LIVE October 17, 12-2pm PST

Where: Zoom

CEUs: 2 CEUs available for California LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs.

Recording: No recording available, join us live!

Pricing:

• Regular Price: $59
• Early Bird Price: $49 (until October 3rd, 2025)
• No CEs, 30% off with code NOCEFORME

Course Description: This presentation integrates social justice by challenging dominant cultural narratives that privilege marriage, romance, and normative kinship as the most legitimate forms of connection. By highlighting queerplatonic relationships as inherently queer and centering community voices (e.g., Kaz, meloukhai), the workshop resists academic gatekeeping and validates the language people create to describe their own lives. Participants are invited to critically reflect on how relational hierarchies marginalize diverse forms of attachment, care, and life planning, and to consider ways to affirm these structures in practice.

Knowledge Base: The course content is based on theoretical, research, and practice-based knowledge.

Instructor Level: Introductory-to-Intermediate.

Instructor Information

Aubri Lancaster (Bri/she) is an AASECT and ANTE UP! Certified Sexuality Educator with lived experience in and a connection to the Asexual and Aromantic communities. Her services can be found at AceSexEducation.com, including workshops, consulting, and training. She also offers free content on Instagram and TikTok at @AceSexEducation. This presenter meets the qualifications to instruct this course based on their direct personal and professional experience in the subject matter.

General Information

• Course Description: This presentation challenges the idea that relationships have to follow familiar scripts by highlighting the many ways people create connection outside of romance and sex. By focusing on queerplatonic relationships, it opens up a space to see how people build meaningful bonds beyond normative hierarchies. Drawing from asexual and aromantic community language and sources, the session uses these insights to queer broader conceptions of relationship formation, offering participants new frameworks for seeing relationships as fluid, adaptable, and customizable. This is an introductory-to-intermediate level session, best suited for those with a basic understanding of asexuality and aromanticism while remaining accessible to participants less familiar with these orientations.
• Knowledge Base: The course content is based on theoretical, research, and practice-based knowledge.
• Instructor Level: Introductory-to-Intermediate.

Educational Goals

This interactive workshop will enhance participants' ability to provide culturally responsive, affirming clinical services when working with asexual, aromantic, and relationship-diverse clients. Participants will develop greater clinical sophistication in recognizing and challenging amatonormative assumptions within therapeutic practice while implementing community-based frameworks that honor diverse expressions of love and connection.

The course will improve participants' professional competency in supporting clients whose relationship goals and structures exist outside traditional romantic scripts, maximizing therapeutic effectiveness through evidence-based approaches that respect asexual and aromantic community wisdom. Participants will gain practical tools for helping clients design relationships that center platonic love, emotional intimacy, and commitment without conforming to societal expectations of romance or sexual partnership.

Measurable Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

1. Discuss three ways queerplatonic relationships, as understood within the asexual community, resist fixed definitions.
2. Analyze two cultural narratives of idealized romance that are challenged by asexual and aromantic community perspectives.
3. Apply two community-based frameworks from the asexual and aromantic communities to clinical practice in order to affirm varied forms of connection, care, and life planning.
4. Identify two ways privileging romance in therapeutic practice can marginalize client experiences of non-romantic connection.
    

Course Evaluation Requirements

To meet continuing education standards, participants must complete a comprehensive evaluation assessing satisfaction with the following areas:

• Content relevance to professional practice and direct client care applications with asexual, aromantic, and relationship-diverse populations
• Presenter knowledge and presentation skills in community-based frameworks and queerplatonic relationship models
• Quality of program materials including current research, community resources, and practical clinical applications
• Workshop format and technical accommodations (online platform functionality and accessibility)
• Overall program effectiveness in meeting stated learning objectives and practical implementation needs

Participants will also provide written feedback on specific ways the program content will be integrated into their clinical practice, potential barriers to implementation when working with diverse relationship structures, and recommendations for program enhancement based on their clinical setting and client population needs.

