Hierarchical definitions
Leslie
So I was discussing the concept of hierarchical vs non-hierarchical
poly with a Person I'm Doing Poly With, and suddenly realized that
all along I'd been presuming that non-hierarchical poly meant that
the person was saying the equivalent of 'everyone I'm involved with
is completely equal/equivalent to everyone else' insofar as depth
of emotion and involvement and commitment went. That they were saying
'there's no way I could ever chose between these people, they're all
equally necessary in my life,' and that they devote equal/equivalent
amounts of energy to each of their involvements; that they were
describing a natural, spontaneous, emotional state, not a self-
imposed requirement or need to be fair to people by refusing to 'play
favorites.'
Except sometimes it seems that people with clearly visible hierarchies
(ie, it's easy to see the differing priority levels of the their
relationships) describe themselves as 'practicing non-hierarchical poly,'
so I was wondering if people might elaborate more on the subject,
because suddenly I think I'm confused.
(I'm suspecting that it's going to turn out that using the phrases
'hierarchical' or 'non-hierarchical' transmit just about as much
information as does saying 'I'm polyamorous' -- ie, it's a vague hint
in the right direction?)
Since I have no primary, I suppose technically speaking I have two
secondaries, but that's only a vague hint in the right direction,
as the two relationships have many differences.
Leslie, wishing labels -- when used -- could be more accurate.
--
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Aahz Maruch
Leslie <les...@vex.net> wrote:
>
>Except sometimes it seems that people with clearly visible hierarchies
>(ie, it's easy to see the differing priority levels of the their
>relationships) describe themselves as 'practicing non-hierarchical poly,'
>so I was wondering if people might elaborate more on the subject,
>because suddenly I think I'm confused.
In my lexicon, 'hierarchical' is essentially used to describe situations
where primary partners get veto over the addition of new primary
partners. That isn't completely accurate, because 'hierarchical' is a
back-formation from 'non-hierarchical' in this context;
'non-hierarchical' was coined in reaction to 'primary/secondary'.
To my mind, 'non-hierarchical' contains the idea of floating priorities,
where each relationship has its own context without referring to other
relationships.
--
--- Aahz (Copyright 2001 by aa...@pobox.com)
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het <*> http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6
Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be
Angi Long
> So I was discussing the concept of hierarchical vs non-hierarchical
> poly with a Person I'm Doing Poly With, and suddenly realized that
> all along I'd been presuming that non-hierarchical poly meant that
> the person was saying the equivalent of 'everyone I'm involved with
> is completely equal/equivalent to everyone else' insofar as depth
> of emotion and involvement and commitment went. That they were saying
> 'there's no way I could ever chose between these people, they're all
> equally necessary in my life,' and that they devote equal/equivalent
> amounts of energy to each of their involvements; that they were
> describing a natural, spontaneous, emotional state, not a self-
> imposed requirement or need to be fair to people by refusing to 'play
> favorites.'
>
> Except sometimes it seems that people with clearly visible hierarchies
> (ie, it's easy to see the differing priority levels of the their
> relationships) describe themselves as 'practicing non-hierarchical poly,'
> so I was wondering if people might elaborate more on the subject,
> because suddenly I think I'm confused.
I don't think the state you describe above is really possible. Nobody
can make their depth of emotion be equal with different partners. Nor
could they make all partners be equally important to them.
I think of "non-heirarchical" as meaning there is no *imposed* heirarchy.
There is still the degree of heirarchy which naturally just happens.
"Non-heirarchical poly" may include the explicit intention and agreement
to try to treat everyone fairly, to explicitly *not* give anyone any
particular preference over anyone else when making decisions. But with
some kinds of decisions, there will still be "preference." It's just
not artificially imposed preference.
-- Angi Long of House Windstalker
Heather Anne Nicoll
> I think of "non-heirarchical" as meaning there is no *imposed* heirarchy.
> There is still the degree of heirarchy which naturally just happens.
> "Non-heirarchical poly" may include the explicit intention and agreement
> to try to treat everyone fairly, to explicitly *not* give anyone any
> particular preference over anyone else when making decisions. But with
> some kinds of decisions, there will still be "preference." It's just
> not artificially imposed preference.
*splork*
You know, I think I do non-heirarchical primary/secondary, by that
definition.
- Darkhawk, /vastly/ amused by this notion
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
Not heaven or hell, just the land between.
-- VNV Nation, "Joy"
Teal
<1eppezo.7vxmx69mdbmN%dark...@mailandnews.com>:
>Angi Long <angi...@home.com> wrote:
>> I think of "non-heirarchical" as meaning there is no *imposed* heirarchy.
>> There is still the degree of heirarchy which naturally just happens.
>> "Non-heirarchical poly" may include the explicit intention and agreement
>> to try to treat everyone fairly, to explicitly *not* give anyone any
>> particular preference over anyone else when making decisions. But with
>> some kinds of decisions, there will still be "preference." It's just
>> not artificially imposed preference.
>
>*splork*
>You know, I think I do non-heirarchical primary/secondary, by that
>definition.
You know, I *still* can't work out whether I do primary/secondary
poly, non-hierarchical poly or some other variant. Most of these terms
seem to describe my setup to some degree.
Superficially my setup looks a bit like primary/secondary poly, since
I'm legally married to Mark (we got married legally before we started
the poly thing), and we share a house that we own jointly (or at
least, a mortgage that we own jointly). And we've never had other
partners living with us full time. But that last factor has been as
much due to circumstances as anything else... I've never had another
partner who *wanted* to live with us, so the issue hasn't really come
up. <shrug>
But on the other hand, I have a very strong rule (probably pretty
close to an oath in strength and meaningfulness to me) that I will
never break off or downgrade a relationship with one person on the
request of another. If someone ever asks me to choose between
themselves and another person in my life, the answer is "no". *They*
may make their own choices as they will, and if that means that they
choose to leave, then so be it - it's happened before. But I will not
choose one over another. I will try to negotiate an arrangement that
all involved can live with; but to choose? Not when requested in that
way, no.
I do have a policy that if I'm considering getting involved with
someone new, I discuss it with those in my life who it might affect
before doing anything about it. Obviously that would include Mark;
whether it would include others I am involved with would depend on the
nature of my relationships with them. It likely wouldn't be much of an
issue with someone that I have a fuckbuddy-type relationship with;
however, if I had a close, life-entagled, primary-oid relationship
with someone other than Mark at the time, that other person would have
the same opportunity that Mark does to say "I'm not sure about this"
if they forsee a possible problem or awkwardness.
I tend to see myself as doing non-hierarchical poly more than as
primary/secondary poly since I am fully open to the idea of new folk
in my life potentially becoming as entangled in my life as Mark is at
present; however, I see the degree of life-entanglement as being the
aspect of the relationship that gives someone that degree of input
into my future directions, and it is rare that a partner other than
Mark has got sufficiently involved in my life that such a degree of
input would be appropriate. However, it has happened in the past and
may again in the future.
So despite the fact that my life tends to organise itself in a pretty
good simulacrum of primary/secondary poly just through the way
circumstances fall, I do *feel* as if the non-hierarchical poly fits
my way of doing things better.
What would you folk call what I do? Does it look more like one form
than another to you? I can never make up my mind what to call it,
since neither primary/secondary nor non-hierarchical seem an exact
fit. Perhaps we need a new term, but I'm blowed if I can work out what
the defining characteristics might be.
Teal, noodling
--
My website: http://tealspace.chromatic-dragonfly.com/
--
Bruce Baugh
Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
> "Non-heirarchical poly" may include the explicit intention and agreement
> to try to treat everyone fairly, to explicitly *not* give anyone any
> particular preference over anyone else when making decisions. But with
> some kinds of decisions, there will still be "preference." It's just
> not artificially imposed preference.
*smile* This is a helpful paragraph.
There are also, of course, the limitations imposed by circumstances. I'm
three hours away from the beloved; she will not be seeing me as often as
she does her husband. And I have to have times when I rest, alone;
ditto. But it's not that she feels any less for me, nor I for her, it's
just that the world as it now is includes these constraints.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> Writer of Fortune <*> Trinity Developer
Western civilization is not in decline as long as I can get paid to figure
out why the secret city of intelligent gorillas is in Borneo.
Heather Anne Nicoll
> (I'm suspecting that it's going to turn out that using the phrases
> 'hierarchical' or 'non-hierarchical' transmit just about as much
> information as does saying 'I'm polyamorous' -- ie, it's a vague hint
> in the right direction?)
I strongly suspect that's the case, really.
I refer to my "what I do" as primary/secondary because I consider it
significant that there are strongly different levels of
life-entanglementness in my life.
It's also true that I tend to prefer to let relationships settle into a
comfortable 'what's right for this relationship', and that level depends
a lot on the other person. So by that way of counting, it's not
heirarchical; I don't impose a given place on a dyad.
On the gripping hand, as far as I can tell, I'm wired for two primary
partners like some people are wired for one and some aren't wired for
that consideration at all; so there is something that might be
considered an outside restriction on relationships, that if I have two
primary partners, the other relationship just doesn't seem to develop in
that direction at all. it just doesn't occur to me to be attracted to
someone 'that way' (where 'that way' involves the life-entangly stuff).
So gods know what that does.
One of these days I'll find an easy way of expressing all this stuff.
- Darkhawk, who was just handed a Jackie Chan flick
piranha
>
> So I was discussing the concept of hierarchical vs non-hierarchical
> poly with a Person I'm Doing Poly With, and suddenly realized that
> all along I'd been presuming that non-hierarchical poly meant that
> the person was saying the equivalent of 'everyone I'm involved with
> is completely equal/equivalent to everyone else' insofar as depth
> of emotion and involvement and commitment went.
no. i wouldn't say that. everyone i call a partner (which is a
subset of "everyone i am involved with") is equivalent insofar as
depth of emotion is concerned. actual day-to-day involvement may
well differ, because they're all different people, and the
dynamics between us are different. commitment is such a weird one
for me anyway, and i think of dropping it from my relationship
vocabulary. i don't commit to anything forever, and what i do
commit to isn't limited to partners (trying to behave decently,
treat them with respect, behave in as loving and caring a manner
as i can, each day anew).
> That they were saying
> 'there's no way I could ever chose between these people, they're all
> equally necessary in my life,'
i dunno about "necessary" in my life. nobody is per se, so i
guess they're all equally unnecessary. :-) but yes, i could
indeed not choose between those i consider and have considered
partners, if i were in the famous situation of having room for
only one person in the lifeboat. i'd end up picking by factors
not related to our partnerships.
> and that they devote equal/equivalent
> amounts of energy to each of their involvements;
no. what energy is required differs by relationship. some of my
less close ones actually require more energy than my close ones.
> that they were
> describing a natural, spontaneous, emotional state, not a self-
> imposed requirement
yes.
> or need to be fair to people by refusing to 'play favorites.'
i do feel a need to be fair, but what that means is really very
dependent on each relationship. "equitable" is probably a better
word.
> Except sometimes it seems that people with clearly visible hierarchies
> (ie, it's easy to see the differing priority levels of the their
> relationships) describe themselves as 'practicing non-hierarchical poly,'
> so I was wondering if people might elaborate more on the subject,
> because suddenly I think I'm confused.
hm. i live with one partner. but that's not because that person
is primary in my life, is the most important, but because of
circumstances, mostly. one other important person died, so we're
no longer together. another wanted children, and i didn't, so zie
now lives with somebody who wanted children too (but zie did not
become less important to me). another didn't want to leave europe
when i decided to stay in noram. relationships shift around for
all sorts of reasons; a partner might go off to tibet for a year.
sometimes the choices made are very hard, and my heart aches, but
nobody has priority in the sense that i would put all other things
and people aside if me doing X were important to zir. me doing X
has to come from within me, has to work for me, and it's a lone
decision. always. and nobody gets to tell me what sorts of
relationships i have with third parties. i grant no vetoes to
anyone, nor rights to dispose of my sexuality for me. i make such
decisions on my own.
if i could, i would want to live with everyone who is close to me
nearby (my commune fantasy). but life doesn't just happen to suit
me; other people have other connections, certain things become
pre-eminent at some phase in their lives (like a phd, or a journey
to find themselves). i have no preconceived notions when somebody
becomes a partner of how much of our lives we can share -- i hope
it's a lot because i like that, but in fact i don't even have to
live in the same country for me to have an emotional connection
with a person whom i can call "partner". our paths entwine, and
sometimes they're really close, and sometimes not so close. but
we understand each other and care for each other, and share lots
of things, sometimes day-to-day in person, sometimes by other
means over great distances.
> (I'm suspecting that it's going to turn out that using the phrases
> 'hierarchical' or 'non-hierarchical' transmit just about as much
> information as does saying 'I'm polyamorous' -- ie, it's a vague hint
> in the right direction?)
probably. i think that's true with most relationship labels.
> Since I have no primary, I suppose technically speaking I have two
> secondaries, but that's only a vague hint in the right direction,
> as the two relationships have many differences.
i am coming more and more to label all my close relationships as
[]ships, because they can be so very different, but i feel so very
strongly for every one of them, and i value them so much, and if
one of them actually goes away, i grieve, for a long time, and in
some way forever for that special something we had together. and
i don't really want to define them because they can go into such
weird ruts if i do (or if somebody else does). i rather make it
up as we go along, and i expect things to change over time, cause
none of us stand still for long.
yes, that requires a huge amount of communication. i heart that.
:-) keeps me from taking people for granted.
> Leslie, wishing labels -- when used -- could be more accurate.
hm. i really view labels only as starting points for conversation
by now. unless we're talking 2% milk. :-)
--
-piranha
Liz Williams
>Except sometimes it seems that people with clearly visible hierarchies
>(ie, it's easy to see the differing priority levels of the their
>relationships) describe themselves as 'practicing non-hierarchical poly,'
>so I was wondering if people might elaborate more on the subject,
>because suddenly I think I'm confused.
I think of hierarchies as mostly defined by the way the relationships are
structured rather than the way people feel about each other.
When I say that I do non-hierarchical poly, I mean that I try to take all my
relationships on their own terms and don't try to make them fit
pre-determined
definitions. I avoid structuring the ground rules of my relationships in
such
a way that one relationship is prevented from developing in the way that
seems
natural for that relationship. I sometimes feel closer to one partner than
to
another, but that can change very rapidly depending on mood and what's going
on in my life - one may be easier to talk to than the others on a particular
issue that I'm having, for instance, and the next day I may have a different
issue and ask advice from another partner and feel closer to that one for a
bit. I think that's perfectly okay, and doesn't necessarily mean that
partner
takes priority over the others. (On a deeper level, I would say I love them
all equally, because I tend to feel a very strong bond with anyone I've had
sex with, but that's harder to see from the outside in most circumstances).
To some outsiders, what I do can look very much like what some people have
called a "non-prescriptive hierarchy", because I do have different degrees
of
life-entanglement with different partners. To me it doesn't feel
hierarchical, because it's just grown this way. Except for the fact that I
am
the sole financial support from one of my partners (because he looks after
our
children full time) and couldn't easily afford to do that for anyone else,
I
don't have any arrangements with any one of my partners that I couldn't also
have with any of the others, if that seemed right, but in practice different
arrangements suit different relationships.
Another reason why my arrangements can look hierarchical is that I place a
very high value on not allowing later relationships to interfere with older
ones except in ways that have been specifically agreed with the older
partner.
Otherwise it seems unfair on the older partner, to me. That can look as if
the older partner is more important to me, whereas to me it just feels like
treating people fairly (and not putting something at risk which is already
working). I feel that it's reasonable to ask new partners to accept that I
have various pre-existing commitments which they will have to live with -
not
just to other partners, but also to my kids, my employers, friends, parents
etc - and which I can only change by negotiation with the other people
affected. It doesn't feel like favouring one partner over another, just
respecting those existing commitments. And of course the newer partner
will
benefit from the same principle if an even newer partner gets added later on
;-)
>(I'm suspecting that it's going to turn out that using the phrases
>'hierarchical' or 'non-hierarchical' transmit just about as much
>information as does saying 'I'm polyamorous' -- ie, it's a vague hint
>in the right direction?)
I think that's exactly right :-)
Liz
--
"He's clearly a bad influence on himself." - Giles, on _Buffy_
Liz Williams
[relationship description snipped]
>So despite the fact that my life tends to organise itself in a pretty
>good simulacrum of primary/secondary poly just through the way
>circumstances fall, I do *feel* as if the non-hierarchical poly fits
>my way of doing things better.
>
>What would you folk call what I do? Does it look more like one form
>than another to you?
To me it looks quite like the way I do poly, which I call non-hierarchical
Angi Long
> Another reason why my arrangements can look hierarchical is that I place a
> very high value on not allowing later relationships to interfere with older
> ones except in ways that have been specifically agreed with the older
> partner.
Question about this: What would you do if you developed a high degree of
life-entanglement with a newer partner, and only then discovered that
maintaining, or keeping in good health, both that relationship and an
earlier one, in which there is much less life-entanglement, are somehow
incompatible? Frex, what if the partner you have children with learned
something about an older (heh, make that pre-existing) partner, which
made them extremely uncomfortable with the pre-existing relationship?
What if it made them so uncomfortable that they didn't even feel they
could stay in a relationship with you if you continued the pre-existing
relationship in its current form?
Teal
<3AA21E20...@bellatlantic.net>:
>Thank you for this astonishing baring of your soul. It took my breath away. I
>respect your bravery, though I may not agree with you. Whew! We are really
>different.
An interesting observation. It surprises me a little, since to me it
didn't seem particularly revelatory. I have felt that I have "bared my
soul" (as you put it) rather more in some other posts that I have made
- some of the recent medical-drama ones spring to mind.
>Teal wrote:
>> You know, I *still* can't work out whether I do primary/secondary
>> poly, non-hierarchical poly or some other variant. Most of these terms
>> seem to describe my setup to some degree.
>
>I would never use these terms for my personal life. Nor setup.
I think about them in terms of attempting to describe (with varying
degrees of success) what *is*, rather than using them in any
prescriptive sort of sense (eg "we do X style of poly, so that means
we really ought to...."). And as with most things, I find that
attempting to discuss stuff clearly enough to communicate the details
often clarifies aspects of the subject matter in my own mind.
Consequently, aiming for precision in description is a useful
exercise, I find.
>> Superficially my setup looks a bit like primary/secondary poly, since
>> I'm legally married to Mark (we got married legally before we started
>> the poly thing), and we share a house that we own jointly (or at
>> least, a mortgage that we own jointly). And we've never had other
>> partners living with us full time. But that last factor has been as
>> much due to circumstances as anything else... I've never had another
>> partner who *wanted* to live with us, so the issue hasn't really come
>> up. <shrug>
>
>What I fail to see is passion.
True. I wasn't talking about passion, per se. That's a slightly
different issue, to me. In my life, I tend to feel *very* strongly
about all the folk who are closest to me; however, the decisions that
are made regarding how my life is to be arranged - who I will live
with, how loves of mine who I do not live with will fit into my life,
that sort of thing - are not made solely by me. They are negotiated
between all of the folk involved; and in any negotiation, one needs to
be consider broader factors than simply passion. If I made major
decisions in my life *solely* based on my passions, my life would be
very different, and not for the better. I believe that good decisions
take ones passions into account, but are not solely dictated by them.
<snip>
>> I do have a policy that if I'm considering getting involved with
>> someone new, I discuss it with those in my life who it might affect
>> before doing anything about it. Obviously that would include Mark;
>> whether it would include others I am involved with would depend on the
>> nature of my relationships with them. It likely wouldn't be much of an
>> issue with someone that I have a fuckbuddy-type relationship with;
>> however, if I had a close, life-entagled, primary-oid relationship
>> with someone other than Mark at the time, that other person would have
>> the same opportunity that Mark does to say "I'm not sure about this"
>> if they forsee a possible problem or awkwardness.
>
>Argh. I can't talk that way.
Whereas I find it essential to do so. I have found it far too easy to
get caught up in the storms of emotion that can occur in some
situations, and I find that I make much better decisions - better for
me, better for those in my life - if I can take a step back, and
consider the emotional reactions as a factor to be considered with
other factors, rather than letting them set the agenda.
I personally consider that I have a pretty good negotiation and
relationship skill set. I've done poly-without-drama, using those
skills, for close on a decade and a half, and I intend to keep right
on doing so. I like my relationships to be calm and peacable,
major-row-free and devoid of nasty gotchas or catch-22 situations or
jealousy games. So far I have, by and large, succeeded in that. And
"talking that way" - taking an analytical approach to the dynamics of
my relationships while simultaneously immersing myself in the passions
of them - is for me an essential part of who I am. I honestly can't
see myself "doing relationships" in any other way. It works too well
for me to really see any point in doing anything else.
>> I tend to see myself as doing non-hierarchical poly more than as
>> primary/secondary poly since I am fully open to the idea of new folk
>> in my life potentially becoming as entangled in my life as Mark is at
>> present; however, I see the degree of life-entanglement as being the
>> aspect of the relationship that gives someone that degree of input
>> into my future directions, and it is rare that a partner other than
>> Mark has got sufficiently involved in my life that such a degree of
>> input would be appropriate. However, it has happened in the past and
>> may again in the future.
>
>I can't think like that, in such a contingent manner. I love, and that is that.
Once again, this brings me to the observation (made in another thread
recently) that there is a difference between what I feel and what I
choose to do about those feelings. I don't believe that "love made me
do it" is a valid excuse for anything that occurs outside one's own
head. It's all a matter of taking responsibility for one's actions.
"Love" didn't make them do it, they chose to do it, with love as the
trigger or impetus or motivation. Big difference, and a valuable one
to remember, I think.
>> So despite the fact that my life tends to organise itself in a pretty
>> good simulacrum of primary/secondary poly just through the way
>> circumstances fall, I do *feel* as if the non-hierarchical poly fits
>> my way of doing things better.
>>
>> What would you folk call what I do? Does it look more like one form
>> than another to you? I can never make up my mind what to call it,
>> since neither primary/secondary nor non-hierarchical seem an exact
>> fit. Perhaps we need a new term, but I'm blowed if I can work out what
>> the defining characteristics might be.
>
>I'm not a folk. You ask, so I say that it seems to me that you are theorizing
>about what ought to be matters of love. I felt so sad reading this letter, a
>whoof went out of me. Maybe my fault. Maybe your fault. I really don't know
>what to say. This seems to me to be a sickness of the newsgroup or this
>subculture. No one ever listens to my advice, but may I suggest love?
<smile> I suspect you may be reading my post with a different set
of... oh, assumptions? connotations? understandings? than the ones I
used when writing it. There's no need at all to feel sad for me -
rather, share my delight in the folk in my life - my loves, my
friends, the people I care about. I assure you that there is no
shortage of passion in my life! My discussions here in this thread are
of a class of conversation that I enjoy immensely - the
noodling-over-terminology-and-theoretical-stuff sort of conversation.
I do it for *fun*, and incidentally often achieve valuable insights
into myself and my relationships by doing so.
Make no mistake - the discussion is not the discussed. I can discuss
passion of the sort that takes my breath away in calm, analytical
terms, all the while taking delight in both modes of being at the same
time.
>You are such a fine person, but to me you seem so lost. I'm sorry if you don't
>like my impression. I may well be very wrong.
I think you perhaps misunderstand what I have been saying here. I am
not lost, I promise you. Is the ocean any less magnificent because its
currents are mapped and charted? I think there is much value in both
ways of being, and I take delight in both in my own life.
>There is a Hemingway story, The
>Snows of Kilimanjaro, in which the lost ways of a man are compared to the lost
>ways of a leopard on the summit of Kilimanjaro. Please read it.
I'll keep the suggestion in mind.
Teal
Jim Roberts
Teal wrote:
> Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
> <3AA21E20...@bellatlantic.net>:
>
> >Thank you for this astonishing baring of your soul. It took my breath away. I
> >respect your bravery, though I may not agree with you. Whew! We are really
> >different.
>
> An interesting observation. It surprises me a little, since to me it
> didn't seem particularly revelatory. I have felt that I have "bared my
> soul" (as you put it) rather more in some other posts that I have made
> - some of the recent medical-drama ones spring to mind.
I don't read your posts when they are to persons of no interest to me.
>
>
> >Teal wrote:
> >> You know, I *still* can't work out whether I do primary/secondary
> >> poly, non-hierarchical poly or some other variant. Most of these terms
> >> seem to describe my setup to some degree.
> >
> >I would never use these terms for my personal life. Nor setup.
>
> I think about them in terms of attempting to describe (with varying
> degrees of success) what *is*, rather than using them in any
> prescriptive sort of sense (eg "we do X style of poly, so that means
> we really ought to...."). And as with most things, I find that
> attempting to discuss stuff clearly enough to communicate the details
> often clarifies aspects of the subject matter in my own mind.
> Consequently, aiming for precision in description is a useful
> exercise, I find.
>
What is there, besides love? The intellectual structure you describe is a fantasy to
me.
[....]
>
> >What I fail to see is passion.
>
> True. I wasn't talking about passion, per se. That's a slightly
> different issue, to me. In my life, I tend to feel *very* strongly
> about all the folk who are closest to me; however, the decisions that
> are made regarding how my life is to be arranged - who I will live
> with, how loves of mine who I do not live with will fit into my life,
> that sort of thing - are not made solely by me. They are negotiated
> between all of the folk involved; and in any negotiation, one needs to
> be consider broader factors than simply passion. If I made major
> decisions in my life *solely* based on my passions, my life would be
> very different, and not for the better. I believe that good decisions
> take ones passions into account, but are not solely dictated by them.
>
Yes. I understand. I have made most of my major decisions on passion. Some worked
out and some didn't. But what would you do if you made one not on passion, and it
didn't work out? Grieve? When you make a decision on passion, you might regret, but
not grieve.
[....]
>
> >
> >Argh. I can't talk that way.
>
> Whereas I find it essential to do so. I have found it far too easy to
> get caught up in the storms of emotion that can occur in some
> situations, and I find that I make much better decisions - better for
> me, better for those in my life - if I can take a step back, and
> consider the emotional reactions as a factor to be considered with
> other factors, rather than letting them set the agenda.
It can work, but does it give you anything new?
>
> I personally consider that I have a pretty good negotiation and
> relationship skill set. I've done poly-without-drama, using those
> skills, for close on a decade and a half, and I intend to keep right
> on doing so. I like my relationships to be calm and peacable,
peaceable, otherwise the word is peACable
>
> major-row-free and devoid of nasty gotchas or catch-22 situations or
> jealousy games. So far I have, by and large, succeeded in that. And
> "talking that way" - taking an analytical approach to the dynamics of
> my relationships while simultaneously immersing myself in the passions
> of them - is for me an essential part of who I am. I honestly can't
> see myself "doing relationships" in any other way. It works too well
> for me to really see any point in doing anything else.
>
OK. I never intended to criticize your personal life, as you never intended to
criticize mine. We have both thought about our lives. Some things have frightened
us and some not.
[....]
>
> Once again, this brings me to the observation (made in another thread
> recently) that there is a difference between what I feel and what I
> choose to do about those feelings. I don't believe that "love made me
> do it" is a valid excuse for anything that occurs outside one's own
> head. It's all a matter of taking responsibility for one's actions.
> "Love" didn't make them do it, they chose to do it, with love as the
> trigger or impetus or motivation. Big difference, and a valuable one
> to remember, I think.
There is little to be said for choice; much to be said for love.
[...]
> >I'm not a folk. You ask, so I say that it seems to me that you are theorizing
> >about what ought to be matters of love. I felt so sad reading this letter, a
> >whoof went out of me. Maybe my fault. Maybe your fault. I really don't know
> >what to say. This seems to me to be a sickness of the newsgroup or this
> >subculture. No one ever listens to my advice, but may I suggest love?
>
> <smile> I suspect you may be reading my post with a different set
> of... oh, assumptions? connotations? understandings? than the ones I
> used when writing it.
At last, daylight! Air! Oh, yes! Coming out of the cave. My mental world is very
different from yours in some respects, and in others we agree very well, don't we?
> There's no need at all to feel sad for me -
> rather, share my delight in the folk in my life - my loves, my
> friends, the people I care about. I assure you that there is no
> shortage of passion in my life! My discussions here in this thread are
> of a class of conversation that I enjoy immensely - the
> noodling-over-terminology-and-theoretical-stuff sort of conversation.
> I do it for *fun*, and incidentally often achieve valuable insights
> into myself and my relationships by doing so.
>
OK. I mistook you. I was on the pain chute.
>
> Make no mistake - the discussion is not the discussed. I can discuss
> passion of the sort that takes my breath away in calm, analytical
> terms, all the while taking delight in both modes of being at the same
> time.
>
I can't get that remove.
>
> >You are such a fine person, but to me you seem so lost. I'm sorry if you don't
> >like my impression. I may well be very wrong.
>
> I think you perhaps misunderstand what I have been saying here. I am
> not lost, I promise you. Is the ocean any less magnificent because its
> currents are mapped and charted? I think there is much value in both
> ways of being, and I take delight in both in my own life.
>
But the ocean is another, not yourself. I can understand a certain need to
understand oneself. Once, when I was 40 I sat in my bathtub and suddenly realised,
"I am my mother". Otherwise, I refuse to analyse myself or my loves.
I'd rather have a Teal unanalyzed, raw. But that is in another life.
[...]
jimbat
Elise Matthesen
Jim Roberts wrote:
>
> Teal wrote:
> > Make no mistake - the discussion is not the discussed. I can discuss
> > passion of the sort that takes my breath away in calm, analytical
> > terms, all the while taking delight in both modes of being at the same
> > time.
> >
>
> I can't get that remove.
It might not be a remove at all. It might be a harmony.
Elise,
who perceives thinking and feeling as harmonies quite often, and who
perceives passion and choice as sometimes harmony, sometimes
counterpoint, and.....
Teal
>Teal wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
>> >Thank you for this astonishing baring of your soul. It took my breath away. I
>> >respect your bravery, though I may not agree with you. Whew! We are really
>> >different.
>>
>> An interesting observation. It surprises me a little, since to me it
>> didn't seem particularly revelatory. I have felt that I have "bared my
>> soul" (as you put it) rather more in some other posts that I have made
>> - some of the recent medical-drama ones spring to mind.
>
>I don't read your posts when they are to persons of no interest to me.
<shrug> Your choice. I find that pattern difficult to understand,
myself - if I am interested in a person's writing, if I want to know
what they have to say, then I am generally interested in seeing how
they respond to a variety of folk and situations. It's all extra data,
after all. But then again, as we have already observed, I take a far
more analytical approach to my interactions than many. Each to their
own.
>> >I would never use these terms for my personal life. Nor setup.
>>
>> I think about them in terms of attempting to describe (with varying
>> degrees of success) what *is*, rather than using them in any
>> prescriptive sort of sense (eg "we do X style of poly, so that means
>> we really ought to...."). And as with most things, I find that
>> attempting to discuss stuff clearly enough to communicate the details
>> often clarifies aspects of the subject matter in my own mind.
>> Consequently, aiming for precision in description is a useful
>> exercise, I find.
>
>What is there, besides love? The intellectual structure you describe is a fantasy to
>me.
Whereas to me, my "intellectual structures" are very real. I use them
as tools to help me understand my world. And as such, they are always
under revision and adjustment, always being updated to reflect ongoing
observations and discoveries about myself and the world I live in. I
suspect (although I don't know) that you probably draw a separation
between the life of the mind and the life of the heart, and feel that
it is necessary to choose one or the other. I, on the other hand, have
long known that I can live most fully only when I partake of *both* -
not privileging one over the other, but yoking them in tandem and
gaining strength thereby.
>> >What I fail to see is passion.
>>
>> True. I wasn't talking about passion, per se. That's a slightly
>> different issue, to me... <snip>... If I made major
>> decisions in my life *solely* based on my passions, my life would be
>> very different, and not for the better. I believe that good decisions
>> take ones passions into account, but are not solely dictated by them.
>
>Yes. I understand. I have made most of my major decisions on passion. Some worked
>out and some didn't. But what would you do if you made one not on passion, and it
>didn't work out? Grieve? When you make a decision on passion, you might regret, but
>not grieve.
What you fail to understand, Grasshopper, is that it is not and never
needs to be a *choice* between passion and intellect. They are two
sides of a coin, yin and yang. Passion is the "why" and intellect is
the "how". I think that a great deal of unhappiness can be avoided on
one's life by *balancing* them.
If I made a decision solely on passion, without thought, then I'd be
like a moth gravitating to a candle flame. Lots of fire and
brightness, but fundamentally self-destructive. On the other hand, how
can one truly and honestly make a decision that has no hint of one's
emotions in? All decisions come down to a choice, by definition; and
when one uses thought to investigate one's options, such weighing up
of the options as is required to make that decision will still proceed
from one's preferences, wishes and values (ie emotions), however much
one may wish to obscure the fact and pretend that one is being
"logical". Logic can't determine the values of various options; at
some point, it all comes back to emotion, to passion.
It's not a dichotomy. It never has been, despite the rhetoric of some
(IMHO) misguided individuals.
>> Whereas I find it essential to do so. I have found it far too easy to
>> get caught up in the storms of emotion that can occur in some
>> situations, and I find that I make much better decisions - better for
>> me, better for those in my life - if I can take a step back, and
>> consider the emotional reactions as a factor to be considered with
>> other factors, rather than letting them set the agenda.
>
>It can work, but does it give you anything new?
Balance. The ability to see the longterm consequences as well as the
here-and-now. The ability to get past short-term flares of passion and
to incorporate my deeper values into a decision. The knowledge that I
can allow myself to feel my passions fully and truly without fearing
for the consequences, since I *know* that I have the skills to deal
with the fallout without damaging my relationships with those who
matter to me. The ability to have faith in the longterm sustainability
of my relationships, come what may, since I know that my "intellectual
structures" provide stability to counterbalance the passing storms of
my cyclonic emotions.
>> <smile> I suspect you may be reading my post with a different set
>> of... oh, assumptions? connotations? understandings? than the ones I
>> used when writing it.
>
>At last, daylight! Air! Oh, yes! Coming out of the cave. My mental world is very
>different from yours in some respects, and in others we agree very well, don't we?
