Talk:Romantic friendship

General comments

For example, Mary and John are friends and don't consider themselves to be "dating", "going-steady", or "romantically involved", yet they engage in activities traditionally regarded as being exclsive to couples. ie. Holding hands, kissing, and such.

I'd take issue with the last, at least - I would say that romantic friendship is by its very nature a very close friendship that is not sexual. Loganberry (Talk) 20:15, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I've now been bold and rewritten the article to something closer to Wiki standards. More input would be welcome! (As would a more appropriate stub notice, if such exists.) Loganberry (Talk) 20:32, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not certain a better stub category really does exist, but I'm gonna call it a Culture stub for lack of anything better and to get it out of the main stub area. Bold! =P --Jemiller226 06:05, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

It should be noted that the concept of "romantic friendship" existed prior to 1900, which was an era during which the concept of sexuality as an identity did not exist.

— this is badly phrased, but I can't think of exactly how to change it. As it stands it seems to imply a) that "the concept of romantic friendship" only existed prior to 1900, and b) that "the concept of sexuality as an identity" has now directly replaced it, neither of which things is true. 86.132.140.139 03:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

If this subject is to be taken seriously (and not with a lot of snickers), it would be good to improve the examples. While using Xenia and Gabrielle and Lenny and Carl will allow contemporary WP readers to understand romantic friendship, it would be better to have more than one historical example. Also, if romantic friendship is nonsexual, why is sex brought up in the Shakespeare, Lenny, and Batman examples? If the issue is that all same-sex romantic friendship are really latent homosexuality and that men and women really can't be friends, that needs to be address generally and not in each example. -Acjelen 00:17, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Acjelen has done a much better job of saying what I would have said with much less tact. I'm far from an expert in this so feel ill-equipped to make changes. The current examples do seem to be entirely pop-culture based - surely real people have had more notable and well documented romantic friendships than Turk and JD! The point about sex is equally true - these either are or aren't sexual relationships. Tompagenet 15:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Removed "Contrasts with latent homosexuality" section

I removed an entire section from this article, as it was sourced from a crappy obscure website, and probably only here to advertise the website. Here is the text I removed, in case someone wants to do something with this:

Contrasts with latent homosexuality

According to the website celebratefriendship.com, a romantic friendship is not the same as latent homosexuality. The website says that romantic friendships have existed in civilizations both tolerant and intolerant of homosexuality, and therefore it seems unlikely that a romantic friendship is the same as homosexuality:

Romantic friendship is not the same thing as latent homosexuality. Romantic friendship has existed in both cultures that violently oppose homosexuality, as well as in cultures that openly accept it, and for that reason it seems unlikely that it is derived from repression of homosexual urges. Some pretty homophobic people, as well as some pretty gay people, have supported romantic friendship. For example, a Renaissance-era man might well be hateful of 'sodomites' but perfectly happy to snuggle with his best friend at night, as long as they didn’t have sex.

The concept of "romantic friendship" existed prior to 1900, which was an era during which the concept of sexuality as an identity did not exist.

References

--Xyzzyplugh 02:46, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Your comments couldn't be further from the truth. I am the one who placed that on the page, and I have no affiliation whatsoever with that website. People on Wikipedia are so damned paranoid that people are trying to "advertise" on here. Here's a clue: for anyone trying to advertise on this website, it ain't hard. Wikipedia has basically overtaken Google.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.191.111.217 (talk • contribs)

I have to side mostly with the anon poster (whom I would ask to sign their posts in future - use four tildes in a row to do so). It's true that celebratefriendship is an obscure website, but a problem we have here is that there doesn't seem to be a non-obscure website dealing specifically with romantic friendship. I think something along the lines of "contrasts with latent homosexuality" would be a valuable addition to this article, though probably with a considerably shorter quote from the website.

I also agree with two posters in an above section. The anon poster (86.132.140.139) is right to say that the wording they quote is awkward, and doesn't make it clear that both romantic friendship and sexuality as an identity can (and do) coexist - sometimes in the same person, since X can be in love with same-sex person Y in a sexual sense, but also enjoy a romantic friendship with same-sex person Z.

