The Love We Forget To Name

At 40 I discovered the deepest connections beyond romance

I was sitting in my hammock, swaddled in the cool embrace of the blue fabric. The pergola I built to hold it—also blue—created a canopy that framed the sky above me. It felt as though everything was suspended in the same hue, the air heavy with the color of stillness as I waited to hear what they had to say.

I was on the phone with a person I had dated but who I had felt a special connection to. We had hit a point where what we each wanted didn’t fit, like when you’re at the end of the puzzle and the pieces sit a little bit wonky. That is to say, to make it fit would mean a smoosh, and the cardboard edges permanently furled.

I had pulled back, feeling the tension. I could try to force it, but we’d both be left with jagged edges. Or… I could choose a path that would leave room for a connection to remain, even if it couldn’t take the form I wanted. And while I was really proud of myself, my emotional IQ, and my willingness to sacrifice for the greater good, I was also extremely bummed.

So when this person was on the phone, telling me because I am their friend, of a new relationship drama in which they were falling, really truly falling, and they didn’t know what to do about it, I shifted from bummed to really really sad.

I could hear they were still talking but all I could hear in my own mind was a single thought on a loop, “So it’s not that you can’t or don’t want to have a romantic relationship, it’s just that you didn’t want to have that with me.”

And, like any good enneagram 4, craving the sweet comfort of beautiful pain…

I asked them.

And they said…. “yeah.”

There was a breath, a pause, an uncomfortable shift in weight I couldn’t see over the phone. But still: yeah.

And all I saw was blue.

The blue sky turned heavy. Painted wood like a cage around me. The air felt thick. The hammock around me suddenly looked like a wave about to crash over me. Why does my chest hurt like this?! Don’t let them hear you crying over the phone.

I swore off dating. I was so tired of being the one that feels. The one who writes poems in their head because of how your eyes look in this light and remembers what flowers were blooming on that picnic by the museum.

I read the book “More: A Memoir of Open Marriage” by Molly Roden Winter and a sentence she wrote planted itself into my brain: “There will be more love”.

It struck me, in the way that only a perfectly timed sentence can. Unexpectedly offering an answer to a question I’ve been praying to the Universe for an answer to. It held me still, like the blanket on my lap suddenly weighed fifty pounds, forcing me to sit in its wisdom.

And I realized, maybe for the first time that I wanted more love.

This had been a point of argument because my husband had always told me I did, and told me it was okay. And, not wanting to admit it to myself or him because then reciprocity would mean he might go out and look for love with someone other than me, I told him no I didn’t.

Why am I always the last one to figure out I’m not telling the truth?

I DID want to experience more love. I craved it. I wanted to stretch myself into the full width and breath of love. What was it like in various forms? Growing up in purity culture I was trained that I shouldn’t even dine alone with a man that wasn’t my husband. But what if I intentionally cultivated non-sexual, non-romantic love with men, women, and whoever in between that I felt compelled to?

I was at a moment when I was tired of the vulnerability of putting myself out there for an exchange we all know. What if I challenged what those exchanges could look like? What if I held hands with my friends, not as a symbol of something more, but as a celebration of what was? What if we said, “I love you” not just as a farewell tossed over our shoulders as we say goodbye but like an “I see you, and it matters, and I care.” What if I not only looked for love, but cultivated it, let it expand and not be afraid when it grew? What if I let it breathe? What if I let myself breathe?

So I decided the rest of the year would be my year of platonic love.

As I shifted my mindset from romantic or sexual connections to platonic ones, I felt a bit lost. I realized that in the last four years of being consensually non monogamous in my marriage, I’d been conflating someone wanting to sleep with me with love. Desire. Not love. It dawned on me, I didn’t have to have desire to have love if love was more than just desire. What a curious thought. For so many years, desire made me feel safe. If someone wanted me, they wouldn’t try to hurt me, they’d be extra nice to me, and I’d be safer. These were the thoughts that finally made their way out of my subconscious as I started thinking about what I wanted to experience.

My first opportunity to give this experiment a try came shortly after.

A dear friend was going through a breakup, and while he was a friend of mine, he was really more a friend of my best friend. He wasn’t ready to emerge post-split on the dating market again but he was also in need of a person to go out to dinners with, explore nature, play games… And I was feeling very emboldened by my newfound mindset. So I volunteered.

And even though my mind had processed this realization, it took my body a little while longer and that caused an awkward learning curve.

