*Originally published: 16th May 2008* Platonic love gets a bad rep nowadays. We see it as the lesser of loves, subjugated beneath romantic, sexual and familial loves. But why is this the case? Platonic love is named after Plato who describes in his allegory of the caves, a group of people looking at the shadows on the wall of the caves never realising they were shadows and thinking to turn around. When we see a beautiful man/woman we aren't seeing "true" beauty, he would say. Just a shadow of beauty cast upon the individual. By loving someone for their beauty we are really loving beauty itself, not the individual. To put it more simply, we are loving "what" they are, not "who" they are. We can feel a magnetic attraction to public figures without the slightest idea of who the really are out of a desire to be associated with qualities of success, humour, or looks. We obsess over others thinking that maybe by proximity we can somehow possess these attributes through ownership or association. Ask yourself how real these types of love are. And how you would feel to be loved in this objectifying fashion. Animals love based on pleasing physical features, or out of some biological maternal/paternal imperative. Only humans can discard these facades and contemplate the richer, deeper beauty we all hold inside us. In fact, you could reasonably call platonic love "human love". We use phrases like "just friends". We often portray male-female friendships as some kind of compromise. Certainly not the best outcome from a date! We talk about the "friend zone", but why? I would much rather someone sought my company not because they like my face but because they looked into my mind and found it worthy. This isn't to say that fathers and daughters, husbands and wives etc can't also develop these types of friendships of course. In fact I'd say without it, these relationships are superficial. Real friendship is the ultimate bond. We should celebrate it more.