"Out of the cave"? It seems rather odd imagery for this discussion, so
I suspect I'm not getting your point here. But yes, it is very
interesting to observe how one can agree very much on some things and
yet be very fundamentally different in others. It is one of the
reasons why I do enjoy good conversation so. A window into the minds
of those aliens I share a species with :-)
>> Make no mistake - the discussion is not the discussed. I can discuss
>> passion of the sort that takes my breath away in calm, analytical
>> terms, all the while taking delight in both modes of being at the same
>> time.
>
>I can't get that remove.
Whereas for me it is second nature. (Or should that be first nature,
given the direction of the topic? Whatever...)
>> >You are such a fine person, but to me you seem so lost. I'm sorry if you don't
>> >like my impression. I may well be very wrong.
>>
>> I think you perhaps misunderstand what I have been saying here. I am
>> not lost, I promise you. Is the ocean any less magnificent because its
>> currents are mapped and charted? I think there is much value in both
>> ways of being, and I take delight in both in my own life.
>
>But the ocean is another, not yourself. I can understand a certain need to
>understand oneself. Once, when I was 40 I sat in my bathtub and suddenly realised,
>"I am my mother". Otherwise, I refuse to analyse myself or my loves.
I find that refusal to analyse deeply alien, I must say. How could you
live like that? But then, we are very different people, as is quite
abundantly obvious! My inner workings are very convoluted and complex,
and analysis is necessary if I am to have any real understanding of
myself. A friend once described me as being rather like an orrery,
with lots of intricate motion and pattern that looks confusing and
hard to interpret or predict from the observer's point of view, but
when one looks at the inner clockworkings one can see the underlying
patterns from which the complexity arises. <shrug> Not having played
with many orreries, I don't know how accurate this analogy is; but I
do like the imagery anyway.
>I'd rather have a Teal unanalyzed, raw. But that is in another life.
<smile> I don't exist in an analyzed form. Ever. The urge to inquire
and analyse and pattern-seek is such a fundamental and basic
characteristic of my nature that without it I would be a very
different person. Definitely a not-Teal. I'm sure not-Teal would be
interesting too - but zie wouldn't be *me*.
Teal
<3aa2c399...@news.iprimus.com.au>:
><smile> I don't exist in an analyzed form. Ever.
Urk. Should have been "_UN_analysed form". (Just in case it isn't
obvious from context).
Teal, typos-r-us
Teal
<3AA2C9BB...@lioness.net>:
What a wonderful analogy! Yup, that one works for me too, and conveys
the complex and dynamic nature of the interaction between thinking and
feeling *very* well. I've been thinking in terms of either
"complementary tools" or "synergy", but I think "harmony" is a much
better model.
Teal, pleased
Jim Roberts
Teal wrote:
> Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
> <3AA2BF5D...@bellatlantic.net>:
>
> >Teal wrote:
> >
> >> Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
> >> >Thank you for this astonishing baring of your soul. It took my breath away. I
> >> >respect your bravery, though I may not agree with you. Whew! We are really
> >> >different.
> >>
> >> An interesting observation. It surprises me a little, since to me it
> >> didn't seem particularly revelatory. I have felt that I have "bared my
> >> soul" (as you put it) rather more in some other posts that I have made
> >> - some of the recent medical-drama ones spring to mind.
> >
> >I don't read your posts when they are to persons of no interest to me.
>
I mean a post more like mine, which may tell too much. My only medical drama for many
years was a sudden inability to pee. Finally, I could hardly walk. They took a liter of
pee out of me with a catheter in the ER, but they missed the real problem, as emerged
later in the night to much screaming.
One of our favorite moments.
>
> <shrug> Your choice. I find that pattern difficult to understand,
> myself - if I am interested in a person's writing, if I want to know
> what they have to say, then I am generally interested in seeing how
> they respond to a variety of folk and situations. It's all extra data,
> after all. But then again, as we have already observed, I take a far
> more analytical approach to my interactions than many. Each to their
> own.
>
Fair dinkum. I'm so different.
[...]
>
> Whereas to me, my "intellectual structures" are very real. I use them
> as tools to help me understand my world. And as such, they are always
> under revision and adjustment, always being updated to reflect ongoing
> observations and discoveries about myself and the world I live in. I
> suspect (although I don't know) that you probably draw a separation
> between the life of the mind and the life of the heart, and feel that
> it is necessary to choose one or the other. I, on the other hand, have
> long known that I can live most fully only when I partake of *both* -
> not privileging one over the other, but yoking them in tandem and
> gaining strength thereby.
>
In the long ago and far away I used to think the same.
[...]
>
> What you fail to understand, Grasshopper, is that it is not and never
> needs to be a *choice* between passion and intellect. They are two
> sides of a coin, yin and yang. Passion is the "why" and intellect is
> the "how". I think that a great deal of unhappiness can be avoided on
> one's life by *balancing* them.
>
No, you need to make the choice, that is, you need to eat the sandwich and you need to
have the life. I choose both.
Never say "no" to the grasshopper.
>
> If I made a decision solely on passion, without thought, then I'd be
> like a moth gravitating to a candle flame.
And why not?
> Lots of fire and
> brightness, but fundamentally self-destructive. On the other hand, how
> can one truly and honestly make a decision that has no hint of one's
> emotions in?
Let them come in.
> All decisions come down to a choice, by definition; and
> when one uses thought to investigate one's options, such weighing up
> of the options as is required to make that decision will still proceed
> from one's preferences, wishes and values (ie emotions), however much
> one may wish to obscure the fact and pretend that one is being
> "logical". Logic can't determine the values of various options; at
> some point, it all comes back to emotion, to passion.
>
It works.
[...]
> Balance. The ability to see the longterm consequences as well as the
> here-and-now. The ability to get past short-term flares of passion and
> to incorporate my deeper values into a decision. The knowledge that I
> can allow myself to feel my passions fully and truly without fearing
> for the consequences, since I *know* that I have the skills to deal
> with the fallout without damaging my relationships with those who
> matter to me. The ability to have faith in the longterm sustainability
> of my relationships, come what may, since I know that my "intellectual
> structures" provide stability to counterbalance the passing storms of
> my cyclonic emotions.
>
> >> <smile> I suspect you may be reading my post with a different set
> >> of... oh, assumptions? connotations? understandings? than the ones I
> >> used when writing it.
> >
> >At last, daylight! Air! Oh, yes! Coming out of the cave. My mental world is very
> >different from yours in some respects, and in others we agree very well, don't we?
>
> "Out of the cave"? It seems rather odd imagery for this discussion, so
> I suspect I'm not getting your point here. But yes, it is very
> interesting to observe how one can agree very much on some things and
> yet be very fundamentally different in others. It is one of the
> reasons why I do enjoy good conversation so. A window into the minds
> of those aliens I share a species with :-)
>
Yes. I admire your mind, but dispute your principles.
>
> >> Make no mistake - the discussion is not the discussed. I can discuss
> >> passion of the sort that takes my breath away in calm, analytical
> >> terms, all the while taking delight in both modes of being at the same
> >> time.
> >
> >I can't get that remove.
>
> Whereas for me it is second nature. (Or should that be first nature,
> given the direction of the topic? Whatever...)
>
I'm in need of help. Out of my depth.
>
> >> >You are such a fine person, but to me you seem so lost. I'm sorry if you don't
> >> >like my impression. I may well be very wrong.
> >>
> >> I think you perhaps misunderstand what I have been saying here. I am
> >> not lost, I promise you. Is the ocean any less magnificent because its
> >> currents are mapped and charted? I think there is much value in both
> >> ways of being, and I take delight in both in my own life.
> >
> >But the ocean is another, not yourself. I can understand a certain need to
> >understand oneself. Once, when I was 40 I sat in my bathtub and suddenly realised,
> >"I am my mother". Otherwise, I refuse to analyse myself or my loves.
>
> I find that refusal to analyse deeply alien, I must say. How could you
> live like that? But then, we are very different people, as is quite
> abundantly obvious! My inner workings are very convoluted and complex,
> and analysis is necessary if I am to have any real understanding of
> myself. A friend once described me as being rather like an orrery,
> with lots of intricate motion and pattern that looks confusing and
> hard to interpret or predict from the observer's point of view, but
> when one looks at the inner clockworkings one can see the underlying
> patterns from which the complexity arises. <shrug> Not having played
> with many orreries, I don't know how accurate this analogy is; but I
> do like the imagery anyway.
>
I refuse to analyze things that are not worthy of analysis. You say that I cannot.
>
> >I'd rather have a Teal unanalyzed, raw. But that is in another life.
>
> <smile> I don't exist in an analyzed form. Ever. The urge to inquire
> and analyse and pattern-seek is such a fundamental and basic
> characteristic of my nature that without it I would be a very
> different person. Definitely a not-Teal. I'm sure not-Teal would be
> interesting too - but zie wouldn't be *me*.
>
As I said. I await.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Teal wrote:
The jimbat is taking this under advisement.
jimbat
Liz Williams
>"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
>> Another reason why my arrangements can look hierarchical is that I place a
>> very high value on not allowing later relationships to interfere with older
>> ones except in ways that have been specifically agreed with the older
>> partner.
>
>Question about this: What would you do if you developed a high degree of
>life-entanglement with a newer partner, and only then discovered that
>maintaining, or keeping in good health, both that relationship and an
>earlier one, in which there is much less life-entanglement, are somehow
>incompatible?
I'm not sure. At the moment, it so happens that my degree of
life-entanglement with my partners is more or less proportional to the
duration of the relationships, so I haven't had to confront this yet. If I
genuinely believed I could only keep one of the two relationships, then in
the
absence of a formal commitment, I think I'd still consider ending the newer
relationship to be the more ethical option, but it would take a lot to
convince me that I really had to make such an absolute choice. A lot would
depend on the reason for the incompatibility, and in a very few
circumstances
I *might* choose the newer relationship (e.g. if the incompatibility
involved
a serious breach of our ground rules by the pre-existing partner).
If I handled the development of the newer relationship as I'd like, then the
pre-existing partner would have agreed to the developing life-entanglement
with the newer one, and part of that agreement would hopefully involve
recognising that any formal commitments to the newer partner would have to
be
honoured and that informal ones would not be withdrawn without ensuring that
acceptable alternatives were available (unless the newer partner had behaved
badly enough to justify withdrawing all support immediately, but it would
probably have to be abuse or similar before I'd consider that an option).
>Frex, what if the partner you have children with learned
>something about an older (heh, make that pre-existing) partner, which
>made them extremely uncomfortable with the pre-existing relationship?
>What if it made them so uncomfortable that they didn't even feel they
>could stay in a relationship with you if you continued the pre-existing
>relationship in its current form?
It would depend on the nature of the new information and whether or not it
was
new to me as well as to the pre-existing partner, I think. I don't think I
can answer in the abstract. Can you give some more specific examples?
FritzCat
news:slrn9a1ldm.3...@cy693370-a.muncie1.in.home.com...
> ...Except sometimes it seems that people with clearly visible hierarchies
> (ie, it's easy to see the differing priority levels of the their
> relationships) describe themselves as 'practicing non-hierarchical poly,'
> so I was wondering if people might elaborate more on the subject,
> because suddenly I think I'm confused.
This issue came up on one of the other online poly forums recently (I think
it was the poly club on Yahoo). I am an unabashedly "hierarchical"
polyamorist, but I noted that the difference I see between my primaries and
secondaries really has little to do with depth of emotion and more to do
with mundanities.
I share my household with my primaries (I'm in a FMFM quad), while my
secondaries do not live under the same roof. My primaries and I share
financial resources, chores, and daily responsibilities. Secondaries aren't
generally involved with all that.
But in terms of emotional involvement, my relationships with secondaries can
be just as intense as that with my primaries, even moreso if NRE has a hold.
As far as "veto powers" and such go... we have no explicit rules, but the
simple fact is that one of my internal, hardwired requirements seems to be
that my lovers get along with one another to a certain degree. Thus, if
someone new came into my life and they didn't get along with my existing
partners, no veto would be needed - I just seem to naturally lose interest
in that potential partner; not much I can do about that. But as a result, it
is important to me for new potential partners to "meet the family" as soon
as possible.
One interesting aspect of this is that secondaries actually have quite an
"advantage" over primaries in that they don't have to deal with all the
daily mumbo-jumbo. That doesn't mean that my time with them is all "vacation
mode", but it does seem to allow for a greater degree of levity.
Of course, this is just me. I'm sure there are as many distinctions between
primaries and secondaries or between hierarchical and non-hierarchical
polyamory as there are polyamorists.
>*< Fritz
Angi Long
> "Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
> >"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
> >> Another reason why my arrangements can look hierarchical is that I place a
> >> very high value on not allowing later relationships to interfere with older
> >> ones except in ways that have been specifically agreed with the older
> >> partner.
> >Question about this: What would you do if you developed a high degree of
> >life-entanglement with a newer partner, and only then discovered that
> >maintaining, or keeping in good health, both that relationship and an
> >earlier one, in which there is much less life-entanglement, are somehow
> >incompatible?
> I'm not sure. At the moment, it so happens that my degree of
> life-entanglement with my partners is more or less proportional to the
> duration of the relationships, so I haven't had to confront this yet.
Yes, that would tend to make it a moot question.
> If I
> genuinely believed I could only keep one of the two relationships, then in
> the absence of a formal commitment,
How would you define a formal commitment? I mean, if you've moved in
together, or made plans to, does that constitute a formal commitment,
or does there need to be something more explicitly stated?
> I think I'd still consider ending the newer
> relationship to be the more ethical option, but it would take a lot to
> convince me that I really had to make such an absolute choice.
Well, there is "ending" a relationship, and then there is "changing"
it, say from a "romantic" category to a more casual "friendship"
category. And "could only keep one" may not be so absolute, either...
it could be that you *could* keep both, but only at the cost of a lot
of discomfort for someone, or at the cost of a high risk of ongoing or
increasing disharmony somewhere. So maybe a more realistic question
is: would you change a pre-existing relationship which had a lower
level of life-entanglement to begin with in order to keep harmony and
health in a newer relationship with a higher level of entanglement?
I know there are a lot of factors which would enter into such a choice,
in any case. But it seems to me that, no matter how "non-heirarchical"
somebody claims to be, there are always bound to be certain relation-
ships which are valued over others. And it seems to me that while
giving precedence to earlier relationships seems logical, it is more
likely that if a conflict actually arises, preference would probably
be given to the more-highly-entangled relationship. And giving
preference to that relationship makes more sense in many ways. For
one thing, from the most practical standpoint, if the partner you are
very entangled with is uncomfortable, or if that relationship is less
harmonic, it is going to affect your own life a lot more than if the
less-entangled partner is uncomfortable or if that relationship is
changed. And, too, a change with the more-entangled partner is bound
to have a bigger effect on that partner than a change with the less-
entangled partner will have on that partner. So, both for your own
sake (generic "your," here, of course), and for the sake of "fairness"
to the partners, it would make more sense to give preference on the
basis of life-entanglement than on the basis of duration.
> A lot would
> depend on the reason for the incompatibility, and in a very few
> circumstances
> I *might* choose the newer relationship (e.g. if the incompatibility
> involved
> a serious breach of our ground rules by the pre-existing partner).
But, from a purely philosophical standpoint, do you even have the
"right" to make ground rules with a later partner, which a pre-
existing partner may not be able to follow? Or, would you only
make such ground rules in the first place with the approval and
agreement of pre-existing partners (in which case, a violation of
those ground rules would actually be a violation of something they
had already, actively, agreed to)?
> If I handled the development of the newer relationship as I'd like, then the
> pre-existing partner would have agreed to the developing life-entanglement
> with the newer one, and part of that agreement would hopefully involve
> recognising that any formal commitments to the newer partner would have to
> be
> honoured and that informal ones would not be withdrawn without ensuring that
> acceptable alternatives were available (unless the newer partner had behaved
> badly enough to justify withdrawing all support immediately, but it would
> probably have to be abuse or similar before I'd consider that an option).
Yeah, that's ideal, of course. But to say that newer relationships
would *have* to develop this way (with full approval and support of
all pre-existing partnes) is to say that all pre-existing partners
have veto power over all potential partners. And that doesn't seem
very realistic in practice, when some pre-existing partners may have
very low levels of life-entanglement with you. I mean, say you have
partner A who lives far away, with whom you exchange email every few
weeks and get together when you happen to be in that part of the
world every year or two. Very low level of life-entanglement. Then
you meet potential partner B, who lives nearby, and with whom you
may want to develop a very high level of life-entanglement. It's
not even possible for A to meet B. Does it make sense then to give
A veto power over B? Or to restrict or end your relationship with B
if A is less than wholly comfortable with or supportive of that
relationship?
And would it be much different if A was not so far away, but still
had very little life-entanglement with you, and no potential or
mutual desire for more? To put it in more conventional terms, does
it make sense to give all your friends, however casual, veto power
over potential spouses? And if you're of a certain type of non-
heirarchical poly mindset, there tends to be some romantic and/or
sexual potential in some or all of your friendships, and/or you
don't draw any kind of defining line between "friendships" and
"partnerships" or "relationships." So this really does boil down
to the same question: if you have a pre-existing relationship
which, whatever you call it, a person with a conventional mindset
might call it a "friendship" (maybe one of those "friendships with
benefits," but in basic structure, a friendship, maybe even an
acquaintanceship, not what a more conventional-minded person would
consider a partnership or potential partnership)... then does it
make sense to give that person any kind of veto power over later-
developing or potential relationships of the sort that a more
conventional-minded person might call them "partnerships" or
"Relationships" or even "marriages?"
> >Frex, what if the partner you have children with learned
> >something about an older (heh, make that pre-existing) partner, which
> >made them extremely uncomfortable with the pre-existing relationship?
> >What if it made them so uncomfortable that they didn't even feel they
> >could stay in a relationship with you if you continued the pre-existing
> >relationship in its current form?
>
> It would depend on the nature of the new information and whether or not it
> was
> new to me as well as to the pre-existing partner, I think. I don't think I
> can answer in the abstract. Can you give some more specific examples?
I think I'm thinking more abstract philosophy than specific examples
here. I think part of what I'm getting at is that (and why) while I
used to consider myself non-heirarchical and hold that as an ideal,
now I don't even really think "non-heirarchical" ever completely
*happens*, because I think heirarchies happen even when people try
not to impose them. And I also think it makes sense to acknowledge
that their are such heirarchies in one's life. And I think that,
while some people might actually structure those heirarchies according
to things like duration of relationships, I think it makes more sense
to give more value and preference to more highly life-entangled
partnerships, even if they're newer than some others. And I tend to
think that this is how people are most likely to *act* if such a
conflict ever does come up... so I think it makes a good thought-
exercise for someone who claims to not have that kind of heirarchy.
People surprise me all the time... but it really would surprise me
if, in actual practice, when some conflict came up which made
someone's spouse or spousal equivalent seriously uncomfortable with
a pre-existing relationship of a much less entangled type, the
person chose to break up with their spouse/equivalent. I would not
be surprised if the person chose to maintain both relationships "as
is" in spite of the discomfort -- I think that happens quite often,
in fact -- but if the discomfort is great, I think that's likely to
be unwise for a number of reasons, and I think the philosophical
ideal of "don't allow a newer relationship to cause changes in a
pre-existing one" bears rethinking.
A Spondee
>.... A friend once described me as being rather like an orrery,
>with lots of intricate motion and pattern that looks confusing and
>hard to interpret or predict from the observer's point of view, but
>when one looks at the inner clockworkings one can see the underlying
>patterns from which the complexity arises. <shrug> Not having played
>with many orreries, I don't know how accurate this analogy is; but I
>do like the imagery anyway.
<longing>
I want an orrery. Want! Want! Want!
</longing>
And then you can play with it.
--
Piglet, pig...@piglet.org
43 days down
1417 to go.
Teal
>Teal wrote:
>> Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
(in between a goodly number of snipped bits)
>> I suspect (although I don't know) that you probably draw a separation
>> between the life of the mind and the life of the heart, and feel that
>> it is necessary to choose one or the other. I, on the other hand, have
>> long known that I can live most fully only when I partake of *both* -
>> not privileging one over the other, but yoking them in tandem and
>> gaining strength thereby.
>
>In the long ago and far away I used to think the same.
What changed your mind? Why?
>> What you fail to understand, Grasshopper, is that it is not and never
>> needs to be a *choice* between passion and intellect. They are two
>> sides of a coin, yin and yang. Passion is the "why" and intellect is
>> the "how". I think that a great deal of unhappiness can be avoided on
>> one's life by *balancing* them.
>
>No, you need to make the choice, that is, you need to eat the sandwich and you need to
>have the life. I choose both.
You've lost me here. You say on one hand that "you need to make the
choice" and then that you "choose both". It was "choosing both" that I
was advocating, so I'm not really clear on what point you are making.
Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me?
>> If I made a decision solely on passion, without thought, then I'd be
>> like a moth gravitating to a candle flame.
>
>And why not?
Because by doing so I take the very strong risk that I may destroy
that which matters most to me in the long term. Candle flames may be
fascinating, but they also burn and destroy if one leaps into them. I
find the lure of the candle flame too tempting sometimes; but I've
been there and I know it's not somewhere I want to live permanently.
It is not a *sane* life for me, seeking candle flames to orbit. And I
do so much prefer sanity, in the long term.
>> Lots of fire and
>> brightness, but fundamentally self-destructive. On the other hand, how
>> can one truly and honestly make a decision that has no hint of one's
>> emotions in?
>
>Let them come in.
Which is exactly my point. One can indeed "let them come in" without
letting go of one's ability to *think* about them.
>> "Out of the cave"? It seems rather odd imagery for this discussion, so
>> I suspect I'm not getting your point here. But yes, it is very
>> interesting to observe how one can agree very much on some things and
>> yet be very fundamentally different in others. It is one of the
>> reasons why I do enjoy good conversation so. A window into the minds
>> of those aliens I share a species with :-)
>
>Yes. I admire your mind, but dispute your principles.
<nods> We do seem to have fundamentally different sets of assumptions
on some issues, don't we? For my part, I'm puzzled as to how an
intelligent person can be so opposed to applying that intelligence to
matters of the heart; but perhaps it can work for folk who are
sufficiently different to me. I know from experience that I have too
much in common with our hypothetical candle-flame-orbiting moth to
really feel at all safe with the idea of *not* being analytical about
my passions and emotions; but perhaps other folks' emotional patterns
are sufficiently different to mine that their needs and risks are of
another sort, or lie in other directions.
>> >> Make no mistake - the discussion is not the discussed. I can discuss
>> >> passion of the sort that takes my breath away in calm, analytical
>> >> terms, all the while taking delight in both modes of being at the same
>> >> time.
>> >
>> >I can't get that remove.
>>
>> Whereas for me it is second nature. (Or should that be first nature,
>> given the direction of the topic? Whatever...)
>
>I'm in need of help. Out of my depth.
Never mind, that was just a bit of wordplay. It can be disregarded
without loss of any appreciable content. <g> What I was really saying
was that I don't perceive it as a "remove". I can feel emotion of
breathtaking intensity fully and wholly, while simultaneously
analysing why I feel that way and what the implications are, and
considering my options and choices for future action relating to it.
It's not a divide or a remove, for me. It's simply how I *am*, what I
*do*.
>> I find that refusal to analyse deeply alien, I must say. How could you
>> live like that? But then, we are very different people, as is quite
>> abundantly obvious! <snip>
>
>I refuse to analyze things that are not worthy of analysis. You say that I cannot.
I don't recall actually saying that I thought you were *incapable* of
it. I know little of your capabilities (or lack thereof) beyond what
you display in your writings; and on the basis of those writings I
would hesitate to opine on this particular matter. What I am
commenting on is your *choice* not to analyse certain matters; which
is not the same thing at all.
>> >I'd rather have a Teal unanalyzed, raw. But that is in another life.
>>
>> <smile> I don't exist in an unanalyzed form. Ever. The urge to inquire
>> and analyse and pattern-seek is such a fundamental and basic
>> characteristic of my nature that without it I would be a very
>> different person. Definitely a not-Teal. I'm sure not-Teal would be
>> interesting too - but zie wouldn't be *me*.
>
>As I said. I await.
Don't hold your breath. <g>
Teal
<980vvm$jdq$2...@news.panix.com>:
><longing>
>I want an orrery. Want! Want! Want!
></longing>
>
>And then you can play with it.
And I promise I'll put it back together again after I've finished
playing with it. <grin>
I wonder how many bits I'd have left over...
Teal, who always has bits left over after working on the bike
PapaBear
news:3aa40cc3...@news.iprimus.com.au...
> pig...@panix.com (A Spondee) wrote in message
> <980vvm$jdq$2...@news.panix.com>:
>
>
> ><longing>
> >I want an orrery. Want! Want! Want!
> ></longing>
> >
> >And then you can play with it.
>
> And I promise I'll put it back together again after I've finished
> playing with it. <grin>
>
> I wonder how many bits I'd have left over...
>
> Teal, who always has bits left over after working on the bike
Mechanic's Law: "If you take something apart and put it back together
often enough you'll have two of them!"
PapaBear
--
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
Without ever feeling sorry for itself.
"Self Pity" - D H Lawrence
Stef Maruch
><longing>
>I want an orrery. Want! Want! Want!
></longing>
If you have a lot of money to burn, check these out :
http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/aw-cgi/ebayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=566140065&r=0&t=0
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1413197852
--
Stef
** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty
** st...@cat-and-dragon.com <*> http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef
**
Quit now, you'll never make it. If you disregard this advice, you'll be
halfway there. -- David Zucker on directing
A Spondee
>In article <980vvm$jdq$2...@news.panix.com>, A Spondee <pig...@panix.com> wrote:
>><longing>
>>I want an orrery. Want! Want! Want!
>></longing>
>If you have a lot of money to burn, check these out :
I can't afford lunch today.
>http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/aw-cgi/ebayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=566140065&r=0&t=0
>http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1413197852
<whimper>
Jim Roberts
Teal wrote:
> Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
> <3AA31E40...@bellatlantic.net>:
>
> >Teal wrote:
> >> Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
>
> (in between a goodly number of snipped bits)
>
> >> I suspect (although I don't know) that you probably draw a separation
> >> between the life of the mind and the life of the heart, and feel that
> >> it is necessary to choose one or the other. I, on the other hand, have
> >> long known that I can live most fully only when I partake of *both* -
> >> not privileging one over the other, but yoking them in tandem and
> >> gaining strength thereby.
> >
> >In the long ago and far away I used to think the same.
>
> What changed your mind? Why?
Pain. Disappointment. Elephants sitting on my chest. Death in the underbrush. A cousin
coming back from Vietnam and tearing out our lilac bushes when I was away.
Your statement was very eloquent and called me back to what I used to be and I cried. But
I am not that person anymore.
>
>
> >> What you fail to understand, Grasshopper, is that it is not and never
> >> needs to be a *choice* between passion and intellect. They are two
> >> sides of a coin, yin and yang. Passion is the "why" and intellect is
> >> the "how". I think that a great deal of unhappiness can be avoided on
> >> one's life by *balancing* them.
> >
> >No, you need to make the choice, that is, you need to eat the sandwich and you need to
> have the life. I choose both.
>
> You've lost me here. You say on one hand that "you need to make the
> choice" and then that you "choose both". It was "choosing both" that I
> was advocating, so I'm not really clear on what point you are making.
> Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me?
>
Both. It is perfectly OK to be both right and wrong. It's Smilla's Sense of Snow.
>
> >> If I made a decision solely on passion, without thought, then I'd be
> >> like a moth gravitating to a candle flame.
> >
> >And why not?
>
> Because by doing so I take the very strong risk that I may destroy
> that which matters most to me in the long term. Candle flames may be
> fascinating, but they also burn and destroy if one leaps into them. I
> find the lure of the candle flame too tempting sometimes; but I've
> been there and I know it's not somewhere I want to live permanently.
> It is not a *sane* life for me, seeking candle flames to orbit. And I
> do so much prefer sanity, in the long term.
>
Yes, but unless you have done, you know nothing. The creation and destruction are
everything. My great love and I could never have made a life together, it took me decades
to understand. She knew long before, being an artist, a Lee Miller. And she needed a
madman like me to define her.
>
> >> Lots of fire and
> >> brightness, but fundamentally self-destructive. On the other hand, how
> >> can one truly and honestly make a decision that has no hint of one's
> >> emotions in?
> >
> >Let them come in.
>
> Which is exactly my point. One can indeed "let them come in" without
> letting go of one's ability to *think* about them.
>
Not at the time. Then comes the derangement, the horror, the rips in the universe, and at
long, long last some understanding. Never full understanding.
>
> >> "Out of the cave"? It seems rather odd imagery for this discussion, so
> >> I suspect I'm not getting your point here. But yes, it is very
> >> interesting to observe how one can agree very much on some things and
> >> yet be very fundamentally different in others. It is one of the
> >> reasons why I do enjoy good conversation so. A window into the minds
> >> of those aliens I share a species with :-)
> >
> >Yes. I admire your mind, but dispute your principles.
>
> <nods> We do seem to have fundamentally different sets of assumptions
> on some issues, don't we? For my part, I'm puzzled as to how an
> intelligent person can be so opposed to applying that intelligence to
> matters of the heart; but perhaps it can work for folk who are
> sufficiently different to me. I know from experience that I have too
> much in common with our hypothetical candle-flame-orbiting moth to
> really feel at all safe with the idea of *not* being analytical about
> my passions and emotions; but perhaps other folks' emotional patterns
> are sufficiently different to mine that their needs and risks are of
> another sort, or lie in other directions.
>
Matters of the heart pass through the heart, carried on a bourne of tears. We live them
out.
I am not a wise man. I know nothing. Love is just love. I can't apply intelligence to
it. That is the work of people like Susan Sontag, and other literary critics. That is not
my work, and I do not read them.
>
> >> >> Make no mistake - the discussion is not the discussed. I can discuss
> >> >> passion of the sort that takes my breath away in calm, analytical
> >> >> terms, all the while taking delight in both modes of being at the same
> >> >> time.
> >> >
> >> >I can't get that remove.
> >>
> >> Whereas for me it is second nature. (Or should that be first nature,
> >> given the direction of the topic? Whatever...)
> >
> >I'm in need of help. Out of my depth.
>
> Never mind, that was just a bit of wordplay. It can be disregarded
> without loss of any appreciable content. <g> What I was really saying
> was that I don't perceive it as a "remove". I can feel emotion of
> breathtaking intensity fully and wholly, while simultaneously
> analysing why I feel that way and what the implications are, and
> considering my options and choices for future action relating to it.
> It's not a divide or a remove, for me. It's simply how I *am*, what I
> *do*.
>
I cannot. There was a brief period in my life when I tried that. But then I realized it
was wrong. I was stupid. The love is for love, and the thinking for thinking.
>
> >> I find that refusal to analyse deeply alien, I must say. How could you
> >> live like that? But then, we are very different people, as is quite
> >> abundantly obvious! <snip>
> >
> >I refuse to analyze things that are not worthy of analysis. You say that I cannot.
>
> I don't recall actually saying that I thought you were *incapable* of
> it. I know little of your capabilities (or lack thereof) beyond what
> you display in your writings; and on the basis of those writings I
> would hesitate to opine on this particular matter. What I am
> commenting on is your *choice* not to analyse certain matters; which
> is not the same thing at all.
>
You are right. It is a choice based on terrifying experiences, thus beyond choice.
>
> >> >I'd rather have a Teal unanalyzed, raw. But that is in another life.
> >>
> >> <smile> I don't exist in an unanalyzed form. Ever. The urge to inquire
> >> and analyse and pattern-seek is such a fundamental and basic
> >> characteristic of my nature that without it I would be a very
> >> different person. Definitely a not-Teal. I'm sure not-Teal would be
> >> interesting too - but zie wouldn't be *me*.
>
Yes, you do. There is a real Teal. And she is a real Thee.
jimbat
one guileless rose
> Elise,
> who perceives thinking and feeling as harmonies quite often, and who
> perceives passion and choice as sometimes harmony, sometimes
> counterpoint, and.....
*swoon* *thud*
*stagger to feet*
*reread*
*swoon* *thud*
I... ah... blah. No words for this wowness.
--Rose, trying very hard not to fall in love with Elise's beauteous
words
--
There is something about singing--for me, anyway. It cleanses my heart.
It makes me whole again. I would sing, and I would become stronger.
--Sharon Shinn, _Archangel_
http://i.am/rwp * Spamfree email: <myfirstname>@callahans.org
ElissaAnn
>--Rose, trying very hard not to fall in love with Elise's beauteous
>words
Why? There's no downside to a love like that!
Switching now from fluff to riffing on the idea of not falling in love:
I hear people say that sometimes "I don't want to fall in love with
[particular person]" It seems so weird to me. I don't think I *do*
anything to fall in love, or can do anything to prevent it, if I
define falling in love differently from choosing to love, or "climbing
in love" as David Aaron calls it in "Endless Light", my favorite
book about love.
Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
Elissa
Xiphias Gladius
> Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
I do, to a certain extent.
I believe that love builds itself out of other things already present in a
relationship. Love comes out of friendship, compatibility, fraternity,
empathy, sexual attraction for some kinds of love.
Infatuation hits one unexpectedly -- there's not much one can do about it.
But love builds over time -- and love has to be built over time.
In communities with arranged marriages, there is a concept of "learning to
love someone." It's a real concept, and it works well. You can't learn
to love just anyone, which is why the people getting married normally have
veto rights, but there are a great many people you can learn to love.
(And, you can learn to love a great many people. But that's a different
issue.)
The Orthodox Jewish community is one which has arranged marriages. I've
known a couple people who have gone through the process, and it works.
It starts with someone suggesting a match: someone who knows both people
suggests that these two people may be compatible. So the two people meet
for coffee or something, and talk for an hour or so. After that, they
both go back to their friends and talk it over. If they feel that there
might be potential there, they have a second meeting, and then a third.
At that point, they know whether they can fall in love with the person or
not. So they either arrange the marriage or they don't.
