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by noirbot
1117 days ago
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As an asexual person myself, who is not aromantic, I'm well aware what asexual means. Obviously sometimes they're cleanly married or in a committed emotional relationship with one person. In general though, most people consider sexual and emotional intimacy to be tightly linked, and I've certainly had multiple times where I was in a long-term emotional relationship with multiple people I was not sexually involved with. Having to determine which of them, or none of them would have counted as my partner would have been hard to determine. Defining at what point a non-sexual relationship with someone I live with crosses over into something closer to a common law marriage would be rather more difficult. |
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If it were me, I imagine I'd be looking for things like the following to determine if the relationship is more like a standard roommate situation or a romantic relationship?
- "do we have long-term shared financial obligations/commitments like having bought a house, or maybe even an expensive car, together?"
- "do we share finances to the extent that more than half of one of our incomes is shared with the other?"
- "have we gone through a legal marriage ceremony"
- "do we have children who we collaboratively parent?"
I think "the spirit of" how legal benefits for marriage are structured are based on the (dated) assumption that married people are doing one or most of the above together.
On the other hand, friends who live together but who are not romantically involved and never were, are very unlikely to do any of the above (outside of legal shenanigans like getting someone immigration status)