Acjelen also makes a good point in saying that the examples we have here are biased too far in favour of fictional characters. We really do not need so many of those, and some of them (eg the Batman and Robin one) seem not much more than fandom gossip. I'd be inclined to cut down on all these significantly, keeping maybe the Xena, Shakespeare and Oprah examples, with hopefully one more (preferably non-American) real-life example as well. Loganberry (Talk) 00:32, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey, as the author of the crappy website www.celebratefriendship.org, I would like to concur that this article needs some unverified claims removed, particularly the pop culture couples section. I also would like to confirm that I have not edited (or created) the romantic friendship entry in Wikipedia at all, let alone used it to "advertise" my site. I would even not disagree with the "crappy" label as concerns the writing-- but the sources my site is based on are not crappy, <RANT ON>I do not list a bunch of speculations about TV characters and call it an "encyclopedic" description of romantic friendship</RANT OFF>, and I have a standard bibliography. I think the people who are working on this might do well to look up some of the non-Internet sources I used (http://www.celebratefriendship.org/sources.htm), like Surpassing the Love of Men-- as well as the primary historical documents cited by these books.

Romantic friendship is a tough topic to get reams of independent sources on, for these reasons:

1. The Internet is not going to be the source for the most authoritative information because even in modern times, interest in the subject for RESEARCH purposes was greatest in the past, namely the '70's and '80's. Romantic friendship was interesting to LGBT and feminist historians like Lillian Faderman because its existence demonstrates that same-sex love is a culturally variable phenomenon that changes over time, and may do so again in the future-- and that philosophy was an important part of the radical gay/feminist philosophies of a few decades ago. In her introduction to Surpassing the Love of Men, Faderman was quite open about the notion that uncovering these past relationships, and separating the concept of same-gender LOVE from same-gender SEX for analytical purposes, challenges the notion that same-sex love has always been, or must always be, a "minority preference," let alone a genetic one. It goes without saying that in the '90's and 2000's, when my fellow LGBT citizens are fixated on the "we can't help it, it's genetic" tactic for political representation, this is not going to be a popular subject of research. At least one of the books on my bibliography is out of print, and getting Surpassing the Love of Men reissued apparently took some effort (as did keeping other feminist classics in print, like Kate Millet's Sexual Politics). It's not a conspiracy or anything, but talk like this is out of fashion for sure.
2. The idea that romantic friendship existed is easily inferred from the fact that they wrote about it fairly often for 400 years; but the idea that it is not the same as homosexuality must be inferred from the fact that societies have existed which extolled the virtues of romantic friendship while simultaneously stringing up "sodomites" who expressed same-sex love sexually. So basically we are inferring the possibility of a positive relationship existing in the past that does not exist today, from evidence that includes an utterly barbaric past custom (virulent homophobia); this is not intuitive. Moreover, the existence of passionate nonsexual relationships, as well as the existence of passionate same-sex relationships of any kind within the majority "straight" population, challenges modern assumptions about gender and sexual orientation, discouraging writing and publishing.
3. Although a small minority have advocated its resurgence, it is primarily a historical phenomenon from a past era in which understandings of sexuality and relationship were different from today, and although the Victorians and Renaissance poets wrote down a lot, they didn't write it in a way that addresses modern concerns (e.g. telling us whether they had sex or not). Modern love poems and songs are not trying to "prove" the existence of gendered, monogamous sexual love to some future society in which gender/sexuality is unrelated to emotional love, say, or conversely, where we have regressed to patriarchal arranged marriage or something; lovers and friends of the past were not out to "prove" their arrangements to us either, meaning all the evidence is circumstantial. I think both crappy-website authors and serious academics start out with a personal direct experience of intense nonsexual love (and usually also an experience of homosexuality with which to contrast it), and that is why we KNOW that the mainstream interpretation of sexual orientation and friendship is incomplete; then the academics go and sift through mountains of circumstantial evidence to prove it. Perhaps in the interest of NPOV, this article should be written as a description of a minority viewpoint in the history of same-sex love.

