If you label a relationship as platonic, that usually serves to make it explicit that there’s no romance or sex going on, yes.
When talking about attraction though, we’re in the context of the split attraction model (look that up if you’re interested), and there, platonic attraction is treated not as the opposite of sexual attraction, but as its own axis for basically saying “how much do I want this person to be my friend”, without saying anything about how much you’re sexually attracted to the person.
If you want to properly reconcile the terms, think about it like this - a sexual/romantic relationship is one where the sexual/romantic attraction between the partners is the strongest force, whereas a platonic relationship is one where their platonic attraction is the strongest force.
I personally actually have a hard time seeing platonic and romantic attraction as separate axes, for me, romantic attraction just feels like an extension, a stronger form of platonic attraction.
If you label a relationship as platonic, that usually serves to make it explicit that there’s no romance or sex going on, yes.
When talking about attraction though, we’re in the context of the split attraction model (look that up if you’re interested), and there, platonic attraction is treated not as the opposite of sexual attraction, but as its own axis for basically saying “how much do I want this person to be my friend”, without saying anything about how much you’re sexually attracted to the person.
If you want to properly reconcile the terms, think about it like this - a sexual/romantic relationship is one where the sexual/romantic attraction between the partners is the strongest force, whereas a platonic relationship is one where their platonic attraction is the strongest force.
I personally actually have a hard time seeing platonic and romantic attraction as separate axes, for me, romantic attraction just feels like an extension, a stronger form of platonic attraction.