Post I found

[zsomeone]

This is a really great post, I just wanted to share it http://grasexuality.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/how-to-have-sex-with-an-asexual-person/
Lots of other good posts on that site too if you want to read around.

Comments

[cheriola]

A lot of asexuals and aromantics find it insulting and invalidating to have to talk of themselves and their partners as "friends". Mostly because Western society values friendships less than romantic relationships. (You're expected to spend less time with your friends when you get into a "serious relationship". People say things like "No, we're just friends.") Hence the coining of the term "zucchini" in the aromantic community for someone they're not in romantic love with or sexually interested in, but still wish to spend their life with. (It's almost impossible to explain the difference to a mere friendship to a romantic person. Google the term.) It's not a new idea, though. Even the Greeks had a set of terms for types of love to base a relationship on that weren't romantic in the Hollywood sense. (Of course, the ancient Greeks also didn't expect to be in romantic or sexual love with their husband/wife. Romance was considered too fickle and fleeting to base a life partnership on.) In modern psychology, love is the combination of caring, attachment and initmacy (of thoughts and emotions, not necessarily physical), which is quite different from liking a friend.

I personally don't have this problem so much - "friend" and "girlfriend/boyfriend" are literally the same word in my native language; "life companion" is the long-accepted term for "yes, we live together, no, we're not going to marry" even for hetero couples; and people aren't usually required to specify their sexual identity and the exact nature of their relationship during small talk. But I can understand why Americans would want the validation of their platonically loving relationships that comes with calling each other something more intimate and closely attached than "friend".

Besides, if you're going to live together and pool your resources and share responsibilities, you've got just as much right to the term "partner" as business partners do. Sex or romance don't figure into it, IMHO. My parents never were in love, and only married for political reasons several years after my birth, but they were certainly partners in life. (If you're wondering: I'm the result of my mother's wish to have a child before she turned 40 and my father's wish not to grow old alone after a nasty divorce. I don't remember ever seeing them so much as kiss. A pragmatic relationship if there ever was one. But a valid relationship nonetheless.)

"Romantic friendship" is nice, but it sounds antiquated. Kind of belittling, too. Like you're only training at romance in the safe environment of a friendship. I'm pretty sure I've heard of it only in the context of Victorian era BFF-type relationships between teenage girls.