Alice Oseman and the Revolutionary Power of the Platonic Love Story

He laughed again and hid his face under the blanket. “Why are you so nice to me?”

“Because I’m an angel.”

“You are.” He stretched out his arm and patted me on the head. “And I’m platonically in love with you.”

Alice Oseman, Radio Silence (2016) p.108

In 2017—somewhere on the stumbling journey to identifying myself proudly and loudly as asexual—I read Alice Oseman’s young adult (YA) novel Radio Silence. When I reached the passage quoted above, I stopped in my tracks. It was the first time I had seen those words put together to such an effect. Friends could say they loved each other, of course, in a fleeting and fluffy sort of way. But to imply that you could be in love with someone in a purely platonic way? That you could refer to something as a love story even if it was about characters who were “just” friends, who never even thought about dating one another? It was a little bit revolutionary.

But that, of course, is the revolutionary heart of aromanticism and asexuality—the quiet, but resonant, revolution inherent in the articulation of different kinds of love, in the deconstruction of the dominant social narratives of romance and sex. As I kept my eye on Oseman’s forthcoming novels, it transpired that this revolution sits at the heart of her writing, making them deeply resonant for aro/ace readers even when not featuring the identities directly. And when they do feature aro-ace identity directly, the quiet revolution is front and centre, and the results are incredible and incredibly important.

Aside from the wildly popular and wonderfully sweet comic series Heartstopper, the majority of Oseman’s stories do not centre on romance—instead having their emotional centre be friendships. The cover of her debut Solitaire informs the reader “This is not a love story”; and there is a portion in Radio Silence where the narrator all but breaks the fourth wall to confirm:

You probably think that Aled Last and I are going to fall in love or something, because he is a boy and I am a girl.

I just wanted to say—

We don’t.

That’s all. (p.85)

Radio Silence, true to this mantra, keeps its focus on the platonic relationship between narrator Frances and her new best friend Aled, weaving a story about the life-affirming, life-saving potential of friendships and the intimacy of creative partnerships with nary a whisper of romantic nor sexual tension between them. I Was Born For This, Oseman’s next novel (published in 2018), follows a different narrative and relationship arc to Radio Silence, but similarly centres on an unexpected yet wonderful friendship—this one between an ordinary fangirl and the anxious frontman of a world-famous band.

While there are romantic subplots in these books—often featuring friends of the protagonist or other members of the ensemble casts, and often admittedly very fun—Oseman’s protagonists are rarely motivated by romance. By the end of Radio Silence, Aled identifies himself as demisexual, using the word on-page. Even without taking this textual representation of the asexual spectrum into account, however, the central focus on glorious, detailed, complex friendships rather than romances makes Oseman’s novels very welcoming to aro-ace readers, and very resonant with their experiences. It could be said that the overarching philosophy of this body of work is that friendships deserve the same narrative attention and the same emotional weight as a romantic plotline would.

Oseman brings this thematic undercurrent, this resonant philosophy, to a head in her 2020 novel Loveless—a coming-of-age story explicitly about the protagonist’s journey to identifying proudly as aromantic asexual, and about unpacking the assumptions that romance and sex should take the spotlight in a story about relationships.

While Loveless is not the first YA novel to feature a protagonist on the aro-ace spectrum(s), the degree to which its plot centres on the aro-ace experience is significant. The novel begins with protagonist Georgia sitting in the middle of her high school graduation party pondering that she’s never been in a relationship. When she admits in a truth-or-dare game that she’s never even been kissed, this sparks ridicule, pity, and confusion from her classmates.

So Georgia decides: she will have her first kiss that very night, she will complete this rite of passage, and she will formally leave her naïve childhood behind. All she has to do is work out who to kiss, since she’s never actually had feelings for anyone at her school. In seventh grade, a girl in her class told her she had to like someone, so Georgia picked the most conventionally attractive boy out of a yearbook photo. So he’ll do, right?

This goes about as disastrously as you might expect, and Georgia is left wondering what in the world is wrong with her. As she sets off to start university, she makes a promise to herself:

I was going to […] reinvent myself and become someone who could fall in love, someone who could fit in with my family, with people my age, with the world. […] I’d get a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend, even. A partner. I’d have my first kiss, and I’d have sex. I wasn’t just a late bloomer. I wasn’t going to die alone.

