#attraction model

Okay, so as some of you may know or have noticed, the last few days I’ve spent a lot of time reading essays on asexual experience and conceptions of relationships and attractions. For the most part, this can all be summed up as “no one really has any idea, but here’s a bunch of stuff that some people have found to work for them.” There are, however, some fascinating and pivotal ideas that I feel apply very well to my own relationships and experience of attraction. This is by no means intended to advise others or put forth a definitive description of relationships and attractions. Instead, it is meant as a discussion about various models for these, and how they apply to me. If you feel that it helps you to better understand your own relationships and expences of attraction, feel free to use it. If not, use whatever works best for you.

Traditionally, there seems to be an assumption that a relationship can fall into one of three categories: sexual, romantic, and platonic. While some overlap is acknowledged to exist between these, they are, broadly, assumed to be distinct and separate. This categorisation is inadequate for several reasons, the most obvious, and the one I will be discussing here, that it fails to adequately encapsulate the complexity of human relationships and attraction.

One possible alternative to this that I have encountered over the last few days of reading is called the 3 T’s (part One, Two, and Three). These are “Time,” “Touch,” and “Talk.” This model, again, isn’t exhaustive but does provide a useful method for conceptualising how a relationship can exist and grow. It does not, however, distinguish between different types of relationship. I will attempt to do this later. Rather, the importance of this model is in how relationships are conceptualised. Ultimately, it doesn’t factor in, in any immediately obvious way, but the rest of this post is written with this model in mind.

For the most part, it appears as though the most difficult relationships in the traditional model to distinguish are romantic and platonic, especially when one removes the sexual components often assumed to be part of romantic relationships. This difficulty arises from the perceived similarities between them, raising questions such as “if they are so similar (often to the point of appearing identical - often the only distinguishing factor is that a romantic relationship is also assumed to be sexual) then how can I tell them apart?” In truth, once the sexual parts are removed as a distinguishing factor (there are many discussions online as to why this fails to reflect the reality), there is very little to distinguish between romantic and platonic relationships, as well as romantic and platonic attraction. In essence, they look exactly the same. So what about the equivalent attractions (romantic and platonic)? Here I encounter a similar issue. I may be able to distinguish them internally, but any attempt to define them, results in them looking identical.

How to resolve this then? At first glance, this would mean that there is no distinction between my romantic attractions and relationships, and the platonic equivalents. I know this, however, to be untrue. They are different. In an attempt to find the line between them, I turned to how I understand attractions, and what separates the desire to be in a romantic relationship with someone, and the desire to be in a platonic relationship with someone.

This is where it gets complicated (I know right? Like it’s not already complicated). First I must reevaluate how I understand romantic and platonic attraction. In particular, how this intersects with other forms of attraction.

For this I have used the SAM, with some additions and amendments of my own, and, in some ways, incorporated my own variation of the Primary/Secondary attraction model (more on this later).

The SAM (Split Attraction Model) states that there are four main types of attraction: sexual, romantic, sensual, and aesthetic. I add to this platonic, and intellectual (something else I came across in my reading). At this point, I can drop sexual attraction from this discussion (at least for now), as it does not apply to me. This leaves us with Romantic, Platonic, Intellectual, Sensual, and Aesthetic. So how do these attractions apply to me, and how do they interact?

I know that I experience Romantic attraction (even if I have as yet been unable to define it) and Platonic attraction. Upon examination, I have found that these may not actually stand as independent attractions. Rather, they are dependent on a combination of the other three. In effect, romantic attraction is built out of a combination of intellectual attraction (more on how I define this shortly), sensual attraction, and aesthetic attraction. The same applies to Platonic. This still leaves us with both romantic attraction and platonic attraction being defined in identical terms. Clearly, this is inadequate.

Personally, I find that I have immense difficulty forming an emotional bond with someone without first having an intellectual attraction to them. So what is intellectual attraction? I have an intense dislike of the usage of sapio-[attraction type]. For me, it is not attraction based on a person’s intellect. Rather, I perceive it as another attraction type, like romantic, platonic, sensual, and aesthetic. Under this definition, it is an attraction to a person’s mind, rather than based on a preconceived notion of intellect. It is a desire to engage with a person on an intellectual level, to hold deep conversations, or engage with their thoughts.

This is important as, if it stands as a prerequisite for the “higher” attractions (please don’t hate me for using that word, I hate it too, but right now I’m much more concerned with accurately communicating meaning than correct terminology), then that must also mean that other attractions could also be prerequisite. At this point, it is useful to add another attraction type, Emotional. I define this as an emotional equivalent to intellectual attraction; that is, a desire to engage with a person on an emotional level.