Although it is essentially impossible to make a hard-and-fast statement that "X relationship in the past was not sexual," I notice that advocates of the "essentialist sexuality" position have no more evidence that ambiguous past relationships WERE sexual. The main advantage they have is popularity. My thought is that of course some people interested in gay sexuality in the past used romantic friendship as a cover-- why wouldn't they?-- but romantic friendship MUST have been something ELSE in addition to a cover for gay relationships, because otherwise the homophobic nitwits who were stringing up "sodomites" wherever they saw them would have closed the thing down in less than 400 years (as they eventually, in fact, did in the mid-1800's for men and early 1900's for women). For a non-original-research version of this idea, I would say Surpassing the Love of Men is the place to start; it shows how flowery public celebration of romantic friendship could coexist with virulent homophobia in literature and life. As an academic book, it has plenty of sources you can go back to for more. Robert Brain's "Friends and Lovers" is another full-length book treatment of the topic (currently out of print I believe, I have one or maybe you can search for it online), focusing on non-Western cultures; many of the other books on my list cover it only as a part of broader history of relationships and use academic journals as sources, which you could look up.

I am not going to edit the page myself, partly to avoid being seen as "advertising" but mostly because I am working on other projects right now. Good luck!

Davelwhite 10:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Clearly you changed your mind! [1] (Not a criticism; it's good to see your input here.) Loganberry (Talk) 12:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Original research tag

The addition of this tag (by another editor) rather reinforces the last section of the discussion above. We can't simply have a heap of sections dealing with various "couples" who might or might not be examples of romantic friendship: we must have verifiable sources specifically mentioning that term. Without those, the example sections are in danger of deletion, possibly even by me! Loganberry (Talk) 23:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I just added it again before coming here! --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 10:12, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

"Same-gender friendships with romantic overtones in American pop culture"

Following on from the very interesting comment above... this section's title rather betrays how unsuitable it is for this article. Some reasons:

1. Why are we emphasising American pop culture? Wikipedia is emphatically not a specifically American encyclopedia, but an international one.
2. "Shakespeare and Fair Lord"... since when was this an American relationship anyway?
3. Far, far too much speculation and original research.
4. Too many sub-sections. We should cut right down on listing every relationship that has some relation to this, especially unsourced ones such as "Clay Puppington and Coach Stopframe".

I'm actually quite close to putting the {{rewrite}} tag on this, the one that suggests that a complete rewrite may be necessary.

Oh, and before I forget... the Coontz quote used in the article lead seems to me to be much too long to justify under fair use. A couple of sentences, yes, but two paragraphs? This could be cut down a lot pretty easily, I think. Loganberry (Talk) 11:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Hopefully I indented this right... I agree with the notion of cutting the Coontz quote (and hopefully my new quotations from Emily Dickinson / Faderman are short enough, editing Victorian letters for length is always a tricky wicket :), but I didn't want to quote Faderman's allegation that "Emily Dickinson's letters were censored" without giving an example). I already moved Shakespeare out of the "American pop culture" section, and frankly I would favor deleting most of the pop culture references. I refer to Xena and Gabrielle on my site since some of the people involved in the show make particular reference to the 19th century custom on the record, but most of the rest appears to be baseless speculation. I don't want to delete the pop reference section myself, however, because it would look like I was erasing it in order to replace it with my own stuff now. Somebody else please do it. :)

When I first saw it after a long time's absence (the original romantic friendship entry was just a simple definition), I would have agreed with the "rewrite" tag. Hopefully the rewrites I am doing to the front part of it will help with academic sourcing and NPOV, although since I obviously (from my website) am from the "romantic friendship and homosexuality are different things, neither of which are bad nor sublimations of the other" camp like Faderman, I would imagine some unconscious bias is in there. At least now you have references, so other points of view can be added if my version is too slanted. Criticism is welcome because I really want this to be seen as a serious, encyclopedic article, not a polemic or pop-culture dumping ground.