I was going to try harder.

I wanted forever love.

I didn’t want to be loveless. (p.32)

This sentiment is, I’m sure, uncomfortably familiar to many aromantic and/or asexual people. Across the novel, Georgia confronts this idea that she is somehow “broken”, and that her lack of attraction is a personal failing that she can work past with sheer willpower. She attempts to date, she attempts to kiss, she spends a disastrous and disgusted evening on Tinder, and she takes all the advice of her supposedly perfect and mature roommate Rooney.

But this leaves Georgia more lost than before, and her clumsy attempts create rifts in her friend group as well. It’s only when Georgia starts tentatively spending time with the university’s Pride Society, and shyly befriends its president, a non-binary ace boy named Sunil, that she begins to reckon with the idea of herself as aromantic and asexual. From there, the world seems to shut down—and yet it opens up as well.

It would take far too long to list the individual moments that resonated with me as an asexual reader, but they are countless—woven through the novel in great and small instances, some hilarious, some painful, some a mix of both. Across her narrative, Georgia must confront this ingrained idea that she is doing love “wrong”, that she is doing life wrong. It makes for a powerful deconstruction of the coming-of-age story, which so often presumes that falling in love, experiencing sexual intimacy, and running off into the future together, are all required rites of passage.

Loveless instead rejects the very idea that there is no love in a story without a romance plot. As her understanding of herself evolves and she grows more confident, Georgia’s quest shifts from “finding love” to acknowledging and celebrating the love she already has in her life: the love between her and her friends, both new and old.

While this is a hugely important book for aro-ace visibility, and will be a hugely validating text for aro-ace readers, its central message about the blinding prevalence of romantic and sexual love is also resonant and vital for readers outside of those spectrums. After all, it’s not only Georgia who is harmed by this social fixation on love and sex as rites of passage. Other characters in the cast discuss how they were previously locked in unhealthy relationships because they perceived being in a relationship as the ultimate sign of success, or how they find themselves desperately lonely despite chasing a sense of “intimacy” by having an active sex life.

Unpacking the dominant narrative that romance and sex are the core to any successful relationship, and to any successful life, is a massive part of the aro-ace movement—that quietly revolutionary philosophy mentioned above. But this deconstruction has relevance and resonance to allo folks as well. All the characters in Loveless, regardless of their sexual and romantic orientations, end up all the happier for their acknowledgment that there are many different types of love, not dependent on the usual expectations of romantic and sexual relationships.

Most rewardingly, Georgia does get her love story, just not in the way she envisioned it at the beginning of the novel when she was swept up in the norms and expectations of greater society. She even gets a glorious, dramatic, unexpected confession of love at the climax of the novel, with all the sappiness and emotional weight of the movies she adores so much… but it is platonic love rather than any other kind.

“But you know what I realised on my walk?” she said. “I realised that I love you, Georgia.”

My mouth dropped open.

“Obviously I’m not romantically in love with you. But I realised that whatever these feelings are for you, I…” She grinned wildly. “I feel like I am in love. Me and you—this is a fucking love story! I feel like I’ve found something most people just don’t get. I feel at home around you in a way I have never felt in my fucking life. And maybe most people would look at us and think that we’re just friends, or whatever, but I know that it’s just… so much more than that.” She gestured dramatically at me with both hands. “You changed me. You… you fucking saved me, I swear to God. I know I still do a lot of dumb stuff and I say the wrong things and I still have days where I just feel like shit but… I’ve felt happier over the past few weeks than I have in years.” (p.413)

This confession feels like a spiritual successor to the “I’m platonically in love with you” declaration that made my heart swell so in Radio Silence. There is that revolution again, though this time even more explicitly within an aro-ace frame.

Loveless follows in the tradition of Oseman’s other friendship novels, and spends its whole narrative pulling apart the connotations of its very title. Georgia does not experience romantic or sexual attraction, but she is not loveless—she loves fiercely and protectively, and with a great eye for sappiness and dramatic flair. She reaffirms the love she has for her childhood friends, she essentially undergoes a platonic love arc with Rooney, and, perhaps most importantly, she comes to love herself. And in this tumultuous world, with its strict binaries and expectations, what is more revolutionary than that?