i feel like people very often forget that you don't have to love someone to be in a relationship with them. relationships are just societal labels they aren't irrefutable facts of reality that are never ever wrong or bad. i have some really really shitty real life friends that i hate but i still call them my friends because it's just a simple shorthand for our relationship so that i don't have to describe our entire history every single time i talk about them. yes that woman with a boyfriend can still be a lesbian. yes that man who had a wife for several decades can still be aromantic. yes these labels connote romantic love, but romantic love is not a strict component of them. i would love to live in a world where every single person with a partner really truly loves that partner, but we don't live in that world. we live in a world where people are pressured to enter heterosexual marriages and have kids regardless of their real wants and feelings















