Why are romantic relationships given all the importance? 

Hi everyone – I’m Aastha! I use they/them pronouns (for now, it’s all TBD) and this is a love letter to my found family.

To say I am melodramatic would be an understatement. I don’t think I have ever felt emotion at a regular level. I thrive on extremes – when I am sad, the world is falling apart and when I am happy, it feels like every flower is about to bloom. And when I love, I am overcome with an urge to express it so I don’t have to lose it. Sure, my therapist has some problems with that mentality.

Yet, it also means that every relationship in my life is bulletproof (I mean, mostly), that my friendships are lifelines, and that my found family is the closest thing I have to utter and complete belonging.

At 2:49AM on May 27th, 2021, I wrote in my journal, “how can you not want to hug, kiss, cuddle, and cherish your friends as if they’re your soulmates? I think about them everyday, about how deeply in love with them I am.” I’ve always been a little afraid of holding their hands for the fear that I would be seen as too affectionate. And that might have something to do with my intensely desi upbringing, I was taught to never show too much vulnerability, or to let people in.

But now, at all of twenty, I am beginning to unlearn, finding freedom in gestures of adoration, in reassuring touches in crowded rooms, in hugs that last a few beats too long, and in the love that grows around the worlds we create for ourselves. And I am left asking myself, “will anyone ever love me the way my friends do?” Probably not.

We’ve somehow created a hierarchy of love that sees platonic love as subordinate to romantic love. I will never forgive Karan Johar for glamorising a chase that I now, finally, know is unrealistic. But since coming out, and coming into queer spaces and queer culture, I have found liberation in the destruction of traditional, and very very straight, dynamics that frown upon physical intimacy and seek to throw my fierceness into a tiny box marked ‘normal.’ The thing is – the way I love is not the love I had been taught, but it is the love I forged for myself.

Queer academic icon Michel Foucault said it best. Since having been part of spaces that accept and normalise homosexual affection, his perspective changed. He realised that one’s sex (sexuality) is not meant to discover the truth about oneself, but rather to use it to create a ✨multiplicity of relationships✨.

There is something so so special about finding platonic love and intimacy in queer spaces where society isn’t glaring down upon you. When we define our spaces as we do our boundaries, with care and room to grow, we allow ourselves the ability to fight the expectations that restrict us. We don’t have to fit into a well-labelled box that defines ‘friendship’, but rather we can expand what that means on an individual level. Platonic love thrives in queer spaces that just appreciate the pureness of love at its essence. So here’s to existing, to loving, and to being loved – the way we desire, and the way we deserve.

Sending love, warmth, and hugs (lots of them, with consent),

Aastha Jani

P.S. You can reach out to me at aasthaja@usc.edu or DM me @aastha.jani on Instagram. Or follow my work on my website and on LinkedIn!

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