulous and varies a lot depending on which source you're looking at. There are certain commonly shared characteristics between one QPR and the next that are usually the ones that get adopted into the definition (e.g. strictly platonic, not the same as "best friends", often confused for a romantic/sexual relationship by others, etc.), but ultimately, a QPR is what the people in it make it.

Sorry, I should have specified that yes, indeed, it's society that tries to devaluate friendship. What I tried to explain in my first post, as a person who immensely values QPRs myself because I've always had a deep desire for platonic love in my life (which I simply called fusional friendship when I was a teen, and I was quite fond of the expression), was that I'm extremely disturbed by the way a few bloggers (and even a few members of AVEN) try to divert the meaning of queerplatonic, the meaning of deep love and affection to call it "attraction". They'd call even the love of a parent for their child or the love of a person for their pets "attraction", and in the same way give platonic relationships a dimension that they actually don't have.

It's really one of my worst pet peeves because it's actually convincing many people that QPRs actually don't exist and are just romantic relationships in denial. It's destructive to the aromantic community and I wish that those people would keep using words such as "alterous" if they want, but they should stop spreading misinformation about what QPRs truly are. And really, they should keep QP and alterous separated, as two different things, emotionally speaking.

I know that this post might sound a bit elitist maybe, but I've seen the reality of platonic love denied so many times, that when it happens even inside the community it's hard to not feel threatened by a handful of Tumblr bloggers who can involuntarily convince others that platonic love is just BS, by "romanticizing" it. At this point, it's hard to not feel a bit paranoid, if you see what I mean :(

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That sounds so complicated and like they should be able to just use QPR if they felt like that was what it was rather than a relationship.

No, because that slurs what QPRs are and factually goes against the very words that make up the term.

Quasiplatonic also does not suit this.

Quasi literally means "as if", but it's also used as:

resembling/seeming but not actually being

virtually/nearly/almost

partially/to a degree but not completely

(which all basically amount to the same thing)

Which boils down the term to a normal rendition of FWB. The correct term in this case would actually be Quasiromantic.

But that implies that there's an almost romance? What if there isn't and they don't want that? (Sorry if I'm being frustrating btw I don't mean to annoy you) I'm just trying to understand this because it's kinda confusing but interesting.

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Yah, because it IS almost if not is romance. Two asexuals having sex to conceive a child doesn't mean they're not at that time in a sexual relationship. Two people with crushes on eachother but agree to not date aren't in a romantic relationship if they remain friends. Feelings don't make most relationship types.

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I...don't understand what you mean tbh..

How can it be a romance if they don't have romantic feelings for each other and don't feel like they're in a romantic relationship?

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Because no one ever had the concept that someone could be in a romantic relationship without romantic attraction. The same goes for gay people willingly dating the opposite sex and straight people willingly dating the same gender (out of unsatisfaction from people of their orientation not because they have a cross-orientation). But it's an exposed thing now. Same goes for asexuals; people used to think that if you had sex or enjoyed it you also felt sexually, but alot of aces sexually compromise and alot of sexual people don't feel sexual attraction and desire sex for other reasons. And no one talks about feelings to that degree so who knows how many people misinterpret their other attractions (e.g. sensual/sexual attraction with a squish) as romantic attraction. I wouldn't be surprised that when things finally get more known; with asexual and aromantic awareness increasing among other related things), that alot of people will realize they never "felt romantically". It's a relationship to many ppl because they're repeatedly doing non-platonic things with the same person and may even intend for the relationship to be permanent.

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lol. between the two quoted descriptions, for QP attraction and Alterous attration, and the descriptions of romantic attraction. I'm none of these things! what am I? I give up.

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But why should it be a relationship if they say it isn't, and don't want it to be?

It just sounds like you'd be telling them what they have and disregarding how they feel about it.

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Alot would just call it denial or relationship erasure or a relationship anarchist, but they shouldn't say it's something it clearly isn't e.g. platonic when it factually isn't.

Some ignorant people insist they're still ace when they yearn for and pursue sex but don't feel anyone's sexually alluring, but that doesn't mean they're right when they're just factually a normal sexual person consisting of about half the population. Because an asexual sees that most people in relationships also desire sex with their partner, does it mean it's valid for them to say they're not in a sexual relationship despite sexually compromising? No.

