Romancing the friendship

The image linked here is a small part of a project I did once when a lover and I were separated by factors outside our control: I wrote and decorated a letter for them for every day we were apart.

Romantic? Yes. Too much? Maybe; guess that depends on your definition of too much. They didn’t think it was — in fact, I’m told they cherish those letters to this day, even though that relationship shifted over time. Now they’re one of my very best friends.

And that’s the thing about relationship: I strongly believe it’s too narrowly defined in our culture, especially cishet pairings. You have romantic relationships, and then you have friends, which are supposed to take a far lesser role in your life somehow. But haven’t friendships stayed more constant throughout your life than romantic relationships? I know for me, many friendships have lasted longer than the big emotional upheaval of romantic partnerships.

For that matter, some friendships are romantic in nature. I love the hell out of my friends. I romance them with poems and letters like Byron did for Shelley. I love them fiercely through their crests and their furrows. I made soup when they’re sick, and present them with spraypainted trophies when they’ve accomplished something cool.

And the basis of my nesting/anchor partnership is friendship above all else. We’re buddies. We’ve got each other’s backs.

This whole website, this whole thought experiment, is to “queer” friendship. To model the types of friendships we have in queer communities, which usually fall somewhere on the spectrum between romantic and not. If we’re supposed to romanticize our lives, why can’t we romanticize our friendships as well?