Relationship

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Asexuals form a variety of relationships to fulfill their emotional needs. Some have adhered to the more common structuring of relationships, whereas others have tried to structure their relationships a bit differently. However, regardless of structure, most asexuals find things such as communication, trust, and affection to be important parts of their relationships.

Attraction

Full article: Attraction

While asexuals do not experience sexual attraction, they experience a variety of other attractions and have come up with names for some of these attractions.

Community- and Partner-Based Intimacy

Some people reject the romantic vs. aromantic dichotomy. They feel that this model is weighed towards the romantic side, since it is defined by something that a person does; it does not take into account the types of intimate relationships that nonromantic people enter into. Many nonromantic people have a desire for partnership, but don’t think of it in a romantic sense.

One of the models proposed to describe how people structure their relationships is that of partner-based and community-based intimacy. To some extent, everyone has both types in their lives; everyone has multiple relationships with multiple people, and everyone has one or a few relationships that are more strongly developed and have a central role in that person’s life. Therefore, this model is not about labeling someone as either a "partner-based intimacy" person or a "community-based intimacy" person, but about describing the forms a person's relationships might take on. Relevant podcast

Partner-Based Intimacy

In this model, a person fulfills their emotional needs from one relationship with a partner. To build up this type of relationship, people try to become very close to someone and to fill an important role in their lives. A lot of time and energy is spent on this relationship, as the people involved begin to structure their lives around each other.

Community-Based Intimacy

In community-based intimacy, a person has multiple relationships. However, since this is a community, these relationships are often a lot more specialized. Instead of having one relationship that is as close and intimate as possible, each relationship fills a different role. Relationships are comprised of different activities and ways of being intimate.

In order to fulfill their needs, a person either finds new people to bring into the community in order to fill specific roles, or they take an existing relationship and build more structure and depth into it. A person following this model is constantly finding new things the community can do to enrich their life. As a person changes, so too do the roles and structures of the individual relationships in their community in order to keep the community tailored to each person.

People are able to drift into and out of the community without it having a harmful effect. As long as the rate of people entering the community is at least equal to the rate of people leaving, the community will essentially remain stable, even if the individual relationships themselves don’t remain stable.

Romantic Friendship