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So what, you're saying it doesn't matter if they have no romantic feelings for each other and no desire to label what they have as a relationship and don't see that way..? You just think they're lying to themselves?

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Oh goodness... I didn't mean to walk in on this intense debate.

I just wanted to say that I've never heard of the term "alterous attraction" before, and I really identify with it. I rarely feel some sort of attraction where I want to be with a person in a way that is not platonic. But every once in a while there is a person who gives me butterflies in my stomach and makes me blush. Many of the descriptions I have seen of "gray aromantic" say that these people experience romantic attraction more rarely than a romantic person. I never completely identified with this, because I not only experience romantic attraction infrequently, but also in a much lesser intensity. It is between romantic and platonic. Thanks for bringing this term to my attention.

On the topic of the difference between QP attraction and alterous attraction, alterous attraction seems to have a romantic element to it, where as QP attraction is purely platonic. I would say that I am queer platonically attracted to my best friend. I feel a really deep connection to her and would love to be roommates with her for my whole life. This is stronger than I feel about my other friends. Yet my feelings for her are purely platonic.

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If you rarely get crushes that's not alterous. And i gave the official definition of the term in my first post here. As i say there, no, Alterous does not mean it has a romantic element. Honestly, people keep stretching this term further and further each time i see it used.

Experiencing romantic attraction infrequently doesn't mean someone's non-romantic; they are romantic, just an abnormal one. Your crushes being less intense than the norm also doesn't make them not crushes; everyone is different and has their own preferences in a relationship too. Desiring a low key romantic relationship still doesn't cancel out your romanticism. Also, maybe Aroflux is more accurate if you experience crushes rarely. If it's just infrequent then the rate may be a little below the norm but close enough to still be so, which would put you closer to being a normal romantic i.e. Gray-romantic than an aromantic/Gray-aromantic.

List of attractions:

There are 6 types of attraction. They're all typically felt with romantic attraction (and why there can be confusion between attractions) but they aren't needed to make it valid. They can all be felt separately, without romantic attraction, and in different combinations. The desire to act in a certain way can also be separate from the attraction (e.g. sexual attraction with no sexual desire/desire to act on it, or romantic desire with no romantic attraction), but constantly having either of those means the person is sexual/romantic/gray.

· Sexual attraction - the impulse to have sex with a specific person; to give/receive genital involving things from them. Synonyms are sexually alluring, sexually appealing, sexually enticing, sexually tempting, etc.

· Romantic attraction - an emotion; so it doesn't translate well into words, but it can be inadequately put as soft/warm/fuzzy feelings with some degree of fixation (at least in comparison to one's normality with others). This is the base requirement, but some people also have a physical reaction to the feeling and others don’t (i.e. butterflies in their stomach, heart rate increase, blushing, etc. [though those can also be symptoms of platonic nervousness]). Others may react mentally with a dreamy mindset, anxious euphoria, infatuation, romantic fantasies, etc.

· Aesthetic attraction - the pull to look at someone because of their beauty and/or mannerisms, which is different from just recognizing good looks/what’s aesthetically pleasing.

· Emotional attraction - the fixation on someone because of their emotions (optimism, stoicness, etc.), and by extent personality. I would compare it to having a favorite character or admirance.

· Sensual attraction - the impulse to have non-genital physical contact with someone specific.

· Platonic attraction - (aka a friend crush or squish; a play on the romantic word crush) the impulse to further know or befriend someone specific. The desired bond can vary from being friends, to close friends, to best friends. It may include nervousness or admirance, and once the desired bond is reached the squish goes away.

· And it's possible to find someone charming without romantic attraction. (look up charming's definition/synonyms for further clarification)

· It’s also possible to feel queerplatonically about someone. A queerplatonic relationship (or one sided, a 'queerplatonic squish' aka 'queerplatonic crush') is a platonic relationship that has (or is desired to have) the characteristic(s) associated with a romantic relationship (excluding non-platonic things like sex and making out, although chaste kissing can be platonic depending on how it’s done). This kind of relationship can include an importance/closeness stronger than the best friend norm and/or displaying platonic physical contact above the norm. Some describe it as "super best friends." It’s also known as romantic/passionate friendship, life partner, Boston Marriage, and bromance/womance (latter aka shemance, sismance, and less popular due to clash with other words; hermance). They may or may not have monogamy, live together, sleep in the same room, have kids, or be mistaken for a couple. Romantics and Aromantics can have QPRs. An example would be Turk and JD from Scrubs.

