#ah lads not again dot png

[arotechno]

hey so i saw your post about the concept of soul mates being an inherently bad one and i wanted to ask if like... what if a version of it existed but could be about friends?

not qprs, not friends you live with, just friends?

normally i don't answer these questions anymore (which you seemed to realize, so genuinely thank you for that!), but since you asked nicely and i haven't talked about it in a while i think i will, briefly! this topic hasn't shown up on my blog in a long time so it might be worth rehashing a little.

so my issues with the idea of soulmates are partly about the inherent arophobia and amatonormativity embedded within it (which is the aspect i refuse to argue about), and partly about my own philosophical beliefs and the implications of that.

i'll start with the latter, since it's mostly my own opinion: i don't believe in the idea of fate and i don't like the idea of people's place in our lives being predetermined. i do believe that human connection is a very powerful force, but i also believe that those connections are more meaningful when you consider them to be something you chose for yourself, often almost on accident, and deliberately decided to maintain. for other people things like fate and destiny are an important part of their belief system, and while i don't agree, more power to them, so long as they don't force that belief onto me. so on this front, your mileage may vary.

the other side of this is the amatonormativity and arophobia. i don't really like repeating myself on this anymore lol so i will start by pointing you toward this post that i feel sums up my feelings most strongly (i want to note that my tone in that post is kind of terse and exasperated, but i'm not directing that at you. when i wrote that post at the time i was being harassed constantly by people willfully misinterpreting my posts and making me repeat the same points over and over, and then saying i was mean when i inevitably grew tired of it and snapped).

i think the conversation gets muddied when it's unclear whether people are talking about the portrayal of soulmates as a fictional device vs whether they believe soulmates exist in real life. obviously those are different conversations, but i also believe that the prevalence of soulmates as a fictional trope that many people swoon over and fantasize about reflects cultural ideas of amatonormativity that are harmful to everyone. i'm not sure which you're asking about here, so i'll answer in both ways.

in the fictional sense. i don't think there's anything inherently "bad" or evil about portraying friends as soulmates. i especially don't mind aro people doing it in a reclamatory or exploratory way (hello i have done it! on this blog!). the context of the portrayal really matters and i think the reason me and so many other aros have just decided to blanket-statement disavow the concept entirely is because most people don't know how to portray soulmates in a way that doesn't throw some flavor of aro person under the bus. i would really encourage you to seek out aplatonic and/or loveless perspectives on this, as while i think we reach similar conclusions, they are approaching this issue from a different angle than i am.

in the real life sense... well i've already made clear how i feel about soulmates in general lol. if people want to think of their real life friends or whoever as soulmates i don't really mind that, people are entitled to call their relationships whatever they would like. i just don't want that concept pushed onto me, and i think everyone could do with a little healthy examination of the idea of soulmates and ask themselves whether they are holding some ideal of a perfect person or people that will drop into their life by miracle. because that person does not exist. you have to put in the work.

in a broader sense, and this is something i discuss in the post i linked, constantly broadening the definition of soulmates just muddies the waters. like, if you have to stretch the concept so far that it's barely even recognizable as the same idea that you see in like, plato's symposium, then maybe it's because the concept is bad. people are always like "soulmates are bad? what if [fifteen qualifiers and stipulations]?" and it's just like... just relinquish the word! just get over the need to call everything soulmates! you know? like, you may be saying, "what if friends as soulmates aren't predestined, but chosen?" to which i would say "then that's not soulmates." that's not what the word has, historically and literarily, meant. you can just call it something else. or call your friends your soulmates if you really want to, it doesn't matter to me how you live your life. but what aro people mean when we say it's bad is that it's bad to suggest that everyone has or needs some other person or people who completes them in some way or who is a predetermined part of their life. it throws aros on the bus in general, and nonpartnering/nonamorous, aplatonic, and loveless aros especially so in various ways. and a fictional portrayal of soulmates that defines not having a soulmate as a tragedy on par with death (yes i have seen this with my own eyes) or not reciprocating the feelings of one's soulmate as evil is deeply arophobic and i shouldn't have to explain why.

maybe we don't have to keep changing what "soulmate" means. maybe we can just acknowledge that it's an inherently amatonormative concept. maybe aro people are just allowed to be right about this one!