I am still working on edits this morning, so if something looks unsourced, wait a few minutes. I'll probably finish by 5:00 PM UDT, 11 AM US Central.

Davelwhite 15:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Update - I have completed my edits, so feel free to start fixing all my mistakes, Loganberry & anyone else who is interested. I tried to fix the questionable quoting of that introduction to a Shakespeare anthology, but couldn't find it on the Net so I left it as is. I have other examples of historical romantic friendship, like Mary Wollstonecraft (Vindication of the Rights of Woman), and John Stuart Mill had an opposite-sex romantic friend Harriet Taylor (complicated situation-- opposite-sex romantic friendship was NOT customary at the time, Mill & Taylor were both feminist rebels, they did eventually marry but there is a quotation from Taylor stating that they were a platonic relationship and disparaging naysayers earlier in their history, and she was a big influence in his book The Subjugation of Woman). Anyhow, so I have primary (e.g. Taylor & Wollstonecraft themselves) & secondary references, but am leaving them out in deference to your statement that there are already a lot of examples of relationships. (I'm not sure if you mean all types of relationships, or just unsourced pop-culture speculation ones.)

Davelwhite 16:02, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Pps - Mill may also be a bad example since he doesn't prove anything about the cultural norm of the time, but he's insteresting anyway.

Davelwhite 16:12, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you; this is just the sort of editing I think this article needs. To be clear about examples: I don't particularly like the idea of a long list of examples anyway: personally I would favour the deletion of most of the pop culture references, with the choice of which ones (if any) to retain being based on which can be verified; those that rely on speculation should be removed en masse. I'd be more than happy for the article to make mention of real-life examples so long as they can be verified, and actually the Mill/Taylor example sounds like an interesting one to discuss, so long as it can be done without turning such a section into a 9999 mini essay Loganberry (Talk) 23:44, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Removed "inclusion in the Biblical canon..." from "Biblical and religious evidence"

The full phrase was, "Their continued inclusion in the Biblical canon also implies that more recent and typically anti-homosexual Christian leaders did not consider the verses offensive." The statement was not cited and betrays such a complete lack of understanding of the Biblical Canon that it can hardly be credible.LCP 21:08, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

It's clear POV and you were right to remove it, especially with no citations to back it up. Loganberry (Talk) 00:08, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Grammatical/content errors

I re-wrote a small section of this page because it was poorly phrased. These are the adjustments I made:

Original:

Same-sex romantic friendship was considered common and unremarkable in the West, and was distinguished from then-taboo homosexual relationships, up until the second half of the 19th century, but after that time its open expression generally became much rarer as physical intimacy between non-sexual partners came to be regarded with anxiety.

Re-Written:

Up until the second half of the 19th century, same-sex romantic friendships were considered common and unremarkable in the West, and were distinguished from the then-taboo homosexual relationships. But in the second half of the 19th century, expression of this nature became more rare as physical intimacy between non-sexual partners came to be regarded with anxiety.

Grammatically, I feel that it now makes more sense. I am not so confident in the content. I did not adjust any of the actual content, but I am not sure that it makes sense and frankly am not sure that it is accurate. There should be clarity on the "physical intimacy" discussed. Did romantic friendships really become taboo because they were "regarded with anxiety"? If so, why did this anxiety suddenly occur in the second half of the 19th century? It is all very sketchy to me. If anyone can provide evidence to back this up, and fix this page, it would be much appreciated. I would like to add once more that the adjustments I made were merely grammatical adjustments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.113.202.98 (talk) 05:08, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Homosexuality vs. romantic friendships

