On Relationships

This paper explores and and questions the distinction between friendship and romantic love, as these two types of relationship are usually understood. We argue that the search for an essential and necessary distinction between them is misguided, since the distinction is most plausibly viewed as being based solely on a cluster of contingent social norms. Furthermore, we seek to show that there are good reasons for not drawing this distinction, such that we should try to change our social norms in this regard. The friendship-romantic relationship binary, we argue, is unhelpful for the flourishing of both friendships and romantic relationships, and unnecessarily limits access to certain goods, notably affectionate touch. Furthermore, this binary raises specifically feminist concerns: that it prioritizes cross-gender relationships over relationships between women, that it imposes limits on intimacy between men, and that it is implicated in problems concerning sexual consent. Our romantic relationships, our friendships, and our gender politics would therefore benefit from dissolving this socially-created distinction. Finally, in service of responding to a potential objection, we offer a preliminary sketch of a positive proposal for how our relationships might be structured in the absence of a friendship/romantic relationship binary, according to which relationships are structured around shared projects. On this proposal, the projects we engage in with other people can function to give definition to our relationships to them, but it is up to us which projects we want to engage in and with whom. Most importantly, this should be negotiated on an individual basis rather than being governed by social norms restricting us to either romantic relationships or friendships.