If they do get married, the *first time* they will have ever been alone
together will be at the wedding. And there they start the process of
falling in love.
- Ian
--
Marriage, n: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master,
a mistress, and two slaves, making, in all, two. -- Ambrose Bierce
SSBB Diplomatic Corps; Boston, Massachusetts
Ruth Lawrence
"ElissaAnn" <elis...@aol.com> wrote in message
<snip>
> Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
No, and I don't always
realise it's happening until,
er, I begin having sleepless
nights filled with unrequited
desire as well as thinking
about the person muchly.
Ruth , oh, and many dreams
Bearpaw
>
>Thi...@Not-My-Real-Address.com (one guileless rose) wrote:
>>
>>--Rose, trying very hard not to fall in love with Elise's beauteous
>>words
>
>Why? There's no downside to a love like that!
Ya.
>Switching now from fluff to riffing on the idea of not falling in love:
>I hear people say that sometimes "I don't want to fall in love with
>[particular person]" It seems so weird to me. I don't think I *do*
>anything to fall in love, or can do anything to prevent it, if I
>define falling in love differently from choosing to love, or "climbing
>in love" as David Aaron calls it in "Endless Light", my favorite
>book about love.
>
>Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
Sorta. There have been people with whom I might have fallen in love
with if we'd both encouraged it. Instead, our feelings pretty much
stayed at "fondness" or "love but not 'in love'". Damned if I can
describe how that happens. I think for *some* people in *some*
contexts, falling in love depends on a mutual feedback process
between the people involved. I think avoiding that process -- for
me, anyway -- *partly* involves keeping slightly more emotional
distance than I would if I wanted to allow the process to continue.
Please note that this is an *extremely* incomplete answer, even just
in terms of my own experience.
(Of course, there's also the separate point worth making that even
if people *do* fall in love, that doesn't mean they have to do
anything specific about it. It's kind of amazing that there seem
to be so many people who feel like "we fell in love" immediately
and necessarily means "we must have sex"/"we must get married"/
whatever.)
Bearpaw
--
~~~~~~~~~~~ bea...@shore.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~
"When you pass the buck, don't ask for change."
- Solomon Short
one guileless rose
> Why? There's no downside to a love like that!
Mostly because it seemed like it might be an imposition, actually. I
know how awkward it can be to be adored when adoration is not what one
wants. It seems to me that Elise has enough on her mind without
acquiring another groupie, though of course I could be wrong.
> Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
I know the signs in myself well enough, when I'm tending towards it, to
be able to sort of head them off at the pass if I need to. I don't
decide when to start tending towards it, but I do usually get to decide
whether to give that tendency free rein. When I do, it happens _very_
fast and I don't have much control after it progresses after that. It
doesn't take the magic out of it... there's still the exhilaration of
saying "Yes, okay, I want to take this chance" and taking the brakes
off.
Analogy du matin: I have a fishbowl of emotions, and if I catch them
when they're young I can often decide whether to put them in bigger
bowls by themselves and nourish them so that they'll grow. Sometimes
they grow all by themselves (and crowd out other emotions in the
process), but that doesn't happen as often these days.
--Rose
Liz Williams
>"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
>> "Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
>> >"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
>> >> Another reason why my arrangements can look hierarchical is that I place
a
>> >> very high value on not allowing later relationships to interfere with
>> >> older ones except in ways that have been specifically agreed with the
>> >> older partner.
>> >Question about this: What would you do if you developed a high degree of
>> >life-entanglement with a newer partner, and only then discovered that
>> >maintaining, or keeping in good health, both that relationship and an
>> >earlier one, in which there is much less life-entanglement, are somehow
>> >incompatible?
>> I'm not sure. At the moment, it so happens that my degree of
>> life-entanglement with my partners is more or less proportional to the
>> duration of the relationships, so I haven't had to confront this yet.
>
>Yes, that would tend to make it a moot question.
>
>> If I
>> genuinely believed I could only keep one of the two relationships, then in
>> the absence of a formal commitment,
>
>How would you define a formal commitment? I mean, if you've moved in
>together, or made plans to, does that constitute a formal commitment,
>or does there need to be something more explicitly stated?
A marriage or a commitment ceremony. Moving in together is an informal
commitment, the way I use the terms in this context.
>> I think I'd still consider ending the newer
>> relationship to be the more ethical option, but it would take a lot to
>> convince me that I really had to make such an absolute choice.
>
>Well, there is "ending" a relationship, and then there is "changing"
>it, say from a "romantic" category to a more casual "friendship"
>category. And "could only keep one" may not be so absolute, either...
>it could be that you *could* keep both, but only at the cost of a lot
>of discomfort for someone, or at the cost of a high risk of ongoing or
>increasing disharmony somewhere. So maybe a more realistic question
>is: would you change a pre-existing relationship which had a lower
>level of life-entanglement to begin with in order to keep harmony and
>health in a newer relationship with a higher level of entanglement?
Only if the pre-existing partner agreed to the proposed change.
>I know there are a lot of factors which would enter into such a choice,
>in any case. But it seems to me that, no matter how "non-heirarchical"
>somebody claims to be, there are always bound to be certain relation-
>ships which are valued over others. And it seems to me that while
>giving precedence to earlier relationships seems logical, it is more
>likely that if a conflict actually arises, preference would probably
>be given to the more-highly-entangled relationship.
Not if you assume that the person's preferences are informed by their
personal
ethics at least as much as by the degree of entanglement. Or if I may quote
piranha, "my only primary relationship is with my ethics." I try to make
sure
that's true of me.
>And giving
>preference to that relationship makes more sense in many ways. For
>one thing, from the most practical standpoint, if the partner you are
>very entangled with is uncomfortable, or if that relationship is less
>harmonic, it is going to affect your own life a lot more than if the
>less-entangled partner is uncomfortable or if that relationship is
>changed.
But acting in a way that is against my personal ethics will affect me too.
It
will undermine my self-esteem.
>And, too, a change with the more-entangled partner is bound
>to have a bigger effect on that partner than a change with the less-
>entangled partner will have on that partner.
Depends on the nature of the change, it seems to me. I can't agree with
this
as an absolute statement.
>So, both for your own
>sake (generic "your," here, of course), and for the sake of "fairness"
>to the partners, it would make more sense to give preference on the
>basis of life-entanglement than on the basis of duration.
I have a different view of fairness. The newer partner agreed to the
life-entanglement knowing of the earlier relationship, so it seems perfectly
fair to me to ask zir to try to avoid interfering with it except in ways
that
have been agreed by the pre-existing partner. I don't think it is fair to
ask
a pre-existing partner to agree to do poly with me if I can't promise to try
to avoid such interference.
>> A lot would
>> depend on the reason for the incompatibility, and in a very few
>> circumstances
>> I *might* choose the newer relationship (e.g. if the incompatibility
>> involved
>> a serious breach of our ground rules by the pre-existing partner).
>
>But, from a purely philosophical standpoint, do you even have the
>"right" to make ground rules with a later partner, which a pre-
>existing partner may not be able to follow? Or, would you only
>make such ground rules in the first place with the approval and
>agreement of pre-existing partners (in which case, a violation of
>those ground rules would actually be a violation of something they
>had already, actively, agreed to)?
I think we may be misunderstanding each other here. I meant that if the
pre-existing partner had broken a ground rule which was agreed between me
*and
that partner*, and that breach gave rise to an incompatibility with the
later
relationship, I would consider breaking up with the pre-existing partner.
For
instance, my husband and I have agreed that polyamory is a non-negotiable
part
of our relationship. If he asked me to return to being monogamous and was
unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise, I would have to seriously
consider breaking up with him rather than with my other partners.
There's no question of my asking a pre-existing partner to "follow" rules
that
haven't been agreed with zir. When I first become involved with a new
partner,
on the other hand, I explain to zir the ground rules in my existing
relationships which may affect zir (although to date I have only ever
thought
the rules between my husband and myself would have such an effect; they are
the most detailed and overlap with the others to a large extent anyway). If
zie cannot agree to respect them, no partnership. It's fairly
straightforward.
>> If I handled the development of the newer relationship as I'd like, then
the
>> pre-existing partner would have agreed to the developing life-entanglement
>> with the newer one, and part of that agreement would hopefully involve
>> recognising that any formal commitments to the newer partner would have to
>> be
>> honoured and that informal ones would not be withdrawn without ensuring
that
>> acceptable alternatives were available (unless the newer partner had
behaved
>> badly enough to justify withdrawing all support immediately, but it would
>> probably have to be abuse or similar before I'd consider that an option).
>
>Yeah, that's ideal, of course. But to say that newer relationships
>would *have* to develop this way (with full approval and support of
>all pre-existing partnes) is to say that all pre-existing partners
>have veto power over all potential partners.
My partners don't have veto powers over new *partners*, but I do check in
with
them about developing *life-entanglements* which may affect them, which is
not
the same thing. For example, I sometimes lend money to one of my partners.
I
have agreed with my husband (who is financially dependent on me) that I can
lend this other partner up to a specified amount without checking in with
him.
If he asked for more, I would check with my husband first. David and I are
also beginning to have plans together that have financial implications,
which
means I will probably check with him too before I next make such a loan.
And
the plans with David are all things my husband has agreed to (and is
involved
in himself, in some cases). Another example: I cannot imagine
intentionally
having children with one partner without checking with my pre-existing
partners first.
> And that doesn't seem
>very realistic in practice, when some pre-existing partners may have
>very low levels of life-entanglement with you. I mean, say you have
>partner A who lives far away, with whom you exchange email every few
>weeks and get together when you happen to be in that part of the
>world every year or two. Very low level of life-entanglement. Then
>you meet potential partner B, who lives nearby, and with whom you
>may want to develop a very high level of life-entanglement. It's
>not even possible for A to meet B. Does it make sense then to give
>A veto power over B? Or to restrict or end your relationship with B
>if A is less than wholly comfortable with or supportive of that
>relationship?
I don't do vetos as a matter of principle. Whether I would restrict or end
my
relationship with B if A was uncomfortable or unsupportive would depend on
the
reasons for the discomfort - if the concern seems reasonable, I am much more
likely to agree than if it seems like an extreme overreaction, in which case
I
am more likely to look for other solutions. But ultimately, short of
unethical behaviour by A, I would probably agree to the restrictions. It
would depend on what they were, though - some things I won't agree to
because
they interfere with other important personal ethical principles, such my
need
to take care of myself and have control of my own body.
>And would it be much different if A was not so far away, but still
>had very little life-entanglement with you, and no potential or
>mutual desire for more? To put it in more conventional terms, does
>it make sense to give all your friends, however casual, veto power
>over potential spouses? And if you're of a certain type of non-
>heirarchical poly mindset, there tends to be some romantic and/or
>sexual potential in some or all of your friendships, and/or you
>don't draw any kind of defining line between "friendships" and
>"partnerships" or "relationships."
I do draw that kind of line (so I've snipped some of what followed on from
your comment, since it doesn't seem to apply to me). It's true that I find
it
easier to form friendships if there's some sort of romantic or sexual
attraction, but I don't see what a mere *potential* has to do with this
discussion, so I may be misunderstanding your point here :-)
If I consulted a friend (even a sexual friend) about a marriage-type
commitment, it would be because I was wondering whether it was right *for
me*
and wanted the friend's opinion, not because I thought the friend *needed*
to
be consulted. If the prospective spouse wanted me to *give up* a
friendship,
though, even a sexual friendship, or placed active restrictions on it, I'd
consider that a big warning signal. So in that sense I'd be concerned that
the
marriage should not interfere with earlier friendships - but that's a
slightly
different concern, I think.
>> >Frex, what if the partner you have children with learned
>> >something about an older (heh, make that pre-existing) partner, which
>> >made them extremely uncomfortable with the pre-existing relationship?
>> >What if it made them so uncomfortable that they didn't even feel they
>> >could stay in a relationship with you if you continued the pre-existing
>> >relationship in its current form?
>>
>> It would depend on the nature of the new information and whether or not it
>> was
>> new to me as well as to the pre-existing partner, I think. I don't think I
>> can answer in the abstract. Can you give some more specific examples?
>
>I think I'm thinking more abstract philosophy than specific examples
>here. I think part of what I'm getting at is that (and why) while I
>used to consider myself non-heirarchical and hold that as an ideal,
>now I don't even really think "non-heirarchical" ever completely
>*happens*, because I think heirarchies happen even when people try
>not to impose them. And I also think it makes sense to acknowledge
>that their are such heirarchies in one's life.
The kind that "just happen" aren't what I call hierarchies. I just call
them
differences, or degrees of life-entanglement.
>And I think that,
>while some people might actually structure those heirarchies according
>to things like duration of relationships, I think it makes more sense
>to give more value and preference to more highly life-entangled
>partnerships, even if they're newer than some others.
If it makes more sense *for you*, that's fine. It doesn't make more sense
for
me, possibly because we aren't wired the same way when it comes to
friendships
and relationships.
>And I tend to
>think that this is how people are most likely to *act* if such a
>conflict ever does come up... so I think it makes a good thought-
>exercise for someone who claims to not have that kind of heirarchy.
I honestly don't think I would act that way, but then I'm not at all sure
it's
a coincidence that duration and degree of life-entanglement tend to go
together for me. I think I may simply be wired that way.
>People surprise me all the time... but it really would surprise me
>if, in actual practice, when some conflict came up which made
>someone's spouse or spousal equivalent seriously uncomfortable with
>a pre-existing relationship of a much less entangled type, the
>person chose to break up with their spouse/equivalent.
I think it's very unlikely that I will ever make a marriage-type commitment
in
a relationship which is more recent than an existing non-marriage-type
relationship, precisely because I would not want to be in a situation where
there was a potential for that dilemma to develop. I wouldn't rule it out
entirely, but I would only do it with the consent of the pre-existing,
non-married partner, and only after doing a lot of exploring and
thought-experiments to try to assure myself that the risk of that sort of
dilemma was minimal.
>I would not
>be surprised if the person chose to maintain both relationships "as
>is" in spite of the discomfort -- I think that happens quite often,
>in fact -- but if the discomfort is great, I think that's likely to
>be unwise for a number of reasons, and I think the philosophical
>ideal of "don't allow a newer relationship to cause changes in a
>pre-existing one" bears rethinking.
My ideal isn't "don't allow a newer relationship to cause changes in a
pre-existing one", it's "try to avoid allowing a newer relationship to
interfere with a pre-existing one in a way that the pre-existing partner
hasn't agreed". That last part is very important; sometimes changes in a
relationship are good, but I want them to be consensual, and if the change
really is going to be a good one, I trust my partners to consider it in good
faith. It's also important to me that I have the word "try" in there,
because
I don't pretend it's easy or that I'll always succeed; sometimes I get it
wrong and then I have to try to fix it.
Jim Roberts
Xiphias Gladius wrote:
> ElissaAnn <elis...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
Is this English?
I do, to a certain extent.
>
> I believe that love builds itself out of other things already present in a
> relationship. Love comes out of friendship, compatibility, fraternity,
> empathy, sexual attraction for some kinds of love.
>
I think that we call love what we want to call love.
>
> Infatuation hits one unexpectedly -- there's not much one can do about it.
> But love builds over time -- and love has to be built over time.
>
My first experience of love was the smile of Grushenka in the movie The
Brothers Karamazov. After that I fell for woman after woman.
>
> In communities with arranged marriages, there is a concept of "learning to
> love someone." It's a real concept, and it works well. You can't learn
> to love just anyone, which is why the people getting married normally have
> veto rights, but there are a great many people you can learn to love.
> (And, you can learn to love a great many people. But that's a different
> issue.)
>
My wild passions have all been wrong, or right. Disasters, train wrecks.
Never married any. I saved myself by falling in love with a woman on the
other end of a rappel rope. I recommend this solution for others.
[...]
jimbat
Liz Williams
Liz Williams
ElissaAnn
>Xiphias Gladius wrote:
>
>> ElissaAnn <elis...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
>
>Is this English?
>
Jimbat, you <insert silly mocking term>, it's a typo.
> I saved myself by falling in love with a woman on the
>other end of a rappel rope. I recommend this solution for others.
<giggle> That's not legal in my state.
Elissa
--
http://members.aol.com/elissaann
Angi Long
> Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
I don't. But I decide whether or not I want to *do* anything about being
in love, and if so, what.
Stef Maruch
ElissaAnn <elis...@aol.com> wrote:
>I hear people say that sometimes "I don't want to fall in love with
>[particular person]" It seems so weird to me. I don't think I *do*
>anything to fall in love, or can do anything to prevent it, if I
>define falling in love differently from choosing to love, or "climbing
>in love" as David Aaron calls it in "Endless Light", my favorite
>book about love.
>
>Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
I don't decide whether to fall in love and I don't decide whether to get
obsessive crushes on people. (I consider those separate things, although
they sometimes look superficially similar, and one might use "fall in
love" to describe either.) But if I notice something like that starting
to happen, I can sometimes influence it.
I have definitely felt "I don't want to" with regard to the obsessive
crushes at times. They sometimes scare me a lot.
I have never felt "I don't want to" with regard to love per se, because
for me loving someone is not scary. Well, the relationship can certainly
be scary, but the feeling isn't. For me love is a very calm feeling.
--
Stef
** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty
** st...@cat-and-dragon.com <*> http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef
**
"Long ago, there was a creature that sounded like a vacuum cleaner.
We don't know much about it, but we know that it ate cats." -- W. Spruiell
"There! Science Fiction in two sentences." -- Julian Flood
"It's also a pretty good parody of socio-biology." -- Nancy Lebovitz
Stef Maruch
one guileless rose <Thi...@Not-My-Real-Address.com> wrote:
>ElissaAnn <elis...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Why? There's no downside to a love like that!
>
>Mostly because it seemed like it might be an imposition, actually. I
>know how awkward it can be to be adored when adoration is not what one
>wants. It seems to me that Elise has enough on her mind without
>acquiring another groupie, though of course I could be wrong.
This may sound like a criticism but it's intended more as a datapoint.
If I were worried about how someone would feel acquiring me as an
unwanted groupie, I wouldn't post "trying not to fall in love" where zie
could see it.
If I were worried about acquiring a groupie, seeing such a post would
trigger groupie-acquisition discomfort in me much as seeing plain "I am
falling in love with you" would.
"I am falling in love with your words" probably wouldn't trigger
groupie-acquisition discomfort. (If I am writing words for an audience,
then I don't mind if members of the audience fall in love with the
words, and I may even hope for it.)
--
Stef
** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty
** st...@cat-and-dragon.com <*> http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef
**
"These colors are very flattering, yet rebellious," says an Urban Decay
press release. "Imagine going home for Christmas with Frostbite on your
lips. Imagine wearing a business suit with Uzi fingernails; you can conform
and have your little tantrum at the same time." -- attrib. Sandy Lerner
from Whiteboard News
Angi Long
> "Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
> >So maybe a more realistic question
> >is: would you change a pre-existing relationship which had a lower
> >level of life-entanglement to begin with in order to keep harmony and
> >health in a newer relationship with a higher level of entanglement?
> Only if the pre-existing partner agreed to the proposed change.
In other words, if the pre-existing partner *didn't* agree, and a change
somewhere was necessary, you would change the newer relationship rather
than the older one? Which is the same thing as saying: the pre-existing
partner is allowed to dictate the terms of newer relationships?
It is one thing to say that you would try *first* to get everyone to
agree to any changes (I certainly would say it was always right to try
that first, no matter what the structure is). But quite another to say
that changes would only happen with someone's agreement.
> >I know there are a lot of factors which would enter into such a choice,
> >in any case. But it seems to me that, no matter how "non-heirarchical"
> >somebody claims to be, there are always bound to be certain relation-
> >ships which are valued over others. And it seems to me that while
> >giving precedence to earlier relationships seems logical, it is more
> >likely that if a conflict actually arises, preference would probably
> >be given to the more-highly-entangled relationship.
> Not if you assume that the person's preferences are informed by their
> personal
> ethics at least as much as by the degree of entanglement. Or if I may quote
> piranha, "my only primary relationship is with my ethics." I try to make
> sure that's true of me.
I put a very high value on following my ethics, too, so I understand this.
I just don't understand how the ethical system makes sense, if it says
that pre-existing relationships are more valuable than newer ones and
pre-existing partners get more say than newer ones, regardless of whether
or not that fits in with which choices would cause more harm or more good
overall to the *people* involved. The ethics which make sense to me are
those which are based on minimizing harm and maximizing good to *people*.
Ethics which insist on being upheld for their own sakes, without regard
for human beings, don't make sense to me.
> >And giving
> >preference to that relationship makes more sense in many ways. For
> >one thing, from the most practical standpoint, if the partner you are
> >very entangled with is uncomfortable, or if that relationship is less
> >harmonic, it is going to affect your own life a lot more than if the
> >less-entangled partner is uncomfortable or if that relationship is
> >changed.
> But acting in a way that is against my personal ethics will affect me too.
> It will undermine my self-esteem.
I understand that so strongly, as there was a time in my life when I
stayed for a long time in an abusive relationship because I had promised
I would, and it was against my ethics to break a promise, No Matter What.
When I finally did break that promise, to say it "undermined my self-
esteem" is a radical understatement. I had to rebuild my personal ethics,
such a large part of my identity, from the ground up. Had to come to
terms with the fact that the set of ethics I'd had before just didn't
make *sense* in ways that any good set of ethics *should* -- *MUST* --
make sense, and must *work*. In the long run, of course, that was a Good
Thing.
It seems to me that you are being strongly influenced here by the fact
that your degrees of entanglement with your partners tend to be proportional
to the durations of those relationships. So for you, giving preference to
longer-standing partners is the same thing as giving preference to more-
entangled ones. What I'm asking is: would giving preference to longer-
standing partners still make sense to you, if that was not so?
> >And, too, a change with the more-entangled partner is bound
> >to have a bigger effect on that partner than a change with the less-
> >entangled partner will have on that partner.
> Depends on the nature of the change, it seems to me. I can't agree with
> this as an absolute statement.
Can you not agree that this is *generally* (as opposed to univerally or
generically) true?
> >So, both for your own
> >sake (generic "your," here, of course), and for the sake of "fairness"
> >to the partners, it would make more sense to give preference on the
> >basis of life-entanglement than on the basis of duration.
> I have a different view of fairness. The newer partner agreed to the
> life-entanglement knowing of the earlier relationship, so it seems perfectly
> fair to me to ask zir to try to avoid interfering with it except in ways
> that have been agreed by the pre-existing partner. I don't think it is fair
> to ask a pre-existing partner to agree to do poly with me if I can't promise
> to try to avoid such interference.
You, and newer partner, can "try to avoid," but it's not always possible.
I'm talking about the times when it's not possible. Or the times when the
choice becomes one of either interfering in a pre-existing relationship,
or causing a great deal of discomfort for a newer partner, and perhaps
ending or changing the newer relationship. Frex, of course it's always
*possible* for your spouse-of-ten-years-with-whom-you-have-kidlets to
divorce you rather than asking for changes in a long-distance-relationship
-of-twelve-years which has come to bother them so much they can't stand it
any more. But is that really what you would want them to do?
I can see that, as that's a very big issue. But I would also expect
that the degree of life-entanglement with him, including the presence
of children, would cause you to give more consideration to that
decision than you would with a much less life-entangled partnership
of a similar duration. Wouldn't you say that's true? I mean, if,
rather than your husband, this was a less-entangled partner which
you had been with slightly longer than you've been with your husband
-- someone you do not live with, do not have children with, perhaps
do not even see very often -- then would there even be the question
of "seriously considering" it? Or would you, in that case, surely
break up with the longer-standing partner who was asking for this
change, rather than leaving your husband?
> There's no question of my asking a pre-existing partner to "follow" rules
> that
> haven't been agreed with zir. When I first become involved with a new
> partner,
> on the other hand, I explain to zir the ground rules in my existing
> relationships which may affect zir (although to date I have only ever
> thought
> the rules between my husband and myself would have such an effect; they are
> the most detailed and overlap with the others to a large extent anyway). If
> zie cannot agree to respect them, no partnership. It's fairly
> straightforward.
That makes a lot of sense, on the surface. But do you leave any
room for voluntarily changing your own ground rules in pre-existing
relationships, which you may have come to want to change because of
a later relationship? What if you change -- because of a relationship,
or for any other reason -- and no longer want the old ground rules?
Or even no longer consider them ethical?
And, more in line with the hypotheticals I was talking about before:
what if the new partner agrees that they *can* follow the ground rules,
which maybe include not changing or breaking previous relationships,
but later, after you've developed a high degree of life-entanglement
with the newer partner, they then develop a serious problem with a pre-
existing partner? Perhaps because of something about that partner which
they hadn't known before, although it's not exactly "new?" Or because
of personality conflicts, which are "nobody's fault?"
> >Yeah, that's ideal, of course. But to say that newer relationships
> >would *have* to develop this way (with full approval and support of
> >all pre-existing partnes) is to say that all pre-existing partners
> >have veto power over all potential partners.
> My partners don't have veto powers over new *partners*, but I do check in
> with
> them about developing *life-entanglements* which may affect them, which is
> not the same thing.
What's the difference between a "partnership" and a "life-entanglement"
to you? To me, all partnerships involve some degree of life-entanglement.
And what do you consider as "affecting" someone? Does emotional effect
count?
> For example, I sometimes lend money to one of my partners. I
> have agreed with my husband (who is financially dependent on me) that I can
> lend this other partner up to a specified amount without checking in with
> him.
> If he asked for more, I would check with my husband first.
This makes sense to me because you have a higher degree of financial
entanglement and life-entanglement with your husband than you do with
your other partner. If you were doing this on the grounds of duration
of the partnership, without regard to degree of entanglement, it would
not make sense to me. Would you make such an agreement (to check in
before lending more than a certain amount of money to a newer partner)
with a pre-existing partner who was *less* entangled with you than the
newer one?
> Another example: I cannot imagine intentionally
> having children with one partner without checking with my pre-existing
> partners first.
Wow. But again, I think you are strongly influenced here by the fact
that your partnerships tend to be entangled in proportion to their
durations. If you had a much-less-entangled partnership which pre-
dated your marriage, would you really feel you needed to check with
that partner before having children with your husband? If so, that
would seem *very* bizarre to me. To ask for the pre-existing
partner or friend's valued advice and opinion while you're making
such a decision makes sense. To put overmuch weight on their
opinion or feelings over that of your spouse doesn't.
> > And that doesn't seem
> >very realistic in practice, when some pre-existing partners may have
> >very low levels of life-entanglement with you. I mean, say you have
> >partner A who lives far away, with whom you exchange email every few
> >weeks and get together when you happen to be in that part of the
> >world every year or two. Very low level of life-entanglement. Then
> >you meet potential partner B, who lives nearby, and with whom you
> >may want to develop a very high level of life-entanglement. It's
> >not even possible for A to meet B. Does it make sense then to give
> >A veto power over B? Or to restrict or end your relationship with B
> >if A is less than wholly comfortable with or supportive of that
> >relationship?
> I don't do vetos as a matter of principle. Whether I would restrict or end
> my
> relationship with B if A was uncomfortable or unsupportive would depend on
> the
> reasons for the discomfort - if the concern seems reasonable, I am much more
> likely to agree than if it seems like an extreme overreaction, in which case
> I am more likely to look for other solutions. But ultimately, short of
> unethical behaviour by A, I would probably agree to the restrictions. [. . .]
I could see a sensible person agreeing to restrictions that were requested
at the very beginning of the potential relationship. But what if it's a
little later, when potential has already become actual? Say it's a few
months into your relationship with B, you have become sexually and
emotionally involved with B, and are beginning to discuss moving in
together, when A says they are not comfortable enough with B to be happy
with you and B living together, and asks you to not move in together?
And then the other, somewhat opposite situation: suppose you have been
involved with B for years, moved in together, perhaps made some kind of
formal commitment to each other, when B learns something about A which
causes them to be uncomfortable with that relationship continuing as it
is. Are you, at that point, willing to make any changes in your
relationship with A (even if A wasn't in agreement with the changes) for
the sake of B's comfort? Or do you stick to your principles about not
changing pre-existing relationships for later ones, even at the expense
of great discomfort for B, or great disharmony in your live-in partnership,
or even the loss of a marriage or equivalent?
> >And would it be much different if A was not so far away, but still
> >had very little life-entanglement with you, and no potential or
> >mutual desire for more? To put it in more conventional terms, does
> >it make sense to give all your friends, however casual, veto power
> >over potential spouses? And if you're of a certain type of non-
> >heirarchical poly mindset, there tends to be some romantic and/or
> >sexual potential in some or all of your friendships, and/or you
> >don't draw any kind of defining line between "friendships" and
> >"partnerships" or "relationships."
> I do draw that kind of line (so I've snipped some of what followed on from
> your comment, since it doesn't seem to apply to me).
Ah, then you do have a heirarchy. You have at least two levels of
relationships in your heirarchy: "friendships" and "partnerships."
> It's true that I find
> it easier to form friendships if there's some sort of romantic or sexual
> attraction, but I don't see what a mere *potential* has to do with this
> discussion, so I may be misunderstanding your point here :-)
That kind of "potential" is what I believe many conventional-minded
folk would say was at least one of the defining factors between a
"friendship" and a "Relationship" or "partnership." It's the
"potential" that would, frex, put a person one was "dating" on a
different plane from a long-time friend (not necessarily "above"
the friend, but in a different category) who, at least at present,
had no "potential" for becoming a "partner."
To at least some polyfolk who consider themselves non-heirarchical,
the "kind of love" they have for "friends" is the same as for
"partners," and they don't consider there to be a dividing line
between the two categories; they think of all their friendships
and partnerships as equally "relationships," and treat them all
similarly. For me, I think that line is fuzzy and there is plenty
of grey area, but there are some people who definitely fit "friend"
and some who definitely fit "partner."
> If I consulted a friend (even a sexual friend) about a marriage-type
> commitment, it would be because I was wondering whether it was right *for
> me*
> and wanted the friend's opinion, not because I thought the friend *needed*
> to be consulted. If the prospective spouse wanted me to *give up* a
> friendship,
> though, even a sexual friendship, or placed active restrictions on it, I'd
> consider that a big warning signal. So in that sense I'd be concerned that
> the marriage should not interfere with earlier friendships - but that's a
> slightly different concern, I think.
Is it? All right, then, what is the difference to you between a
"sexual friendship" and a "less-life-entangled partnership?" And
how do you see putting people into these categories as "non-
heirarchical?"
For me, degree of life-entanglement is a big defining factor between
"friendship" and "partnership." (Sexual involvement isn't.) But
there is no definite line. And I give "preference" to my relationships
(whether I call them "friendships" or "partnerships" or something else)
based, in large part, on degree of life-entanglement. If degree of
life-entanglement is also a big defining factor for you in "friendship"
versus "partnership," then saying (as you seem to be) that you give
"partners" more "preference" in decision-making than you give "friends"
may be the same thing as saying that you give more life-entangled
relationships preference over less life-entangled ones. Do you think
this may be the case?
> >And I think that,
> >while some people might actually structure those heirarchies according
> >to things like duration of relationships, I think it makes more sense
> >to give more value and preference to more highly life-entangled
> >partnerships, even if they're newer than some others.
> If it makes more sense *for you*, that's fine. It doesn't make more sense
> for me, possibly because we aren't wired the same way when it comes to
> friendships and relationships.
Well, then, answer this one directly: Suppose you had a partnership
which pre-dated your marriage. Suppose this partnership had a low
level of life-entanglement. Like the "partner A" from the example
above, this is a long-distance relationship with communication every
few weeks and physical contact only every year or two. Suppose your
husband discovered something about pre-existing partner, or a
personal conflict with that partner, which made him extremely
uncomfortable with "sharing" you with that person sexually or
romantically. Perhaps husband is willing to endure the discomfort,
even though it is great, or perhaps he is so uncomfortable that even
though he dislikes having to do it, he asks you to change the nature
of pre-existing relationship and make it into a platonic friendship.
Perhaps over time it gets so bad that husband feels that if pre-
existing relationship does not change, he may have to leave, because
the discomfort for him is that great. Suppose pre-existing partner
doesn't want this change, would feel hurt by it. Pre-existing partner
feels that it would be wrong for husband to cause changes in their
pre-existing relationship with you. You and pre-existing partner are
a small part of each other's life. Perhaps they even have a spouse
of their own. Neither you nor pre-existing partner has any desire to
increase the degree of life-entanglement in your relationship. Does
it really still make sense to you to give pre-existing partner
preference over your husband?
Aside from the relative impacts on the other people involved, would
it not be self-destructive for you to give up a marriage in preference
over a relationship with very little entanglemnt and no potential for
increasing entanglement?
> >And I tend to
> >think that this is how people are most likely to *act* if such a
> >conflict ever does come up... so I think it makes a good thought-
> >exercise for someone who claims to not have that kind of heirarchy.
> I honestly don't think I would act that way, but then I'm not at all sure
> it's a coincidence that duration and degree of life-entanglement tend to go
> together for me. I think I may simply be wired that way.
I don't understand what you mean by being "wired that way." Do you
mean you just couldn't develop any less-entangled relationships until
you already had a husband? When you were getting involved with your
husband, was that the only relationship you had at the time? If not,
what happened to the other relationships? Do you have *no* relation-
ships which predate your marriage, even friendships?
And could you not have a relationship which was intended by both
parties to have a low level of life entanglement, permanently? Such
that later-developing relationships could easily develop higher levels
of life-entanglement?
> >People surprise me all the time... but it really would surprise me
> >if, in actual practice, when some conflict came up which made
> >someone's spouse or spousal equivalent seriously uncomfortable with
> >a pre-existing relationship of a much less entangled type, the
> >person chose to break up with their spouse/equivalent.
> I think it's very unlikely that I will ever make a marriage-type commitment
> in
> a relationship which is more recent than an existing non-marriage-type
> relationship, precisely because I would not want to be in a situation where
> there was a potential for that dilemma to develop.
If you were starting over, and happened to already have a non-marriage-
type relationship which had no potential for becoming marriage-type, does
this mean that you would be likely to never develop any marriage-type
relationship at all? Assuming that a marriage-type relationship is
something you would like, I would find that very sad.
