The problem is the language. And the problem with the language is the society in which it evolved. We were never supposed to talk about any of this stuff; so we never developed those terms to express those concepts.

Ask yourself why we use the same word “love” when we talk about parent-child love, and lover-lover love, and sibling-sibling love. Why we have a word to describe someone who has lost a spouse (widow/er), and a word to describe a child who has lost their parents (orphan), but we have no word to describe the survivor of a set of twins, or the mother who is childless. Yet we still have words to describe someone who has never wed (bachlor/spinster)

Say you are my friend, and I have just started a relationship with X, and I want a way to communicate clearly to you all that X means to me, and is coming to mean to me, and to clearly have you understand the facets of our relationship simply so you can know how important X is to my life. To be able to share with you the new joy that I have found.

Do we have a way to do that in our language? Does it matter, or change what term I should use if my relationship with X is sexual or not?

The hyper-labeling keeps coming up in each phase, and it ends up deviding us further because we end up all chosing our favorite terms for the same things, and thinking we’re special little snowflakes because we’re the only one with that particular relationship, using that term.

Why do “widows” feel connected, but gays, bis, polys and kinks feel devided?

We’re not all friends, and we can’t all be friends. “Friends” has gotten a bad rap, because it got over-used as a cover while gays struggled for acceptance, “This is my roommate friend Joe.”

How do we rattify the language to be inclusive, sharing, and better able to communicate our special and unique connections, without it being defensive and isolating?

And here is where I’m at… IT DOES CHANGE THE RELATIONSHIP. I’m finding that some people simply cannot wrap their mind around someone having the freedom to engage in multiple sexual and emotional relationships, yet realizing they don’t want to do so with THEM. I have at least one person who knows I am poly who assumes his friendship is worth less because I’m not fucking him. His problem, not mine you might say… but it IS my problem as it’s changed/changing our relationship.

Otherwise — I agree with the general timbre of the article. Our society has become phobic about intimacy — whether that be on an emotional or physical level. “Friend” has been bastardized in part by the online meaning of the term — you can be a “friend” to someone simply because you’ve added them to a buddy list, blogrolled their writings, or sent them a “woo” on OKCupid. You may know nothing about them, but hey, now they are your friend! So that has made people want to differentiate the many types of friends one can have.

I would rather had the word stay the same, and we come up with new words for these slight approximations. But I don’t always get what I want.

But what about when it’s grey….?

sexual energy is often not the crux of a relationship/friendship
but it can be there…..

examples:

The woman I know from high school, we fell into bed every 10-18 months or so,
definitely a romantic friendship, but not sexually oriented…..

friends i might (or do)fuck under the right circumstances

someone i love and want an ongoing connection with, sometimes sexual sometimes not…

the old friend I flash frequently just to give him a little thrill….

I find myself in that situation a second time. The connection is there but cannot be realized now.

Perhaps, as I think about it, I think of them as lovers because I would dearly love them to be lovers. It is less painful than accepting that though they’re beloved friends, they still remain outside the inner circle. If it were just me, I don’t think I would think “lover”. I believe it has to do with the desire for more on the part of both parties but that being tempered by other people’s needs that must come first (primary partners’ comfort levels, relationships and families in flux, etc.)

(Didn’t mean to be working out my relationship issues all over your web site…)

Full points on this post btw.

“Friends” to me generally doesn’t imply romantic feelings, even if the friendship is long and strong. But as 00Goddess says, there’s also *romantic friendship,* something else again. Romantic love has a magic that “friends” just doesn’t imply. I have guy friends — but I don’t caress their hair, hold their hands, drift into reveries and get moo-eyed about them when we’re apart. A romantic friendship is where those sorts of things happen — and that qualifies as poly in my book. Even if it’s “platonic” and “spiritual,” meaning that (for whatever reason) you don’t intend to end up in bed.

The Victorians knew about this. Christian kids who choose to wear chastity-pledge rings know about it. I first experienced it among waterbrothers. Most of us were teens, except for a 33-year-old high school teacher and his wife — and the boundaries of age and role-in-society were things that neither we nor they wanted to cross sexually. But that couple was certainly more than what “friends” would imply to most people who hear the word.