PLPs: The platonic partnerships that pair up friends for life

PLPs: The platonic partnerships that pair up friends for life Getty Images Do all primary-partner relationships have to be romantic and sexual? Lilygren considers them “platonic life partners”, meaning they are each other’s primary partners – the way people often relate to spouses or romantic partners, only romance and sex don’t factor into their relationship. “As a culture, we really devalue friendship when compared to relationships like marriage – we're expected to have transient, secondary friendships that become marginalised when one friend gets married,” says Lilygren, “and there really isn't a word for a friend who is a partner in life.” ‘PLP’ fills that void. British Museum Among the first documented platonic life partnerships were the Ladies of Llangollen in the late 18th Century ‘Boston Marriages’ From colonial times up until about 1850, people entered life partnerships – marriages – for “pragmatic” reasons, says Eli Finkel, professor at Northwestern University, Illinois, US, and author of The All-Or-Nothing Marriage: How the Best Marriages Work. Around this time, the term ‘Boston Marriage’ popped up to describe “two women living together in a long-term, committed relationship”, says Faderman.