What if the first relationship you happened to develop turned out to be
one with a very low level of life entanglement? Would that make you
unlikely to develop *any* relationships with more entanglement?
> I wouldn't rule it out
> entirely, but I would only do it with the consent of the pre-existing,
> non-married partner, and only after doing a lot of exploring and
> thought-experiments to try to assure myself that the risk of that sort of
> dilemma was minimal.
The risk can be minimal, and it can still happen.
What if the pre-existing partner would not consent to your having *any*
marriage-type relationships? Would you then break up with the pre-
existing partner (preferring a marriage-type relationship to that one),
or would your ethics dictate that you keep the pre-existing relationship
and never marry?
> >I would not
> >be surprised if the person chose to maintain both relationships "as
> >is" in spite of the discomfort -- I think that happens quite often,
> >in fact -- but if the discomfort is great, I think that's likely to
> >be unwise for a number of reasons, and I think the philosophical
> >ideal of "don't allow a newer relationship to cause changes in a
> >pre-existing one" bears rethinking.
> My ideal isn't "don't allow a newer relationship to cause changes in a
> pre-existing one", it's "try to avoid allowing a newer relationship to
> interfere with a pre-existing one in a way that the pre-existing partner
> hasn't agreed". That last part is very important; sometimes changes in a
> relationship are good, but I want them to be consensual, and if the change
> really is going to be a good one, I trust my partners to consider it in good
> faith. It's also important to me that I have the word "try" in there,
> because
> I don't pretend it's easy or that I'll always succeed; sometimes I get it
> wrong and then I have to try to fix it.
Well, I'm assuming all along that everyone has *tried*, to the best of
their abilities, to come to agreement, and failed. Or, in some cases,
that it turns out that the pre-existing partner is simply unwilling or
unable to agree to changes, for whatever reason. If everyone can come
to agreement in the first place, then the question of "preference"
doesn't even come up. It's only when there's a conflict and you must
make a decision in the face of partners who cannot agree with each other
that the question of "preference" -- meaning how much relative weight
you give to each partner, each partnership, and each partner's feelings
in your decision-making -- becomes relevant.
(BTW, I hope I am not seeming "argumentative" in this conversation. I
don't mean to be "arguing," just discussing ideas, and "debating" only
in the most friendly sense.)
Teal
<20010306072721...@ng-fp1.aol.com>:
>Switching now from fluff to riffing on the idea of not falling in love:
>I hear people say that sometimes "I don't want to fall in love with
>[particular person]" It seems so weird to me. I don't think I *do*
>anything to fall in love, or can do anything to prevent it, if I
>define falling in love differently from choosing to love, or "climbing
>in love" as David Aaron calls it in "Endless Light", my favorite
>book about love.
>
>Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
I like to fondly imagine that I can have some influence at least on
the *pacing* of such reactions; but I also have the sneaking suspicion
that I'm probably kidding myself if I think that it is really likely
to make any more than a very small difference to the outcome. I've
found that whether or not I fall for someone is a function of who I
am, who they are and to some degree how much I interact with them; and
quite probably the only really convincing way of stopping that
particular sequence once started would be to completely remove myself
from the other person's presence; beyond that... <shrug> ...
realistically? I don't know. I doubt that any resolutions I may make
in that direction are likely to have a huge difference on outcomes.
Teal, contemplative
Heather Anne Nicoll
> Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
I recognize the potential to do so.
I _don't_ fall in love without signs of reciprocation. (I can get
obsessive without reciprocation, but the process of "falling in love"
requires that my interest be requited.) If I don't "want" to fall in
love (or if I don't think trying to develop the relationship is
appropriate), I don't tell the person that I'm interested.
Falling in love is an interactive process requiring consent and mutual
desire for me. I couldn't have fallen in love with the beloved if he
hadn't been willing to say that he was also attracted to me, for
example; the crush would have remained just that, without the stability
I need to build stronger emotions upon.
- Darkhawk, warm and fuzzy after getting a phone call
while still in bed
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
Not heaven or hell, just the land between.
-- VNV Nation, "Joy"
Liana
> Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
To some degree, especially if I am aware of doing so early enough. There
have certainly been cases when I didn't realize I was in love until well
after I could do anything about it except accept the feeling and deal with
it. (That is how it went with my SO. We grew to be friends, but I didn't
realize I loved him until my then-boyfriend pointed it out to me. I've
grown to be a fair bit more self-analytical since then, so I am more
likely to figure it out early now.) When I realize I am in the process of
falling in love I can stop and examine my options. If I decide it's a bad
idea I can't necessarily make it go away, but I can sometimes transmute it
into something less intense. Or I can decide to go for it, and let myself
fall in love, at which point that control goes away, and again best I can
do is deal with the emotions as they are.
Liana
Jim Roberts
Teal wrote:
> elis...@aol.com (ElissaAnn) wrote in message
> <20010306072721...@ng-fp1.aol.com>:
>
[...]
> >
> >Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
If you can't speak English should you take the plunge? I think not.
>
>
> I like to fondly imagine that I can have some influence at least on
> the *pacing* of such reactions; but I also have the sneaking suspicion
> that I'm probably kidding myself if I think that it is really likely
> to make any more than a very small difference to the outcome. I've
> found that whether or not I fall for someone is a function of who I
> am, who they are and to some degree how much I interact with them; and
> quite probably the only really convincing way of stopping that
> particular sequence once started would be to completely remove myself
> from the other person's presence; beyond that... <shrug> ...
> realistically? I don't know. I doubt that any resolutions I may make
> in that direction are likely to have a huge difference on outcomes.
>
> Teal, contemplative
Always. We never can have much influence on outcomes. We can row the
canoe, but the end comes in the end.
jimbat
piranha
<20010306072721...@ng-fp1.aol.com>:
>
> Switching now from fluff to riffing on the idea of not falling in love:
thank you, thank you, thank you. i think the fluff ratio is a bit
high for me right now, *grin*.
> I hear people say that sometimes "I don't want to fall in love with
> [particular person]" It seems so weird to me. I don't think I *do*
> anything to fall in love, or can do anything to prevent it, if I
> define falling in love differently from choosing to love, or "climbing
> in love" as David Aaron calls it in "Endless Light", my favorite
> book about love.
>
> Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
most of the time, no, i usually only recognize it after it has
happened. but i know how it happens, and if there is a serious
impediment to it being a good idea, i can stop it happening -- i
did this once with a great friend whose spouse was jealous even
of close friendships, and i knew it wouldn't have improved the
situation any if i had fallen in love.
--
-piranha
piranha
<1epuf6u.pi8pdk14e6qc4N%Thi...@Not-My-Real-Address.com>:
>
> Mostly because it seemed like it might be an imposition, actually. I
> know how awkward it can be to be adored when adoration is not what one
> wants. It seems to me that Elise has enough on her mind without
> acquiring another groupie, though of course I could be wrong.
"you don't have to do anything specific about love". in any of
its forms, including adoration.
it is very possible to adore people without making a public
display of it and possibly making them uncomfortable, if one
is unsure whether they would appreciate the adoration.
if i really want to check whether they appreciate it, or consider
it an imposition, i wouldn't do it in public, where i am possibly
putting them on the spot in front of everyone. whatever would be
the good in that?
--
-piranha
For Madmen Only
<jim...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
>I think that we call love what we want to call love.
I agree.
fmmo
one guileless rose
> If I were worried about how someone would feel acquiring me as an unwanted
> groupie, I wouldn't post "trying not to fall in love" where zie could see
> it.
>
> If I were worried about acquiring a groupie, seeing such a post would
> trigger groupie-acquisition discomfort in me much as seeing plain "I am
> falling in love with you" would.
piranha <pir...@gooroos.com> wrote:
> if i really want to check whether they appreciate it, or consider
> it an imposition, i wouldn't do it in public, where i am possibly
> putting them on the spot in front of everyone. whatever would be
> the good in that?
I posted it first, and thought about why I posted it after (in response
to a question about it). Points taken.
fairest one
: elis...@aol.com (ElissaAnn) wrote in
: <20010306072721...@ng-fp1.aol.com>:
:> I hear people say that sometimes "I don't want to fall in love with
:> [particular person]" It seems so weird to me. I don't think I *do*
:> anything to fall in love, or can do anything to prevent it, if I
:> define falling in love differently from choosing to love, or "climbing
:> in love" as David Aaron calls it in "Endless Light", my favorite
:> book about love.
:>
:> Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
: most of the time, no, i usually only recognize it after it has
: happened. but i know how it happens, and if there is a serious
: impediment to it being a good idea, i can stop it happening -- i
: did this once with a great friend whose spouse was jealous even
: of close friendships, and i knew it wouldn't have improved the
: situation any if i had fallen in love.
yup. me too. :)
with most people that i have loved, i don't realize it until after it's
happened.
with the one that i live with, i knew that i was very interested in him,
and that he was very interested right back, and that it was A Really Bad
Idea at the time. so i did the "there is no elephant in my living room
la-la-la-la" dance for a while, and then it wasn't such a bad idea
anymore, so i thought about it, and decided that yes, i was in love with
him.
betsy.
--
"I think when my litter was being taught these skills, I was back
in the den dismembering a vole." --jon carroll, sfgate, 12.07.00
RJ
}Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
Hmmm. Yes & no.
For me, love is an attitude consciously chosen, while expressing it
is a function of mutually intersecting behaviors (or the lack of
same).
So I can love someone and chose to do "nothing", if you will.
===== RJ Johnson ==================================== r...@xocolatl.com =====
Xander: Who's the little fear demon? Come on, who's the little fear demon?
Giles: Don't taunt the fear demon. Xander: Why? Can he hurt me?
Giles: No, it's just... tacky.
===================== David Fury, "Fear, Itself" ==========================
Miche
RJ <r...@xocolatl.com> wrote:
> On 6 Mar 2001, ElissaAnn wrote:
>
> }Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
>
> Hmmm. Yes & no.
>
> For me, love is an attitude consciously chosen, while expressing it
> is a function of mutually intersecting behaviors (or the lack of
> same).
>
> So I can love someone and chose to do "nothing", if you will.
That makes perfect sense to me.
Miche
--
"... in the physics of the heart, distance is relative;
it is time that is absolute."
- Lois McMaster Bujold, _Shards of Honor_
Liz Williams
[the same stuff twice]
Sorry about that, people. Connection problems.
Liz Williams
>> >So maybe a more realistic question
>> >is: would you change a pre-existing relationship which had a lower
>> >level of life-entanglement to begin with in order to keep harmony and
>> >health in a newer relationship with a higher level of entanglement?
>
>> Only if the pre-existing partner agreed to the proposed change.
>
>In other words, if the pre-existing partner *didn't* agree, and a change
>somewhere was necessary, you would change the newer relationship rather
>than the older one?
Assuming the newer partner agreed to continue with the relationship under
those conditions, yes. Unless I felt the pre-existing partner was being
sufficiently unreasonable to amount to a breach of trust between us (i.e.
not
considering the request for a change in good faith), in which case I would
consider breaking up with the pre-existing partner.
>Which is the same thing as saying: the pre-existing
>partner is allowed to dictate the terms of newer relationships?
No. It's up to me and my newer partner to decide what the terms of the
newer
relationship need to be in order to avoid the change to the pre-existing
one.
Often there will be several options for achieving that, and we get to choose
which one suits us best, not the pre-existing partner.
>> >I know there are a lot of factors which would enter into such a choice,
>> >in any case. But it seems to me that, no matter how "non-heirarchical"
>> >somebody claims to be, there are always bound to be certain relation-
>> >ships which are valued over others. And it seems to me that while
>> >giving precedence to earlier relationships seems logical, it is more
>> >likely that if a conflict actually arises, preference would probably
>> >be given to the more-highly-entangled relationship.
>
>> Not if you assume that the person's preferences are informed by their
>> personal ethics at least as much as by the degree of entanglement. Or if I
>> may quote piranha, "my only primary relationship is with my ethics." I try
>> to make sure that's true of me.
>
>I put a very high value on following my ethics, too, so I understand this.
>I just don't understand how the ethical system makes sense, if it says
>that pre-existing relationships are more valuable than newer ones and
>pre-existing partners get more say than newer ones, regardless of whether
>or not that fits in with which choices would cause more harm or more good
>overall to the *people* involved. The ethics which make sense to me are
>those which are based on minimizing harm and maximizing good to *people*.
>Ethics which insist on being upheld for their own sakes, without regard
>for human beings, don't make sense to me.
I agree with what you say about ethics here, I just don't agree that my
ethics
don't fit in with the principle of minimizing harm and maximizing good. The
point is that the pre-existing partner is the only one who can decide what
degree of harm to zir zie is prepared to accept for the sake of the newer
relationship.
>It seems to me that you are being strongly influenced here by the fact
>that your degrees of entanglement with your partners tend to be proportional
>to the durations of those relationships. So for you, giving preference to
>longer-standing partners is the same thing as giving preference to more-
>entangled ones. What I'm asking is: would giving preference to longer-
>standing partners still make sense to you, if that was not so?
Yes, totally.
>> >And, too, a change with the more-entangled partner is bound
>> >to have a bigger effect on that partner than a change with the less-
>> >entangled partner will have on that partner.
>
>> Depends on the nature of the change, it seems to me. I can't agree with
>> this as an absolute statement.
>
>Can you not agree that this is *generally* (as opposed to univerally or
>generically) true?
No. It depends on the nature of the change. A minor change with the
more-entangled partner may have less effect on zir than a major change with
the less-entangled partner would have on that partner.
>> >So, both for your own
>> >sake (generic "your," here, of course), and for the sake of "fairness"
>> >to the partners, it would make more sense to give preference on the
>> >basis of life-entanglement than on the basis of duration.
>
>> I have a different view of fairness. The newer partner agreed to the
>> life-entanglement knowing of the earlier relationship, so it seems
perfectly
>> fair to me to ask zir to try to avoid interfering with it except in ways
>> that have been agreed by the pre-existing partner. I don't think it is
fair
>> to ask a pre-existing partner to agree to do poly with me if I can't
promise
>> to try to avoid such interference.
>
>You, and newer partner, can "try to avoid," but it's not always possible.
>I'm talking about the times when it's not possible. Or the times when the
>choice becomes one of either interfering in a pre-existing relationship,
>or causing a great deal of discomfort for a newer partner, and perhaps
>ending or changing the newer relationship. Frex, of course it's always
>*possible* for your spouse-of-ten-years-with-whom-you-have-kidlets to
>divorce you rather than asking for changes in a long-distance-relationship
>-of-twelve-years which has come to bother them so much they can't stand it
>any more. But is that really what you would want them to do?
I would want them to ask for the changes so that I could discuss them with
the
LDR partner and try to find something we could all agree on. I would expect
the LDR partner to make considerable efforts to assist with this, because
the
marriage commitment would only have happened with the LDR partner's consent
and I would expect zir to help me honour that commitment. But I would also
expect the spouse to make considerable efforts to be flexible, if zie was
suddenly uncomfortable with something that had been going on since before we
got involved.
No. I wouldn't consider it for an instant.
>I mean, if,
>rather than your husband, this was a less-entangled partner which
>you had been with slightly longer than you've been with your husband
>-- someone you do not live with, do not have children with, perhaps
>do not even see very often -- then would there even be the question
>of "seriously considering" it? Or would you, in that case, surely
>break up with the longer-standing partner who was asking for this
>change, rather than leaving your husband?
I would break up with *any* partner who insisted on monogamy. It's not
something I can do. But that's to do with the way I'm wired and not to do
with my later relationships. I would break up with a partner who insisted
on
monogamy even if I had no other relationships at all.
>
>> There's no question of my asking a pre-existing partner to "follow" rules
>> that
>> haven't been agreed with zir. When I first become involved with a new
>> partner,
>> on the other hand, I explain to zir the ground rules in my existing
>> relationships which may affect zir (although to date I have only ever
>> thought
>> the rules between my husband and myself would have such an effect; they are
>> the most detailed and overlap with the others to a large extent anyway).
If
>> zie cannot agree to respect them, no partnership. It's fairly
>> straightforward.
>
>That makes a lot of sense, on the surface. But do you leave any
>room for voluntarily changing your own ground rules in pre-existing
>relationships, which you may have come to want to change because of
>a later relationship? What if you change -- because of a relationship,
>or for any other reason -- and no longer want the old ground rules?
Then I ask the pre-existing partner to agree to change the ground rules. If
zie doesn't agree, the ground rules stay as they are.
>Or even no longer consider them ethical?
In that case I would probably end the relationship if a change could not be
agreed. I find it hard to imagine examples, though.
>And, more in line with the hypotheticals I was talking about before:
>what if the new partner agrees that they *can* follow the ground rules,
>which maybe include not changing or breaking previous relationships,
>but later, after you've developed a high degree of life-entanglement
>with the newer partner, they then develop a serious problem with a pre-
>existing partner? Perhaps because of something about that partner which
>they hadn't known before, although it's not exactly "new?" Or because
>of personality conflicts, which are "nobody's fault?"
Again, unless the pre-existing partner had broken a ground rule, I would
stay
with the pre-existing partner and try to find ways of agreeing changes to
one
or both relationships that would allow me to stay with the newer one too.
If
that proved impossible, I'd give up the newer relationship, provided I felt
the pre-existing partner had considered any requested changes in good faith.
>> >Yeah, that's ideal, of course. But to say that newer relationships
>> >would *have* to develop this way (with full approval and support of
>> >all pre-existing partnes) is to say that all pre-existing partners
>> >have veto power over all potential partners.
>
>> My partners don't have veto powers over new *partners*, but I do check in
>> with
>> them about developing *life-entanglements* which may affect them, which is
>> not the same thing.
>
>What's the difference between a "partnership" and a "life-entanglement"
>to you? To me, all partnerships involve some degree of life-entanglement.
>And what do you consider as "affecting" someone? Does emotional effect
>count?
Life-entanglement to me means practical stuff like having kids together,
moving in together, having shared financial responsibilities, helping each
other out financially, sharing possessions, etc. A partnership does not
necessarily involve life-entanglement to me. Emotional effect counts, but I
primarily had practical effects in mind when I wrote the post.
>> For example, I sometimes lend money to one of my partners. I
>> have agreed with my husband (who is financially dependent on me) that I can
>> lend this other partner up to a specified amount without checking in with
>> him.
>> If he asked for more, I would check with my husband first.
>
>This makes sense to me because you have a higher degree of financial
>entanglement and life-entanglement with your husband than you do with
>your other partner. If you were doing this on the grounds of duration
>of the partnership, without regard to degree of entanglement, it would
>not make sense to me. Would you make such an agreement (to check in
>before lending more than a certain amount of money to a newer partner)
>with a pre-existing partner who was *less* entangled with you than the
>newer one?
If the loan would affect the pre-existing partner, then yes.
>> Another example: I cannot imagine intentionally
>> having children with one partner without checking with my pre-existing
>> partners first.
>
>Wow. But again, I think you are strongly influenced here by the fact
>that your partnerships tend to be entangled in proportion to their
>durations. If you had a much-less-entangled partnership which pre-
>dated your marriage, would you really feel you needed to check with
>that partner before having children with your husband? If so, that
>would seem *very* bizarre to me. To ask for the pre-existing
>partner or friend's valued advice and opinion while you're making
>such a decision makes sense. To put overmuch weight on their
>opinion or feelings over that of your spouse doesn't.
Because having children is an important issue in my life, the possibility of
doing so would have been agreed with the pre-existing partner before the
marriage to the newer partner, so this situation shouldn't arise.
If I wanted to have children with my "fourth" partner (chronologically),
then
I would definitely ask for the agreement of my "third" partner (whom I have
no
formal commitment to and relatively little life-entanglement) as well as my
husband and the "second" partner (whom I am engaged to). The long-term
nature
of the commitment would impose constraints on the freedom of decision-making
in the earlier relationship, and there would be an obvious impact on my
available free time, so it would need to be discussed.
Then the likelihood is we won't move in together until and unless the
discomfort has been resolved.
>And then the other, somewhat opposite situation: suppose you have been
>involved with B for years, moved in together, perhaps made some kind of
>formal commitment to each other, when B learns something about A which
>causes them to be uncomfortable with that relationship continuing as it
>is. Are you, at that point, willing to make any changes in your
>relationship with A (even if A wasn't in agreement with the changes) for
>the sake of B's comfort?
I *can't* make changes that A isn't in agreement with. Either we agree, or
the relationship with A ends, or B withdraws the request for the changes, or
the relationship with B ends.
>Or do you stick to your principles about not
>changing pre-existing relationships for later ones, even at the expense
>of great discomfort for B, or great disharmony in your live-in partnership,
>or even the loss of a marriage or equivalent?
I stick to my principles. But what that means in practice is going to
depend
on what this new knowledge of B's actually is.
>> >And would it be much different if A was not so far away, but still
>> >had very little life-entanglement with you, and no potential or
>> >mutual desire for more? To put it in more conventional terms, does
>> >it make sense to give all your friends, however casual, veto power
>> >over potential spouses? And if you're of a certain type of non-
>> >heirarchical poly mindset, there tends to be some romantic and/or
>> >sexual potential in some or all of your friendships, and/or you
>> >don't draw any kind of defining line between "friendships" and
>> >"partnerships" or "relationships."
>
>> I do draw that kind of line (so I've snipped some of what followed on from
>> your comment, since it doesn't seem to apply to me).
>
>Ah, then you do have a heirarchy. You have at least two levels of
>relationships in your heirarchy: "friendships" and "partnerships."
Yes. I don't have a hierarchy amongst partners, and I don't have a
hierarchy
amongst friends, but partners are more important than friends. I don't
consider my relationships with my friends to be part of the way I do poly,
exactly, so when I say I do non-hierarchical poly, I'm only talking about my
partnerships.
>> It's true that I find
>> it easier to form friendships if there's some sort of romantic or sexual
>> attraction, but I don't see what a mere *potential* has to do with this
>> discussion, so I may be misunderstanding your point here :-)
>
>That kind of "potential" is what I believe many conventional-minded
>folk would say was at least one of the defining factors between a
>"friendship" and a "Relationship" or "partnership." It's the
>"potential" that would, frex, put a person one was "dating" on a
>different plane from a long-time friend (not necessarily "above"
>the friend, but in a different category) who, at least at present,
>had no "potential" for becoming a "partner."
That doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with hierarchies.
>> If I consulted a friend (even a sexual friend) about a marriage-type
>> commitment, it would be because I was wondering whether it was right *for
>> me*
>> and wanted the friend's opinion, not because I thought the friend *needed*
>> to be consulted. If the prospective spouse wanted me to *give up* a
>> friendship,
>> though, even a sexual friendship, or placed active restrictions on it, I'd
>> consider that a big warning signal. So in that sense I'd be concerned that
>> the marriage should not interfere with earlier friendships - but that's a
>> slightly different concern, I think.
>
>Is it? All right, then, what is the difference to you between a
>"sexual friendship" and a "less-life-entangled partnership?"
A sexual friendship doesn't have the same romance or expectations for the
future as a partnership. I'm with my partners because I love them deeply, I
have sex with them partly because it's fun and partly as an expression of
that
love, and I want the relationships to continue as long as possible. When I
had sexual friendships, that was a different sort of love - on the same sort
of level as any other friendship - and we had sex purely because it seemed
like a fun thing to do on that particular occasion, with no expectation that
it would be ongoing.
I also tend to relate to friends mostly in small groups (apart from the
actual
sex, if it's a sexual friendship) rather than one-to-one as I do with
partners. I'm only likely to spend one-to-one time with friends if there's a
particular activity we both want to do and our other friends don't, or
something in particular we want to talk about, whereas with partners,
regular
one-to-one time is very important and what we do with it doesn't really
matter.
>And
>how do you see putting people into these categories as "non-
>heirarchical?"
It isn't. Partners are more important in my life than friends (see above).
>For me, degree of life-entanglement is a big defining factor between
>"friendship" and "partnership." (Sexual involvement isn't.) But
>there is no definite line. And I give "preference" to my relationships
>(whether I call them "friendships" or "partnerships" or something else)
>based, in large part, on degree of life-entanglement. If degree of
>life-entanglement is also a big defining factor for you in "friendship"
>versus "partnership," then saying (as you seem to be) that you give
>"partners" more "preference" in decision-making than you give "friends"
>may be the same thing as saying that you give more life-entangled
>relationships preference over less life-entangled ones. Do you think
>this may be the case?
No, I don't think degree of life-entanglement is a defining factor in that
distinction for me. There have been times when I had more life-entanglement
with friends (housemates in particular) than with any of my partners.
It depends on what the new information is, and whether I felt the
pre-existing
partner was being unreasonable (not acting in good faith) in refusing to
make
the changes. Maybe if you give me some specific examples of the kind of
information you have in mind and the kind of changes you think the spouse
might suggest?
>Aside from the relative impacts on the other people involved, would
>it not be self-destructive for you to give up a marriage in preference
>over a relationship with very little entanglemnt and no potential for
>increasing entanglement?
No. It would be self-destructive for me to act against my ethics. In this
case, I would have to balance my ethical principle that marriage should be
for
life against my ethical principle that newer relationships shouldn't
interfere
with older ones in ways that haven't been agreed. I can't say in the
abstract
what the outcome would be, because I would need to make judgments as to
whether or not the partners involved were acting reasonably and within our
ground rules.
>> >And I tend to
>> >think that this is how people are most likely to *act* if such a
>> >conflict ever does come up... so I think it makes a good thought-
>> >exercise for someone who claims to not have that kind of heirarchy.
>
>> I honestly don't think I would act that way, but then I'm not at all sure
>> it's a coincidence that duration and degree of life-entanglement tend to go
>> together for me. I think I may simply be wired that way.
>
>I don't understand what you mean by being "wired that way." Do you
>mean you just couldn't develop any less-entangled relationships until
>you already had a husband? When you were getting involved with your
>husband, was that the only relationship you had at the time? If not,
>what happened to the other relationships? Do you have *no* relation-
>ships which predate your marriage, even friendships?
Whew. Taking those in reverse order:
I have friendships which predate my marriage, but not sexual ones. One of
them, the friendship with the TOCOTOX, is very physical and contains an
element of sexual attraction, but we have never actually had sex because I
am
not MOTAS for the TOCOTOX. My husband has always accepted that friendship,
even when we were monogamous.
When I first got involved with my husband, I had only one other partnership.
My husband and I were non-monogamous for the first eighteen months of our
relationship. During that time I resumed two earlier partnerships, giving
me
three earlier ones in total. Two of these eventually petered out due to the
other partners' work commitments before my husband and I became monogamous.
I
gave up the third because he and my husband did not get on. I now think
this
was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. It was partly due to
reflecting on that incident that I decided I would not agree to vetos in
future, and developed my ethical principle of trying to avoid allowing later
relationships to interfere with earlier ones without agreement.
I didn't mean that I needed a husband before I could develop a
less-entangled
relationship. I meant that I do not think it is natural for me to develop a
marriage-type commitment to someone whose relationship with me post-dates an
earlier relationship that does not include such a commitment. I think it
might be possible for me to develop life-entanglements which are less
serious
than marriage, but more serious than those in an earlier relationship, but
I'm
not sure. It hasn't happened yet. If it looked like happening, I'd want to
discuss it very carefully with the earlier partner first.
>And could you not have a relationship which was intended by both
>parties to have a low level of life entanglement, permanently? Such
>that later-developing relationships could easily develop higher levels
>of life-entanglement?
I'm not sure. I'd probably want to keep that as a sexual friendship rather
than a partnership.
>> >People surprise me all the time... but it really would surprise me
>> >if, in actual practice, when some conflict came up which made
>> >someone's spouse or spousal equivalent seriously uncomfortable with
>> >a pre-existing relationship of a much less entangled type, the
>> >person chose to break up with their spouse/equivalent.
>
>> I think it's very unlikely that I will ever make a marriage-type commitment
>> in
>> a relationship which is more recent than an existing non-marriage-type
>> relationship, precisely because I would not want to be in a situation where
>> there was a potential for that dilemma to develop.
>
>If you were starting over, and happened to already have a non-marriage-
>type relationship which had no potential for becoming marriage-type, does
>this mean that you would be likely to never develop any marriage-type
>relationship at all? Assuming that a marriage-type relationship is
>something you would like, I would find that very sad.
>
>What if the first relationship you happened to develop turned out to be
>one with a very low level of life entanglement? Would that make you
>unlikely to develop *any* relationships with more entanglement?
I honestly don't know. The fact is that I do have two marriage-type
relationships, and the way I do poly has evolved around them, so it's hard
to
know what I would do if those relationships didn't exist. If they both came
to an end, that would be sufficiently traumatic that it would probably
prompt
a major overhaul of my views on all sorts of things, including poly, so I
can't really say what sort of person I'd be after that.
>> I wouldn't rule it out
>> entirely, but I would only do it with the consent of the pre-existing,
>> non-married partner, and only after doing a lot of exploring and
>> thought-experiments to try to assure myself that the risk of that sort of
>> dilemma was minimal.
>
>The risk can be minimal, and it can still happen.
>
>What if the pre-existing partner would not consent to your having *any*
>marriage-type relationships? Would you then break up with the pre-
>existing partner (preferring a marriage-type relationship to that one),
>or would your ethics dictate that you keep the pre-existing relationship
>and never marry?
It would depend on zir reasons for not consenting. Put as baldly as that,
it
sounds pretty unreasonable, so I might consider it a sufficiently serious
breach of good faith to consider breaking up with zir.
>(BTW, I hope I am not seeming "argumentative" in this conversation. I
>don't mean to be "arguing," just discussing ideas, and "debating" only
>in the most friendly sense.)
You're asking the wrong person. I come from a culture that's notorious for
enjoying a good argument and doesn't necessarily make much distinction
between
that and a debate ;-)
This does so far feel like a *good* argument (or a friendly debate) to me,
though, if a slightly heated one. I'm comfortable with the degree of heat
at
the moment, but in case the feedback is useful anyway: It would feel less
heated to me if I didn't get the sense that you're finding it hard to accept
that what I'm saying is true for me. And I've been getting the impression
that it's quite important to you to get me to admit some sort of hierarchy
in
my partnerships, or some sort of circumstances in which I would impose a
hierarchy, so it would also feel less heated to me if I had more of a sense
that you would be prepared at some point to "agree to disagree" rather than
continuing to press for that sort of admission. I don't think we need to
"agree to disagree" just yet, though :-)
Bernadette Bosky
Bearpaw <bea...@nautilus.shore.net> wrote:
>elis...@aol.com (ElissaAnn) writes:
>>Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
>
>Sorta. There have been people with whom I might have fallen in love
>with if we'd both encouraged it. Instead, our feelings pretty much
>stayed at "fondness" or "love but not 'in love'". Damned if I can
>describe how that happens. I think for *some* people in *some*
>contexts, falling in love depends on a mutual feedback process
>between the people involved. I think avoiding that process -- for
>me, anyway -- *partly* involves keeping slightly more emotional
>distance than I would if I wanted to allow the process to continue.
>
think of from my life was deciding to keep thinking of someone as "a
fried--a very good friend" instead of as "a lover" (or using the word
"love" at all). It could be that the terms themselves made a big
emotional difference for me, or that it symbolized some more complex
emotional process. I guess I should add that it was an affair with an
ostensibly monogamously married man, and I'd already been burned by
falling in love in a similar situation, so I had a lot of *reasons* for
drawing the emotional line also. But it was a definite conscious
decision, too.
Bernadette Bosky
--
"Christian has to die, of course.... What sort of climax can the play
have if the war ends with Cyrano, Christian, and Roxane all still alive?
What sort of relationship would develop then between these three?"
Angi Long
> >===== Original Message From "Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> =====
> >"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
> >> "Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
> >> >So maybe a more realistic question
> >> >is: would you change a pre-existing relationship which had a lower
> >> >level of life-entanglement to begin with in order to keep harmony and
> >> >health in a newer relationship with a higher level of entanglement?
> >> Only if the pre-existing partner agreed to the proposed change.
> >In other words, if the pre-existing partner *didn't* agree, and a change
> >somewhere was necessary, you would change the newer relationship rather
> >than the older one?
> Assuming the newer partner agreed to continue with the relationship under
> those conditions, yes. Unless I felt the pre-existing partner was being
> sufficiently unreasonable to amount to a breach of trust between us (i.e.
> not
> considering the request for a change in good faith), in which case I would
> consider breaking up with the pre-existing partner.
I'm sorry, but you use this "breach of trust" and "good faith" idea repeatedly,
and it seems to me that that could be just a way of giving yourself an "out."
A way of saying "I'll go along with what pre-existing partner wants if I agree
it's reasonable, but if I don't agree, then I'll take this 'out'." Whereas
the situations I'm talking about in the first place, where "heirarchy" or
"preference" would even be an issue, are the ones where you are already in the
position of not agreeing with what pre-existing partner wants. In other words,
it seems to me that this "out" would pretty much *always* apply in such a
conflict.
> >I put a very high value on following my ethics, too, so I understand this.
> >I just don't understand how the ethical system makes sense, if it says
> >that pre-existing relationships are more valuable than newer ones and
> >pre-existing partners get more say than newer ones, regardless of whether
> >or not that fits in with which choices would cause more harm or more good
> >overall to the *people* involved. The ethics which make sense to me are
> >those which are based on minimizing harm and maximizing good to *people*.
> >Ethics which insist on being upheld for their own sakes, without regard
> >for human beings, don't make sense to me.
> I agree with what you say about ethics here, I just don't agree that my
> ethics
> don't fit in with the principle of minimizing harm and maximizing good. The
> point is that the pre-existing partner is the only one who can decide what
> degree of harm to zir zie is prepared to accept for the sake of the newer
> relationship.
But my point is: why does only pre-existing partner get the power to decide
how much harm they are prepared to accept for the sake of the newer relation-
ship? Why doesn't newer partner get to decide how much harm *they* are
prepared to accept for the sake of the older relationship? And what about
you? Why don't you get to decide how much harm -- to yourself and to the
newer relationship and to the newer partner -- *you* are prepared to accept
for the sake of the older relationship? It doesn't make sense to me to give
only one person, out of all those affected, this power. And it espeically
doesn't make sense to give that power to someone who may be *less* affected
than others. To me, what makes sense is to give more power to those who are
more affected. Which means, in virtually all cases I can imagine, those who
are more life-entangled.
