Love Your Friends Like Romantic Partners

I believe Valentines Day is such a strange holiday, at least for us to celebrate in the modern day. In between the major holiday of New Years and the minor one of St. Patrick’s Day (which is also weird), there’s a holiday all about dating and love. It’s also turned into a consumeristic cash grab but I’m not here to rain on anyone’s parade (especially my own). I’ve never met anyone who actually likes Valentines Day, unless it’s someone who’s been in a long-term relationship (which makes you think… duh!).

Personally, Valentines Day has always been something that I dread. Since getting old enough to date, I’ve either ended a relationship right before Valentines Day, met someone immediately after, or was with someone that never took it seriously. So I always opt out to spend it with my friends or with family. Thankfully, my dad has stepped up to be my number one Valentine every year since I was a baby, so my standards are high.

I introduce all of this to sort of counsel myself into a solution for my own love life problems and also stall for the real topic of this blog. It’s no surprise that I am very open about loving my friends a little bit more than most people are comfortable with. A lot of people are really specific about saying “I love you” either to people they don’t really love or saying it too often. I think there are two types of “I love you”s but, of course, they’re going to sound the same. I absolutely think you should take the romantic “I love you”s very seriously, don’t say them too often and don’t say them too quickly. But the platonic “I love you”s? Everyone gets one of those from me. It’s really hard to not earn one from me, I love hard and I love lots. 

A few months ago, a family friend that I really look up to and admire sent me a video on Instagram. I find it funny how she drops the most inspiring pieces of advice through Reels at random times in the day, especially in between Smiling Friends (RIP) fan art and other funny videos. It was a video about a girl getting interviewed in a park and she said, “Treat your friends more like your lovers and your lovers more like your friends.” She goes on to explain herself in a really beautiful way that I admire so deeply. I want to take this statement and explain why I personally believe in it. When this family friend sent me that video, I had already been thinking about that statement and saying it in a different way in my own life and since then, I’ve been thinking about it even more.

Obviously I don’t think we should date our friends. I just think we should prioritize our platonic friendships as much, if not more, than our romantic relationships. There are so many young girls that chase after a date while not being able to see the beautiful platonic friendships that provide for them even more than a romantic one ever would. I was definitely one of those girls when I was younger.

As I got older, I heard more and more about how I should value friendships over dating. I heard it so much that I knew it couldn’t possibly be a thrown-out suggestion that didn’t take years for these other people to realize it themselves. But sometimes you have to live through the experiences to truly learn where it came from. It’s hard to take advice and live by it without knowing what happens when you don’t.

Now, there are definitely lines that shouldn’t be crossed in showing your love for your platonic friends, but that should be up for you and the other person to decide. For the most part, it’s not anyone’s business how you interact with your platonic friends, just like it’s not anyone’s business how you interact with your romantic partners. You don’t have to put a label on it either, again, the same way you don’t with romantic partners. You don’t have to claim it as some sort of nonbiological familial love to explain it to people and you don’t have to explain it as pretend dating either.

As an only child, it’s difficult for me to be able to relate to actual sibling relationships. Usually, I label any friendship I have with a male as a brother/sister relationship because that one of the only bonds I know will make sense to other people. I have felt, what I think to be, true sisterly love before, but as I get older, I try to lean away from specifically labeling my friendships, especially as sibling relationships because 9 times out of 10 they don’t even fall under that category to me. I just naturally refer to many of my friendships like that.

Of course, as a society we are obsessed with labeling things. I’ll admit that I am too. It gives me a form of comfort in understanding more about the world or myself. But I’ve noticed a lot less labeling recently. With the rise of “situationships” and just “talking” to someone romantically (even though those are ultimately labeling it) rather than dating, I’ve noticed more and more people pushing against the expectations of labels. Now both your and my opinions about labeling romantic relationships are a topic for another day, and that’s just not what I want to talk about. I want to hop on the no-label train and prioritize the bonds of friendships rather than labeling them, even if I do treat them the same way I would romantic partners sometimes.

More recently, I had a talk with one of my closest friends about romantic and platonic love, specifically in inexplicably stated queer media, after watching “The Long Walk” (I wonder who). We talked about how a lot of queer relationships are deemed as “brotherly” or “sisterly” love by the mainstream media that’s too afraid of outwardly titling those relationships as queer/romantic. We came to the conclusion that it doesn’t really matter if it’s labeled as some form of “sibling” love, as long as it’s not explicitly stated as that in the actual content and can be interpreted as queer representation, the most important part of it is that it’s love. It doesn’t matter if it has the ability to be explicitly stated as queer representation or if it falls under the description of platonic love to the mainstream media, what matters is that it’s love and it’s beautiful. (maybe omit since it’s saying the same thing)

Ultimately what I’m trying to say is in the title. There’s not much explanation I have other than love is beautiful. There’s a lot of overlap with the feelings you have for platonic friends and the ones you have towards romantic partners. Don’t be afraid of that overlap. You don’t need a romantic partner in your life if you have meaningful bonds that already fill that role.

You don’t need to have a boyfriend to have a good Valentines Day. It’s not lame that you spend it with your dad every year. If you want to give gifts to your friends like an extravagant boyfriend, don’t be afraid of doing that if you know it’ll make you happy. I’m just talking to myself here…

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I wanted to insert a bit about this clip from Smosh where Shayne Topp talks about how people love to see a relationship on screen because I thought it fit and it was just so beautiful. I also just think a lot of things are beautiful.

When I was younger and was more of a quiet kid, I would watch the popular friend groups and specifically observe their friendships and relationships with each other. Even if I knew the group was not nice overall, like if they were mean to most people, I still admired their friendships because that was some of the most genuine relationships I’ve seen from an outsider’s perspective.

All relationships are beautiful, even if they weren’t great in the beginning, even if they aren’t great now. I think we were put on this planet to love each other. Give your friends a kiss for me. Or whatever.