In the same article that I wrote here in March on this subject, I was talking about the fact that sentimental dissent should begin with suppressing the affective centrality of partner relationships. Perhaps from the evidence of what I was saying to them, I was surprised that people did not feel more challenged, but that was the conclusion that I drew from some feedback that was passed on to me by the readers: people believe that the romantic ideology that idealizes the form of a couple, that at least does not affect us progressive and (post)modern people like us, and that it is no longer the antiquated principles of affective life our drivers.

This perception is erroneous, but the existence of a hierarchy of affections in which all the privileges of the partner institution have been made so invisible to us. What have we already emancipated ourselves? Let's see:
Why don't we imagine projects like long-term coexistence, buying a home, choosing a shared economy, paternity or educating children?

Why do we think it is normal that in the workplace there should be no days of leave to take care of a friend, but that he can have it, for example, for the care of a brother-in-law who never sees, simply because he is an affective orbiting satellite of a formalized partner?

Why do we measure both the declarations of love through the words, as if we had to be careful, if we tell the right person? Don't we know that these words have the function of expressing true love, and that we ourselves give real love a concrete and narrow form monopolized by idyllic love Disney?
If the couple is not the supreme form of love, and the rest of the bonds are not just a complement or a consolation prize, how can we explain the phrase “we are just friends”, the formula we use when we want to express with someone who has no affective-sexual relationship?

Etc. etc.

Like the other hegemonic institutions, it has also been attempted to seek alternatives to the romantic model of the couple, but not always in the right direction. Today, for example, fleeing from the dependence generated by an excessively strict and square way of understanding the couple, we have jumped to an absolute personal independence that can only be believed in the logic of a capitalist market, in which we have so much protected and protected our individuality and our freedom, which has de facto become impossible to us, the same possibility of having a meaningful relationship with other people.

More interesting alternatives such as polymerization consider the need to understand and expand the network beyond the peer as the first condition of the affection revolution. But be careful to read these proposals in neoliberal coordinates, because relationships with people can never be understood in the sense of increased consumerism. At least, if we do not want to pay the expensive price of the distribution of love or the dehumanization of affections, or if we want to avoid the cold of loneliness and affective starvation, let it be the sad fatality of those of us who have decided to love out of the usual affective formats.

The real alternative to conventional love is the creation of more community networks in which, far from labels, we recognize and will show all lovers their value and uniqueness as the axis of all relationships, establishing friendship, and guaranteeing mutual affective commitments and an ethics of rigorous relations, the label of quality of our love.