> >> >And, too, a change with the more-entangled partner is bound
> >> >to have a bigger effect on that partner than a change with the less-
> >> >entangled partner will have on that partner.
> >
> >> Depends on the nature of the change, it seems to me. I can't agree with
> >> this as an absolute statement.
> >
> >Can you not agree that this is *generally* (as opposed to univerally or
> >generically) true?
>
> No. It depends on the nature of the change. A minor change with the
> more-entangled partner may have less effect on zir than a major change with
> the less-entangled partner would have on that partner.
But if the proposed change is the same, or similar? Frex, if one of the
relationships must become platonic, or have the frequency of contact cut
down? Those would be big changes, have a big effect, for the more life-
entangled partner, but small changes, small effect, for the less life-
entangled partner.
Or, in the case that the conflict is big enough that one relationship or
the other must end entirely, I don't see how ending the relationship can
have less effect on the more life-entangled partner than on the less.
To look at the extreme cases -- your husband versus a long-distance,
rarely-seen, infrequently-communicated-with partner -- you're talking
about moving out, going through divorce, the whole child custody mess,
major financial upheaval -- and those are just the "practical" effects,
nevermind the major emotional effects -- versus losing one date per year
and a few emails.
> >You, and newer partner, can "try to avoid," but it's not always possible.
> >I'm talking about the times when it's not possible. Or the times when the
> >choice becomes one of either interfering in a pre-existing relationship,
> >or causing a great deal of discomfort for a newer partner, and perhaps
> >ending or changing the newer relationship. Frex, of course it's always
> >*possible* for your spouse-of-ten-years-with-whom-you-have-kidlets to
> >divorce you rather than asking for changes in a long-distance-relationship
> >-of-twelve-years which has come to bother them so much they can't stand it
> >any more. But is that really what you would want them to do?
> I would want them to ask for the changes so that I could discuss them with
> the
> LDR partner and try to find something we could all agree on. I would expect
> the LDR partner to make considerable efforts to assist with this, because
> the
> marriage commitment would only have happened with the LDR partner's consent
> and I would expect zir to help me honour that commitment. But I would also
> expect the spouse to make considerable efforts to be flexible, if zie was
> suddenly uncomfortable with something that had been going on since before we
> got involved.
But if LDR and spouse do both make their considerable efforts and are able
to come to agreement on some solution, then that's outside the question of
what happens -- what *you* choose -- when there is a true conflict, and no
agreement.
> >> For
> >> instance, my husband and I have agreed that polyamory is a non-negotiable
> >> part
> >> of our relationship. If he asked me to return to being monogamous and was
> >> unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise, I would have to seriously
> >> consider breaking up with him rather than with my other partners.
> >I can see that, as that's a very big issue. But I would also expect
> >that the degree of life-entanglement with him, including the presence
> >of children, would cause you to give more consideration to that
> >decision than you would with a much less life-entangled partnership
> >of a similar duration. Wouldn't you say that's true?
> No. I wouldn't consider it for an instant.
Wait -- you just said that you *would* seriously consider it. Are you
changing that?
> >I mean, if,
> >rather than your husband, this was a less-entangled partner which
> >you had been with slightly longer than you've been with your husband
> >-- someone you do not live with, do not have children with, perhaps
> >do not even see very often -- then would there even be the question
> >of "seriously considering" it? Or would you, in that case, surely
> >break up with the longer-standing partner who was asking for this
> >change, rather than leaving your husband?
> I would break up with *any* partner who insisted on monogamy. It's not
> something I can do. But that's to do with the way I'm wired and not to do
> with my later relationships. I would break up with a partner who insisted
> on monogamy even if I had no other relationships at all.
This is different from what you said at first, which was only that you
would "seriously consider" breaking up with your husband if he insisted
on monogamy.
I consider polyamory to be non-negotiable for me, too. But if it was a
spouse (/equivalent) of long duration, especially one with whom I was
raising kids, asking (and I know they wouldn't ask lightly), I would at
least *consider* giving it a try. The answer would most likely still be
"no." At the very most, it would be "I'll try for a while, but it
probably won't work." But for such an entangled partner, I would at
least give it some consideration. Whereas for a less-entangled partner
-- such as my TOCOTOX, who pre-dates my lifepartner by years -- I could
not even imagine considering it.
> >That makes a lot of sense, on the surface. But do you leave any
> >room for voluntarily changing your own ground rules in pre-existing
> >relationships, which you may have come to want to change because of
> >a later relationship? What if you change -- because of a relationship,
> >or for any other reason -- and no longer want the old ground rules?
> Then I ask the pre-existing partner to agree to change the ground rules. If
> zie doesn't agree, the ground rules stay as they are.
I must admit that I am finding this upsetting, because if you mean what
you say here, then you are making yourself a prisoner and a slave. And
I've been there, done that, and it was a true nightmare.
> >Or even no longer consider them ethical?
> In that case I would probably end the relationship if a change could not be
> agreed. I find it hard to imagine examples, though.
But ending the relationship *is* a change. And you just said that if
the partner would not agree to the change, you would not make it.
If you would not make other, smaller changes to a relationship unilaterally,
then why would you consider it okay to make the biggest change of all --
ending it -- unilaterally?
> >And, more in line with the hypotheticals I was talking about before:
> >what if the new partner agrees that they *can* follow the ground rules,
> >which maybe include not changing or breaking previous relationships,
> >but later, after you've developed a high degree of life-entanglement
> >with the newer partner, they then develop a serious problem with a pre-
> >existing partner? Perhaps because of something about that partner which
> >they hadn't known before, although it's not exactly "new?" Or because
> >of personality conflicts, which are "nobody's fault?"
> Again, unless the pre-existing partner had broken a ground rule, I would
> stay
> with the pre-existing partner and try to find ways of agreeing changes to
> one
> or both relationships that would allow me to stay with the newer one too.
> If
> that proved impossible, I'd give up the newer relationship, provided I felt
> the pre-existing partner had considered any requested changes in good faith.
What constitutes "good faith?" If you ask an LDR partner to make your
relationship platonic because your husband has become so uncomfortable
with it that he cannot stay in the marriage as long as the LDR is
romantic/sexual, and the LDR partner says "no, I don't feel that would
be fair, as our relationship pre-dates your marriage. I am not willing
to make that change," do you then divorce your husband?
> >What's the difference between a "partnership" and a "life-entanglement"
> >to you? To me, all partnerships involve some degree of life-entanglement.
> >And what do you consider as "affecting" someone? Does emotional effect
> >count?
> Life-entanglement to me means practical stuff like having kids together,
> moving in together, having shared financial responsibilities, helping each
> other out financially, sharing possessions, etc. A partnership does not
> necessarily involve life-entanglement to me. Emotional effect counts, but I
> primarily had practical effects in mind when I wrote the post.
I use "life-entanglement" to also mean emotional attachment, time spent
together, energy invested in each other, amount of future-planning done
together, etc., in addition to the purely practical stuff.
> >> For example, I sometimes lend money to one of my partners. I
> >> have agreed with my husband (who is financially dependent on me) that I can
> >> lend this other partner up to a specified amount without checking in with
> >> him.
> >> If he asked for more, I would check with my husband first.
> >This makes sense to me because you have a higher degree of financial
> >entanglement and life-entanglement with your husband than you do with
> >your other partner. If you were doing this on the grounds of duration
> >of the partnership, without regard to degree of entanglement, it would
> >not make sense to me. Would you make such an agreement (to check in
> >before lending more than a certain amount of money to a newer partner)
> >with a pre-existing partner who was *less* entangled with you than the
> >newer one?
> If the loan would affect the pre-existing partner, then yes.
So if the pre-existing partner had a low opinion of any kind of loans, and
was affected emotionally (but not practically) by the thought of you
loaning money to another partner, would you refrain from loaning money?
Another hypothetical: Suppose you have a much-less-entangled partnership
predating a marriage-type partnership. Pre-existing partner has become
accustomed to borrowing sums of money from you on occasion. You now wish
to enter a large financial commitment with newer partner, such as
purchasing a house and/or having a child, which will necessitate your
being unable to loan money to pre-existing partner any more. The new
financial commitment is something you and marriage-type partner want very
much, but pre-existing partner does not want to agree to the proposed
change. Do you forego making the change then?
> >> Another example: I cannot imagine intentionally
> >> having children with one partner without checking with my pre-existing
> >> partners first.
> >Wow. But again, I think you are strongly influenced here by the fact
> >that your partnerships tend to be entangled in proportion to their
> >durations. If you had a much-less-entangled partnership which pre-
> >dated your marriage, would you really feel you needed to check with
> >that partner before having children with your husband? If so, that
> >would seem *very* bizarre to me. To ask for the pre-existing
> >partner or friend's valued advice and opinion while you're making
> >such a decision makes sense. To put overmuch weight on their
> >opinion or feelings over that of your spouse doesn't.
> Because having children is an important issue in my life, the possibility of
> doing so would have been agreed with the pre-existing partner before the
> marriage to the newer partner, so this situation shouldn't arise.
It shouldn't. But what if the desire to have children had happened
because of a change in you? What if you had previously thought you
would not want children, but over time, you changed, and now felt you
could not be happy if you did not at least try to have children?
> If I wanted to have children with my "fourth" partner (chronologically),
> then
> I would definitely ask for the agreement of my "third" partner (whom I have
> no
> formal commitment to and relatively little life-entanglement) as well as my
> husband and the "second" partner (whom I am engaged to). The long-term
> nature
> of the commitment would impose constraints on the freedom of decision-making
> in the earlier relationship, and there would be an obvious impact on my
> available free time, so it would need to be discussed.
None of my non-marriage type partners has ever asked for my consent
before having children with someone else. I cannot imagine it ever
happening. One of my lifepartner's otherloves had a child last year
with her husband. I think we would both have been blown away by the
whole concept if she had even brought the topic up in the context of
asking either of us for permission or consent to have a child with
her husband. I would hope that the impact would be *discussed*, but
that's very different from asking for agreement.
> >I could see a sensible person agreeing to restrictions that were requested
> >at the very beginning of the potential relationship. But what if it's a
> >little later, when potential has already become actual? Say it's a few
> >months into your relationship with B, you have become sexually and
> >emotionally involved with B, and are beginning to discuss moving in
> >together, when A says they are not comfortable enough with B to be happy
> >with you and B living together, and asks you to not move in together?
> Then the likelihood is we won't move in together until and unless the
> discomfort has been resolved.
And if you already have moved in together, and A asks you to move out?
Do you move out? What if you've already married, and A asks you to
divorce?
> >And then the other, somewhat opposite situation: suppose you have been
> >involved with B for years, moved in together, perhaps made some kind of
> >formal commitment to each other, when B learns something about A which
> >causes them to be uncomfortable with that relationship continuing as it
> >is. Are you, at that point, willing to make any changes in your
> >relationship with A (even if A wasn't in agreement with the changes) for
> >the sake of B's comfort?
> I *can't* make changes that A isn't in agreement with. Either we agree, or
> the relationship with A ends, or B withdraws the request for the changes, or
> the relationship with B ends.
But, as I said above, ending the relationship with A *is* a change, and
you said you wouldn't/couldn't make changes with A that A doesn't agree
with, so how can the relationship with A end, if A doesn't agree to that?
Or, again... if you wouldn't find it right to even make smaller changes
unilaterally, then how can you find it right to make the biggest change
of all -- ending the relationship -- unilaterally?
I don't see how you can say that you "*can't*" make changes that A isn't
in agreement with. You can make any changes you want. If A isn't in
agreement with staying in a relationship with you under the new circum-
stances, then the relationship can end. To say that you "can't" make
changes that A isn't in agreement with means that, frex, if you wanted
to stop having sex with A, and A didn't agree, you'd have to keep having
sex with them. I hope this isn't really how you feel!
> >Or do you stick to your principles about not
> >changing pre-existing relationships for later ones, even at the expense
> >of great discomfort for B, or great disharmony in your live-in partnership,
> >or even the loss of a marriage or equivalent?
> I stick to my principles. But what that means in practice is going to
> depend on what this new knowledge of B's actually is.
It could be something that could only become known over time, such as
a negative pattern. Frex, B knew you leant money on occasion to A,
but it was only after combining finances with B and making several loans
to A that B saw that every time you loaned money to A, your own bills
got paid late, you incurred late fees and worsened your credit rating,
and it made you irritable for a time. Maybe you were always willing to
put up with this, and it still doesn't bother you much, but it bothers
B enough that B very strongly does not want you to loan money to A any
more.
It could be something which never came up before, or which was hidden,
such as the nature of A's true feelings for B. Or some aspect of A's
personal ethics which doesn't bother you, but does bother B greatly.
It's hard to give specific examples to which you wouldn't say "that
just couldn't happen with me," because I don't know what issues would
be okay with you but might bother a spouse or lifepartner of yours.
Frex, cheating is probably no more okay with you than with your spouse,
but just as an example, suppose that you had a pre-existing partner who
cheated, or was willing to cheat, in certain circumstances which didn't
bother you enough to end or change your relationship with them, but
when your spouse learned this, it bothered them so greatly that they
couldn't stand to "share" you with such a person.
> >> >And would it be much different if A was not so far away, but still
> >> >had very little life-entanglement with you, and no potential or
> >> >mutual desire for more? To put it in more conventional terms, does
> >> >it make sense to give all your friends, however casual, veto power
> >> >over potential spouses? And if you're of a certain type of non-
> >> >heirarchical poly mindset, there tends to be some romantic and/or
> >> >sexual potential in some or all of your friendships, and/or you
> >> >don't draw any kind of defining line between "friendships" and
> >> >"partnerships" or "relationships."
> >> I do draw that kind of line (so I've snipped some of what followed on from
> >> your comment, since it doesn't seem to apply to me).
> >Ah, then you do have a heirarchy. You have at least two levels of
> >relationships in your heirarchy: "friendships" and "partnerships."
> Yes. I don't have a hierarchy amongst partners, and I don't have a
> hierarchy
> amongst friends, but partners are more important than friends. I don't
> consider my relationships with my friends to be part of the way I do poly,
> exactly, so when I say I do non-hierarchical poly, I'm only talking about my
> partnerships.
Wait. How can you say you don't have a heirarchy amongst partners, after
you've been describing here a very strong heirarchy based strictly on
relationship duration and time precedence?
> >> It's true that I find
> >> it easier to form friendships if there's some sort of romantic or sexual
> >> attraction, but I don't see what a mere *potential* has to do with this
> >> discussion, so I may be misunderstanding your point here :-)
> >That kind of "potential" is what I believe many conventional-minded
> >folk would say was at least one of the defining factors between a
> >"friendship" and a "Relationship" or "partnership." It's the
> >"potential" that would, frex, put a person one was "dating" on a
> >different plane from a long-time friend (not necessarily "above"
> >the friend, but in a different category) who, at least at present,
> >had no "potential" for becoming a "partner."
> That doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with hierarchies.
It doesn't? Hmm, let me try again... The kind of "potential" is what
many conventional-minded folk use as at least one of the defining
factors in where a certain relationship fits into their heirarchy of
relationships, which usually includes categories of "friends," "partners,"
and "potential partners." Most conventional-minded folk will reserve the
"partner" category in this heirarchy for at most one person at a time.
Further subdivisions in the heirarchy may be "casual friend" or "acquain-
tance," "best friend" or "close friend," "date," "boy/girlfriend,"
"fiance," "spouse," etc., as well as categories for "family of origin,"
"children," etc. Many polyfolk have subcategories in their heirarchies
for "primary partners," "secondary partners," "sexual friends," etc.
Some reserve the "primary" category for at most one person at a time;
some don't.
By "heirarchy," in the sense under discussion, I mean "ordering which
defines the degree or order of preference which is given to each person
in the event of a true conflict." By "true conflict" I mean "situation
in which agreement between all parties cannot be reached."
A typically heirarchy might be (simplified): children, self, spouse(s),
other partners, close friends, family of origin, more distant friends,
acquaintances, strangers. (A lot of people probably put "self" much
lower, but I think that's not very healthy. Except for children who are
truly dependent on the parent in so many ways, one really should look
out for one's own needs first and foremost.) This means that, in the
event of a conflict in which agreement cannot be reached, children's
needs and feelings are given more weight than anyone else's, followed by
one's own needs and feelings, then by those of spouse(s), etc. It does
not necessarily mean that, frex, children's needs always wholly dictate
the decision, as, even when children's needs are given high relative
weight, there are still many other factors in the equation.
If you have an ordering within your partnerships -- which you are saying
you do have, based on time precedence -- which defines which partner's
needs, feelings, opinions, agreement, consent get more weight than
others' in cases of conflict where agreement between the partners can't
be reached... then how do you call that "non-heirarchical?"
> >Is it? All right, then, what is the difference to you between a
> >"sexual friendship" and a "less-life-entangled partnership?"
> A sexual friendship doesn't have the same romance or expectations for the
> future as a partnership. I'm with my partners because I love them deeply, I
> have sex with them partly because it's fun and partly as an expression of
> that
> love, and I want the relationships to continue as long as possible. When I
> had sexual friendships, that was a different sort of love - on the same sort
> of level as any other friendship - and we had sex purely because it seemed
> like a fun thing to do on that particular occasion, with no expectation that
> it would be ongoing.
Wow... if I didn't love someone deeply and want the relationship to
continue as long as possible, I wouldn't call it a "friendship," I'd
call it an "acquaintanceship."
> I also tend to relate to friends mostly in small groups (apart from the
> actual
> sex, if it's a sexual friendship) rather than one-to-one as I do with
> partners. I'm only likely to spend one-to-one time with friends if there's a
> particular activity we both want to do and our other friends don't, or
> something in particular we want to talk about, whereas with partners,
> regular
> one-to-one time is very important and what we do with it doesn't really
> matter.
This also sounds like what you are calling "friends," I would call
"acquaintances" or "casual friends." What you are calling "partners,"
I would call "friends" or "partners," depending on the degree of life-
entanglement and other factors.
> >For me, degree of life-entanglement is a big defining factor between
> >"friendship" and "partnership." (Sexual involvement isn't.) But
> >there is no definite line. And I give "preference" to my relationships
> >(whether I call them "friendships" or "partnerships" or something else)
> >based, in large part, on degree of life-entanglement. If degree of
> >life-entanglement is also a big defining factor for you in "friendship"
> >versus "partnership," then saying (as you seem to be) that you give
> >"partners" more "preference" in decision-making than you give "friends"
> >may be the same thing as saying that you give more life-entangled
> >relationships preference over less life-entangled ones. Do you think
> >this may be the case?
> No, I don't think degree of life-entanglement is a defining factor in that
> distinction for me. There have been times when I had more life-entanglement
> with friends (housemates in particular) than with any of my partners.
I think future-planning makes for a higher degree of life-entanglement
than merely sharing space. So if I had a housemate with whom I was
sharing space, but didn't intend to try to make that arrangement last
as long as possible, didn't make plans with that person for how our
lives would fit together years from now, etc., and a non-housemate
with whom I did make those kinds of plans, I would consider my life to
be more entangled with the non-housemate.
> My husband and I were non-monogamous for the first eighteen months of our
> relationship. During that time I resumed two earlier partnerships, giving
> me
> three earlier ones in total. Two of these eventually petered out due to the
> other partners' work commitments before my husband and I became monogamous.
> I
> gave up the third because he and my husband did not get on. I now think
> this
> was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. [. . .]
Even though the alternative may well have cost you what you have with
your husband now?
Do you think this was a mistake because you feel you would have been
happier with the other person? Would you have had a marriage-type
relationship with him, children, etc.? Or do you think it was a
mistake because you feel guilty for hurting him? Or do you think
the breakup was just unnecessary, and it would have been possible to
maintain both relationships with reasonable comfort for everyone?
> I didn't mean that I needed a husband before I could develop a
> less-entangled
> relationship. I meant that I do not think it is natural for me to develop a
> marriage-type commitment to someone whose relationship with me post-dates an
> earlier relationship that does not include such a commitment.
This seems to say that all your later relationships are limited to
the degrees of life-entanglement and commitment of previous ones.
So if you started with a less-entangled type relationship, you
could never develop a marriage-type one.
Perhaps what you're saying is that you actually only have one type
of partnership, and that's the type which progresses over time into
a marriage-type relationship. Or put another way, degree of life-
entanglement in all your relationships increases with time. So that
earlier relationships will of course tend to be farther along in this
progression -- more entangled, closer to marriage-type -- than later
ones. And you just never have the kind of relationships that are
only destined or intended to stay "secondary type" or "less entangled,"
never to progress to "more entangled" or "marriage type." Does this
sound accurate?
> >What if the pre-existing partner would not consent to your having *any*
> >marriage-type relationships? Would you then break up with the pre-
> >existing partner (preferring a marriage-type relationship to that one),
> >or would your ethics dictate that you keep the pre-existing relationship
> >and never marry?
> It would depend on zir reasons for not consenting. Put as baldly as that,
> it
> sounds pretty unreasonable, so I might consider it a sufficiently serious
> breach of good faith to consider breaking up with zir.
Again the "breach of good faith" thing. What does that mean, exactly?
Suppose pre-existing partner has done all the considering they could
possibly do, and has simply found that, no matter how much they might
want to try for your sake, they simply couldn't cope with your having
any marriage-type relationship? Would that be a "breach?" Does
"breach" just mean that you disagree on what's reasonable?
> >(BTW, I hope I am not seeming "argumentative" in this conversation. I
> >don't mean to be "arguing," just discussing ideas, and "debating" only
> >in the most friendly sense.)
> You're asking the wrong person. I come from a culture that's notorious for
> enjoying a good argument and doesn't necessarily make much distinction
> between that and a debate ;-)
Well, since you're the one I'm "debating" with here, I'm asking the
only person who matters right now :)
> This does so far feel like a *good* argument (or a friendly debate) to me,
That's good :)
> though, if a slightly heated one. I'm comfortable with the degree of heat
> at
> the moment, but in case the feedback is useful anyway: It would feel less
> heated to me if I didn't get the sense that you're finding it hard to accept
> that what I'm saying is true for me. [. . .]
Well, but I *do* find it hard to accept, so I can't be dishonest about
that. I mean, I accept that it's true that you *think* you'd act
certain ways in certain kinds of conflicts, but I find it hard to
accept that you actually *would* act those ways, especially without
regretting it afterward.
> And I've been getting the impression
> that it's quite important to you to get me to admit some sort of hierarchy
> in
> my partnerships, or some sort of circumstances in which I would impose a
> hierarchy, so it would also feel less heated to me if I had more of a sense
> that you would be prepared at some point to "agree to disagree" rather than
> continuing to press for that sort of admission. I don't think we need to
> "agree to disagree" just yet, though :-)
But you already have "admitted" to the heirarchy your partnerships have.
You give higher weight to pre-existing partnerships than to later ones.
You're clear on that. Where we are disagreeing, or where I am questioning,
is on whether that's the heirarchy which makes the most sense, and on
whether you would really (and without regrets) follow that heirarchy in
practice, if certain kinds of conflicts became more than hypothetical.
Of course, if none of those kinds of conflicts ever does come up for you,
then you can keep thinking you would act a certain way, and I can keep
thinking you'd probably either surprise yourself and change your mind, or
else regret it, and neither of us would ever be proven right or wrong.
I'm also influenced by the fact that, while I've heard many people say
"if anyone ever gave me a 'them or me' type ultimatum, I'd leave the
person giving the ultimatum," the few times I've actually seen someone
(a spouse-type partner) give that kind of ultimatum, the person did the
opposite of what they'd said (and, apparently, at the time truly thought)
they'd do.
Angi Long
> Yes--this is a good overall description. The main example I can
> think of from my life was deciding to keep thinking of someone as "a
> fried--a very good friend" instead of as "a lover"
A fried? That must've been some friedship!
Aahz Maruch
For starters, I consider "fall in love" and "love" to be two different
things. "Fall in love" I consider closer to infatuation or NRE; as
other people have mentioned, I believe that I can control it to a
certain extent, but it's not really something I can "decide".
I believe that "love", OTOH, is something that can only truly come out of
an emotionally intimate relationship, generally as a consequence of
chosen behaviors. There's a lot more decision in loving someone, though
I think that the love itself is usually not "decided".
--
--- Aahz (Copyright 2001 by aa...@pobox.com)
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het <*> http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6
"..., and some of you may regard all women as evil traps that exist only
to tease, torture, and suck out your very soul." --DrMax
David Vrooman
Angi Long wrote in message ...
>"Bernadette Bosky" <b...@panix.com> wrote:
>> Yes--this is a good overall description. The main example
I can
>> think of from my life was deciding to keep thinking of
someone as "a
>> fried--a very good friend" instead of as "a lover"
>
>A fried? That must've been some friedship!
The kind that requires deep-friend goat cheese, I presume.
Dave
David Matthewman
obviously strong interest in the way Liz does poly, and Liz and I have
discussed it a lot. Nonetheless, I do not do poly in the same way Liz
does, and despite her best efforts there are still some aspects of it
that I'm unsure about. My apologies in advance if, in the course of my
reply, I misrepresent her.
Where I'm speaking personally, I'm generally speaking *as* one of
Liz's partners, and not referring to my other relationships or to
other relationships in general.
Quoth Angi Long on Wed, 07 Mar 2001 21:51:29 GMT:
No, I don't think so.
'Breach of trust' and 'good faith' to me covers situations where I've
either deliberately broken one of the ground rules I agreed, or abused
my position as one of Liz's earlier partners to try to control a later
one by lying about my feelings. A disagreement is not in itself a
breach of trust or a lack of good faith.
Trust is a very big point here. Liz's approach to poly works for her
because she trusts her partners to be honest, and to care if she's
upset (note here that caring that she's upset does not automatically
mean I'll change my behaviour to make her less upset, just that I'll
make an effort to see if it's possible to do so).
For example, if I were to have a squick about seeing Liz carry bruises
inflicted by other partners, Liz would think it reasonable for me to
ask her not to do SM that caused bruises with later partners when she
would shortly be seeing me. That's on the assumption that it caused me
genuine distress to see bruises on her. If, on the other hand, I was
saying it because I selfishly didn't want her to do SM with anyone
else, and was making up the squick about bruises as a plausible
excuse, I'd expect Liz to be very angry with me and to strongly
consider walking out. That's what 'breach of trust' means to me.
It gives Liz an out, but it gives Liz an out in a situation where I
think most people agree she needs one. To me, it answers the point you
make later on about the relationship sounding as though Liz is making
herself a partner and a slave.
> Or, in the case that the conflict is big enough that one relationship or
> the other must end entirely, I don't see how ending the relationship can
> have less effect on the more life-entangled partner than on the less.
> To look at the extreme cases -- your husband versus a long-distance,
> rarely-seen, infrequently-communicated-with partner -- you're talking
> about moving out, going through divorce, the whole child custody mess,
> major financial upheaval -- and those are just the "practical" effects,
> nevermind the major emotional effects -- versus losing one date per year
> and a few emails.
Yes it would. Let me say outright, though, that as someone who knows
Liz fairly well I have no doubt that if it really came down to this,
Liz would indeed choose the older relationship. I probably wouldn't
myself, as it happens, but I believe it's a reasonable and consistent
way to behave.
One point is that because of the way Liz does poly, the older
relationship must already at this point have consented to Liz's
marrying, settling down with and having kids with the newer one. If I
did this, I would accept that Liz's life was going to become
considerably more life-entangled with the new partner than it was with
me, and accepted in turn that this would make it very hard for Liz to
leave the new relationship. While I would still be the older
relationship, and the one Liz would choose in the crunch, I would
accept that it would have to be a really big issue to force it to come
to crunch point.
In a way, I would be voluntarily 'giving up' some of my rights as the
longer-term relationship in agreeing to the marriage. If I suddenly
demanded them back, that would be a breach of good faith. But if her
husband asked Liz to stop seeing me, she'd refuse and if her
persisted, she'd have to consider leaving him. When he married her, he
would himself have had to accept that Liz had a longer-term
relationship which, according to Liz's way of doing poly, would always
have precedence over him. *He'd* be breaching her trust if he asked
her to change that.
> But if LDR and spouse do both make their considerable efforts and are able
> to come to agreement on some solution, then that's outside the question of
> what happens -- what *you* choose -- when there is a true conflict, and no
> agreement.
>
> > >> For
> > >> instance, my husband and I have agreed that polyamory is a non-negotiable
> > >> part
> > >> of our relationship. If he asked me to return to being monogamous and was
> > >> unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise, I would have to seriously
> > >> consider breaking up with him rather than with my other partners.
>
> > >I can see that, as that's a very big issue. But I would also expect
> > >that the degree of life-entanglement with him, including the presence
> > >of children, would cause you to give more consideration to that
> > >decision than you would with a much less life-entangled partnership
> > >of a similar duration. Wouldn't you say that's true?
>
> > No. I wouldn't consider it for an instant.
>
> Wait -- you just said that you *would* seriously consider it. Are you
> changing that?
No, she was saying that she wouldn't consider making the relationship
a monogamous one again.
> This is different from what you said at first, which was only that you
> would "seriously consider" breaking up with your husband if he insisted
> on monogamy.
It's *not* different from what Liz said at first. She said she'd
seriously consider breaking up if he *asked* her to be monogamous and
was unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise. What she said
originally was at the 'we're still discussing this' stage. If her
husband (or I) presented her with a non-negotiable 'become monogamous
or I walk tomorrow' ultimatum, she'd leave.
> I consider polyamory to be non-negotiable for me, too. But if it was a
> spouse (/equivalent) of long duration, especially one with whom I was
> raising kids, asking (and I know they wouldn't ask lightly), I would at
> least *consider* giving it a try.
Liz *has* tried it, for several years. It didn't work, and she blames
her depression on it. The risks of that recurring are too great for
her to consider it again.
> > Then I ask the pre-existing partner to agree to change the ground rules. If
> > zie doesn't agree, the ground rules stay as they are.
>
> I must admit that I am finding this upsetting, because if you mean what
> you say here, then you are making yourself a prisoner and a slave. And
> I've been there, done that, and it was a true nightmare.
I don't see it that way. I'm open to the criticism that it's because
I'm a jailer and a slave-owner, but I don't feel like one. Ultimately,
Liz isn't following these rules because I've asked her to. She's
following there rules because, after much consideration, she finds
them to be the ethical way for her to do poly. In any case, my ground
rules with her do not say 'You get to tell me how I can behave with
later partners' but 'If I do something with a later partner that
adversely affects my relationship with you, I will only do it with
your agreement'. And even that has the caveat '...but in giving you
this power, I am trusting you not to abuse it, and I will consider
leaving you if you do.' I've talked earlier in the post about what I
consider 'breach of trust' and 'good faith' to mean.
> > >Or even no longer consider them ethical?
>
> > In that case I would probably end the relationship if a change could not be
> > agreed. I find it hard to imagine examples, though.
>
> But ending the relationship *is* a change. And you just said that if
> the partner would not agree to the change, you would not make it.
>
> If you would not make other, smaller changes to a relationship unilaterally,
> then why would you consider it okay to make the biggest change of all --
> ending it -- unilaterally?
'I will never leave you, no matter what' is not one of the ground
rules, and never could be.
Ending the relationship is not at one end of a scale that starts with
arranging to spend a weekend away from the house with another partner.
Ending the relationship is the ultimate sanction, and indicates a
complete breakdown of trust that has pretty much made the rules
irrelevant.
> None of my non-marriage type partners has ever asked for my consent
> before having children with someone else. I cannot imagine it ever
> happening. One of my lifepartner's otherloves had a child last year
> with her husband. I think we would both have been blown away by the
> whole concept if she had even brought the topic up in the context of
> asking either of us for permission or consent to have a child with
> her husband. I would hope that the impact would be *discussed*, but
> that's very different from asking for agreement.
Yes, but that's your datapoint. Liz's is different.
> Wait. How can you say you don't have a heirarchy amongst partners, after
> you've been describing here a very strong heirarchy based strictly on
> relationship duration and time precedence?
Liz calls that a 'chronology'. I sympathise; I've spent nearly a year
trying to convince here that it *is* a hierarchy, but I can see her
point. It's not primary/secondary poly, and doesn't necessarily
reflect the degree of life-entaglement with each partner. It certainly
doesn't reflect the degree of emotional attachment she has with each
partner, which is roughly equal (well, it feels so to her, and I
haven't seen any evidence to the contrary).
> Even though the alternative may well have cost you what you have with
> your husband now?
Monogamy nearly cost her her husband.
> This seems to say that all your later relationships are limited to
> the degrees of life-entanglement and commitment of previous ones.
> So if you started with a less-entangled type relationship, you
> could never develop a marriage-type one.
I believe that is probably true for Liz. I think she's unusual in
this, but I believe her.
> Perhaps what you're saying is that you actually only have one type
> of partnership, and that's the type which progresses over time into
> a marriage-type relationship. Or put another way, degree of life-
> entanglement in all your relationships increases with time. So that
> earlier relationships will of course tend to be farther along in this
> progression -- more entangled, closer to marriage-type -- than later
> ones. And you just never have the kind of relationships that are
> only destined or intended to stay "secondary type" or "less entangled,"
> never to progress to "more entangled" or "marriage type." Does this
> sound accurate?
It doesn't sound accurate to me, but I'll defer to Liz if she thinks
it is.
> Well, but I *do* find it hard to accept, so I can't be dishonest about
> that. I mean, I accept that it's true that you *think* you'd act
> certain ways in certain kinds of conflicts, but I find it hard to
> accept that you actually *would* act those ways, especially without
> regretting it afterward.
I didn't se Liz say she wouldn't have regrets. We're talking about
situations where there will *always* be regrets, and the issue is to
minimise those regrets. She may feel that she's made the best decision
in the circumstances, but may regret that the circumstances came about
in the first place.
