The Joys of Falling in Platonic Love
Make it stand out
When I first moved to London a little over half a year ago and was romanticising the image of my first great love in the city, it’s a solid assumption to make that my new flatmate wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Life is constantly surprising us.
I was in somewhat of a rush to find a new place to live, a rough few months in my previous city meaning I was keen to have a change of scene as quickly as possible. Amid the raging hellscape that is the London renting crisis, finding out that living in the flat that I was viewing was someone I had been Instagram friends with for years (as a result of us both being book bloggers) felt too good to be true. We hadn’t spoken too much on Instagram prior, only responding to the occasional story and commenting on the odd post. We decided to grab lunch on my first weekend in the flat.
I have found that the first outing with a potential friend does tend to resemble a first date. Laying the groundwork. Scoping each other out. Finding out about their job, family, political leanings, Netflix choices, what they do in their spare time. I came away from our lunch suspecting serious friend potential. The more we spoke about our shared interests and the more I saw the kind of content she was resharing on social media, I knew we were onto a winner. It is becoming increasingly apparent to me over the years, though I’m sure few in their twenties will dispute, that there is a certain shared language between people who have grown up on the same side of the internet. The same memes, same pop culture taste and references that still play a big part in our make up today. When you manage to spot another out in the wild - it’s a beautiful thing.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
We rapidly became inseparable, forming our own routines. Weekends spent exploring new areas of the city, scouting out new book shops and cafes, deciding on our new regular haunts. Evenings after work spent in each other’s rooms chatting through the inane things that had happened in our days. Becoming familiar with each other’s colleagues, acquaintances, workplace and love life dramas. A fast-tracked friendship.
I have always been someone lucky enough to find making friends easy and have a large number of them. Still, I’m conscious that I inherently try to keep the emotional proximity of these friendships (and possible romantic relationships) at an arm’s length and on my own terms.
The emotional vulnerability and exposure in this friendship, however, felt out of my sphere of control. Both due to our high level of time spent together, as well as her innate understanding of my psychology. She knows my next move before I do. She knows why I have behaved in a certain way before I do. She isn’t afraid to be brutally honest with me. I was forced to confront my own behaviours towards certain situations as a result of having a third party available and able to make sense of my thought patterns in a way I hadn’t had before.
I have always had a level of cynicism towards the notion of ‘divine timing’ but sometimes its existence nudges itself into my reality. We were both exactly what we needed at exactly the right time. She had come out of a long-term relationship a short while before I moved in, and as a flagrant extrovert, socialiser and partier, I helped to get her out and start enjoying life again; meeting new people and exploring the city. With her guidance and unflinching ability to call out behaviours of mine I wasn’t even aware of, I was making strides towards my immobilising fear of emotional vulnerability. There are at least two relationships in my life I was able to mend as a result of my relationship with her.
“There is no set ultimate, desirable destination for a platonic relationship to work towards; the only expectation is that you will grow closer and the relationship stronger.”
In the early stages of our friendship, a man I was dating commented that he was intimidated by her and our friendship. It wasn’t that he thought there was something deeper between us, because he knew there wasn’t. It was more the acute awareness that a lot of what we as humans seek romantic relationships for, I was getting already. Anything with him was a welcome addition. But it would never be something I felt I needed or was actively seeking. When you receive absolute emotional fulfilment and understanding in one aspect of your life, it's enlightening to take a step back and assess what has consciously or subconsciously changed. I hadn’t realised until this point just how much I unwittingly centred dating in my life. My busy and chaotic dating life had become a defining part of my identity, something people always asked me for updates on when they saw me - typically having multiple dates a week. Instead, I had deleted my dating apps - the first time I had done so for any significant length of time in my single adult life.
Friday and Saturday nights I would typically spend meeting a new man, I was out with her. Relaxed nights at home with a takeout I’d usually enjoy with whoever I was dating at the time, I was enjoying with her. My fear of romantic intimacy as a result of subliminal societal expectation of the path that should typically follow meant I was fleeing romances before calling it off. By removing the element of the wider implications that come with romantic intimacy, I had discovered that platonic intimacy was something I could freely throw myself into and allow myself to be emotionally vulnerable within. Why would I now choose to spend my Friday night in a ropey bar, hearing about how this week’s man could have played football professionally if it wasn’t for the injury? When I was guaranteed good conversation and a good time with someone I was extremely close with already?
We all go through life wanting to feel as though someone will ‘understand’ us completely, and love us for our character flaws, not in spite of them. We are attuned to believe that a romantic connection is the only form of this and the one we ought to spend our lives seeking. More often than not, not only for myself, but for those around me, I have known that to be the antithesis of the case. That kind of love is more often than not found in those friendships that come around only a small handful of times in a lifespan. Romantic intimacy and romance in general, realistically boils down to care, thought and compassion at the heart of every action. I now know you can get this with someone you don’t have a sexual relationship with.
Platonic relationships are significantly less fragile because there’s a distant lack of wider expectation. There is no set ultimate, desirable destination for a platonic relationship to work towards; the only expectation is that you will grow closer and the relationship stronger. Our friendship has set a precedent and expectation for how we can be, and should be, treated by others in our lives. We’ve both inadvertently de-centred dating; we know we have a crucial figure who has the other’s best interest at the heart of everything. The free time that we would have in our lives spent dating, we have spent enjoying this friendship instead.
Words: Kitty Winks
