What Happens When a Platonic Life Partnership Falls Apart

In 2022, the Cut ran a story about platonic life partners, people who threw out the messy scripts of romantic relationships and made a commitment with a close friend instead. During the isolation of the pandemic, PLP arrangements went viral on TikTok, where couples documented the ins and outs of building a life with a bestie. Two years later, we decided to check in on how some of these relationships are holding up — and how they aren’t.

They’re divorcing.

Jay Guercia and Krystle Purificato first met at an LBGTQ center in Long Island in 2012. The pair quickly became best friends and made a pact to build a life together if neither of them got married by the age of 30. After Guercia was granted custody of a teenager about to enter the foster-care system in 2020, she and Purificato took the plunge (when they were 22 and 27, respectively) and decided to become platonic life partners. The two got married in 2020 and moved to a house in Tampa, where they started documenting their partnership on TikTok. We caught up with Guercia, who still lives in Florida and says she and Purificato are now separated. (Purificato declined to be interviewed.)

We’re currently going through a divorce. When me, Krystle, and our son — let’s call him Bobby — all got together and moved to Tampa, it was from a place of emergency. During COVID I felt very alone, physically and emotionally. My mom died in 2002 and my dad died in 2018. Krystle was my rock back then, and I wanted to be close to her. When I met Bobby, he was also so alone. I dreamed we could all be together and make something better out of this.

But the way things seemed onscreen — we weren’t connecting like that behind closed doors. Creating an instant family takes a lot of work, and I often felt I was the only one shouldering it. Krystle and I had different opinions on how to manage the household and parent Bobby. Before we all got together, Krystle and I had lived nearby or in apartments close to each other, but we’d never lived in the same space, sharing finances. There’s things you don’t know about people till you try to build that dynamic with them. It was irresponsible and impulsive from the start, and naïve to think that because we were best friends with similar values that we’d have the tools necessary to properly raise a young man with trauma.

We had a lot of arguments about Bobby. Krystle didn’t know how to do paperwork for his school or doctor’s appointments. She didn’t really go to the doctor herself. We’d ask Bobby to take out the trash, but he’d leave the can empty without the bag, there would be a silly little argument, and it would happen again. For me those things built up. If we gave him an allowance, we couldn’t agree what he was allowed to use it for. I wanted him to go to school, go to therapy, heal, make good friendships and get his driver’s license, but it wasn’t what he or Krystle wanted. We argued about how he saw us, whether he respected us, and our responsibility to him. Once, I woke up at two in the morning and heard kids I didn’t know with Bobby in our sunroom. One kid threw up on the bathroom floor. I asked Krystle, “What are we going to do about this?” She said, “I don’t know, we’ll talk to Bobby about it in the morning.” I was like, “Okay, are there going to be consequences?” We couldn’t agree on what those would be. I wanted us to be a team, but it felt like we were all living separate lives.

At the time I worked a job making $35,000 a year, and I wanted to make $60,000. I needed support to make sure Bobby was going to school, that meals were made and the house cleaned. I felt the weight of running our household was on me, and I felt like I couldn’t take care of myself.

Emotionally, I wasn’t in a good place. I told Krystle and Bobby I needed space to take care of myself for a while, to stay with family out of state and figure out why I wasn’t okay. The idea wasn’t ever to remove myself completely. I told them I wanted us to be more supportive of each other, to bond and connect. Their response was, “This is the best it’s ever been for us. We have a house, we have a dog.” Bobby said, “I’m safe.” Krystle said she didn’t understand. I felt they couldn’t see the tight connection I wanted.

I moved out in August of 2022 and filed for divorce around October of that year. Ultimately our relationship was trial-and-error. I still think platonic partnerships are valid, but when you make such a strong commitment and go from being best friends with someone to actually living with them in a different dynamic where you’re relying on the other person for emotional support, household chores, and finances, it can really strain the original connection you had. We didn’t have the ability to grow together the way I would have wanted.

Now I’m two years engaged to my fiancé. I met him through mutual friends while hanging out one night in 2022. We have a really strong romantic bond, and I’m living my best life. I’ve learned that a permanent friendship is different than a strong romantic bond. I’ve learned about the attachment and chemical feelings that happen in your body when you connect with someone you’re romantically and physically involved with. Krystle and I didn’t have that bond.

With Krystle, the pain of separation wasn’t there. I don’t want to sound awful saying that, but when people cry tears from a breakup and feel that physical hurt — that wasn’t there for me. I cried over Bobby, I cried because of how it all fell apart. But I know that if my fiancé and I were to separate right now and I saw a photo of us two weeks later, I would feel that pain in my body.

She broke off a platonic engagement.

Evelyn, who asked to use a pseudonym for this story, is 29 years old and lives in Chicago. She spoke to us about the end of her four-year relationship with her platonic fiancé.

I met him when I turned 21. It was 2016, and I’d gone through a romantic breakup the year before and was going through a lot of life changes and had to drop out of college. It was a really confusing time. I felt so alone.

We lived in a smallish town in Indiana and connected on Tinder. He was 22 and worked at a music store. He came over for what was supposed to be a first-date-slash-hookup. It was nothing serious; we were going to watch a movie and see what happened, but he ended up staying at my place for three days because we could just sit and talk. We weren’t really attracted to each other, but having that connection was a big deal to me.