--
David Matthewman
Liz Williams
>Disclaimer: I am not Liz. As one of Liz's partners, I have an
>obviously strong interest in the way Liz does poly, and Liz and I have
>discussed it a lot. Nonetheless, I do not do poly in the same way Liz
>does, and despite her best efforts there are still some aspects of it
>that I'm unsure about. My apologies in advance if, in the course of my
>reply, I misrepresent her.
Only slightly ;-)
Exactly. Although I'm not sure that lying about one's feelings is the only
example of bad faith. I think that being honest about one's feelings, but
refusing to take the interests and welfare of one's partner into account at
all, would be another example. I also don't think that trying to control a
later relationship is the only example of breach of trust other than
breaking
ground rules; for instance, I would consider it to be a breach of trust if a
partner stole from me, but there's nothing in the ground rules about that
because it's just too obvious.
>For example, if I were to have a squick about seeing Liz carry bruises
>inflicted by other partners, Liz would think it reasonable for me to
>ask her not to do SM that caused bruises with later partners when she
>would shortly be seeing me. That's on the assumption that it caused me
>genuine distress to see bruises on her.
I'd think it reasonable to ask, but I wouldn't necessarily agree to the
request. I'm not going to say more because this is actually very similar to
an issue I'm having with a partner at the moment (David didn't realise this
when he posted, and he and I have both since talked directly to the partner
concerned).
>It gives Liz an out, but it gives Liz an out in a situation where I
>think most people agree she needs one. To me, it answers the point you
>make later on about the relationship sounding as though Liz is making
>herself a partner and a slave.
Yes. There should *always* be an "out" in a relationship where one partner
is
breaching the trust of the other.
Thank you, you've just saved me about half an hour's worth of writing that
myself :-)
[request to return to monogamy]
>> > >I can see that, as that's a very big issue. But I would also expect
>> > >that the degree of life-entanglement with him, including the presence
>> > >of children, would cause you to give more consideration to that
>> > >decision than you would with a much less life-entangled partnership
>> > >of a similar duration. Wouldn't you say that's true?
>>
>> > No. I wouldn't consider it for an instant.
>>
>> Wait -- you just said that you *would* seriously consider it. Are you
>> changing that?
>
>No, she was saying that she wouldn't consider making the relationship
>a monogamous one again.
That's right.
>> This is different from what you said at first, which was only that you
>> would "seriously consider" breaking up with your husband if he insisted
>> on monogamy.
>
>It's *not* different from what Liz said at first. She said she'd
>seriously consider breaking up if he *asked* her to be monogamous and
>was unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise. What she said
>originally was at the 'we're still discussing this' stage. If her
>husband (or I) presented her with a non-negotiable 'become monogamous
>or I walk tomorrow' ultimatum, she'd leave.
Yes. (Or let the person walk, depending on how you look at it).
>> I consider polyamory to be non-negotiable for me, too. But if it was a
>> spouse (/equivalent) of long duration, especially one with whom I was
>> raising kids, asking (and I know they wouldn't ask lightly), I would at
>> least *consider* giving it a try.
>
>Liz *has* tried it, for several years. It didn't work, and she blames
>her depression on it. The risks of that recurring are too great for
>her to consider it again.
Also true. Which is a big part of why my husband and I agreed that
returning
to monogamy was non-negotiable; that and the fact that, as our outside
relationships became better established, it began to seem unfair to both of
us
to ask our other partners to live with the uncertainty of wondering if we
might stop being poly at some point in the future.
>> > Then I ask the pre-existing partner to agree to change the ground rules.
>> > If zie doesn't agree, the ground rules stay as they are.
>>
>> I must admit that I am finding this upsetting, because if you mean what
>> you say here, then you are making yourself a prisoner and a slave. And
>> I've been there, done that, and it was a true nightmare.
>
>I don't see it that way. I'm open to the criticism that it's because
>I'm a jailer and a slave-owner, but I don't feel like one.
*grin* But you do "slave-owner" so *well*, sweetie ;-)
>Ultimately,
>Liz isn't following these rules because I've asked her to. She's
>following there rules because, after much consideration, she finds
>them to be the ethical way for her to do poly. In any case, my ground
>rules with her do not say 'You get to tell me how I can behave with
>later partners' but 'If I do something with a later partner that
>adversely affects my relationship with you, I will only do it with
>your agreement'. And even that has the caveat '...but in giving you
>this power, I am trusting you not to abuse it, and I will consider
>leaving you if you do.' I've talked earlier in the post about what I
>consider 'breach of trust' and 'good faith' to mean.
You've been spending too much time in my brain :-)
>> > >Or even no longer consider them ethical?
>>
>> > In that case I would probably end the relationship if a change could not
be
>> > agreed. I find it hard to imagine examples, though.
>>
>> But ending the relationship *is* a change. And you just said that if
>> the partner would not agree to the change, you would not make it.
>>
>> If you would not make other, smaller changes to a relationship
unilaterally,
>> then why would you consider it okay to make the biggest change of all --
>> ending it -- unilaterally?
>
>'I will never leave you, no matter what' is not one of the ground
>rules, and never could be.
Yes. A smaller change cannot be made unilaterally because it is always open
to the other partner to say "well, if you insist on that, I'm leaving". The
decision to leave, on the other hand, is one that can always be made
unilaterally, and I think it is important for one's self-esteem that one
*should* be able to make it if one's ethics dictate that it is necessary.
>> Wait. How can you say you don't have a heirarchy amongst partners, after
>> you've been describing here a very strong heirarchy based strictly on
>> relationship duration and time precedence?
>
>Liz calls that a 'chronology'. I sympathise; I've spent nearly a year
>trying to convince here that it *is* a hierarchy, but I can see her
>point. It's not primary/secondary poly, and doesn't necessarily
>reflect the degree of life-entaglement with each partner. It certainly
>doesn't reflect the degree of emotional attachment she has with each
>partner, which is roughly equal (well, it feels so to her, and I
>haven't seen any evidence to the contrary).
To me, it isn't a hierarchy because there's nothing in the ground rules I
have
agreed with any partner which prevents any other partnership from taking
what
feels to me like its natural course. The fact that some courses that are
natural to you (Angi) or anyone else aren't natural to me is neither here
nor
there. It's the presence or absence of artificial constraints on the
development of a relationship that defines the presence or absence of a
hierarchy, for me.
>> Perhaps what you're saying is that you actually only have one type
>> of partnership, and that's the type which progresses over time into
>> a marriage-type relationship. Or put another way, degree of life-
>> entanglement in all your relationships increases with time. So that
>> earlier relationships will of course tend to be farther along in this
>> progression -- more entangled, closer to marriage-type -- than later
>> ones. And you just never have the kind of relationships that are
>> only destined or intended to stay "secondary type" or "less entangled,"
>> never to progress to "more entangled" or "marriage type." Does this
>> sound accurate?
>
>It doesn't sound accurate to me, but I'll defer to Liz if she thinks
>it is.
No, I don't think it is. I have at least one partnership that I don't think
will ever progress into a marriage-type relationship, even if we're together
for the rest of our lives (which I hope we will be). I wouldn't call it
"secondary type", though, but that's partly because I don't use those terms
and partly because I'd have no objection if it *did* start progressing in
that
way.
>> Well, but I *do* find it hard to accept, so I can't be dishonest about
>> that. I mean, I accept that it's true that you *think* you'd act
>> certain ways in certain kinds of conflicts, but I find it hard to
>> accept that you actually *would* act those ways, especially without
>> regretting it afterward.
>
>I didn't se Liz say she wouldn't have regrets. We're talking about
>situations where there will *always* be regrets, and the issue is to
>minimise those regrets. She may feel that she's made the best decision
>in the circumstances, but may regret that the circumstances came about
>in the first place.
I agree with David about the "regret" issue. But why is it so hard for you
to
accept that someone else might act differently than you would, based on a
different choice of ethical principles?
Liz Williams
few
other points:
"Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
>"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
>> >===== Original Message From "Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> =====
>> >"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
>> >> "Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
We all have that power - we have the power to end the relationship if we
really can't deal with the situation. For me, the point is that the newer
partner has begun a relationship with me knowing what my other involvements
are, and I have begun the relationship knowing both the newer partner and
the
existing ones. My pre-existing partners have agreed to do poly with me
without knowing who I may choose to get involved with in the future, and
without insisting on a veto. The way my set-up works, they may never even
meet my newer partner if that relationship is an LDR. That puts them in a
position of greater vulnerability than either the newer partner or myself.
In
return, I give them the assurance that I will try to avoid allowing any
newer
relationships to intefere with the one we already have, unless they have
agreed to the changes. If a change happens unintentionally, I will try to
fix
it once it is pointed out to me. All of that makes perfect sense to me.
>And it espeically
>doesn't make sense to give that power to someone who may be *less* affected
>than others. To me, what makes sense is to give more power to those who are
>more affected. Which means, in virtually all cases I can imagine, those who
>are more life-entangled.
I can see that this is also a reasonable and acceptable way of doing things,
provided everyone involved agrees to it. It just isn't right for me.
>> >> >And, too, a change with the more-entangled partner is bound
>> >> >to have a bigger effect on that partner than a change with the less-
>> >> >entangled partner will have on that partner.
>> >
>> >> Depends on the nature of the change, it seems to me. I can't agree with
>> >> this as an absolute statement.
>> >
>> >Can you not agree that this is *generally* (as opposed to univerally or
>> >generically) true?
>>
>> No. It depends on the nature of the change. A minor change with the
>> more-entangled partner may have less effect on zir than a major change with
>> the less-entangled partner would have on that partner.
>
>But if the proposed change is the same, or similar? Frex, if one of the
>relationships must become platonic, or have the frequency of contact cut
>down? Those would be big changes, have a big effect, for the more life-
>entangled partner, but small changes, small effect, for the less life-
>entangled partner.
I'd consider making the relationship platonic to be a big change for either
partner - in fact, I'd consider it to be ending the relationship and
replacing
it with a different sort of relationship entirely. The emotional effect
might
be the same for both, or it might even be greater for the less
life-entangled
partner; life-entanglement and emotional attachment are not the same thing
for
me.
As for cutting down the frequency of contact, it would depend on exactly
what
was proposed. Going from seeing an LDR once a year to seeing them only
every
other year might have a more adverse effect on that relationship than going
from seeing someone in the same town twice a week to seeing them once a
week.
Again, the effect will depend on the degree of emotional attachment as well
as
the degree of life-entanglement.
>Or, in the case that the conflict is big enough that one relationship or
>the other must end entirely, I don't see how ending the relationship can
>have less effect on the more life-entangled partner than on the less.
>To look at the extreme cases -- your husband versus a long-distance,
>rarely-seen, infrequently-communicated-with partner -- you're talking
>about moving out, going through divorce, the whole child custody mess,
>major financial upheaval -- and those are just the "practical" effects,
>nevermind the major emotional effects -- versus losing one date per year
>and a few emails.
The practical effects will be greater, yes. The emotional effects may not
be.
>> >Or even no longer consider them ethical?
>
>> In that case I would probably end the relationship if a change could not be
>> agreed. I find it hard to imagine examples, though.
>
>But ending the relationship *is* a change. And you just said that if
>the partner would not agree to the change, you would not make it.
The whole point here is to follow my ethics. So if I've come to consider a
ground rule unethical, I have no ethical option other than to cease
following
it.
>What constitutes "good faith?" If you ask an LDR partner to make your
>relationship platonic because your husband has become so uncomfortable
>with it that he cannot stay in the marriage as long as the LDR is
>romantic/sexual, and the LDR partner says "no, I don't feel that would
>be fair, as our relationship pre-dates your marriage. I am not willing
>to make that change," do you then divorce your husband?
Depends why my husband is suddenly so uncomfortable about something he knew
about before we got married.
>> >What's the difference between a "partnership" and a "life-entanglement"
>> >to you? To me, all partnerships involve some degree of life-entanglement.
>> >And what do you consider as "affecting" someone? Does emotional effect
>> >count?
>
>> Life-entanglement to me means practical stuff like having kids together,
>> moving in together, having shared financial responsibilities, helping each
>> other out financially, sharing possessions, etc. A partnership does not
>> necessarily involve life-entanglement to me. Emotional effect counts, but
I
>> primarily had practical effects in mind when I wrote the post.
>
>I use "life-entanglement" to also mean emotional attachment, time spent
>together, energy invested in each other, amount of future-planning done
>together, etc., in addition to the purely practical stuff.
We have a semantic difference here. I include amount of future-planning as
part of "life-entanglement", but not the other things you mention.
>> >> For example, I sometimes lend money to one of my partners. I
>> >> have agreed with my husband (who is financially dependent on me) that I
can
>> >> lend this other partner up to a specified amount without checking in
with
>> >> him.
>> >> If he asked for more, I would check with my husband first.
>
>> >This makes sense to me because you have a higher degree of financial
>> >entanglement and life-entanglement with your husband than you do with
>> >your other partner. If you were doing this on the grounds of duration
>> >of the partnership, without regard to degree of entanglement, it would
>> >not make sense to me. Would you make such an agreement (to check in
>> >before lending more than a certain amount of money to a newer partner)
>> >with a pre-existing partner who was *less* entangled with you than the
>> >newer one?
>
>> If the loan would affect the pre-existing partner, then yes.
>
>So if the pre-existing partner had a low opinion of any kind of loans, and
>was affected emotionally (but not practically) by the thought of you
>loaning money to another partner, would you refrain from loaning money?
In that case the pre-existing partner and I would have a serious
compatibility
problem, because it is important to me to help my friends and partners when
I
am in a position to do so. I would address that as a compatibility problem
rather than as a problem caused by a later relationship; I would handle it
the
same way whether the person asking me not to make the loan was an earlier or
a
later partner. I don't know what the outcome would be; ideally we would
find
other ways of helping the person concerned (maybe by way of a gift rather
than
a loan), but it's possible that we would break up over it.
>Another hypothetical: Suppose you have a much-less-entangled partnership
>predating a marriage-type partnership. Pre-existing partner has become
>accustomed to borrowing sums of money from you on occasion. You now wish
>to enter a large financial commitment with newer partner, such as
>purchasing a house and/or having a child, which will necessitate your
>being unable to loan money to pre-existing partner any more. The new
>financial commitment is something you and marriage-type partner want very
>much, but pre-existing partner does not want to agree to the proposed
>change. Do you forego making the change then?
It would depend on whether the pre-existing partner had other reasonable
means
of getting the money zie needed. If not, I would forego making the change.
If so, I would suspect zir of bad faith (using the financial issue as an
excuse to avoid telling me zie had a problem with the new relationship) and
that issue would have to be resolved before any decision was made.
>> >> Another example: I cannot imagine intentionally
>> >> having children with one partner without checking with my pre-existing
>> >> partners first.
>
>> >Wow. But again, I think you are strongly influenced here by the fact
>> >that your partnerships tend to be entangled in proportion to their
>> >durations. If you had a much-less-entangled partnership which pre-
>> >dated your marriage, would you really feel you needed to check with
>> >that partner before having children with your husband? If so, that
>> >would seem *very* bizarre to me. To ask for the pre-existing
>> >partner or friend's valued advice and opinion while you're making
>> >such a decision makes sense. To put overmuch weight on their
>> >opinion or feelings over that of your spouse doesn't.
>
>> Because having children is an important issue in my life, the possibility
of
>> doing so would have been agreed with the pre-existing partner before the
>> marriage to the newer partner, so this situation shouldn't arise.
>
>It shouldn't. But what if the desire to have children had happened
>because of a change in you? What if you had previously thought you
>would not want children, but over time, you changed, and now felt you
>could not be happy if you did not at least try to have children?
Too different from my actual situation for me to be able to comment. There
has never been a time when I did not want children; it feels like you are
asking me to tell you how I would react if I wasn't me. (You had no way of
knowing that, of course, so that isn't intended as a criticism).
>> >I could see a sensible person agreeing to restrictions that were requested
>> >at the very beginning of the potential relationship. But what if it's a
>> >little later, when potential has already become actual? Say it's a few
>> >months into your relationship with B, you have become sexually and
>> >emotionally involved with B, and are beginning to discuss moving in
>> >together, when A says they are not comfortable enough with B to be happy
>> >with you and B living together, and asks you to not move in together?
>
>> Then the likelihood is we won't move in together until and unless the
>> discomfort has been resolved.
>
>And if you already have moved in together, and A asks you to move out?
>Do you move out? What if you've already married, and A asks you to
>divorce?
I would not have moved in with B or married B without A's consent, so A had
better have one *hell* of a good reason for making that request. I would
take
a lot of convincing that A was not in bad faith.
>I don't see how you can say that you "*can't*" make changes that A isn't
>in agreement with. You can make any changes you want. If A isn't in
>agreement with staying in a relationship with you under the new circum-
>stances, then the relationship can end.
Well, I can say till I'm blue in the face that I want to make [X] change,
but
if A isn't there to say it to, it's a bit pointless, isn't it? By making a
change, I meant making the change and continuing the relationship, which
obviously requires A's consent.
>To say that you "can't" make
>changes that A isn't in agreement with means that, frex, if you wanted
>to stop having sex with A, and A didn't agree, you'd have to keep having
>sex with them. I hope this isn't really how you feel!
If A did not agree, I would not have sex with zir, but I would consider
myself
to be ending the relationship rather than making a change.
>> >Or do you stick to your principles about not
>> >changing pre-existing relationships for later ones, even at the expense
>> >of great discomfort for B, or great disharmony in your live-in
partnership,
>> >or even the loss of a marriage or equivalent?
>
>> I stick to my principles. But what that means in practice is going to
>> depend on what this new knowledge of B's actually is.
>
>It could be something that could only become known over time, such as
>a negative pattern. Frex, B knew you leant money on occasion to A,
>but it was only after combining finances with B and making several loans
>to A that B saw that every time you loaned money to A, your own bills
>got paid late, you incurred late fees and worsened your credit rating,
>and it made you irritable for a time. Maybe you were always willing to
>put up with this, and it still doesn't bother you much, but it bothers
>B enough that B very strongly does not want you to loan money to A any
>more.
I think what I would consider ethical in this situation would depend on the
degree of B's financial dependence on me.
>It could be something which never came up before, or which was hidden,
>such as the nature of A's true feelings for B. Or some aspect of A's
>personal ethics which doesn't bother you, but does bother B greatly.
>It's hard to give specific examples to which you wouldn't say "that
>just couldn't happen with me," because I don't know what issues would
>be okay with you but might bother a spouse or lifepartner of yours.
>Frex, cheating is probably no more okay with you than with your spouse,
>but just as an example, suppose that you had a pre-existing partner who
>cheated, or was willing to cheat, in certain circumstances which didn't
>bother you enough to end or change your relationship with them, but
>when your spouse learned this, it bothered them so greatly that they
>couldn't stand to "share" you with such a person.
I appreciate the difficulty of giving examples, but cheating *would* bother
me, so yeah, it wouldn't happen quite like this with me.
>> >> It's true that I find
>> >> it easier to form friendships if there's some sort of romantic or sexual
>> >> attraction, but I don't see what a mere *potential* has to do with this
>> >> discussion, so I may be misunderstanding your point here :-)
>
>> >That kind of "potential" is what I believe many conventional-minded
>> >folk would say was at least one of the defining factors between a
>> >"friendship" and a "Relationship" or "partnership." It's the
>> >"potential" that would, frex, put a person one was "dating" on a
>> >different plane from a long-time friend (not necessarily "above"
>> >the friend, but in a different category) who, at least at present,
>> >had no "potential" for becoming a "partner."
>
>> That doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with hierarchies.
>
>It doesn't? Hmm, let me try again... The kind of "potential" is what
>many conventional-minded folk use as at least one of the defining
>factors in where a certain relationship fits into their heirarchy of
>relationships, which usually includes categories of "friends," "partners,"
>and "potential partners."
For the purposes of the sorts of dilemmas we're talking about here, my
"potential partners" are mostly in my "friends" category until such time as
they become actual partners. There's a grey area consisting of LDRs where
the
distance is the only factor preventing us from completing the transition
from
potential to actual partner; in such a case I'd probably treat the LDR in
the
same way as an actual partner for purposes of resolving these sorts of
dilemma, but it hasn't happened yet.
>> >Is it? All right, then, what is the difference to you between a
>> >"sexual friendship" and a "less-life-entangled partnership?"
>
>> A sexual friendship doesn't have the same romance or expectations for the
>> future as a partnership. I'm with my partners because I love them deeply,
I
>> have sex with them partly because it's fun and partly as an expression of
>> that
>> love, and I want the relationships to continue as long as possible. When I
>> had sexual friendships, that was a different sort of love - on the same
sort
>> of level as any other friendship - and we had sex purely because it seemed
>> like a fun thing to do on that particular occasion, with no expectation
that
>> it would be ongoing.
>
>Wow... if I didn't love someone deeply and want the relationship to
>continue as long as possible, I wouldn't call it a "friendship," I'd
>call it an "acquaintanceship."
Even if you were having sex with them?
I dunno, my friendships are much more "in the now" things than my
partnerships. I don't get particularly upset if I drift apart from a
friend,
whereas I would with a partner.
But I have a very wide definition of "friend", anyway - sort of "any friend
of
a friend is a friend of mine". "Acquaintanceship" isn't a category I use
much
outside the professional context.
>> I also tend to relate to friends mostly in small groups (apart from the
>> actual
>> sex, if it's a sexual friendship) rather than one-to-one as I do with
>> partners. I'm only likely to spend one-to-one time with friends if there's
a
>> particular activity we both want to do and our other friends don't, or
>> something in particular we want to talk about, whereas with partners,
>> regular
>> one-to-one time is very important and what we do with it doesn't really
>> matter.
>
>This also sounds like what you are calling "friends," I would call
>"acquaintances" or "casual friends." What you are calling "partners,"
>I would call "friends" or "partners," depending on the degree of life-
>entanglement and other factors.
Fair enough.
>> >For me, degree of life-entanglement is a big defining factor between
>> >"friendship" and "partnership." (Sexual involvement isn't.) But
>> >there is no definite line. And I give "preference" to my relationships
>> >(whether I call them "friendships" or "partnerships" or something else)
>> >based, in large part, on degree of life-entanglement. If degree of
>> >life-entanglement is also a big defining factor for you in "friendship"
>> >versus "partnership," then saying (as you seem to be) that you give
>> >"partners" more "preference" in decision-making than you give "friends"
>> >may be the same thing as saying that you give more life-entangled
>> >relationships preference over less life-entangled ones. Do you think
>> >this may be the case?
>
>> No, I don't think degree of life-entanglement is a defining factor in that
>> distinction for me. There have been times when I had more
life-entanglement
>> with friends (housemates in particular) than with any of my partners.
>
>I think future-planning makes for a higher degree of life-entanglement
>than merely sharing space. So if I had a housemate with whom I was
>sharing space, but didn't intend to try to make that arrangement last
>as long as possible, didn't make plans with that person for how our
>lives would fit together years from now, etc., and a non-housemate
>with whom I did make those kinds of plans, I would consider my life to
>be more entangled with the non-housemate.
I'd probably consider them both to be about equal (but different).
>> I
>> gave up the third because he and my husband did not get on. I now think
>> this
>> was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. [. . .]
>
>Even though the alternative may well have cost you what you have with
>your husband now?
I don't think it need have done.
>Do you think this was a mistake because you feel you would have been
>happier with the other person? Would you have had a marriage-type
>relationship with him, children, etc.? Or do you think it was a
>mistake because you feel guilty for hurting him? Or do you think
>the breakup was just unnecessary, and it would have been possible to
>maintain both relationships with reasonable comfort for everyone?
The last one of those (with a lot of hindsight). And I didn't fully realise
how much I would miss the other person (still do, every single day, and it
still hurts).
>> And I've been getting the impression
>> that it's quite important to you to get me to admit some sort of hierarchy
>> in
>> my partnerships, or some sort of circumstances in which I would impose a
>> hierarchy, so it would also feel less heated to me if I had more of a sense
>> that you would be prepared at some point to "agree to disagree" rather than
>> continuing to press for that sort of admission. I don't think we need to
>> "agree to disagree" just yet, though :-)
>
>But you already have "admitted" to the heirarchy your partnerships have.
>You give higher weight to pre-existing partnerships than to later ones.
>You're clear on that. Where we are disagreeing, or where I am questioning,
>is on whether that's the heirarchy which makes the most sense, and on
>whether you would really (and without regrets) follow that heirarchy in
>practice, if certain kinds of conflicts became more than hypothetical.
I'm also saying that I don't consider that to be a hierarchy.
>Of course, if none of those kinds of conflicts ever does come up for you,
>then you can keep thinking you would act a certain way, and I can keep
>thinking you'd probably either surprise yourself and change your mind, or
>else regret it, and neither of us would ever be proven right or wrong.
I've given you no reason to think I'd act differently than I've said I
would.
>I'm also influenced by the fact that, while I've heard many people say
>"if anyone ever gave me a 'them or me' type ultimatum, I'd leave the
>person giving the ultimatum," the few times I've actually seen someone
>(a spouse-type partner) give that kind of ultimatum, the person did the
>opposite of what they'd said (and, apparently, at the time truly thought)
>they'd do.
I'm not them.
Ken
>In article <20010306072721...@ng-fp1.aol.com>,
>ElissaAnn <elis...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
>
>For starters, I consider "fall in love" and "love" to be two different
>things. "Fall in love" I consider closer to infatuation or NRE; as
>other people have mentioned, I believe that I can control it to a
>certain extent, but it's not really something I can "decide".
>
>I believe that "love", OTOH, is something that can only truly come out of
>an emotionally intimate relationship, generally as a consequence of
>chosen behaviors. There's a lot more decision in loving someone, though
>I think that the love itself is usually not "decided".
(crawling out of his lurking foxhole)
Well, Aahz... I have a different take on it
I have a few people that I do indeed Love... do anything for, be there
when they need me, what have you
However... only ONE of those am I "In Love With"... meaning that
person is the one that all others in realtionships with me take a
second seat to...
'M' and 'S' know that 'L' is my #1.. .and if she says that she needs
me, all other plans get put on hold and re-scheduled
I Love all three... but am only In Love with 'L'
Ken
(crawling back into his hidey-hole)
--------------------------------------------
Sig line? I don't need no bloody sig line!
For Madmen Only
Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
,<lots of stuff that I snipped>
>So maybe a more realistic question
>is: would you change a pre-existing relationship which had a lower
>level of life-entanglement to begin with in order to keep harmony and
>health in a newer relationship with a higher level of entanglement?
The most wrong thing I ever did was ending a pre-existing friendship
"to keep harmony and health in a newer relationship with a higher
level of entanglement." It sickened me to do it at time, but I did it
anyway. I have never forgiven myself for it and am very committed to
not doing it again.
<much more snipped>
(Angi wrote the following in an earlier post)
>> >Frex, what if the partner you have children with learned
>> >something about an older (heh, make that pre-existing) partner, which
>> >made them extremely uncomfortable with the pre-existing relationship?
>> >What if it made them so uncomfortable that they didn't even feel they
>> >could stay in a relationship with you if you continued the pre-existing
>> >relationship in its current form?
Perhaps it's not fair of me to answer this since I've never had, and
never will have a partner with whom I've had children, but I'm quite
confident that were I to experience the situation you describe, I
would wish to change the relationship with the partner-with-children
and retain the pre-existing relationship in its current form.
>People surprise me all the time... but it really would surprise me
>if, in actual practice, when some conflict came up which made
>someone's spouse or spousal equivalent seriously uncomfortable with
>a pre-existing relationship of a much less entangled type, the
>person chose to break up with their spouse/equivalent.
I can't dispute this, because I did it once. But as I said, it did
not really feel right and felt increasingly less right over time.
Just because many people might tend to make that choice, it does not
mean it is the best choice, even for those who made it.
fmmo
For Madmen Only
Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
>"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> Assuming the newer partner agreed to continue with the relationship under
>> those conditions, yes. Unless I felt the pre-existing partner was being
>> sufficiently unreasonable to amount to a breach of trust between us (i.e.
>> not
>> considering the request for a change in good faith), in which case I would
>> consider breaking up with the pre-existing partner.
>
>I'm sorry, but you use this "breach of trust" and "good faith" idea repeatedly,
>and it seems to me that that could be just a way of giving yourself an "out."
I'm not sure why you see this as an "out." For me this would simply
be "the way it is."
>A way of saying "I'll go along with what pre-existing partner wants if I agree
>it's reasonable, but if I don't agree, then I'll take this 'out'."
To me it's more like "but if I don't agree, then I'll do what seems
best to me." Personally I don't see anything wrong with that.
>Whereas
>the situations I'm talking about in the first place, where "heirarchy" or
>"preference" would even be an issue, are the ones where you are already in the
>position of not agreeing with what pre-existing partner wants.
Okay.
>In other words,
>it seems to me that this "out" would pretty much *always* apply in such a
>conflict.
In the case of a conflict where I do not agree, or cannot come to
agreement with someone about our relationship, then it seems perfectly
appropriate and ethical to end the relationship.
<snip>
<Angi says:>
>> >> >And, too, a change with the more-entangled partner is bound
>> >> >to have a bigger effect on that partner than a change with the less-
>> >> >entangled partner will have on that partner.
<snip>
<Liz says:>
>> It depends on the nature of the change. A minor change with the
>> more-entangled partner may have less effect on zir than a major change with
>> the less-entangled partner would have on that partner.
>
>But if the proposed change is the same, or similar? Frex, if one of the
>relationships must become platonic, or have the frequency of contact cut
>down? Those would be big changes, have a big effect, for the more life-
>entangled partner, but small changes, small effect, for the less life-
>entangled partner.
I don't think that's always, or even mostly true. I think when
talking about people, about things that have emotional impact, only
those individuals involved can say how big an effect some change is
going to have.
>Or, in the case that the conflict is big enough that one relationship or
>the other must end entirely, I don't see how ending the relationship can
>have less effect on the more life-entangled partner than on the less.
>To look at the extreme cases -- your husband versus a long-distance,
>rarely-seen, infrequently-communicated-with partner -- you're talking
>about moving out, going through divorce, the whole child custody mess,
>major financial upheaval -- and those are just the "practical" effects,
>nevermind the major emotional effects -- versus losing one date per year
>and a few emails.
I don't know how to explain it, but for me it doesn't weigh so easily
or obviously as you suggest. It looks to me like you are somehow
quantifying stuff that, to me is qualitative, not quantitative. For
example, I probably wouldn't feel that I was "losing one date per year
and a few emails" I'd feel I was losing a longstanding, valuable,
human connection. I also see you talking about the effect to the
partners--maybe this is appropriate within the context of the
discussion you are having with Liz (I'm following it, but not
closely), but I'll add that for me, in these kinds of scenarios you
are presenting, I'd be mostly considering the effect to me.
fmmo
Metal Fem
piranha wrote:
> relationships shift around for
> all sorts of reasons; a partner might go off to tibet for a year.
> sometimes the choices made are very hard, and my heart aches, but
> nobody has priority in the sense that i would put all other things
> and people aside if me doing X were important to zir. me doing X
> has to come from within me, has to work for me, and it's a lone
> decision. always. and nobody gets to tell me what sorts of
> relationships i have with third parties. i grant no vetoes to
> anyone, nor rights to dispose of my sexuality for me. i make such
> decisions on my own.
This is a pretty timely discussion for me, and it's something I'm having
a lot of trouble with, especially around negotiating life plans.
When my sweetie and I started out 5 years ago we agreed that we would
give each other room to pursue our dreams and that we would not be
monogamous. We placed a high value on being independant people rather
than being "a couple".
However we didn't know then what we know now, and we weren't the exact
people we are now, and we didn't think to ask what that really *meant*
for each of us. So the spirit of what we agreed now feels different to
both of us. And we have some serious stuff to sort out on that score.
We've resisted the urge to go on a recriminatory archeological dig to
find out "what was really agreed!" and decided instead to acknowledge
that we've changed and to try renegotiation.
My sweetie didn't raise this stuff, it's because I've been feeling like
my time, my space and my money is not my own that it's all come to a head.
I feel that I've been taking on far too much responsibility for
keeping our household running smoothly - practically, emotionally and
financially.
I'm in 17K of debt, 9K of which includes a lot of valueless credit card
"rescue" type debt incurred as a result of my coming in to "fix" joint
financial problems. The other 8K is covered by the value of what I
borrowed it for - the car we both use. My sweetie has very little debt
(>1K) and no credit cards.
I also feel overwhelmed by housework as we have different standards
about it and as I'm not happy living in a house that isn't what I
consider clean I tend to do most of the housework.
My sweetie has been dealing with depression for the last 2/3 years and
been on a number of anti-depressants which has also been a factor in my
slipping back into a caretaker role.
I don't say these things to dump on my sweetie, just to give an
indication of where I'm at. I think we ended up in this situation
because of the way I am unhealthy about stuff just as much as anything else.
The other big thing facing us - and the reason why I replied to
pirahna's post - is that the expectations that my sweetie has about what
our lives will look like together in the future now differ seriously
from mine.
The sweetie is older than me, has grown children and has emigrated and
lived in a few cities. Zie is at the "I want to buy a house, keep
afghan hounds again and live with you for the rest of my life" stage.
Zie does not have other sweeties.
I on the other hand want to work for a while in the country where I have
my other citizenship. And I think I want to do that alone. I also want
to know that in the future if I want to I can live by myself for a
while.
All this has come to a head because zie will shortly be coming into enough
money for a downpayment for a house. For the last 3 years we've been
saying that we'll buy together and I've been OK with that, now that it
seems close to being reality I'm suddenly very not OK about it.
Zie still wants to buy with me knowing how I feel, but also has said
that if I wanted to be away for more than a month at a time then zie
would have to reconsider the r/ship. And zie is very strongly opposed
to my living by myself. So, I dunno, it seems dangerous to me.
If we could agree that if I wanted to go away or live by myself for a
while that
a) we would negotiate financial stuff to support the house we have
together and
b) work to keep the r/ship good
I would be happy enough to buy a house with zir.
I think my brain expanded on what was possible in domestic arrangments
after talking to another local poly person who has a responsible
financial and emotional role in two households.
