File:One-sided pale romance-friendship 1 by Pappy.png

Summary

One-sided pale romance to one-sided friendship flag by Pappy (one of the proposed versions).

Pale romance refers to a type of romantic relationship an alien species from webcomic Homestuck practice. It is not strictly romantic in typical human sense, but involves a deep bond centered around mutual emotional regulation and improvement of social performance. It is not associated with sexual relationships as normal human romantic relationships are. In human terms a pale relationship could be read as an intense friendship functionally keeping one or both participants out of trouble, and likely with a lot of semi-therapeutic feelings discussions.

One-sided pale romance refers to a stable relationship arrangement where one of the participants behaves as a pale partner of the other one, but no reciprocation is expected.

One-sided friendship refers to the one of the participants treats the other as a friend, but the other doesn't.

One-sided pale romance combined with one-sided friendship means one of the participants behaves as a pale partner to the other, and the latter is treating the former as a friend. This may take the form of one partner being more emotionally open than the other while not expecting reciprocation, or emotionally regulating and moderating behavior of the other while expecting none of the matching treatment.

Although the term doesn't strictly refer to explicitly mutually agreed on one-sided relationship, it is implied that this kind of an arrangement is consensual, sufficiently satisfying and preferred over mutual pale romance or mutual friendship rather than being a substitute to it.