Platonic attraction
Wanting a friendship with one particular person, and the small family of labels, from aplatonic to alloplatonic, built on it.
Platonic attraction is the wish to form a friendship with a specific person, or a closer friendship with someone you already know. It is not the same as wanting friends in general. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki describes it as aimed at a particular person, and sometimes strong enough to make someone flustered in the way a crush does. A platonic crush has its own name: a squish.
The vocabulary around it comes from asexual and aromantic communities, which separate kinds of attraction that are usually treated as one. The labels follow the same pattern as asexual and allosexual, and most of them are documented only in community wikis and aromantic spaces. They are microlabels in the plainest sense.
Aplatonic is the best documented. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki dates it to 6 April 2012, on the AVEN forums, where a member wrote that they had friends and cared about them, but that love was not a word they could apply to them. AUREA, a volunteer-run aromantic-spectrum advocacy organisation, says people who use the word usually mean one of two things: feeling little or no platonic attraction, or finding platonic relationships of any kind hard to form, often because of neurodivergence or trauma. The sources do not settle on one definition, so it is worth asking which one someone means.
Aplatonic does not mean friendless. AUREA notes that the claim that aplatonic people do not want or have friends was once a deliberate misreading used to attack a-spec identities, and the LGBTQIA+ Wiki says some aplatonic people have strong platonic bonds.
Alloplatonic is the other end: someone who regularly feels platonic attraction. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki records it in use by July 2015. Between the two sit demiplatonic, for someone who feels platonic attraction only after forming a deep emotional connection, and greyplatonic, for someone who feels it rarely or only in particular circumstances; AUREA also names frayplatonic. Quoiplatonic, also called WTFplatonic, is for people who find the idea of platonic attraction unclear, cannot tell it apart from other kinds, or do not relate to the aplatonic and alloplatonic split at all.
Queerplatonic is related but different. It most often names a committed relationship that is neither a friendship nor a romance, where platonic attraction names a feeling. The LGBTQIA+ Wiki notes that some people treat queerplatonic attraction as separate from platonic attraction, while others see the two as overlapping or the same. Wiktionary's definition of aplatonic includes little or no desire for queerplatonic relationships; AUREA's definition does not mention them.
Aplatonic does not mean friendless
The word sounds like a statement about someone's social life, and it gets heard as having no friends or not wanting any. It describes attraction, the pull toward being friends with a particular person, and some aplatonic people have strong friendships.
The opposite mistake is to treat platonic attraction as universal, something everyone feels and a few people are failing to notice. The labels exist because that is not everyone's experience, and because the person who coined aplatonic found that what others said about friendship did not match their own experience.
Saying it well
Say this
- I am aplatonic, and I still have friends.
- Squish, not crush: it is platonic attraction.
- Demiplatonic: I need to know someone well before I want to be their friend.
- Quoiplatonic, because I cannot tell platonic attraction from anything else.
Not this
- Aplatonic, so you must be lonely
- Everyone feels platonic attraction
- You just have not met the right friend
- Queerplatonic is just a fancy word for platonic
Questions people actually ask
What is platonic attraction?
The wish to form a friendship with a specific person, or a closer friendship with someone you already know. It is more targeted than simply wanting friends.
What does aplatonic mean?
Usually either feeling little or no platonic attraction, or finding platonic relationships hard to form, often because of neurodivergence or trauma. It does not mean having no friends.
What does alloplatonic mean?
Regularly feeling platonic attraction. It is the counterpart of aplatonic.
What does quoiplatonic mean?
Finding the idea of platonic attraction unclear or impossible to separate from other kinds, or not relating to the split between aplatonic and alloplatonic. It is also called WTFplatonic.
What is the difference between platonic and queerplatonic?
Platonic attraction is a feeling aimed at a friendship. Queerplatonic usually names a committed relationship that is neither friendship nor romance, although some people use the two words for overlapping things.