For me, after I am intellectually attracted to someone, I can start to develop an emotional attraction, and following that, a sensual attraction. At this point, I will borrow a concept from neuroscience. In a  similar way to how different emotions are determined by different ratios of the same chemicals in the brain, one could understand that the “higher” attractions (romantic, platonic, and theoretically sexual - though categorisation of sexual exclusively as a higher attraction gets messy very quickly) as made up of the “lower” attractions in different ratios of importance (and to an extent, degree to which they are felt) and order of occurrence. Under this model, my romantic and platonic attraction look more like this:

Romantic-:

Intellectual (high) => Emotional (high) => Sensual (moderate) => Aesthetic (low)

Platonic-:

Intellectual (high) => Emotional (moderate) => Sensual (low) => Aesthetic (low)

This model can also be used to form a theoretical model of sexual attraction as follows

Sexual-:

Aesthetic (high) => Sensual (high) => Emotional (high-moderate) => Intellectual (low)

Note: the levels of each attraction given are relative to the other attractions within the “higher” attraction. Platonic attraction could have the same levels of Emotional attraction as Romantic, but this would still be less important than Intellectual attraction. The model of sexual attraction is purely theoretical based on what I have observed to appear to be the order of importance in others (and may not be as messy as I had assumed - need more data). Input from allosexual or grey/demi-asexual individuals would be appreciated to help refine this.

Ah! Finally! We have a discernable difference! So how does the 3T’s relate to all this? Simply put, each of the T’s relates to a different “lower” attraction (though some overlap will occur). So, Intellectual = talk+time, emotional = touch+talk, sensual = touch+time, aesthetic = a visual element that doesn’t relate much to the 3 T’s for me, possibly, but with a healthy dose of uncertainty, because aesthetic isn’t a prominent attraction for me.

So, I have a two-tiered model of attraction (akin to the Primary/Secondary model) that uses a modified Split Attraction Model, that is unified by a model loosely borrowed from neuroscience.

So how does this relate to relationships? Both my romantic and platonic relationships place strong importance on Intellectual and Emotional connection, though, an emotional connection is less important in a platonic relationship. More weight is placed on a sensual connection in a romantic relationship, and aesthetic attraction doesn’t factor in much at all. This doesn’t mean that Romantic relationships are more important or in some way “superior” to Platonic ones. Rather, they place different value on different aspects of the relationship; they serve different purposes.

So how does this look when applied to real life?

I am in a romantic relationship with B. It is important to me that we connect intellectually and emotionally, and a sensual connection is important for maintaining those. We live together, share a bed and intimate spaces. We eat together, frequently spend time together, share intimate thoughts, and often get into debates about intellectually stimulating subject matter (we recently got drunk and stayed up until the sun was rising and got into a debate about whether or not maths was real, for example). We have also committed to maintaining this relationship.

I have a platonic attraction with T. It is important to me that we connect intellectually and emotionally, though a sensual connection isn’t very important. Mostly we talk online, rarely spending any physical time together. When time together does happen, we might share a hug, but that’s more or less the extent of our sensual connection. Our discussions are about intellectually stimulating topics (e.g., how words can be used in different ways for different meaning) and emotionally important topics (e.g., the sense of relief and freedom associated with coming to terms with ones (a)sexuality). This relationship has no defined commitment, though it is understood (at least for me) that it will continue so long as it is beneficial to both of us.

Both relationships also make use of humour and other enjoyable methods of communication. This keeps the relationships from feeling too serious or clinical.

This application of the above model to real life examples highlights another vital distinction. For me (and this is only my perspective on this, the other people involved may have different thoughts), a romantic relationship has an element of explicit commitment. We have discussed where we want the relationship to go, and how we want it to benefit us. In contrast, a platonic relationship has implicit commitment. We have not discussed where we want the relationship to go or what we want from it. It is expected that it will be maintained until it is no longer beneficial to us to maintain it.

So how do I define my attractions in simplified terms that can be easily and readily communicated? For me, a persons sex or gender simply doesn’t factor in. I know that I am asexual, and experience romantic attraction. This raises an interesting point about terminology. By my understanding, both the “bi-” and “pan-” prefixes might be appended to “romantic” and a suitable term formed that way, but what is the difference? Personally, I am inclined towards “pan-,” not because of any difference in meaning, but I feel it better describes me. Realistically, both terms probably apply equally, and any distinction between them is largely irrelevant to how they apply to me. However, is “romantic” the right way to describe my attraction? Intellectual attraction is the prerequisite for all of my close relationships, and all of these are not tied in any way to sex or gender. If I describe my attraction in terms of “romantic,” then I feel like I am placing higher priority on an attraction type that is not my “primary” attraction, that would better fit how I understand Intellectual attraction. I lack a term for this that is not the “sapio-” prefix. This is inadequate as it is a type of attraction in and of itself, not a qualifier for a type of attraction. One possible term that may be used is “sapient,” meaning that I could potentially describe myself as “pan-sapient,” but (aside from sounding pretentious af) I do not know if it may have other, unintended implied meaning. For now, I will stick with “pan-romantic” even if I do not feel it to be the most accurate way to describe myself, as it is an understood term.