At the time he was living with family and looking to move out, so we moved in together pretty quickly. I lived alone in my apartment, and asked, “Want to split the rent?” He said, “Okay, sounds great.” We had sex at first, but it started to feel weird around the three-month mark. It went from an irregular thing to something off-limits. In retrospect we absolutely should have talked about it more.

We had committed to each other as partners, yet didn’t fulfill sexual or romantic roles. We loved hanging out with each other, and I thought we worked as platonic life partners. Six months in, he proposed. I said yes. Though I thought it didn’t make a lot of sense that we didn’t have a sexual relationship — I don’t think I knew what being aromantic or demisexual was at the time, I was just feeling my way through — I didn’t take my commitment to him lightly. We sat down and talked about the future we wanted together. We were young but shared a lot of goals. We wanted to move to a bigger city, to go back to school and get our degrees. We gave each other emotional support and did a lot of strategizing about how to get where we wanted.

The first few years we had a great relationship because of how isolated we were, even if we didn’t have sexual or romantic feelings for each other. I started thinking maybe I didn’t need those things. If I’m satisfied in all these other ways, why is that so important? And certain things were easier than a romantic relationship. There was an ease to it. I never had the anxiety of, does this person really love me if he didn’t do this or that for me? Does this person really care about me? I didn’t feel like I needed to put a lot of effort into my appearance if he was attracted to another woman. We could just exist as we were, without jealousy.

There were downsides. We considered ourselves monogamous, even if we didn’t have sex, and I wasn’t sure if I could go the rest of my life without sex. Shared goals were the basis of our relationship, but we started to go in different directions. I was threatened with termination at my job and resigned. He was supportive, but to save money on rent, we moved into the cheapest place we could find, a crappy studio where we were around each other all the time. It felt like the opposite of years before, when being together was a wonderful thing we felt we could do forever. In this new apartment we were squished together like sardines. Suddenly this person felt like too much. We opened up the relationship, I started going out more and broadening my horizons and talking to more people. It wasn’t so much dating as casual sex. As I did that, I thought, Have I chosen this relationship for the right reasons? Was I doing it because we actually made great platonic partners, or because we were lonely? 

I broke up with him right before COVID hit, but I felt terrible and immediately took it back and we decided to keep doing what we were doing. He’d lost his job and wasn’t putting effort into finding a new one, which was a big deal because we were very broke and I couldn’t carry us alone. There wasn’t a lot holding our partnership together at that point, but we didn’t want to be alone. When the pandemic started, I remember being glad we didn’t split up. At the bare minimum we kept each other company, but there was an undercurrent of, This probably won’t last. 

We finally broke off our engagement right after Thanksgiving of 2020. Around that time I’d gone back to school online and he had done the same, but we felt ourselves continuing to drift in different directions. Our relationship had become this ruse. We stopped even liking each other, ironically ending up in the same place we had wanted to avoid with a traditional romantic relationship. I was the one who said we needed to move on. I kept the apartment because I had the income to pay for it, and he moved out a few days later. It was hard, but he’d still come back and hang out with me. We still help each other out sometimes; we’re there for each other in case of serious emergencies and it’s not awkward or weird. I’m now in a romantic partnership with someone I met on Reddit. We have friendship and a wonderful sexual and romantic connection. I’ve learned that when two partners are romantically and sexually invested in each other, it incentivizes your commitment by reinforcing the emotional bond. The sexual and romantic sides are the glue that keeps the relationship from falling apart.

Romantic expectations got in the way.

Michelle, who also asked to use a pseudonym for this story, is in her mid-40s and lives in Colorado. She recently ended a platonic partnership after her partner started to develop romantic feelings for her and wanted to start a family. 

I’m a 44-year-old trans woman. I met my platonic partner a year ago. I live in a small town. We met while she was staying with a neighbor of mine. She was looking for a place to live and I took her in. Over time we became close in platonic ways and got to know each other more deeply.

While taking LSD together, we found ourselves cuddled up on the couch and she asked me if I wanted to be partners “for real.” Of course I said yes. I told her I loved her. There was no implication of sex, though I did ask if she wanted to kiss me, and she did.

People often wondered if we were a couple. We spent a lot of time with each other and usually went places together. We’d kiss on the lips and say “I love you” anytime one of us went somewhere without each other. She did tell me she was sexually attracted to me, though I preferred to keep things platonic.

The platonic-partner label felt right for us because I’m not really sure how to interact with cis women. I was sexually abused by a cis woman and was worried about screwing things up between us. I’m on the autism and asexual spectrums, trans, and still trying to figure out how sex plays into relationships. Sexual intimacy is new territory for me. I’m in a new body — six years on hormones and three years post-bottom surgery — and my relationships have been sexless to minimally sexual; that’s where I’m comfortable. She had her own room.

What split us up was I didn’t want children. I’m biologically unable, and she knew it, but asked if I’d raise kids with her. I told her this wasn’t a job for me. At that point we knew we weren’t forever partners but enjoyed our time together until she found someone interested in starting a family together. She moved out suddenly. It was hard.

That’s changed, though. Her new partner, and their living arrangement, wasn’t good for her, and she asked me to come get her. We’ve largely picked up where we left off. Another partner who I do have a sexual relationship with — I guess I just felt comfortable experimenting with her — will be moving in as well. No one knows how it’s going to go, but we’re optimistic, we’re adults, and we communicate well. My first partner is still very much my platonic partner. I’m glad to have her back.