These two seem to be tangled up in each other, but I don't really see the connection. The "Romantic Friendship" is supposed to be discussing non-sexual friendships, which is not the same thing as homosexual relationships. Does anyone else share this opinion with me? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.113.202.98 (talk) 05:11, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I do. I think this should be expanded upon as well...69.206.139.242 (talk) 23:49, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Same...I tagged the article with a toofewopinions template, but I doubt it will do much...I wonder, I seem to recall this article and the one on platonic love having content that dealt with non homosexual relationships, but it appears to have vanished...Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 07:31, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Where is the evidence that "Romantic Friendship" is non-sexual? If you look at Rotundo's Essay "Romantic Friendship" you will see that he specifically says that it is impossible to tell whether genital intimacy was present or not. In fact, many scholars (John Ibson's Picturing Men and D'Emilio and Freedman's Intimate Matters) suggest that many of these romantic relationships at times crossed over into genital intimacy. The argument that they are non-sexual misses the fact that the spectre of sexuality did not yet exist, but was rather a social construction (see Foucault's History of Sexuality). It is highly problematic to try to separate out supposed genital contact from 19th century romantic friends. Phenophexadin (talk) 19:38, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Bromance?

Shouldn't this article mention something about the now popular "bromance" (men who are very close to each other in the similar fashion this article describes)? Especially it's been coined to use with celebrities like Lance Armstrong and Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon because they often hang out together. Even Cary Grant's close friendship with actor Randolph Scott drew rumors that they were gay. Crackthewhip775 (talk) 06:05, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Modern-day romantic friendship

Obviously this can't go into the actual article unless someone finds sources to back it up, but romantic friendships definitely still exist, just perhaps without "love letters" that can be used as verification. Someone else has mentioned the modern concept of the "bromance" on this page, but romantic friendships continue to occur between women as well. I am a women, and when I was in college (which was recent) my female friends and I regularly cuddled in each other's beds when relaxing or watching TV, made romantic/sexual comments to each other, and told each other "I Love you," and on our Facebook profiles we often listed ourselves as being in relationships (or even married) with each other, despite the fact that we were all totally straight. When I first heard about the concept of romantic friendships I immediately recognized this as very similar to the relationships among my female friends, and I know we were not unique. 99.148.203.156 (talk) 03:09, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Romantic friendship is way more common, typically, among women anyway. In real life as well as in literature, film, tv, celebrity culture, etc. This article really needs more examples of that. 24.61.21.58 (talk) 06:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

They most certainly still exist, but yes, it does need backing up. Perhaps this paper could be interesting. I am a women and have (over the past 7 years) had male friends with whom I would hold hands, hug, kiss (no tongues), and share a bed. I think it would also be interesting to look into modern day social acceptance of non-same-sex romantic friendships. My experiences varied but were mostly neutral to negative, with some partners asking end the friendship, while others would accept some but not all of the aspects of the friendship. SuzannaQ (talk) 23:57, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

References

I agree. I would also like to see a mention of the scenario of a heteroromantic couple where one person has romantic feelings in the typical sense, and the other has friendly, nonsexual romantic feelings as discussed in this article. Benjamin (talk) 04:16, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Lucy Montgomery?

And Anne of Green Gables should be mentioned I think. It's a classic example of romantic friendship. Lucy herself had romantic friendships as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.61.21.58 (talk) 06:59, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Opposite-sex romantic friendship

It is not mentioned here at all. Can anyone add an example of it (or replace it with one of the same-sex romantic friendship examples)? I don't know of any.93.172.250.185 (talk) 02:07, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Anna Freud and Dorothy T. Burlingham

These two should definitely be mentioned, as their relationship is a clear example of romantic friendship. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.136.17.78 (talk) 22:37, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Notability, unity and category of topic

"romantic" and "non-sexual" is of course mutually exclusive, in the sense that "romantic love" implies sexual interest (even if it does not cumulate in a sexual act). This is no matter, even the most misguided terminology will enter Wikipedia if it is only notable. So what is the origin of the term? It appears to be Faderman (1981). This author single-handedly created this topic, and what we are discussing is simply its reception by later commentators. This also explains why the article is tagged for "WikiProject LGBT studies", a little surprising considering its claimed "non-sexual" nature. So this is a non-sexual topic of a clearly homosexual nature, then?