I found myself sitting across from this friend at a coffee shop. My legs, seemingly of their own accord, crossed themselves inward toward him. I felt my body closing the space between us, and I found myself resting my hand on his knee as I nodded in agreement with something he said. This is what I’d do on a date to show someone I was into them, I thought. I pulled it back quickly, suddenly aware of how instinctive these movements were. Instincts that had once been part of a different script, one that didn’t allow for this kind of closeness without a deeper meaning. The rumble of the coffee grinders made it hard to hear what he was saying. Should I lean back in again? Is that behavior wrong? I didn’t want to mess this up. How can I trust my instincts when they were never free to learn this dance?

Now let me take a moment to say, I understand that I’m uniquely positioned in this experiment of exploring platonic love. My marriage has non-traditional definitions of what is appropriate and what isn’t in my interactions with people outside of my husband, so I have no boundaries on how I hang out with men except for what the men bring to our time. This is a whole upside down and inside out mentality shift from how I grew up in the evangelical church where I was trained to make myself attractive but never to attract attention from the “wrong” people. To be likable and agreeable but never so much that I led a man on. To take pride in my appearance to keep my husband satisfied but never so much that I caused any other husband to be distracted. To never even dine alone with a man because that might give him an invitation for closeness. (God forbid!)

Even decades removed from those rules, they still show up as whispers in the back of my mind in a voice that tries to sound holy but I know is just pious. They show up in the memories of well intentioned college ministry leaders scolding me for getting caught having coffee openly on campus with a boy who was not my boyfriend. Even now, something as simple as sharing a meal or a moment of closeness feels like a quiet act of rebellion.

A few weeks later, dressed up and in heels on the way to a show together, I asked if I could hold his arm. The new friendship nerves had mostly faded, and honestly, I wanted to. I was realizing about myself that I wanted platonic physical affection from my friends.

Except… as I walked arm in arm with him I felt a bit of a buzz. The buzz. The light electricity the first time you touch someone new and you break that barrier. The delicious, tingly, unfamiliarity. Wait. Is this platonic? Stop it body!

Or don’t?

Is it okay to feel a feeling and just enjoy it for what it is without it having to be something more?

Are all electrical charges between humans a prelude to sex? Can touches be pleasurable between friends without any sort of shame?

With women, I’d been able to find that space. Female friendships are notoriously affectionate, but this was new territory. I decided to enjoy it for exactly what it was and nothing more. Even when shame crept in later that night, my brain offering a detailed breakdown of every awkward moment, every tiny misstep, I could feel my inner compass shifting toward a new north, opening space for new possibilities. The world’s on fire. Why not let joy in when it unexpectedly appears?

The sky had turned deep cobalt with dusk as we walked. Gray, heavy clouds hung over us like a giant crocheted blanket. Maybe platonic love feels like feeling safe enough to awkwardly figure it out with someone. My friends are captivating, filled with wonder and beauty, each one interesting in their own way. How could I not feel something when I’m near them. Maybe platonic love includes desire but in a different way. To sense their skin and hear their heartbeat and to remember we are both alive right here together and to have that be exactly, deliciously, comfortably enough.

It takes me months of wondering if he’ll change his mind about wanting more and him holding the line before I stop waiting for it to happen. No man has ever not shifted the boundary on me. And I don’t really know how to deal with that. Part of me feels rejected. And part of me feels deeply safe. I realize platonic heterosexual love is a balance. But one I’m willing to keep adjusting to.

This experiment flows easier with women.

I tell my two closest female friends, as we are planning a girls weekend to see each other for the first time in months, that I want to touch them more. And luckily, they are used to my out-of-seemingly-nowhere declarations and they like me anyway. I think of it like I’m giving them a warning. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable and to be honest, I’ve always held myself back with them. Even with my most cuddly friends. Looking back, I can see how it was because of my repressed sexuality. I have always been bisexual since I first started experiencing crushes. But I didn’t allow myself permission to be openly and unashamedly bi until my late thirties. I look back on past girls trips full of platonic cuddle puddles in king sized beds and remember myself feeling a pull toward the human connection but afraid to let myself feel it, because… what if I felt more?

I chuckle audibly to myself as I write this line in my journal: Is this whole journey of experiencing platonic love just going to be me dealing with my bisexuality? It’s a fair question. If I have the capacity to be romantically or sexually attracted to anyone, how do I experience platonic love without confusing things, or confusing others with my intentions?

But then, I snuggle the heck out of my best friend. We fall asleep in her bed spooning, tangled in the warmth of our shared space. We crash into each other in a laughing fit at a gastropub downtown, the sound of our joy spilling out into the night. I’m an only child, and she’s not. I wonder internally if this is what it’s like growing up with a sister you’re desperately close to. Platonic love can feel a lot like familial love I realize. But even better because we chose it, we keep choosing it. And that feels extra special.

