Long Overdue Essay on My "Relationship Orientation"

"Platonic Bonding" as "Relationship Orientation"

I told skinintheway that I would write a post about how I bond with people, which—for want of a word—I've been calling "platonic bonding." For clarity, the kind of bonding I'm talking about here is serious interpersonal love (or in love) bonding of the kind we'd generally associate with wanting someone for a partner. Here goes:

Let me start by laying out our more standard cultural paradigm as a baseline. We generally consider partner-bonding to involve some degree of the following kinds of attachments:

* sexual desire
* romantic attraction
* interpersonal bonding

As I think of it, sexual desire encompasses being physically drawn to someone; wanting to sleep with them, touch them; being wowed by their physical appearance; and so on. Romantic attraction (or falling in love/infatuation), which is often entangled with sexual desire, has an added dimension of thinking a person is fantastic, enthralling, admirable, impossible to get out of one's head, possibly a kindred spirit, or at any rate having a personality one feels "sparks" with. Interpersonal bonding occurs when people are in relationship with a degree of trust, mutual support, social contact, considerable knowledge of each other, often shared interests/pastimes, a sense of the reliability of the relationship, etc.( Read more... )