(Some include sex and non-platonic physical actions like foreplay under this term; i.e. say that it only means absence in romantic feelings, but those things are factually not platonic by definition so it's a misunderstanding. Every dictionary defines platonic as non-sexual, and a minority include non-romantic. Quasiplatonic; created for those who want to avoid the use of queer, is also inaccurate because the prefix means the reverse. Aliplatonic has been a suggested alternative. If someone has a relationship that displays queerplatonically but one has romantic feelings and the other doesn't, then it's up to them on whether they call their relationship QP or romantic.)

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Okay Star Bit, I just read about Relationship Anarchy and a lot of it does sound like how I see things when it comes to all types of possible relationships..

So anyway, if one were to have a sexual, though without sexual attraction, and nonromantic relationship, though with some romantic elements but not romantic attraction, with someone but they don't consider themselves to be in a relationship, then they would just be odd friends who happen to have sex? But it wouldn't be queerplatonic because for it to be queerplatonic it would have to be nonsexual as well? That makes sense I guess..

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If you rarely get crushes that's not alterous. And i gave the official definition of the term in my first post here. As i say there, no, Alterous does not mean it has a romantic element. Honestly, people keep stretching this term further and further each time i see it used.

Experiencing romantic attraction infrequently doesn't mean someone's non-romantic; they are romantic, just an abnormal one. Your crushes being less intense than the norm also doesn't make them not crushes; everyone is different and has their own preferences in a relationship too. Desiring a low key romantic relationship still doesn't cancel out your romanticism. Also, maybe Aroflux is more accurate if you experience crushes rarely. If it's just infrequent then the rate may be a little below the norm but close enough to still be so, which would put you closer to being a normal romantic than an aromantic.

List of attractions:

There are 6 types of attraction. They're all typically felt with romantic attraction (and why there can be confusion between attractions) but they aren't needed to make it valid. They can all be felt separately, without romantic attraction, and in different combinations. The desire to act in a certain way can also be separate from the attraction (e.g. sexual attraction with no sexual desire/desire to act on it, or romantic desire with no romantic attraction), but constantly having either of those means the person is sexual/romantic/gray.

· Sexual attraction - the impulse to have sex with a specific person; to give/receive genital involving things from them. Synonyms are sexually alluring, sexually appealing, sexually enticing, sexually tempting, etc.

· Romantic attraction - an emotion; so it doesn't translate well into words, but it can be inadequately put as soft/warm/fuzzy feelings with some degree of fixation (at least in comparison to one's normality with others). This is the base requirement, but some people also have a physical reaction to the feeling and others don’t (i.e. butterflies in their stomach, heart rate increase, blushing, etc. [though those can also be symptoms of platonic nervousness]). Others may react mentally with a dreamy mindset, anxious euphoria, infatuation, romantic fantasies, etc.

· Aesthetic attraction - the pull to look at someone because of their beauty and/or mannerisms, which is different from just recognizing good looks/what’s aesthetically pleasing.

· Emotional attraction - the fixation on someone because of their emotions (optimism, stoicness, etc.), and by extent personality. I would compare it to having a favorite character or admirance.

· Sensual attraction - the impulse to have non-genital physical contact with someone specific.

· Platonic attraction - (aka a friend crush or squish; a play on the romantic word crush) the impulse to further know or befriend someone specific. The desired bond can vary from being friends, to close friends, to best friends. It may include nervousness or admirance, and once the desired bond is reached the squish goes away.

· And it's possible to find someone charming without romantic attraction. (look up charming's definition/synonyms for further clarification)

· It’s also possible to feel queerplatonically about someone. A queerplatonic relationship (or one sided, a 'queerplatonic squish' aka 'queerplatonic crush') is a platonic relationship that has (or is desired to have) the characteristic(s) associated with a romantic relationship (excluding non-platonic things like sex and making out, although chaste kissing can be platonic depending on how it’s done). This kind of relationship can include an importance/closeness stronger than the best friend norm and/or displaying platonic physical contact above the norm. Some describe it as "super best friends." It’s also known as romantic/passionate friendship, life partner, Boston Marriage, and bromance/womance (latter aka shemance, sismance, and less popular due to clash with other words; hermance). They may or may not have monogamy, live together, sleep in the same room, have kids, or be mistaken for a couple. Romantics and Aromantics can have QPRs. An example would be Turk and JD from Scrubs.

