#very incredible how my deeply conservative religious school made me queerer

[sergeant-angels-trashcan]

Ok I have confusion

(This is a very queer confusion so buckle up)

So. Like. What's the difference between romantic love and platonic love? Normally, I'd be like "sex" but in thinking about it, that's a false dichotomy. People have sex with people they aren't in love with all the time and vice versa; that's a different axis of relationships. I'm not talking about physical expression or sexual desire, I'm talking about love the...emotion? Love the action? Because if you remove the physical axis, what's the difference?

I am genuinely confused. I went to a Jesus school and they were very big on Love is An Action Verb, it's not mushy emotions, it's something you do. We also learned about the different Greek words for types of love like philos (brotherly) eros (sexual) and agape (unconditional). Maybe another kind that's familial idk. Again, learned it at Jesus School, large chance something in there is incorrect.

So if having sex isn't the main definer of romantic love, what's the difference between romantic and platonic? Like the definition of platonic is based around what it is not (romantic or sexual attraction) but those aren't the same thing. Because you can have a romantic relationship without sexual attraction so it seems to hold that you can have a platonic relationship WITH sexual attraction. And some definitions are like "it's only the outward expression of physical desire that makes it romantic vs platonic" which seems incredibly incorrect I'm probably just going to disregard that

I feel like this is something I'm supposed to intrinsically "know" like I'm supposed to innately understand the difference between romantic and platonic bc they just feeeeel different like obviously the love you have for a family member is different from the love you have for a friend which is different from the love you have for a partner but it seems like the only actual differences are desire and physicality, and if you take away that axis (I keep thinking of it as a third dimension, sorry) what's the difference? I care about all of these people, I want them to be happy and healthy and spend time with me, I want to know what they like and don't, what they want out of life, I want them to be able to do what they want and be safe and take care of them, and the intensity with which I feel those things doesn't change the type of love it is (does it???)

Is the answer really just "it FEELS different, you'll just know it" or am I just missing a component here? Or did I accidentally open a can of queer worms?