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Romantic friendship: deep and lasting connection comes in many forms

newstatesman.com

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Re: Romantic friendship: deep and lasting connection comes in many forms

#4
I don't think we do. As the article notes, these are not new concepts - the Greeks had four words for different types of loves, as recently as 50 years ago they were still known and understood in pop culture [1]

It is a recent invention that has us all confused. The rush to validate the gay rights movement has pushed people far beyond their comfort zone, and the culture war has put pressure on people to assert their allegiance to the camps by overstating or denying their deep connections. "I love you bro" was actually a pretty common sentiment, and now many very progressive people feel the need to qualify it - "I love you, bro, but not like in a sexual way, not that there's anything wrong with that"

Lines have been blurred and confused and nobody's the better for it. It is a shift in religion that caused us to lose our knowledge of how to love someone as a friend.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Loves

Re: Romantic friendship: deep and lasting connection comes in many forms

#5

I don't think we do. As the article notes, these are not new concepts - the Greeks had four words for different types of loves, as recently as 50 years ago they were still known and understood in pop culture [1] It is a recent invention that has us all confused. The rush to validate the gay rights movement has pushed people far beyond their comfort zone, and the culture war has put pressure on people to assert their…

Niobe Way comes to similar conclusions in Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection but I’m not sure I’d pin it on a shift in religion but the hyper-sexualization of society that started in the 60’s where every intimate relationship was primarily defined in the context of sex. Today much of the language and expressions of intimate relationships has been entirely co-opted and has sexual overtones compared to the 1800’s. Expressions such as holding hands and words such as love and intimate all now have sexual overtones they previously did not.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/04/the-secret-li...

https://dustyoldthing.com/19th-century-concept-of-friendship...

Re: Romantic friendship: deep and lasting connection comes in many forms

#6

I don't think we do. As the article notes, these are not new concepts - the Greeks had four words for different types of loves, as recently as 50 years ago they were still known and understood in pop culture [1] It is a recent invention that has us all confused. The rush to validate the gay rights movement has pushed people far beyond their comfort zone, and the culture war has put pressure on people to assert their…

The ancient Greeks had actually at least 6 words for the different types of love: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love

Re: Romantic friendship: deep and lasting connection comes in many forms

#8
> “In fact, their relationship did become sexual at one point.”

Lost me here.

I have a few acquaintances who I know who are very interesting, but unconventional. I struggle sometimes with interpreting what they say. He/she confusion (from a native speaker) for example.

I am interested in the case where there is no sexual dimension of the friendship (at least from one person), but where social landscape presents fluid sexuality as background noise.

I’m dealing. I was interested in the discussion of friendship and less so discussion of long game hookups. Haha

Re: Romantic friendship: deep and lasting connection comes in many forms

#10
Not directly related but "limerance" is a type of love that I find useful to know about:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence

That wiki article is quite discursive, but I think about it as "what would evolution need to invent to keep human parents together long enough that their kids didn't die in early infancy", it would need to be strong, but precisly because of that, it probably couldn't last longer than a few years.

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