But I can't buy a house with zir if zir expectations are that I will
stay in that house all the time, it's tricky enough to deal with my
emotions about that in rental given the other issues we have around
different housework values and time/space values. In deep mortgage I
think I would snap. And being a cat person I don't know that the
drivers that are making me want to live partially or wholly by myself
are going to be impacted in a positive way by living with two afghan
hounds.
I love my sweetie a lot, and I want to be in zir life however that is
for the rest of my life - but I want it to feel like choice, not like I'm
there because we have a 150K mortgage. Or that b/c zie won't
countenance my
taking residential time away the price of being with zir is my freedom.
I guess I should also say that while poly hasn't always been textbook
perfect for us it's actually the "how I/we live" thing that is causing
heartache at the moment not the poly. My (2 year) LDR is chugging along
beautifully and while there are still some wrinkles about it with my
sweetie those wrinkles seem part of the wider set of problems my sweetie
and I have generally, and they don't feel like resentment of the LDR's
presence.
Nor does what I want to do feel like a backdoor to doing something more
with the LDR, the LDR has influenced me in the sense that I want what
zie and I have in some respects for my sweetie and I but I certainly
don't want what my sweetie and I have (ie living together) with my LDR.
I am being confronted fairly heavily with my r/ship failings at the
moment around trying to be the perfect live-in partner and I don't want
to make the same mistakes with the LDR that I have with my sweetie.
I used to be so feral about not living with people too, and not having
debt, and not playing mother, and I kept everything private and
separate.
Then I thought I had found something that would make it "different" with
my sweetie and I'm feeling somewhat stupid and "bad person" about it all
to find that I'm where I am now.
Observations, comments, questions?
Mf
Angi Long
"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
> David Matthewman <da...@matthewman.org> wrote:
> >Quoth Angi Long on Wed, 07 Mar 2001 21:51:29 GMT:
> >'Breach of trust' and 'good faith' to me covers situations where I've
> >either deliberately broken one of the ground rules I agreed, or abused
> >my position as one of Liz's earlier partners to try to control a later
> >one by lying about my feelings. A disagreement is not in itself a
> >breach of trust or a lack of good faith.
> Exactly. Although I'm not sure that lying about one's feelings is the only
> example of bad faith. I think that being honest about one's feelings, but
> refusing to take the interests and welfare of one's partner into account at
> all, would be another example. I also don't think that trying to control a
> later relationship is the only example of breach of trust other than breaking
> ground rules; for instance, I would consider it to be a breach of trust if a
> partner stole from me, but there's nothing in the ground rules about that
> because it's just too obvious.
> >It gives Liz an out, but it gives Liz an out in a situation where I
> >think most people agree she needs one. To me, it answers the point you
> >make later on about the relationship sounding as though Liz is making
> >herself a partner and a slave.
>
> Yes. There should *always* be an "out" in a relationship where one partner
> is breaching the trust of the other.
I think you should *always* have an "out" whenever you disagree strongly
enough with a partner about what the reasonable or right course of action
is. And that's what I don't see you allowing for. It sounds like you
are saying that the pre-existing partner has ultimate power over you, as
long as they don't use "bad faith," which seems to boil down to *them*
thinking they're being reasonable. But a partner could be totally honest
about their feelings, give full consideration to you and to other partners,
and still come out with a request which is not reasonable to you. That's
happened to both myself and my current lifepartner in the past, with
partners we each felt we knew and trusted at the time. Do you think you
are immune to that? Or, if it happened, would you just find a way to
define it as "bad faith" or "breach of trust," so you could refuse their
request without feeling that you were violating your ethics?
> >For example, if I were to have a squick about seeing Liz carry bruises
> >inflicted by other partners, Liz would think it reasonable for me to
> >ask her not to do SM that caused bruises with later partners when she
> >would shortly be seeing me. That's on the assumption that it caused me
> >genuine distress to see bruises on her.
> I'd think it reasonable to ask, but I wouldn't necessarily agree to the
> request. [. . .]
But if the SM with the later partner is a new thing, then it certainly
*does* "change" the relationship with the pre-existing partner, by
bringing in discomfort that was not there before. And you have said
that you would not change that relationship without that partner's
agreement. So on what grounds would you *not* agree to the request?
> >> Or, in the case that the conflict is big enough that one relationship or
> >> the other must end entirely, I don't see how ending the relationship can
> >> have less effect on the more life-entangled partner than on the less.
> >> To look at the extreme cases -- your husband versus a long-distance,
> >> rarely-seen, infrequently-communicated-with partner -- you're talking
> >> about moving out, going through divorce, the whole child custody mess,
> >> major financial upheaval -- and those are just the "practical" effects,
> >> nevermind the major emotional effects -- versus losing one date per year
> >> and a few emails.
> >Yes it would. Let me say outright, though, that as someone who knows
> >Liz fairly well I have no doubt that if it really came down to this,
> >Liz would indeed choose the older relationship. I probably wouldn't
> >myself, as it happens, but I believe it's a reasonable and consistent
> >way to behave.
I don't believe it's reasonable, because I don't see the justification
for causing that kind of effect to the husband, let alone -- but
especially -- to the children. Of course there are many times in life
when we have to choose to cause someone harm to save someone else some
other harm. But I only see the choice as reasonable when the overall
amount of harm is, as much as possible, minimized. And I cannot see
the point of view that would say that putting a husband and children
(who one was in a good and happy relationship with to begin with)
through a divorce and all that that entails in order to save someone
else from having to give up one date per year constitutes minimizing
the harm.
> >One point is that because of the way Liz does poly, the older
> >relationship must already at this point have consented to Liz's
> >marrying, settling down with and having kids with the newer one. If I
> >did this, I would accept that Liz's life was going to become
> >considerably more life-entangled with the new partner than it was with
> >me, and accepted in turn that this would make it very hard for Liz to
> >leave the new relationship. While I would still be the older
> >relationship, and the one Liz would choose in the crunch, I would
> >accept that it would have to be a really big issue to force it to come
> >to crunch point.
That's the ideal from all sides in any poly relationship, of course:
all involved parties should have agreed and consented to everything
from the outset, and all should commit to trying not to let true
conflicts (the type where mutual agreement cannot be reached) arise.
But the problem is that it's impossible for anyone to fully predict
everything that may come up in the future, and how they'll feel about
it. And it's impossible for anyone to know everything there is to
know about any person or situation. So it is still very possible,
and not even uncommon, for conflicts to come up *even though* everyone
consented to everything (or so everyone thought) in the first place.
So, you consent to Liz's marrying someone else and having kids with
them. You think it will be fine. But over time, you become more and
more uncomfortable. Eventually -- many years and a handful of kids
later -- it finally gets to the point where your discomfort is so
great that you don't feel you can stay in the relationship as it is
any more. You were not okay with the changes as you thought you'd
be. Perhaps there have even been changes which you do not feel you
agreed to, although they did result from the marriage you agreed to.
You want -- need, if your relationship is to continue -- things to go
back to the way they were before the marriage, and the only way for
that to happen is for her to divorce her husband, move away from him,
and maybe from the kids too. You are not acting in "bad faith," as
these are your true feelings. What happens then?
Maybe you, personally, wouldn't feel it was fair for you to ask her
to divorce her husband in that circumstance, so you wouldn't. But
someone else might. And there is no way to know in advance, unless
you *are* the person, and even then, self-knowledge is far from
perfect for anyone, who might wind up doing that, no matter how
reasonable they seem.
> >In a way, I would be voluntarily 'giving up' some of my rights as the
> >longer-term relationship in agreeing to the marriage. If I suddenly
> >demanded them back, that would be a breach of good faith. But if her
> >husband asked Liz to stop seeing me, she'd refuse and if her
> >persisted, she'd have to consider leaving him. When he married her, he
> >would himself have had to accept that Liz had a longer-term
> >relationship which, according to Liz's way of doing poly, would always
> >have precedence over him. *He'd* be breaching her trust if he asked
> >her to change that.
You would have agreed to the marriage. You would not necessarily
have agreed to all the ways the marriage changed, or threatened to
change, your relationship. And he would have agreed to accepting
the previous partner, but he wouldn't necessarily have known
everything about that partner which he would learn in the future,
or everything that might come up around that partner.
> >> > >I can see that, as that's a very big issue. But I would also expect
> >> > >that the degree of life-entanglement with him, including the presence
> >> > >of children, would cause you to give more consideration to that
> >> > >decision than you would with a much less life-entangled partnership
> >> > >of a similar duration. Wouldn't you say that's true?
> >> > No. I wouldn't consider it for an instant.
> >> Wait -- you just said that you *would* seriously consider it. Are you
> >> changing that?
> >No, she was saying that she wouldn't consider making the relationship
> >a monogamous one again.
> That's right.
> >> This is different from what you said at first, which was only that you
> >> would "seriously consider" breaking up with your husband if he insisted
> >> on monogamy.
> >It's *not* different from what Liz said at first. She said she'd
> >seriously consider breaking up if he *asked* her to be monogamous and
> >was unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise. What she said
> >originally was at the 'we're still discussing this' stage. If her
> >husband (or I) presented her with a non-negotiable 'become monogamous
> >or I walk tomorrow' ultimatum, she'd leave.
What is the difference between "asked her to be monogamous and was
unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise" and "presented her
with a non-negotiable 'become monogamous or I walk tomorrow' ultimatum,"
other than the time limit being explicitly given? And the time limit
bit ("I walk tomorrow") was not mentioned before. No change was made
between "I would have to seriously consider..." and "I wouldn't consider
it for an instant." And I'm still confused as to how the two statements
are compatible.
Liz, you said you would have to "seriously consider" leaving your husband
rather than leaving other partners if he asked you to be monogamous and
was unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise. Then you said you
would not consider making the relationship monogamous for an instant.
But if you would only "seriously consider" leaving your husband rather
than becoming monogamous with him, that implies that you would also be
"considering" the alternative. That leaving him rather than becoming
monogamous with him was *not* a foregone conclusion. Or there would be
no considering, serious or otherwise, to do in the first place. Can you
clear that up?
> >> I consider polyamory to be non-negotiable for me, too. But if it was a
> >> spouse (/equivalent) of long duration, especially one with whom I was
> >> raising kids, asking (and I know they wouldn't ask lightly), I would at
> >> least *consider* giving it a try.
> >Liz *has* tried it, for several years. It didn't work, and she blames
> >her depression on it. The risks of that recurring are too great for
> >her to consider it again.
I can understand that. Still, I think a request like that would always
merit some consideration, because it's always possible -- however unlikely
-- that at a different point in your life, you might find that earlier
feelings and needs have changed. It might only take a moment's considera-
tion to reach a conclusion, but I would still give it *more* consideration
for a much-entangled partner than I would for a little-entangled one.
> >> But ending the relationship *is* a change. And you just said that if
> >> the partner would not agree to the change, you would not make it.
> >> If you would not make other, smaller changes to a relationship
> unilaterally,
> >> then why would you consider it okay to make the biggest change of all --
> >> ending it -- unilaterally?
> >'I will never leave you, no matter what' is not one of the ground
> >rules, and never could be.
I thought we were talking about changes to the relationship, not just to
the ground rules.
> Yes. A smaller change cannot be made unilaterally because it is always open
> to the other partner to say "well, if you insist on that, I'm leaving". The
> decision to leave, on the other hand, is one that can always be made
> unilaterally, and I think it is important for one's self-esteem that one
> *should* be able to make it if one's ethics dictate that it is necessary.
So when you said that you would not allow a later relationship to cause
changes to an earlier relationship without the earlier partner's agreement,
you were not including *ending* the earlier relationship in those changes?
You have no ethical objection to allowing a later relationship to cause
the *end* of an earlier one, but only to allowing it to cause *changes*
short of ending it?
> >> Wait. How can you say you don't have a heirarchy amongst partners, after
> >> you've been describing here a very strong heirarchy based strictly on
> >> relationship duration and time precedence?
> >Liz calls that a 'chronology'. I sympathise; I've spent nearly a year
> >trying to convince here that it *is* a hierarchy, but I can see her
> >point. It's not primary/secondary poly, and doesn't necessarily
> >reflect the degree of life-entaglement with each partner. It certainly
> >doesn't reflect the degree of emotional attachment she has with each
> >partner, which is roughly equal (well, it feels so to her, and I
> >haven't seen any evidence to the contrary).
> To me, it isn't a hierarchy because there's nothing in the ground rules I
> have
> agreed with any partner which prevents any other partnership from taking
> what
> feels to me like its natural course. The fact that some courses that are
> natural to you (Angi) or anyone else aren't natural to me is neither here
> nor
> there. It's the presence or absence of artificial constraints on the
> development of a relationship that defines the presence or absence of a
> hierarchy, for me.
It appears to me that the constraint of not causing changes to earlier
relationships does present partnerships from freely taking their
natural courses. If it felt natural for you to move in with a newer
partner, and the older partner objected because they felt it would
change the earlier relationship, then the newer relationship would not
be able to follow its natural course.
> >> Perhaps what you're saying is that you actually only have one type
> >> of partnership, and that's the type which progresses over time into
> >> a marriage-type relationship. Or put another way, degree of life-
> >> entanglement in all your relationships increases with time. So that
> >> earlier relationships will of course tend to be farther along in this
> >> progression -- more entangled, closer to marriage-type -- than later
> >> ones. And you just never have the kind of relationships that are
> >> only destined or intended to stay "secondary type" or "less entangled,"
> >> never to progress to "more entangled" or "marriage type." Does this
> >> sound accurate?
> No, I don't think it is. I have at least one partnership that I don't think
> will ever progress into a marriage-type relationship, even if we're together
> for the rest of our lives (which I hope we will be). [. . .]
Then if this partner had happened to come first chronologically, you
would never have married anyone?
> >> Well, but I *do* find it hard to accept, so I can't be dishonest about
> >> that. I mean, I accept that it's true that you *think* you'd act
> >> certain ways in certain kinds of conflicts, but I find it hard to
> >> accept that you actually *would* act those ways, especially without
> >> regretting it afterward.
> >I didn't se Liz say she wouldn't have regrets. We're talking about
> >situations where there will *always* be regrets, and the issue is to
> >minimise those regrets. She may feel that she's made the best decision
> >in the circumstances, but may regret that the circumstances came about
> >in the first place.
By "regret" there, I mean "feel you made the wrong choice."
> I agree with David about the "regret" issue. But why is it so hard for you
> to accept that someone else might act differently than you would, based on a
> different choice of ethical principles?
It's hard for me to accept that (a) someone would act radically differently
than all other human beings in my experience ever have, and (b) someone who
seemed otherwise reasonable would act very unreasonably, and not at least
come to consider their own actions unreasonable later. And there is no way
I can see leaving a husband and children, where the relationship was good
and wanted in the first place, for a LDR with once-a-year contact, where
there is no potential for increased contact or entanglement and where there
was not *more* emotional attachment or more desire or value for the
relationship per se than for the marriage, as "reasonable." So I don't
believe you would let this situation happen; I believe you would find a
way to believe there was some "bad faith" or "breach of trust" so that you
could keep your marriage without internal conflict with your ethics.
In another post:
"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote in message news:3AB9...@MailAndNews.com...
> "Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
> >But my point is: why does only pre-existing partner get the power to decide
> >how much harm they are prepared to accept for the sake of the newer relation-
> >ship? Why doesn't newer partner get to decide how much harm *they* are
> >prepared to accept for the sake of the older relationship? And what about
> >you? Why don't you get to decide how much harm -- to yourself and to the
> >newer relationship and to the newer partner -- *you* are prepared to accept
> >for the sake of the older relationship? It doesn't make sense to me to give
> >only one person, out of all those affected, this power.
> We all have that power - we have the power to end the relationship if we
> really can't deal with the situation. For me, the point is that the newer
> partner has begun a relationship with me knowing what my other involvements
> are, and I have begun the relationship knowing both the newer partner and
> the existing ones. My pre-existing partners have agreed to do poly with me
> without knowing who I may choose to get involved with in the future, and
> without insisting on a veto.
But they don't need a "veto," since you've already said that you
wouldn't make any changes or do anything with a later partner
without their agreement, and that amounts to the same thing.
> The way my set-up works, they may never even
> meet my newer partner if that relationship is an LDR. That puts them in a
> position of greater vulnerability than either the newer partner or myself.
I don't understand why. If they never meet the newer partner, then
the newer partner also never meets them, and is just as vulnerable.
They both know (or have opportunity to know) just as little or as
much about each other as the other does, at the point where each
agrees to the new relationship.
To my way of thinking, the way you do things makes the newer partner
quite a bit more vulnerable, and permanently so. The newer partner
has to forever deal with the fact that they will *always* come
"second" to you, will *never* reach a point of equality in your mind
with the pre-existing partner, no matter how long they spend with
you or how much they invest in the relationship. They could marry
you, they could spend two or three decades as your spouse, they
could have children with you, and another person, even one you have
seen a dozen times in your entire life, written to maybe once a month,
not seen at all in the past several years or heard from in many months,
would still have the power to cause you to leave, to tear apart the
newer partner's and the children's entire lives. No matter how nice
the earlier partner seems, there can be no security in giving them
that kind of power. I can see living with another person having that
kind of power over my relationship if the relationship is not a very
entangled one. But I could never give someone else that kind of
power over something like a marriage. Of course the spouse always
has power, but to give it to someone else outside the relationship...
And I don't understand, really, why you see it as okay to give A power
like that over B's relationship, but not to give B power over A's. It
seems to me that in trying to make things more "fair" for A, you make
them very unfair for B. And I don't see how you can feel that the
relationship with B is free to follow its natural course, while at the
same time saying that you won't do anything with B without A's agree-
ment.
> In
> return, I give them the assurance that I will try to avoid allowing any
> newer
> relationships to intefere with the one we already have, unless they have
> agreed to the changes. If a change happens unintentionally, I will try to
> fix
> it once it is pointed out to me. All of that makes perfect sense to me.
It only makes sense to me if you append "within reason, by my own
judgment" to it, and apply liberally. It would make a lot better
sense if you gave them the assurance that you would not *form* new
relationships which would significantly interfere with the pre-
existing one, but once new relationships were agreed to and
established, if you gave *all* your partners the assurance that
you would try not to let other relationships interfere with theirs.
Even if duration is the only difference between two relationships,
as time goes on, how does it make sense to you for A to have this
assurance about B, but for B to have no such assurance about A, when
B has been with you for fifteen years, and A has been with you for
fifteen and a half years? Why does it make sense for your partners
to never be able to achieve equality with each other, no matter how
much they invest in the relationships?
Perhaps "investment" is a better way of saying what I have been
meaning by "entanglement." More time does not necessarily mean
more investment.
> >But if the proposed change is the same, or similar? Frex, if one of the
> >relationships must become platonic, or have the frequency of contact cut
> >down? Those would be big changes, have a big effect, for the more life-
> >entangled partner, but small changes, small effect, for the less life-
> >entangled partner.
> I'd consider making the relationship platonic to be a big change for either
> partner - in fact, I'd consider it to be ending the relationship and
> replacing
> it with a different sort of relationship entirely. The emotional effect
> might
> be the same for both, or it might even be greater for the less
> life-entangled
> partner; life-entanglement and emotional attachment are not the same thing
> for me.
Emotional attachment to a person and attachment to sex are not the
same thing, either.
> >Or, in the case that the conflict is big enough that one relationship or
> >the other must end entirely, I don't see how ending the relationship can
> >have less effect on the more life-entangled partner than on the less.
> >To look at the extreme cases -- your husband versus a long-distance,
> >rarely-seen, infrequently-communicated-with partner -- you're talking
> >about moving out, going through divorce, the whole child custody mess,
> >major financial upheaval -- and those are just the "practical" effects,
> >nevermind the major emotional effects -- versus losing one date per year
> >and a few emails.
> The practical effects will be greater, yes. The emotional effects may not
> be.
If they are not, something is seriously wrong with at least one
partner or relationship.
(Temporary) suicidal depression, I would consider a normal reaction
to a divorce. It's common, and as long as it doesn't go on too long,
it's not extreme. If not quite suicidal, some very serious depression
for some amount of time is pretty much a given. A person who got
anywhere *near* suicidally depressed because a long-distance partner
they had only ever seen every year or so cut off the sexual part of
their relationship, I would say had some serious emotional illness.
That would not be normal. And I would not consider their emotional
illness as a good reason to continue having sex with them.
> >> >Or even no longer consider them ethical?
> >> In that case I would probably end the relationship if a change could not be
> >> agreed. I find it hard to imagine examples, though.
> >But ending the relationship *is* a change. And you just said that if
> >the partner would not agree to the change, you would not make it.
> The whole point here is to follow my ethics. So if I've come to consider a
> ground rule unethical, I have no ethical option other than to cease
> following it.
But you also consider changing the relationship without the person's
agreement to be unethical. Given that they always have the power to
leave if they can't accept the change you make, I don't see how you
can consider changing unethical, but not consider leaving a change.
> >What constitutes "good faith?" If you ask an LDR partner to make your
> >relationship platonic because your husband has become so uncomfortable
> >with it that he cannot stay in the marriage as long as the LDR is
> >romantic/sexual, and the LDR partner says "no, I don't feel that would
> >be fair, as our relationship pre-dates your marriage. I am not willing
> >to make that change," do you then divorce your husband?
> Depends why my husband is suddenly so uncomfortable about something he knew
> about before we got married.
It's impossible for your husband to have known *everything* about
that partner or that relationship or what would come up or how it
would affect him in the future, in advance. So "uncomfortable
about something he knew about" is meaningless. Presumably, he
didn't *know* he would get uncomfortable. And it's probably far
from "sudden." Much more likely, it's developed over a long time,
and attempts to deal with it in other ways have not succeeded in
stopping the growth of the discomfort. If it is sudden, perhaps
it is because of something husband never suspected that partner
would ever do. Not something husband knew about ahead of time.
Maybe husband has pro-life feelings and didn't know that earlier
partner would develop a habit of having an abortion every year or
two. I don't know. Point is, you can't discount the possibility
that there is something that an earlier partner could do which
could come to bother a later partner this much, while at the same
time not bothering you enough that you'd end the earlier relation-
ship on your own. And then it's not really fair to say that the
later partner "knew about" the earlier partner when they started
the relationship with you, because they *didn't* know *this*.
> >I use "life-entanglement" to also mean emotional attachment, time spent
> >together, energy invested in each other, amount of future-planning done
> >together, etc., in addition to the purely practical stuff.
> We have a semantic difference here. I include amount of future-planning as
> part of "life-entanglement", but not the other things you mention.
Hm. Do you not consider emotions, time, and energy to be parts of a
person's "life?" I think they're pretty major parts.
> >Another hypothetical: Suppose you have a much-less-entangled partnership
> >predating a marriage-type partnership. Pre-existing partner has become
> >accustomed to borrowing sums of money from you on occasion. You now wish
> >to enter a large financial commitment with newer partner, such as
> >purchasing a house and/or having a child, which will necessitate your
> >being unable to loan money to pre-existing partner any more. The new
> >financial commitment is something you and marriage-type partner want very
> >much, but pre-existing partner does not want to agree to the proposed
> >change. Do you forego making the change then?
> It would depend on whether the pre-existing partner had other reasonable
> means
> of getting the money zie needed. If not, I would forego making the change.
> If so, I would suspect zir of bad faith (using the financial issue as an
> excuse to avoid telling me zie had a problem with the new relationship) and
> that issue would have to be resolved before any decision was made.
What if they had other means of getting money which you considered
reasonable -- or means of avoiding needing the money in the first
place, or no real *need* of the money in the first place (the loans
were to cover wants, not needs) -- and they did not consider
reasonable?
Saying here that you would automatically suspect them of "bad faith"
seems to confirm that any time you don't agree with the reasonable-
ness of their decision or request, you will find a way to see it as
some sort of "bad faith." What if they are acting in their best
faith, being totally honest, and just plain feel that their being
able to keep borrowing money from you so they can buy more Magic
cards is more important than the child you want to have with your
husband?
> >It shouldn't. But what if the desire to have children had happened
> >because of a change in you? What if you had previously thought you
> >would not want children, but over time, you changed, and now felt you
> >could not be happy if you did not at least try to have children?
> Too different from my actual situation for me to be able to comment. There
> has never been a time when I did not want children; it feels like you are
> asking me to tell you how I would react if I wasn't me. (You had no way of
> knowing that, of course, so that isn't intended as a criticism).
Well of course, hypothetical examples are hypothetical. I don't
know you well enough to come up with examples which would have a
reasonable probability of actually happening for you personally.
Besides, it seems to always be the possibilities we *don't* think
up and prepare for ahead of time that are the most likely to
actually happen. (smile) But that doesn't mean that something
in many ways parallel to the given hypothetical couldn't happen
to you.
> >And if you already have moved in together, and A asks you to move out?
> >Do you move out? What if you've already married, and A asks you to
> >divorce?
> I would not have moved in with B or married B without A's consent, so A had
> better have one *hell* of a good reason for making that request. I would
> take a lot of convincing that A was not in bad faith.
The reason would presumably be because the moving in or the marriage
had changed the relationship with A in ways that A didn't anticipate
when they agreed.
Frex, you move in with B, with A's consent, but the move entails a
bigger place with more expenses. As a result, you are able to
travel to see A less often. Perhaps neither of you anticipated
this. A then objects and asks you to move away from B, so you can
go back to seeing A more often. What do you do? Does it make a
difference if you have signed a lease or a mortgage with B, or that
it would put B in financial hardship to have to move again at this
point?
Does it make any difference that the exact same change could have
happened if you had simply chosen to move into a bigger place on
your own?
> >I don't see how you can say that you "*can't*" make changes that A isn't
> >in agreement with. You can make any changes you want. If A isn't in
> >agreement with staying in a relationship with you under the new circum-
> >stances, then the relationship can end.
> Well, I can say till I'm blue in the face that I want to make [X] change,
> but
> if A isn't there to say it to, it's a bit pointless, isn't it? By making a
> change, I meant making the change and continuing the relationship, which
> obviously requires A's consent.
Doesn't make sense to me. You can *make* [X] change, and A can then
leave if they want. They might leave immediately after the change,
but that doesn't mean you can't make the change in the first place.
> >To say that you "can't" make
> >changes that A isn't in agreement with means that, frex, if you wanted
> >to stop having sex with A, and A didn't agree, you'd have to keep having
> >sex with them. I hope this isn't really how you feel!
> If A did not agree, I would not have sex with zir, but I would consider
> myself to be ending the relationship rather than making a change.
I just can't get the way of thinking that doesn't consider ending
the relationship to be making a change. Especially when the kinds
of changes we were considering were the kinds you meant when you
said you would not let a later relationship cause changes in an
earlier one. Perhaps I was wrong, but I thought it was obvious
that this included not letting a later relationship cause the end
of an earlier one, that "leaving" was included in what you meant
by "changes" in the first place.
So if you don't want to have sex with A, for whatever reason, then
you do think it's ethical to end the relationship with A if they
won't agree to the change? ...Even if the reason has something to
do with a newer partner?
Is there a significant difference between wanting to make a change
like that because of something to do with a newer partner, and
wanting to make a change like that for any other reason, to your
mind? If so, can you quantify why?
> >> A sexual friendship doesn't have the same romance or expectations for the
> >> future as a partnership. I'm with my partners because I love them deeply,
> >> I have sex with them partly because it's fun and partly as an expression of
> >> that
> >> love, and I want the relationships to continue as long as possible. When I
> >> had sexual friendships, that was a different sort of love - on the same sort
> >> of level as any other friendship - and we had sex purely because it seemed
> >> like a fun thing to do on that particular occasion, with no expectation
> >> that it would be ongoing.
> >Wow... if I didn't love someone deeply and want the relationship to
> >continue as long as possible, I wouldn't call it a "friendship," I'd
> >call it an "acquaintanceship."
> Even if you were having sex with them?
Of course. Why would that make a difference? I've had sex with
complete strangers before, and that didn't make them into anything
other than strangers. Okay, maybe acquaintances, because by the
time the sex was done I did know a little more about them than
before (smile), but just knowing things about someone doesn't
make them into a friend, and the presence of sex *per se* doesn't
change the nature of the relationship in any other way (than
granting a little more knowledge of the person, that is) that I
can see. If the sex does facilitate getting closer, such that I
begin to care about them deeply and want the relationship to
continue as long as possible, then of course they may have become
a friend... but then they no longer fall under "if I didn't love
them deeply and want the relationship to continue as long as
possible, I wouldn't call it a 'friendship.'"
> I dunno, my friendships are much more "in the now" things than my
> partnerships. I don't get particularly upset if I drift apart from a
> friend, whereas I would with a partner.
I would get upset and/or sad with either, but it would depend in
large part on how the drifting happened, as well as on how much
investment and/or entanglement there was in the friendship or
partnership. But I have a lot more acquaintanceships and casual
friendships than true friendships, and those driftings happen
very easily and tend to bother me less than it sometimes seems
they should. In fact that's probably one reason I don't develop
more real friendships.
> But I have a very wide definition of "friend", anyway - sort of "any friend
> of
> a friend is a friend of mine". "Acquaintanceship" isn't a category I use
> much outside the professional context.
I often say "friend" as an inclusive term, except when I get into
a conversation like this one and want to go into more detail.
Another thing about friends and drifting: when acquaintances or
casual friends drift, I usually don't feel any motivation to want
to get in touch with them later, and other than a vague "that's
nice" feeling, I don't feel much if I see them again. That's why
I don't bother with school reunions. But when friends drift, I'm
quite happy if I see them again, and will sometimes decide to
look them up again and try to revive the friendship even after
years have passed. I can continue to think of them as friends
even when there's been no contact for years.
> >> I
> >> gave up the third because he and my husband did not get on. I now think
> >> this was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. [. . .]
> >Even though the alternative may well have cost you what you have with
> >your husband now?
> I don't think it need have done.
In that case, it probably was a mistake.
But what if you could see into that alternative universe and
learn that you really couldn't have kept both relationships, would
you still feel it was a mistake?
> And I didn't fully realise
> how much I would miss the other person (still do, every single day, and it
> still hurts).
Ouch. No chance of reviving that relationship now?
> >But you already have "admitted" to the heirarchy your partnerships have.
> >You give higher weight to pre-existing partnerships than to later ones.
> >You're clear on that. Where we are disagreeing, or where I am questioning,
> >is on whether that's the heirarchy which makes the most sense, and on
> >whether you would really (and without regrets) follow that heirarchy in
> >practice, if certain kinds of conflicts became more than hypothetical.
> I'm also saying that I don't consider that to be a hierarchy.
Then I wonder what your definition of "heirarchy" is.
> >Of course, if none of those kinds of conflicts ever does come up for you,
> >then you can keep thinking you would act a certain way, and I can keep
> >thinking you'd probably either surprise yourself and change your mind, or
> >else regret it, and neither of us would ever be proven right or wrong.
> I've given you no reason to think I'd act differently than I've said I
> would.
No more reason than any other person I've ever seen act differently
than they said they would.
> >I'm also influenced by the fact that, while I've heard many people say
> >"if anyone ever gave me a 'them or me' type ultimatum, I'd leave the
> >person giving the ultimatum," the few times I've actually seen someone
> >(a spouse-type partner) give that kind of ultimatum, the person did the
> >opposite of what they'd said (and, apparently, at the time truly thought)
> >they'd do.
> I'm not them.
They weren't each other, either.
People -- good people, all kinds of people -- don't always act the
way they say they will, the way they think they will. I don't always
internalize that, but I do know it (now). The thing is, when you're
talking about a hypothetical, which you tend to think could just
never happen anyway, because you take such care to make sure it never
could... it's easy to say what you think you'd do. When it becomes
a reality, it's just very different, for anyone.
EveningStar
Metal Fem wrote:
lots & lots of stuff snipped
> Observations, comments, questions?
Reading this, I think what struck me is "what do you *really* want and
what are you willing to pay for it?". And I am not talking money here.
From this place and distance, you need to decide that and then
negotiate. YMMV.
Maureen
A Spondee
>It's hard for me to accept that (a) someone would act radically differently
>than all other human beings in my experience ever have, and (b) someone who
>seemed otherwise reasonable would act very unreasonably, and not at least
>come to consider their own actions unreasonable later.
Aren't you also someone who has a great deal of trouble figuring out
basic social interactions?
Are you *positive* you understand the actions of the people around
you? And, if so, what has made you so sure that you understand them?
--
Piglet, pig...@piglet.org
46 days down
1414 to go.
Angi Long
> "Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
> >"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
> >I'm sorry, but you use this "breach of trust" and "good faith" idea repeatedly,
> >and it seems to me that that could be just a way of giving yourself an "out."
> I'm not sure why you see this as an "out." For me this would simply
> be "the way it is."
> >A way of saying "I'll go along with what pre-existing partner wants if I agree
> >it's reasonable, but if I don't agree, then I'll take this 'out'."
> To me it's more like "but if I don't agree, then I'll do what seems
> best to me." Personally I don't see anything wrong with that.
To clarify: I think that doing what you believe is best is the
reasonable thing. I don't think it's reasonable to think that
what the earliest partner wants, or that which best preserves
the earliest relationship "as is," is de facto best, regardless
of what the circumstances might actually be. I think it would
be good to say "I'll go along with what the pre-existing partner
wants if I agree it's reasonable, but if I don't agree, then I'll
do what I believe is best." I don't think it's very truthful to
say "I'll go along with what the pre-existing partner wants,
unless they are breaching trust or not acting in good faith,"
which to me implies that breaching trust or not acting in good
faith would be rare and unlikely things for the partner to be
doing in this kind of situation, and that in fact in *most* such
situations, she would go along with what the pre-existing partner
wants... but then to respond to most every example with "that
would be a breach of trust or bad faith," making it seem that in
fact, in *most* such situations of conflict, she really would not
go along with what the pre-existing partner wanted.
It seems to me sort of a case of defining the situation out of
existence.
> In the case of a conflict where I do not agree, or cannot come to
> agreement with someone about our relationship, then it seems perfectly
> appropriate and ethical to end the relationship.
But what about when the two people who cannot agree are your two
partners? Or, you can come to agreement with one or the other,
but not with both at the same time?