My two best friends come into town for my 40th birthday. I didn’t want to ask them. They are both mothers and my birthday happens during the most chaotic and exhausting month of the year for mothers: December. But there they are, standing in my kitchen with me. There they are helping me set up for the cacao ceremony I decided I wanted to do to usher in my next decade. They’re stringing up twinkle lights over the outdoor dining table, and as they sit hunched over the arrangement of botanicals they’ve been creating, my daughter joins them and they make space for her.

I watch from the corner of the room. They tease me, telling me not to take pictures of them sitting like that, but I do it anyway. Because I’m not sure they’ve ever looked more beautiful. In this quiet moment, I realize: this too is love. The way they create, the way they give, the way they make space for each other and for me. It’s not a love born of romance, but of something just as powerful: the kind of love that fills every space you let it into, unconditionally, purely, in the most unexpected ways.

Seated around a sacred circle for my 40th birthday, I look at the faces of my dearest friends. They are all here. My husband who knew me and saw me and made space for me before I could even see myself. Our mutual friend who helped me figure out platonic affection. The person from that moment in the hammock, who I chose to love as a friend when I couldn’t as more. The women who helped me feel what it might have been like to have sisters, to be loved unconditionally by choice…

The facilitator guides us through an incredibly rich ceremony and near the end of our time she asks each person one by one to come up and give me a birthday blessing, a wish, a prayer… whatever word you like best.

Words of affirmation are like oxygen to me so this was the greatest birthday gift anyone could ever give me, even if watching the faces of everyone as she made the request filled me with embarrassment. I hope they don’t hate having to say something nice about me, says a tiny part inside of me, a very young version of myself who would rather bear the weight of loneliness than feel like someone faked a compliment.

But one by one, the humans I’ve spent the last year intentionally cultivating love, in lots of different forms and sizes and textures with, crawl over till they are seated cross legged in front of me. We are on blankets and pillows on my floor. It’s already a vulnerable way to be in someone’s home. And their vulnerability is also a gift. Some of them speak out loud and the whole circle gets to hear and nod along. Some speak to me in whispers that only I can hear.

My two best female friends and I are holding hands. They knew my heart was calling out for this. Another friend tells me that our connection helped heal them this year. And then they say it, for the first time, “I love you”. And I say it back. And I realize I really mean it. And now the love floodgates have opened. We’re naming the specific ways we love each other.

I’m seeing clearly the tapestry of love I’ve woven with intention over the last year. Each person a thread of a different color and texture, some vibrant like turquoise, some deep like velvety navy some expansive like shimmering aquamarine. Together, we’ve created something beautiful, shimmering, warm, cozy, comforting.

And once again, all I see is blue.

The solstice sky has darkened to a rich navy, stars pinpricking the fabric above like quiet witnesses to the love surrounding me. The air is heavy with it, as though the very atmosphere had absorbed every thread of connection in the room. Blue like the deep of the ocean. Blue like fresh air in the spring. Blue like endless horizon. Why does my chest hurt like this? Oh, it’s because it’s going to explode. “Can you die from happiness?!” I ask my friend and she looks at me through watery eyes and winks.

The tears come silently, and this time, I let them.

I let them wash over me, like a baptism. Waves of emotion pulling me deeper into surrender. It’s full and warm, heavy with all the love I’ve been afraid to let myself hold. I breathe in, deeper this time, and it fills every empty space in me. Love, without need, without boundaries, wraps around me like a blanket, and I finally feel free.

Reflecting on my year of exploring platonic love, I realized that Molly Roden Winter’s mother was right: there will be more love.

The potential of my friendships, which feels like too weak a word now for them, is deep as the ocean and as unending as the horizon. Love floods in like fresh air when we make space for it. It crashes over us in waves. It surges like a river, taking us somewhere new. It’s connected to desire but not bound by it. Love, like water, seems to change forms constantly, working its way into new places, showing up where we least expect it. Every time we try to hold it in one space it evaporates into another when we aren’t paying attention. Love itself—platonic, romantic, familial—is always something we are in the process of understanding, not something neatly defined.

I can't hold it, and I won't try to anymore. Instead, I will continue to move through it, as I always have: swimming in it, climbing with it, flying through it, remaining open to where it takes me.

I’m trusting that each wave I experience is as life giving as the breath I take in its wake. Knowing that even as a tide may recede, there will be more.

---

*Names, genders, and identifying details of the people spoken about in this essay have been switched up to protect their privacy.