Ansel Elgort seemingly has everything he could want. He’s famous, he’s got a successful music and acting career (mostly), and he’s in a loving relationship with his longtime girlfriend, Violetta Komyshan. As it turns out, he’s still on the lookout for a bit more, uh, *checks notes* love.
The Baby Driver star gave an offbeat interview with The Times and things went from odd-but-cute to unexpected when he was asked what he wants to accomplish by his 30th birthday and he said he wants more love in his life. He also wants to act more and do more music stuff but that’s all secondary to the love stuff.
Now before you jump to any conclusions of the “Ansel Elgort wanting an open relationship with his girlfriend” ilk, he stresses that he’s looking for more love of the non-sexual kind. He’s perfectly happy with his girlfriend when it comes to sexual stuff, he just wants more of the other stuff and she’s apparently perfectly understanding about it.
“It doesn’t need to be sexual. I could be done sexually with my girlfriend. I think we’ve been pretty clear that I want to feel free to fall in love with people and that [option] should be open, but sexually it can be closed off.”
Okay so to be clear, Ansel wants to emotionally connect with more people while still being in an emotional and sexual relationship with his girlfriend? Right, gotcha.
To further explain what he means exactly, Ansel used his friendship with his guy friends and his close-but-strictly-platonic relationship with Shailene Woodley:
“I’m in love with a bunch of my male friends who I’m not interested in having sex with, so why can’t I put the desire to have sex with women aside and let myself have love with women?
“I love Shailene Woodley and we never had anything sexual and that was great. There will probably be some sort of chemical thing at some point that you can’t help, but you just have to be disciplined and not be a f******. We’re primitive beings.”
As weird as it all initially sounds on paper, which is not helped by Ansel’s long-winded explanation of what he’s on about, he’s onto something here.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting more platonic friends, especially when making friends becomes harder as you get a bit older, and wanting to form an emotional connection without the complicated sexual stuff with more people is a very understandable thing to want.
So good on Ansel Elgort and his desire to make more platonic friends. Just next time, maybe keep the explanations a little shorter or people might get a little confused over what exactly you’re looking for.