The problen is that a "romantic friendship" is supposed to be simply a close friendship of non-sexual nature, including certain types of physical contact that would be considered sexual by other people. It boils down to cultural differences in interpreting physical contact, and "romantic friendship" can only ever describe a type of friendship as observed by somebody else across a cultural boundary. Thus the term has no objective reality at all and simply serves as a handle to discuss changing cultural conventions, it does not describe any well-defined type of friendship. In the end, the article is frank enough to admit that the concept of "romantic friendship" is simply coined in order to advocate "the social constructionist view that sexual orientation is a modern, culturally constructed concept". I have no problem with that, as long as the nature of the term is made explicit. We are not talking about a special type of friendship, we are here talking about 1980s to 1990s efforts in the US "LBGT" subculture to push one specific brand of "social constructionist" agenda, no more, no less.

As the article in its current revision is broken anyway, I suggest it would be best to just turn it into a page about Faderman's book explicitly (since that what it is in any case), or perhaps (failing relevant material once we drop the quotefarm) just merge it into Faderman's bio article, as the concept of "romantic friendship" seems to be her main claim to notability anyway. --dab (𒁳) 10:24, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

You might want to learn a bit more about Asexuality, Romantic orientation, and Bromance, which is a modern form observed among Western males.

In contexts such as this, 'romance' refers specifically to emotional intimacy, not sexual intimacy. Like many terms used within the social sciences, the entire point is to enable an outside observer to describe something without an objective reality in a way that provides minimal confusion to those familiar with the terminology. The goal is to be able to describe things that, by their nature, do not have an objective reality in a way that permits them to be objectively studied. Werhdnt (talk) 02:57, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Difference between friendship and this?

Any friendship between two sexes (including kinship, sibling) may be very close but non-sexual relationship and include holding hands, hugging, kissing, and sharing a bed, so maybe we need to clarify what is romantic one? Roma.rr (talk) 17:49, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Introduction needs serious work

The second paragraph of the introduction is comprised of possibly the most poorly written sentence I've ever read on Wikipedia. I am not sure where to start wi this abomination, so I am pasting it here in the hope that someone can fix it. (Feel free to delete this note once it is fixed.) "The term was coined in the later 20th century in order to retrospectively describe a type of relationship which until the mid 19th century had been considered unremarkable but since the second half of the 19th century had become more rare as physical intimacy between non-sexual partners came to be regarded with anxiety." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.246.1.91 (talk) 03:55, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Janeth and Selma

Hi there, new guy here, just curious - exactly whom are "Janeth and Selma?" I can't seem to find any reference to them in the article, what do they have to do with any of this? AnyyVen (talk) 03:12, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I cannot seem to find any justification for why it's there, and furthermore, the uploader, Selmpadi, appears to be an SPA. Previous updates by this editor were corrected by ClueBotNG, and include numerous spurious additions (like sharing a bed "only with pijamas [sic]") that were since removed by other editors. AnyyVen (talk) 16:19, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

fundamental flaws

I agree with questions brought up by editors dab (2013) and Roma.rr. More specifically, at no point is any effort made to define the key word ROMANTIC. Only at the end is a "see also" offered to Romance (love). Bad enough that Romance (love) cannot seem to distinguish concepts such as feelings of love from courtship, the latter being much closer to common modern usage.

And for all the effort made to put "romantic friendship" in a modern context, the article itself blithely opens with the term was coined in the later 20th century in order to retrospectively describe a type of relationship … during a period of history when homosexuality did not exist as a social category. Choose one, or the other, or hang a lantern on it and explain the discrepancy — without ONE of those choices, I'd say the article's existence is questionable at best.

Where is mention of chivalric love?

