"romantic friendship"
Notes to Self are longer journal entries from Seven Yrs Ago. I was 20 in early 2014.
* romantic friendship — very close but non-sexual relationship betw friends, often involving a degree of physical closeness beyond that which is common in contemporary Western societies, and may include holding hands, hugging, kissing and sharing in bed.
The term romantic friendship was coined in the later 20th century in order to retrospectively describe a type of relationship which until the mid 19th century had been considered unremarkable but since the 2nd half of the 19th century had become more rare as physical intimacy between non-sexual partners came to be regarded with anxiety.
“Since modern readers are unused to such ardor in masculine friendship and are likely to leap at the notion of homosexuality, we may remember that such an ideal, often exalted above the love of woman, could exist in real life” — Douglas Bush
“he felt that friendship and platonic emotion were a primarily masculine capacity (apparently unaware of the custom of female romantic friendship which also existed).” — Wiki on Montaigne’s “On Friendship”