Fin Crowder & Emery Wakefield: “A queer platonic relationship is… a level above best friend.”

Fin Crowder and Emery Wakefield are both nonbinary and asexual. They’ve been friends since they were young, and, today, live in a queer platonic relationship.

They spoke a little about their relationship and how they show love and support for each other.

Fin Crowder: I use both nonbinary and a gender just because they both feel comfortable. It’s both just kind of like this void of being in either box of male or female, I’m just kind of in the middle floating around. I also identify as a romantic and asexual.

Emery Wakefield: Well, some of the identities that I used to label myself would be non-binary, I’m not male or female, but I don’t feel the need to define that any further. I’m just neither, that’s the way it is. I’m asexual I don’t experience sexual attraction to people.

I don’t know, this is a weird analogy – it’s almost like window shopping. For me, it’s like that person is very nice looking. And that’s about as far as that goes for me.

Fin Crowder: So, a queer platonic relationship is a sort of connection that kind of is similar to what you would feel with a romantic attraction, but it doesn’t have the romantic elements. It’s very much just a strong connection to someone, I like to describe it as like a level above best friend–

Emery Wakefield: I also use the term “ride or die,” or like, you know, “I’m always gonna be there for you.”

Fin Crowder: I can’t see a future without having this person in it. For me, it’s like, you know, I’ve been friends with Em for most of my life, and this is the person that I want to make sure is in my life for the rest of my life.

Emery Wakefield: It’s like having a platonic soulmate or a platonic life partner. When I envisioned as a future, Fin’s always there, regardless of what might happen. It’s like, well, I want to make sure Fin’s around, you know?

Fin Crowder: I think our relationship – even before we identified it is like queer platonic – has been, since like high school, it’s been that.

I mean, there were always jokes that people would be like, you know, we were glued to each other. We were always together.

I remember you told me one time that the principal walked by and said, “Where’s your other half?” Like, we were always doing things together, I mean, it was very easy to happen because I could drive and you couldn’t, we had classes together.

So, I’d be like, “Okay, we’re going home,” and I’d drive you home, but anytime I think of doing something the first person I think of like, “Oh, should I bring someone?” I think of you because it’s like, you know, I want to do things with you all the time.

Emery Wakefield: I would describe Fin as maybe the best person you could ever have at your side. And in any given situation. Ze always seems to know what is going on or what to do or anything like that.

Fin Crowder: There are so many things that they know about and know how to do. If you’re ever trying to remember a Simpsons reference, they’ve got it.

They have a lot of knowledge of what you could call obscure things, but they just have a lot and are available basically as a walking encyclopedia next to you.

And I think that’s just nice to have as someone who can help you throughout life.

Emery Wakefield: It’s like, I’m the person who can give someone a fun fact, but you’re the person who knows how to get to where we’re going in the car.

Fin Crowder: Only sometimes.

Laughter

Fin Crowder: We actually have a running joke that we share the same brain cell. It was two, but then we had an incident in high school where one of them died.

So, we share the same brain cell, and so, we’ll jokingly message each other like, one time a couple weeks ago, you were like, “Hey, I need the brain cell on Thursday. I have a quiz” and I was like, “Cool, you can have it. I’ll just play video games.”

Emery Wakefield: I appreciate that. I passed the quiz. I did very well.

Fin Crowder: That’s good to hear.