For Jay Guercio, 24, a platonic life partnership “just made sense” after realizing how much her life goals aligned with her best friend Krystle, who she first met in 2012 and had filled her life with “companionship, love, laughter and adventure.”

“We want to raise kids the same way. We have the same ideas as what finances should look like. We are already symbiotic in how we work,” she said. “There’s no reason to keep on waiting to hopefully find a partner who is going to align with all those things that also happens to be romantic and/or sexual in nature when it just made sense to start building the life that we wanted to live together.”

Fast forward and now they raise their adopted son together after getting platonically married in November 2020.

Guercio describes a platonic partnership as “a committed relationship to someone that doesn’t involve romance or sex.”

Cyndi Darnell, a certified clinical sexologist, therapist and couple’s counselor, says platonic partnerships can “absolutely” be as successful as a traditional marriage, because “partnership is based on shared values.”