For Decker, the essence of queerplatonic attraction is its ambiguous position in relation to normative categories: she writes that QPR "is a platonic relationship, but it is 'queered' in some way—not friends, not romantic partners, but something else".
[5] Some authors put less stress on the partner-status structure or non-normative character of QPR and focus more on the idea that it represents a stronger emotional connection than conventional friendship.
The Huffington Post described it in 2014 as a "new label" coming from the same place as "aromantic" and "demisexual",[18] the College of William & Mary's neologism dictionary observed in 2016 that it was only used in aromantic and asexual spaces,[6] and Zach Schudson and Sari van Anders characterised it in 2019 as one of several "emergent gender and sexual identity discourses" appearing on LGBT social networking sites.
[23] Sex therapist Stefani Goerlich suggested in 2021 that the concept was inspired by Boston marriages—formalized romantic friendships between wealthy women in late nineteenth century New England.
She also presents QPR as a radical counter-narrative to the lesbian bed death trope, with asexuality "an additive quality rather than a deficit" in a queerplatonic partnership between women.
[6] Similarly, Roma De las Heras Gómez connects relationship anarchy's critique of the idea that a romantic relationship is necessary to "create a family that includes long-term partnership, cohabitation, joint economic responsibility, and potential child raising" to the folk categories used in "asexual communities and aromantic communities online", and though she does not directly mention QPR, she does use the phrase "queerplatonic relationships" as a keyword for the paper,[29] suggesting that she sees QPR as similar to relationship-anarchist non-sexual cohabitation and co-parenting.