Romance (love) happily states Researchers have determined that romantic love is a complex emotion that can be divided into either passionate or companionate forms. Search for companionate love and you wind up at Triangular theory of love which says

Companionate love is an intimate, non-passionate type of love that is stronger than friendship because of the element of long-term commitment. "This type of love is observed in long-term marriages where passion is no longer present" but where a deep affection and commitment remain. The love ideally shared between family members is a form of companionate love, as is the love between close friends who have a platonic but strong friendship.

I do not see where a strong case has been made that "romantic friendship" is anything but "companionate love" with a new label to claim "originality." Other than justifying someone's pet theory, I cannot see why this article shouldn't be merged.

It's kinda like making sausage: when you realize the lard is outpacing the meat, then cramming in more lard is very poor strategy for disguising the error. Mere bulk does not add substance.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 23:54, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

sex but not sex

Though I have not yet located the source, I once read that "intimacy" is spread over three variables, the sensual, the sexual, and the erotic.

It becomes quickly apparent that WP articles on various forms of "buddy love" — e.g. Romantic friendship, Chivalric love, Bromance, Boston marriage, Platonic love — are very common in that they whitewash the fact that sexual arousal is allowed, even encouraged… so long as touching of Naughty Bits is avoided and there is no overt orgasm (and any erection that is unseen, or at least unacknowledged, never happened). That is to say, clearly it's implicit in "buddy love" to exchange and enjoy sensual and even erotic cues, and build them up synergically by touch and proximity and all sorts of intimacy… short of outright sex. Researchers on homosociality (such as Lionel Tiger) have considered the underlying eroticism of one-gender social interactions such as team sports.

(Some sort of unifying page should be created for Buddy love, with a better title, in order to establish a common point rather than trying to keep up with the redundant See also links.)

It is dishonest that this covert sexual content is not explicitly addressed, instead merely pushed aside as irrelevant "because this is about love and camaraderie, not icky stuff!" As WP is not a manual for "correct" social behavior, this oversight needs general improvement. Fixing Romantic friendship would be a pleasant beginning.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia may not be a manual for correct social behaviour, its limited by what is documented in published academic sources. There are a great many things that exist in reality that wikipedia has concept of. There are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamt of in its philosophy XD

Firejuggler86 (talk) 02:39, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

The fact that these terms are somehow, sometimes indirectly related, does not mean that they are one and the same. I mean, they all have their own meaning. Romantic friendship is an old-fashioned, more passionate and emotional form of friendship, bromance is a male friendship with romantic aesthetics and emotionality, courtly love is platonic love-dedication to a sacred partner, platonic love is generally all love without a sexual and romantic beginning, all these are different things. With the same emphasis, you could demand that the articles on sexual attraction and romance be combined, because these things are (mostly) interconnected. Solaire the knight (talk) 21:29, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Request of Help

I was looking for some small help. I created an article Valentine's Day in Pakistan. While article subject orientation is related to Romance relationships and festival, but in some parts of the world it touches serious issues like violations of women's rights & Human rights At this stage looking for help in better chronological order within article, and continued copy edit help in times to come.

Thanks in advance.

Bookku (talk) 05:03, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Longing and jealousy as strictly sexual experiences

Am I the only one confused by this moment? This is added as the opinion of an authoritative source and has a link, but to be honest, this is the first time I hear ideas that jealousy or longing cannot be platonic. Moreover, even in our time, the media, from Western to Asian, openly show the experience of jealousy and longing in an asexual-platonic friendship as something normal. Of course, not so ardently given the 21st century in the yard, but still. For example, the Japanese concept of romantic friendship explicitly includes the so-called "passionate friendship" attraction, and anime inspired by it like Maria-sama is watching us or in the male version, Tsurune, explicitly discusses romantic allusions in friendship between people of the same sex. So, does anyone know of a more varied study of jealousy and longing in academic sources? Solaire the knight (talk) 21:14, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

The Ladies of Llangollen House in Wales

literally all of the examples on the page are about white men when these are arguably the most well-known example of romantic friendships. 110.174.42.222 (talk) 05:43, 28 September 2023 (UTC)