(Some include sex and non-platonic physical actions like foreplay under this term; i.e. say that it only means absence in romantic feelings, but those things are factually not platonic by definition so it's a misunderstanding. Every dictionary defines platonic as non-sexual, and a minority include non-romantic. Quasiplatonic; created for those who want to avoid the use of queer, is also inaccurate because the prefix means the reverse. Aliplatonic has been a suggested alternative. If someone has a relationship that displays queerplatonically but one has romantic feelings and the other doesn't, then it's up to them on whether they call their relationship QP or romantic.)

TBH I feel like you're not listening to me. I would like to just agree to disagree. I feel something between romantic and platonic attraction (leaning platonic) very rarely, and identify much more as aromantic than romantic. I often call myself aromantic, because I am so close to that, but would never call myself romantic. I believe attraction is on a spectrum, and I am so close to aromantic, that it is often most convenient to just call myself that.

I just found the term "alterous attraction" interesting, as I have never heard it before, and the way it was described in the original post in this thread I do feel that I identify with it. I believe I feel this type of attraction sometimes.

Please respect how I self-identify.

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Alterous can apply to alot of things so I'm just making sure the right term is being used; this is how misconceptions can catch fire and maticulous lines get drawn between terms that are actually the same.

But every once in a while there is a person who gives me butterflies in my stomach and makes me blush.

Is this the only quality of this unknown feeling you occasionally have?

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Star Bit, you know that there are no "official definitions". Stop speaking as if you wanted to create something "official". You have no special authority.

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I'd consider the person who created the term pretty official.

(not that it's me but i provided a link to it)

I'm saying a term should stay as its creator intend because this is how we get the confusion that QPRs include sex. And it just then forces the creator to create another word for what they intended because the term got stretched beyond repair.

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Dodecahedron314

Romance-repulsed aro who's in an actual QPR here.

I really don't get what all those blogs have with "queerplatonic attraction". "Queerplatonic" used to define a type of relationship that looks based on attraction from the outside (because people can't help but think that if you love each other so much, it necessarily means attraction), but that's actually very deep friendship, emotionally speaking. Why, if a bond is so deep, it's necessarily more than friendship ? Is friendship supposed to be that shallow, so shallow that it can't be deep and committed ?

"Alterous" seems different. Like some sort of attraction mixed with a tiny bit of repulsion to traditional romance. Like, a crush that doesn't want to be expressed like one.

No, no one is saying that friendship is "shallow"--much of society considers it as such thanks to amatonormativity and allonormativity saying that the only meaningful relationship it's possible to have is a traditional monogamous romantic-sexual one, but this is most definitely not the reasoning behind the distinction between a QPR and a friendship. I love and care for my friends deeply, make no mistake about it. I wouldn't even necessarily call it a difference in goals between said relationships, because I would be just as eager to live with my friends for the rest of my life as with my QPP. However, there's a subtle difference in what I feel for my QPP versus what I feel for my friends--not just a higher degree of commitment, but sort of a different quality to the emotion, a bit more...I'm not quite sure how to describe it. Warm? Enveloping? Light? None of these adjectives actually make any sense, but it's sort of a thing where when I'm with my QPP, it just has a different and more pronounced effect on me than when I'm with my friends. It's definitely in no way romantic (trust me on this, if it smacked even the least bit of romance I would be out the door and across the county immediately because I'm *that* romance-repulsed), but I do consider it to be on a separate level from normal friendship--perhaps not above, but adjacent. Not superior, just different.

I can't really speak for alterous attraction because I don't identify with the term myself, so I'll leave that part of the response to someone who's more qualified in that area than I am.

Yeah I think queerplatonic is just an unusual frienship that can have some romantic and/or sexual elements but the people in it just consider each other as just friends.

But with the other one it's like they can have some romantic and/or sexual elements and they feel like they are in an "almost relationship" instead of just a special frienship.