Outline with Main Points

• 12:00-12:05 PM: Introduction
• Welcome, access needs, and participant introductions
• 12:05-12:15 PM: Icebreaker Activity
• Interactive activity to invite participant engagement and reflection
• 12:15-12:30 PM: Historic Function of Marriage
• Marriage as a social, legal, and cultural institution
• 12:30-12:45 PM: Amatonormativity & Love is Love
• The privileging of romance as the highest form of relationship
• The harmful biproducts of liberatory movements
• 12:45-1:00 PM: Romantic, Platonic, and Alterous Attractions
• Exploring different forms of attraction
• How alterous attraction complicates romantic/platonic binaries
• 1:00-1:05 PM: Break
• 1:05-1:20 PM: Soulmates, "The One," and "My Person"
• Cultural narratives of idealized romance
• Alternative framings of deep connection
• 1:20-1:35 PM: Development of the Term Queerplatonic
• Community origins and evolution of the term
• How queerplatonic relationships resist fixed definitions
• 1:35-1:50 PM: Designing Relationships that Center Platonic Love
• Creative models of connection and care
• Life planning, commitment, and intimacy outside romance
• 1:50-2:00 PM: Closing & Q&A
• Takeaways and participant reflections

Required Readings/Resources

• AUREA Aro Census Team 2020. (2021). The Aro Census 2020 report. AUREA. https://aromanticism.org/aro-census
• Brake, E. (2012). Minimizing marriage: Marriage, morality, and the law. Oxford University Press.
• Coontz, S. (2005). Marriage, a history: From obedience to intimacy, or how love conquered marriage. Viking.
• Gupta, Y. (2024). (SA)fe Sp(aces). In Routledge eBooks (pp. 197–207). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003178798-17
• Kenney, T. N. (2020). Thinking asexually: Sapin-Sapin, asexual assemblages, and the queer possibilities of platonic relationalities. Feminist Formations, 32(3), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2020.0038

CA BBS CONTINUING EDUCATION PROGRAM POLICIES

Rouse Academy (CEPA Provider # 1000132) is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for MFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs licensed through the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Rouse Academy maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.

Contact Information: For any inquiries related to subject matter guidance, correction, grading, comments, or problem resolution please contact us at [email protected], phone 415-448-6743, 4124 18th St, San Francisco, CA 94114.

To receive your CE certificate: Watch the entire course and complete the evaluation sent at the end of the course. You will receive the certificate automatically after submitting the evaluation.

Recording Viewers: Please note, you must complete both the quiz AND evaluation. A SCORE OF 70% OR MORE ON THE QUIZ IS REQUIRED FOR CE CREDIT. You will receive the certificate automatically after submitting the evaluation.

Grievance Policy

For this course, "Instructor" refers to Aubri Lancaster and Rouse Academy.

1. If there is a grievance, participants will be asked to put their concerns in writing to [email protected].
   
   
2. If the grievance concerns the instructor, content presented, or style of presentation, the individual filing the grievance will be asked to put comments in written format. The participant will receive a written response in 1-2 business days. When necessary, the participant will receive a full refund.
   
   
3. If the grievance concerns workshop offering, content, level of presentation, or facilities, the instructor will mediate and be the final arbitrator. If the participant requests action, the instructor will: a. Attempt to move the participant to another workshop, or b. Provide a credit for a subsequent workshop, or
   c. Provide a full refund of the workshop fee.
   
   

Actions b and c will require a written note documenting the grievance for record keeping purposes. The grieved individual need not sign the note.

Refund Policy

Pricing:

• Regular Price: $59
• Early Bird Price: $49 (until October 3rd, 2025)
• No CEs, 30% off with code NOCEFORME

Refunds are not available on all items, especially live webinars (see individual promotional materials). Refunds are always available if CE item was purchased in error. Full refunds for CE test payment will be granted when the request is submitted in writing and a post-test has not been submitted and graded. Refunds will be issued within 7 days of request to the payment method used for original purchase.

Disability Accommodations

Arrangements can be made for those with disabilities or special needs; please contact David F. Khalili, LMFT at 415-448-6743, [email protected] or the address above.

Course Details

Continuing Education Units: Two Units
Format and Length: Live Zoom meeting. Total running time 120 minutes of instructional content + breaks
Topic Area: Clinical Practice, Theoretical Foundations, Cultural Competency
Instructional Level: Introductory-to-Intermediate

Completion Requirements: Live viewers must complete an online evaluation at the end of the course to obtain their CE certificate via email. Those viewing the recording must watch the entire workshop, complete an evaluation, and obtain a score of 70% or higher on a course completion quiz. You are allowed to take the quiz as many times as needed.

Who Should Attend: Licensed Marriage & Family Therapists, Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselors, Licensed Educational Psychologists, and graduate students in mental health programs. Other wellness providers who work with diverse populations, especially asexual, aromantic, and relationship-diverse clients.

Course Date: October 17, 2025

Conflict of Interest Statement: There is no potential conflict of interest or outside commercial support for this course.

Technical Requirements: Participants will need stable internet connection and device capable of accessing Zoom. No recording will be available.

Rouse Academy (CEPA Provider # 1000132) is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for MFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs licensed through the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.