Just as a side note, QPRs generally don't include sexual elements, because that would contradict the definition of the relationship as strictly platonic--however, quasiplatonic relationships (QSPRs) can. Also, the phrase "just friends" is kind of problematic, because it does sort of have the connotation that Rising Sun was talking about with implicitly devaluing friendship, which I will emphasize again is not what's going on here.

Anyway, whether the people in the QPR consider it closer to an extremely close friendship or a "relationship-relationship" is very much dependent on the people, and can evolve over time. The entire point of the concept of QPRs is to offer a term for those whose relationships aren't described by the traditional romantic/sexual model to describe their relationships on their own terms, and that's why the definition seems so nebulous and varies a lot depending on which source you're looking at. There are certain commonly shared characteristics between one QPR and the next that are usually the ones that get adopted into the definition (e.g. strictly platonic, not the same as "best friends", often confused for a romantic/sexual relationship by others, etc.), but ultimately, a QPR is what the people in it make it.

Sorry, I should have specified that yes, indeed, it's society that tries to devaluate friendship. What I tried to explain in my first post, as a person who immensely values QPRs myself because I've always had a deep desire for platonic love in my life (which I simply called fusional friendship when I was a teen, and I was quite fond of the expression), was that I'm extremely disturbed by the way a few bloggers (and even a few members of AVEN) try to divert the meaning of queerplatonic, the meaning of deep love and affection to call it "attraction". They'd call even the love of a parent for their child or the love of a person for their pets "attraction", and in the same way give platonic relationships a dimension that they actually don't have.

It's really one of my worst pet peeves because it's actually convincing many people that QPRs actually don't exist and are just romantic relationships in denial. It's destructive to the aromantic community and I wish that those people would keep using words such as "alterous" if they want, but they should stop spreading misinformation about what QPRs truly are. And really, they should keep QP and alterous separated, as two different things, emotionally speaking.

I know that this post might sound a bit elitist maybe, but I've seen the reality of platonic love denied so many times, that when it happens even inside the community it's hard to not feel threatened by a handful of Tumblr bloggers who can involuntarily convince others that platonic love is just BS, by "romanticizing" it. At this point, it's hard to not feel a bit paranoid, if you see what I mean :(

Yes, I can definitely agree that the concept of queerplatonic "attraction" doesn't make sense, because attraction being involved in that kind of relationship definitely does make it seem as though it's not what it actually is. I think people might just be confusing all this with having a squish on someone, I don't know. The definition I've seen tossed around in some places of QPRs as "soft-romo" or "romantic without the romance" is not only incredibly inaccurate, but really squicks me out as someone who's both in a QPR and romance-repulsed--I can very much attest that they are not the same thing.

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Attraction strictly means "something that evokes interest" so yes, it can actually be used platonically; as all the other attractions but sexual and romantic can be used platonically.

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Yes, I can definitely agree that the concept of queerplatonic "attraction" doesn't make sense, because attraction being involved in that kind of relationship definitely does make it seem as though it's not what it actually is. I think people might just be confusing all this with having a squish on someone, I don't know. The definition I've seen tossed around in some places of QPRs as "soft-romo" or "romantic without the romance" is not only incredibly inaccurate, but really squicks me out as someone who's both in a QPR and romance-repulsed--I can very much attest that they are not the same thing.

Glad to see that we share the same opinion on this :)

Attraction strictly means "something that evokes interest" so yes, it can actually be used platonically; as all the other attractions but sexual and romantic can be used platonically.

That's your opinion only. Practically no one other than you and a handful of Tumblr users use the word that way, and for a very good reason. Partly because there's already a word for it, "love".

The way you're using and categorizing the word with hypothetical subtypes is extremely confusing and misleading, and even worse when you're trying to impose your definitions as some kind of Truth with a capital T. Not to say that it reflects a lack of understanding of the way emotions and feelings work.

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NO, dictionaries do, and alot (if not a majority) on AVEN do too; thats why they're commonly used on here. And if you ask any of these common people you'd get them insisting that it's platonic too. And I'm also fairly sure these forms of attraction aren't from tumblr either. And people don't just use the word love because it's inaccurate. I, and many others, don't love people we're aesthetically attracted to. Again, we've been over this before and other users have informed you of it otherwise too; and with evidence no less.

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