> >Or, in the case that the conflict is big enough that one relationship or
> >the other must end entirely, I don't see how ending the relationship can
> >have less effect on the more life-entangled partner than on the less.
> >To look at the extreme cases -- your husband versus a long-distance,
> >rarely-seen, infrequently-communicated-with partner -- you're talking
> >about moving out, going through divorce, the whole child custody mess,
> >major financial upheaval -- and those are just the "practical" effects,
> >nevermind the major emotional effects -- versus losing one date per year
> >and a few emails.
> I don't know how to explain it, but for me it doesn't weigh so easily
> or obviously as you suggest. It looks to me like you are somehow
> quantifying stuff that, to me is qualitative, not quantitative. For
> example, I probably wouldn't feel that I was "losing one date per year
> and a few emails" I'd feel I was losing a longstanding, valuable,
> human connection.
I did specify that what I was listing were only the practical effects,
"nevermind" the emotional ones. Yes, losing a partner with whom you
have had little contact can be rather emotional. But I don't see how,
to a normal person without some kind of emotional illness, it can be
anywhere near *as* emotional as going through a divorce, especially a
divorce one didn't want or choose.
> I also see you talking about the effect to the
> partners--maybe this is appropriate within the context of the
> discussion you are having with Liz (I'm following it, but not
> closely), but I'll add that for me, in these kinds of scenarios you
> are presenting, I'd be mostly considering the effect to me.
Me, too. That's why I said I thought it would be self-destructive to
choose a pre-existing LDR with little contact or entanglement and no
potential for more over a (good) marriage. But I believe Liz's stance
is that she would put more weight on others' desires than on her own
-- specifically, she would put the most value on pleasing the pre-
existing partner and the effect on that partner and that relationship.
Because, I suppose, perceiving herself as being unfair to that partner
would affect her more than she could imagine anything else could, even
losing her marriage or her children, or causing extreme hurt to her
husband or her children. That's what I'm finding so hard to understand.
Angi Long
> Are you *positive* you understand the actions of the people around
> you? And, if so, what has made you so sure that you understand them?
Understand them, no. Observe what the actions are, yes, usually.
And also, I have had so many people in the past tell me, when I
was shocked when people acted very differently from how they'd
said they would behave, that "of course they do that, most all
people will do that," and it has matched my own observations
enough times, that I think it's true. This is the opposite of
what I used to believe a few years ago, which was that everyone
would always do exactly what they said they'd do. Observation
over time has said that occasionally they do, but most often, in
a stressful situation which has been purely hypothetical to them
in the past, their own predictions about their own behavior turn
out to not be very accurate.
Aside: what is infinitely frustrating for me is when I do a
"check" on what I think someone is saying, thinking that surely
they will clarify for me and turn out to be saying the more
reasonable thing, not the interpretation that first struck me,
and they just keep insisting that yes, they really did mean
the extreme and unreasonable thing I first heard.
<not-me> "I would do anything my Master told me to do."
<me> "Surely you don't mean *anything*? I mean, you wouldn't do
something obviously unreasonable, like killing your children
if your Master told you to, would you?"
<not-me> "Yes, I did mean anything. If my Master told me to kill my
children, I would do so."
I have to conclude that either the person is a sick fuck (which I
do not want to believe, if I previously liked the person), or they
are yanking my chain on purpose (which is cruel, and I also don't
want to believe it if I previously liked the person), or they're
mistaken in their beliefs about what they would do.
I hear Liz saying that she would do unreasonable things for a pre-
existing partner. I don't want to believe she is either sick or
cruel. So I think she is simply mistaken.
Stef Maruch
Angi Long <angi...@home.com> wrote:
>I think that doing what you believe is best is the
>reasonable thing.
[...]
>I believe Liz's stance
>is that she would put more weight on others' desires than on her own
>-- specifically, she would put the most value on pleasing the pre-
>existing partner and the effect on that partner and that relationship.
>Because, I suppose, perceiving herself as being unfair to that partner
>would affect her more than she could imagine anything else could, even
>losing her marriage or her children, or causing extreme hurt to her
>husband or her children. That's what I'm finding so hard to understand.
What if you look at it this way: "Liz believes it is best to put that
much value on the pre-existing relationship."
--
Stef
** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty
** st...@cat-and-dragon.com <*> http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef
**
"Here's a cool guy saying nobody tells him what to do. He does whatever
he wants and he buys this product as a reflection of that independence."
"So basically, this maverick is urging everyone to express his
individuality through conformity in brand-name selection?"
"Well, it sounded more defiant the way *he* said it."
-- Calvin & Hobbes by Watterson
Angi Long
> Angi Long <angi...@home.com> wrote:
> >I think that doing what you believe is best is the
> >reasonable thing.
> [...]
> >I believe Liz's stance
> >is that she would put more weight on others' desires than on her own
> >-- specifically, she would put the most value on pleasing the pre-
> >existing partner and the effect on that partner and that relationship.
> >Because, I suppose, perceiving herself as being unfair to that partner
> >would affect her more than she could imagine anything else could, even
> >losing her marriage or her children, or causing extreme hurt to her
> >husband or her children. That's what I'm finding so hard to understand.
> What if you look at it this way: "Liz believes it is best to put that
> much value on the pre-existing relationship."
Best for whom?
I think something was left out there, but I'll rephrase: I think that
doing what you believe is best for everyone involved is the reasonable
thing, as long as your ethics around what is "best" are reasonable ones
which actually support minimizing harm and maximizing good as much as
possible.
But back, for a moment, to "best for whom:" This is the circular
reasoning I can see happening here: It is obvious to me that aside
from any harm to Liz herself, a *lot* more harm results from choosing a
pre-existing little-entangled LDR partner over a spouse and children.
Overwhelmingly more harm, considering the children. The only way that
could be a reasonable choice, then, is if the harm to Liz herself would
be so incredibly overwhelmingly huge that it would outweigh that. This
means that either the harm to Liz from losing the LDR would be hugely
greater than the harm to her from losing her marriage and children --
which I find hard to believe, and don't think it would be healthy for
anyone if it was true -- or the harm to Liz not from the loss, but from
her perceived betrayal of her own ethics, would be that great -- which
is what she seems to be saying.
So she seems to have an ethic which puts itself above people. Which
has the potential to maximize harm to people rather than minimizing it.
The ethic itself causes the harm. I can only see that as a flawed
ethic.
Louise
<angi...@home.com> wrote:
>Aside: what is infinitely frustrating for me is when I do a
>"check" on what I think someone is saying, thinking that surely
>they will clarify for me and turn out to be saying the more
>reasonable thing, not the interpretation that first struck me,
>and they just keep insisting that yes, they really did mean
>the extreme and unreasonable thing I first heard.
><not-me> "I would do anything my Master told me to do."
><me> "Surely you don't mean *anything*? I mean, you wouldn't do
> something obviously unreasonable, like killing your children
> if your Master told you to, would you?"
><not-me> "Yes, I did mean anything. If my Master told me to kill my
> children, I would do so."
>I have to conclude that either the person is a sick fuck (which I
>do not want to believe, if I previously liked the person), or they
>are yanking my chain on purpose (which is cruel, and I also don't
>want to believe it if I previously liked the person), or they're
>mistaken in their beliefs about what they would do.
>
>I hear Liz saying that she would do unreasonable things for a pre-
>existing partner. I don't want to believe she is either sick or
>cruel. So I think she is simply mistaken.
From my reading of this thread (and I may have missed some), I haven't
noticed Liz saying that she would do "unreasonable" things. I think
that the "good faith / breach of trust" concepts are central here, and
completely consistent with Liz' declarations earlier that
(In Message-ID: <3AAF...@MailAndNews.com>:)
>some things I won't agree to
>because
>they interfere with other important personal ethical principles, such my
>need
>to take care of myself and have control of my own body.
and that she agreed with piranha's statement "my only primary
relationship is with my ethics" (which I can't find the reference for
right now).
Angi, I think it was really cool that you made a point of stepping
back from the discussion a couple of days ago and checking in with Liz
about whether the "tone" of the conversation was conveying what you
meant to convey, and about whether it was acceptable to her. It was
also valuable to me to hear Liz' response, and to think about how
different her reaction was from my own.
In this post, Liz may not have thought you were suggesting that her
convictions described here would be consistent with her killing her
children. I did think so. I thought it was a truly offensive thing
to say. On re-reading, I saw that you didn't quite say that; you just
described that situation with the same words you used to describe
possible interpretations of Liz' behaviour. So I guess it's just
reductio ad absurdam. And maybe that's not a problem for Liz.
Louise
* Louise lou...@cyberus.ca *
* http://www.cyberus.ca/~louise/books.htm *
Metal Fem
EveningStar wrote in reply to my woes:
> Reading this, I think what struck me is "what do you *really* want and
> what are you willing to pay for it?". And I am not talking money here.
> From this place and distance, you need to decide that and then
> negotiate. YMMV.
Thanks for your reply, and yep, I'm doing that and I used a recent
LAX/SYD plane journey as an opportunity to make some decent notes about
it all. I guess I should have been more specific about the reasons why
I posted all that stuff, and what we are actually doing about it.
I do tend to be someone who conceptualises this sort of thing as
absolute trade-off choices (ie if I want this, I have to give up this)
and my partner tends to be somewhat fatalistic about r/ship stuff.
A lot of that thinking happens in the context of internalised stuff
about what I/we deserve and whatever other baggage I/we may be carrying
at the time about how r/ships are supposed to be and what I'm supposed
to do.
So in our case I think we need to be careful around thinking about it as
something that is about tradeoffs but instead try and think about it as
something that needs to be approached creatively.
Being aware of that, mostly what I'm looking for at this stage in my
dealing with it is some new views on how others might handle a similar
situation, options I might not be considering etc.
Geez, you know, on reflection I think I might be asking for some
MAS/GAS.
Crikey
Mf
Stef Maruch
Angi Long <angi...@home.com> wrote:
>[...]as long as your ethics around what is "best" are reasonable ones
>which actually support minimizing harm and maximizing good as much as
>possible.
People have very different views of what actions facilitate "minimizing
harm and maximizing good as much as possible." That how smart, well
meaning people can end up on opposite ends of the political spectrum,
for example.
I'm not going to address specifics because I haven't had the energy to
follow the details of the thread.
--
Stef
** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty
** st...@cat-and-dragon.com <*> http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef
**
The teacher comes when the soul calls--and thank goodness, for the ego
is never fully ready. -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the
Wolves
David Matthewman
> > I'd think it reasonable to ask, but I wouldn't necessarily agree to the
> > request. [. . .]
>
> But if the SM with the later partner is a new thing, then it certainly
> *does* "change" the relationship with the pre-existing partner, by
> bringing in discomfort that was not there before. And you have said
> that you would not change that relationship without that partner's
> agreement. So on what grounds would you *not* agree to the request?
On the grounds that no partner gets to have absolute control over what
Liz can do with her body. In a lot of your answers, you seem to have
the impression that Liz lives, thinks and breathes the 'earlier
partners take precedence' rule. She doesn't. The rule comes into play
when considering conflicts between partners to do with changing
relationships, but it's by no means the only factor.
The time limit is a red herring, and I apologise for introducing it.
The key difference between 'asking someone to be monogamous' and
'insisting that they be monogamous' is that in the first place the
person is being offered a choice about it. In the second case, the
implication is that Liz's partner will simply leave if she doesn't
choose monogamy. In the first there's a chance that he'll stay - it
will strain the relationship, but it won't *necessarily* end it.
> But if you would only "seriously consider" leaving your husband rather
> than becoming monogamous with him, that implies that you would also be
> "considering" the alternative.
No, she would 'seriously consider' leaving him for *asking*, because
she sees the act of asking itself as a serious breach of the
'polyamory is not negotiable' ground rule. It would, I suspect, depend
on *how* he asked. The alternative that Liz would be considering here
would be continuing in a polyamorous relationship that her partner was
very unhappy with, in the hope that they could work through it. She
wouldn't be considering becoming monogamous with her partner.
If he *insisted* on monogamy - by which I mean and I think Liz means
'be monogamous with me or the relationship is over' - then Liz would
end the relationship with no consideration of the alternative, because
the alternative would be monogamy.
--
David Matthewman
Liz Williams
>In this post, Liz may not have thought you were suggesting that her
>convictions described here would be consistent with her killing her
>children. I did think so. I thought it was a truly offensive thing
>to say. On re-reading, I saw that you didn't quite say that; you just
>described that situation with the same words you used to describe
>possible interpretations of Liz' behaviour. So I guess it's just
>reductio ad absurdam. And maybe that's not a problem for Liz.
I don't find it offensive, but nor do I find it a constructive contribution
to
the discussion. It ignores the fact that I have other ethical principles
than
just the one under discussion, and in any real-life situation I have to
balance the various principles against each other. Many of the extreme
actions that would follow from following the "avoid harm to earlier
relationships" rule alone are actually precluded by one of the other
principles.
Liz Williams
>"Stef Maruch" <st...@panix.com> wrote:
>> Angi Long <angi...@home.com> wrote:
>> >I think that doing what you believe is best is the
>> >reasonable thing.
>> [...]
>> >I believe Liz's stance
>> >is that she would put more weight on others' desires than on her own
>> >-- specifically, she would put the most value on pleasing the pre-
>> >existing partner and the effect on that partner and that relationship.
>> >Because, I suppose, perceiving herself as being unfair to that partner
>> >would affect her more than she could imagine anything else could, even
>> >losing her marriage or her children, or causing extreme hurt to her
>> >husband or her children. That's what I'm finding so hard to understand.
>
>> What if you look at it this way: "Liz believes it is best to put that
>> much value on the pre-existing relationship."
>
>Best for whom?
>
>I think something was left out there, but I'll rephrase: I think that
>doing what you believe is best for everyone involved is the reasonable
>which actually support minimizing harm and maximizing good as much as
>possible.
>
>reasoning I can see happening here: It is obvious to me that aside
>from any harm to Liz herself, a *lot* more harm results from choosing a
>pre-existing little-entangled LDR partner over a spouse and children.
>Overwhelmingly more harm, considering the children.
Angi, I think the point you're missing here is the one that David made, that
my LDR partner would have to have consented to the marriage and effectively
"given up" some of his "rights" in order to do so. The need to protect the
interests of the children is an important ethical principle which would need
to be weighed against the one we've been discussing here, and in doing that
weighing-up exercise I would be taking into account the agreement reached
prior to the marriage. Whatever decision I made *would* be the one I
thought
was best for everyone, and the circumstances that drove the LDR partner to
ask
me to leave my spouse would have to be very extreme in order for me not to
consider the request a breach of trust. The circumstances would likely be
so
extreme as to constitute a breach of trust by the spouse, in which case
removing the children from that situation might well seem to be the right
thing for everyone.
Liz Williams
>I don't think it's very truthful to
>say "I'll go along with what the pre-existing partner wants,
>unless they are breaching trust or not acting in good faith,"
>which to me implies that breaching trust or not acting in good
>faith would be rare and unlikely things for the partner to be
>doing in this kind of situation, and that in fact in *most* such
>situations, she would go along with what the pre-existing partner
>wants... but then to respond to most every example with "that
>would be a breach of trust or bad faith," making it seem that in
>fact, in *most* such situations of conflict, she really would not
>go along with what the pre-existing partner wanted.
Firstly, trying to avoid interference is not the same thing as doing
whatever
the pre-existing partner wants. Often a partner may want X, but be prepared
to agree to Y as a compromise; and willingness to compromise where it is
reasonable to do so is a big part of the trust that I believe needs to exist
between partners.
Secondly, the reason I keep responding "that would be a breach of trust or
bad
faith" is that we're deliberately discussing extreme examples, because it is
rare (although it happens occasionally) that compromise is not possible
where
there is no breach of trust or bad faith. Where there's a need to discuss
extreme examples, it's to be expected that extreme descriptions like "breach
of trust" or "bad faith" will come up regularly.
To summarise, I do believe that in *most* situations where a choice between
two partners becomes necessary, that will be due to a breach of trust or an
absence of good faith on the part of one partner, and in that circumstance I
will apply the ethical principle of self-protection (which entails
preferring
a relationship in which I can trust my partner to one in which I can't).
That
doesn't alter the fact that, in the rare circumstance where there is no bad
faith on either side, I will apply the principle of maintaining the earlier
relationship.
It seems to me that a lot of our difficulties understanding each other in
this
thread are coming from an assumption on my part that we're talking about one
ethical principle amongst many, requiring a balancing act, contrasted with
an
assumption on your part that we're talking about an overriding principle
which
takes priority over all others.
>> >Or, in the case that the conflict is big enough that one relationship or
>> >the other must end entirely, I don't see how ending the relationship can
>> >have less effect on the more life-entangled partner than on the less.
>> >To look at the extreme cases -- your husband versus a long-distance,
>> >rarely-seen, infrequently-communicated-with partner -- you're talking
>> >about moving out, going through divorce, the whole child custody mess,
>> >major financial upheaval -- and those are just the "practical" effects,
>> >nevermind the major emotional effects -- versus losing one date per year
>> >and a few emails.
>
>> I don't know how to explain it, but for me it doesn't weigh so easily
>> or obviously as you suggest. It looks to me like you are somehow
>> quantifying stuff that, to me is qualitative, not quantitative. For
>> example, I probably wouldn't feel that I was "losing one date per year
>> and a few emails" I'd feel I was losing a longstanding, valuable,
>> human connection.
>
>I did specify that what I was listing were only the practical effects,
>"nevermind" the emotional ones. Yes, losing a partner with whom you
>have had little contact can be rather emotional. But I don't see how,
>to a normal person without some kind of emotional illness, it can be
>anywhere near *as* emotional as going through a divorce, especially a
>divorce one didn't want or choose.
That presupposes that the marriage bond is the strongest emotional bond in
your life. That simply isn't true for me. There is no *stronger* emotional
bond, but there are a few others which are *as* strong.
>> I also see you talking about the effect to the
>> partners--maybe this is appropriate within the context of the
>> discussion you are having with Liz (I'm following it, but not
>> closely), but I'll add that for me, in these kinds of scenarios you
>> are presenting, I'd be mostly considering the effect to me.
>
>Me, too. That's why I said I thought it would be self-destructive to
>choose a pre-existing LDR with little contact or entanglement and no
>potential for more over a (good) marriage. But I believe Liz's stance
>is that she would put more weight on others' desires than on her own
I think you're misunderstanding me in two respects here. Firstly, if there
was a conflict between my marriage and an earlier relationship which was so
severe that it could only be resolved by ending one of the relationships,
I'd
have to seriously question whether it really was such a good marriage. And
secondly, saying I put more weight on others' desires than on my own ignores
the strength of my desire to preserve the existing relationship.
>Because, I suppose, perceiving herself as being unfair to that partner
>would affect her more than she could imagine anything else could, even
>losing her marriage or her children, or causing extreme hurt to her
>husband or her children. That's what I'm finding so hard to understand.
That's not quite it. It's more that I don't believe my desire to avoid the
pain of losing the marriage justifies acting unethically.
Liz Williams
downthread, and trying to avoid too much duplication, hence considerable
snippage:
"Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
>Responding to two posts in one:
>
>"Liz Williams" <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
>> David Matthewman <da...@matthewman.org> wrote:
>> >Quoth Angi Long on Wed, 07 Mar 2001 21:51:29 GMT:
>I think you should *always* have an "out" whenever you disagree strongly
>enough with a partner about what the reasonable or right course of action
>is. And that's what I don't see you allowing for. It sounds like you
>are saying that the pre-existing partner has ultimate power over you, as
>long as they don't use "bad faith," which seems to boil down to *them*
>thinking they're being reasonable.
No. It boils down to me agreeing that they're following our ground rules,
not
abusing my trust, and being sincere.
>But a partner could be totally honest
>about their feelings, give full consideration to you and to other partners,
>and still come out with a request which is not reasonable to you. That's
>happened to both myself and my current lifepartner in the past, with
>partners we each felt we knew and trusted at the time. Do you think you
>are immune to that? Or, if it happened, would you just find a way to
>define it as "bad faith" or "breach of trust," so you could refuse their
>request without feeling that you were violating your ethics?
No, I think that if my current partners came out with a request which I
found
unreasonable, I could trust them to listen to my explanation of why I found
it
unreasonable and help me look for a compromise that would work for both of
us.
>> >For example, if I were to have a squick about seeing Liz carry bruises
>> >inflicted by other partners, Liz would think it reasonable for me to
>> >ask her not to do SM that caused bruises with later partners when she
>> >would shortly be seeing me. That's on the assumption that it caused me
>> >genuine distress to see bruises on her.
>
>> I'd think it reasonable to ask, but I wouldn't necessarily agree to the
>> request. [. . .]
>
>But if the SM with the later partner is a new thing, then it certainly
>*does* "change" the relationship with the pre-existing partner, by
>bringing in discomfort that was not there before. And you have said
>that you would not change that relationship without that partner's
>agreement. So on what grounds would you *not* agree to the request?
On the grounds that I have the right to determine what I do with my own
body,
including how I want it to appear, and that it is for me to decide where to
strike the balance between this ethical principle and the one of avoiding
interference with earlier relationships.
(I said yesterday that I couldn't discuss this, so in case anyone is
concerned, I can talk about it now because, since posting yesterday, I have
resolved the issue with the partner concerned).
[addressed to David]:
>So, you consent to Liz's marrying someone else and having kids with
>them. You think it will be fine. But over time, you become more and
>more uncomfortable. Eventually -- many years and a handful of kids
>later -- it finally gets to the point where your discomfort is so
>great that you don't feel you can stay in the relationship as it is
>any more. You were not okay with the changes as you thought you'd
>be.
In that situation, I would do everything possible to negotiate a compromise
between David, myself and my spouse that would allow David to be
comfortable.
Knowing David (who is more prepared to be flexible about such things than
most
people I know), I find it extremely unlikely that this could not be
achieved.
However, if it could not I would ultimately feel that, provided my spouse
and
I had not broken any ground rules or been insincere in our attempts to
resolve
matters, David would have to take responsibility for the agreement he had
reached and live with the consequences. It would be up to him to decide
whether or not that meant that the relationship had become untenable. I
*think* David would feel the same way, but I don't speak for him and if I'm
mistaken I'm sure he'll correct me :-)
>Perhaps there have even been changes which you do not feel you
>agreed to, although they did result from the marriage you agreed to.
In that situation, I would consider it reasonable to ask my spouse to agree
to
reverse the changes.
>You want -- need, if your relationship is to continue -- things to go
>back to the way they were before the marriage, and the only way for
>that to happen is for her to divorce her husband, move away from him,
>and maybe from the kids too.
That seems like a huge leap. What sort of conflict would make that
necessary,
do you think?
>Liz, you said you would have to "seriously consider" leaving your husband
>rather than leaving other partners if he asked you to be monogamous and
>was unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise. Then you said you
>would not consider making the relationship monogamous for an instant.
>But if you would only "seriously consider" leaving your husband rather
>than becoming monogamous with him, that implies that you would also be
>"considering" the alternative. That leaving him rather than becoming
>monogamous with him was *not* a foregone conclusion. Or there would be
>no considering, serious or otherwise, to do in the first place. Can you
>clear that up?
David has explained this pretty well. The alternatives that I would be
considering would involve staying in the marriage without giving up my
outside
relationships and hoping that, between us all, we could find acceptable ways
of making my husband comfortable with me remaining actively polyamorous.
While I often consider that there is something to be said for a "clean
break"
rather than imposing a unilateral decision, I might think the latter worth
trying in this situation because of the importance of the marriage
commitment.
I would not consider returning to monogamy because I consider it to be a
threat to my mental health.
>> >Liz *has* tried it, for several years. It didn't work, and she blames
>> >her depression on it. The risks of that recurring are too great for
>> >her to consider it again.
>
>I can understand that. Still, I think a request like that would always
>merit some consideration, because it's always possible -- however unlikely
>-- that at a different point in your life, you might find that earlier
>feelings and needs have changed. It might only take a moment's considera-
>tion to reach a conclusion, but I would still give it *more* consideration
>for a much-entangled partner than I would for a little-entangled one.
It took me nearly seven years of monogamy to understand the damage it was
doing to me. It seems the symptoms take a while to become apparent to me,
and
then the nature of the depression itself makes it difficult for me to
extricate myself. No advance consideration could assure me that the same
would not happen again, so I consider the risk too great and would not
consider it at all.
>> Yes. A smaller change cannot be made unilaterally because it is always
open
>> to the other partner to say "well, if you insist on that, I'm leaving".
The
>> decision to leave, on the other hand, is one that can always be made
>> unilaterally, and I think it is important for one's self-esteem that one
>> *should* be able to make it if one's ethics dictate that it is necessary.
>
>So when you said that you would not allow a later relationship to cause
>changes to an earlier relationship without the earlier partner's agreement,
>you were not including *ending* the earlier relationship in those changes?
>You have no ethical objection to allowing a later relationship to cause
>the *end* of an earlier one, but only to allowing it to cause *changes*
>short of ending it?
I do have ethical objections to allowing a later relationship to cause the
end
of an earlier one, but sometimes it is necessary to permit this as a last
resort in order to safeguard other ethical principles. Where no agreement is
possible, I consider ending the relationship to be frequently preferable to
imposing lesser unilateral changes; I believe ending it is often "cleaner"
and
fairer, especially if the proposed unilateral change is likely to cause
ongoing distress. I do not think that imposing changes without agreement is
a
good foundation for an ongoing relationship.
I explained some of this a while back when we were discussing whether or
not,
if a monogamous partner refused to agree to poly and the partner who wanted
to
be poly no longer found monogamy acceptable, it was preferable to end that
relationship before beginning another. I don't particularly want to rehash
it
now.
>> >> Wait. How can you say you don't have a heirarchy amongst partners,
after
>> >> you've been describing here a very strong heirarchy based strictly on
>> >> relationship duration and time precedence?
[snip David's response]
>> To me, it isn't a hierarchy because there's nothing in the ground rules I
>> have agreed with any partner which prevents any other partnership from
taking
>> taking what feels to me like its natural course. The fact that some
courses
>> that are natural to you (Angi) or anyone else aren't natural to me is
>> neither here nor there.
>> It's the presence or absence of artificial constraints on the
>> development of a relationship that defines the presence or absence of a
>> hierarchy, for me.
>
>It appears to me that the constraint of not causing changes to earlier
>relationships does present partnerships from freely taking their
>natural courses. If it felt natural for you to move in with a newer
>partner, and the older partner objected because they felt it would
>change the earlier relationship, then the newer relationship would not
>be able to follow its natural course.
I think the point you're missing here is that moving in with the newer
partner
in those circumstances is highly unlikely to feel natural to me, because
things that interfere with older relationships feel *un*natural to me almost
by definition. I really do seem to be wired that way.
>> >> Perhaps what you're saying is that you actually only have one type
>> >> of partnership, and that's the type which progresses over time into
>> >> a marriage-type relationship. Or put another way, degree of life-
>> >> entanglement in all your relationships increases with time. So that
>> >> earlier relationships will of course tend to be farther along in this
>> >> progression -- more entangled, closer to marriage-type -- than later
>> >> ones. And you just never have the kind of relationships that are
>> >> only destined or intended to stay "secondary type" or "less entangled,"
>> >> never to progress to "more entangled" or "marriage type." Does this
>> >> sound accurate?
>
>> No, I don't think it is. I have at least one partnership that I don't
think
>> will ever progress into a marriage-type relationship, even if we're
together
>> for the rest of our lives (which I hope we will be). [. . .]
>
>Then if this partner had happened to come first chronologically, you
>would never have married anyone?
Assuming that the relationship began after I developed my current set of
ethical principles, probably not. If I had, it would have been after a
great
deal of soul-searching and discussing with that partner and running
thought-experiments to consider how the sorts of conflicts we're discussing
here would be resolved.
You're ignoring the importance of the "bad faith/breach of trust" issue and
the effect of other ethical principles which have to be balanced against it.
You're also ignoring the fact that not everything I do with a later partner
affects my earlier partners. They don't get to veto the relationship; they
get to tell me if they believe a specific thing I am doing or proposing to
do
in that relationship is affecting them or likely to affect them in a way
they
are not prepared to agree to, and then we discuss how to either avoid the
effect (which may sometimes involve not doing the specified thing) or make
other changes which will enable them to be more comfortable with that
effect.
>> The way my set-up works, they may never even
>> meet my newer partner if that relationship is an LDR. That puts them in a
>> position of greater vulnerability than either the newer partner or myself.
>
>I don't understand why. If they never meet the newer partner, then
>the newer partner also never meets them, and is just as vulnerable.
>They both know (or have opportunity to know) just as little or as
>much about each other as the other does, at the point where each
>agrees to the new relationship.
Pre-existing partners don't get to agree or disagree to the relationship
itself, only to things we do in that relationship that affect the existing
one. I usually sound them out about possible new relationships beforehand,
and I take their feelings into account when I make my decision, but I don't
ask for their consent. The new partner gets to ask me, or indeed my
existing
partners, any questions they consider relevant to their decision whether or
not to get involved with me. When the pre-existing partner got involved
with
me, they had no idea whom I might consider as a potential partner in the
future; it might be someone I hadn't even met yet at the time. So the
pre-existing partner is almost giving me a blank cheque, where the only
constraint is their trust that I care for them and won't lightly do anything
which would hurt them. That, in my opinion, requires far greater trust on
their part than it does on the part of the new partner.
>To my way of thinking, the way you do things makes the newer partner
>quite a bit more vulnerable, and permanently so. The newer partner
>has to forever deal with the fact that they will *always* come
>"second" to you, will *never* reach a point of equality in your mind
>with the pre-existing partner, no matter how long they spend with
>you or how much they invest in the relationship.
They are equal in my mind, because I don't consider my set-up hierarchical
and, for the deepest values of "love", I love them all equally. They do
have
to deal with the fact that I'm wired in such a way that the "chronological"
way I do poly is the only kind that works for me, but that's no different
than, say, a secondary of Darkhawk's having to deal with the fact that she
only seems to be wired for two primaries at a time. I don't see anything
wrong with that. It's just the way the world is. What kind of partner
would
insist that I should do something that I considered to be profoundly
unnatural
and which broke a commitment to an existing partner? Not someone I'd want
to
be involved with, I don't think.
>They could marry
>you, they could spend two or three decades as your spouse, they
>could have children with you, and another person, even one you have
>seen a dozen times in your entire life, written to maybe once a month,
>not seen at all in the past several years or heard from in many months,
>would still have the power to cause you to leave, to tear apart the
>newer partner's and the children's entire lives. No matter how nice
>the earlier partner seems, there can be no security in giving them
>that kind of power.
The security lies in trusting me only to accede to the earlier partner's
insistence that I leave in very extreme circumstances. I find it hard to
imagine circumstances in which such insistence would *not* be a breach of
trust unless there *had* been a breach of trust on the part of the spouse,
which would justify leaving.
>And I don't understand, really, why you see it as okay to give A power
>like that over B's relationship, but not to give B power over A's. It
>seems to me that in trying to make things more "fair" for A, you make
>them very unfair for B. And I don't see how you can feel that the
>relationship with B is free to follow its natural course, while at the
>same time saying that you won't do anything with B without A's agree-
>ment.
Because doing things with B *that interfere with my relationship with A*
*doesn't* feel natural to me, unless A is in breach of our ground rules or
is
acting in bad faith (in which case it's A that's causing the interference,
not
B).
>> In
>> return, I give them the assurance that I will try to avoid allowing any
>> newer
>> relationships to intefere with the one we already have, unless they have
>> agreed to the changes. If a change happens unintentionally, I will try to
>> fix
>> it once it is pointed out to me. All of that makes perfect sense to me.
>
>It only makes sense to me if you append "within reason, by my own
>judgment" to it, and apply liberally.
Of course. That caveat ties right back into the "good faith" point, and I
think a caveat of that sort is implied in *any* ethical principle. I don't
believe it is possible to formulate an ethical principle that has no
exceptions ever, unless you count "meta-principles" such as "always follow
your ethical principles".
>It would make a lot better
>sense if you gave them the assurance that you would not *form* new
>relationships which would significantly interfere with the pre-
>existing one, but once new relationships were agreed to and
>established, if you gave *all* your partners the assurance that
>you would try not to let other relationships interfere with theirs.
Certainly, the better-established a newer relationship is, the more extreme
the circumstances leading to the conflict would have to be before I would
consider an insistence on ending the newer relationship or make changes that
will have a serious adverse effect on it was *not* a breach of trust or in
bad
faith.
>> >But if the proposed change is the same, or similar? Frex, if one of the
>> >relationships must become platonic, or have the frequency of contact cut
>> >down? Those would be big changes, have a big effect, for the more life-
>> >entangled partner, but small changes, small effect, for the less life-
>> >entangled partner.
>
>> I'd consider making the relationship platonic to be a big change for either
>> partner - in fact, I'd consider it to be ending the relationship and
>> replacing
>> it with a different sort of relationship entirely. The emotional effect
>> might
>> be the same for both, or it might even be greater for the less
>> life-entangled
>> partner; life-entanglement and emotional attachment are not the same thing
>> for me.
>
>Emotional attachment to a person and attachment to sex are not the
>same thing, either.
No, but for me and several of the people I am partnered with or considering
as
potential partners, a lot of our emotional bonding takes place during or as
a
result of sex. I don't believe the bond would be weakened by a consensual
agreement not to have sex (tautology deliberately left in for emphasis), if
there were reasons for such an agreement that we both considered
sufficiently
strong, but I do believe it would be seriously threatened by imposing such a
decision unilaterally, and it is highly unlikely that I would consider the
effect on a later relationship to be a sufficiently strong reason.
>> >Or, in the case that the conflict is big enough that one relationship or
>> >the other must end entirely, I don't see how ending the relationship can
>> >have less effect on the more life-entangled partner than on the less.
>> >To look at the extreme cases -- your husband versus a long-distance,
>> >rarely-seen, infrequently-communicated-with partner -- you're talking
>> >about moving out, going through divorce, the whole child custody mess,
>> >major financial upheaval -- and those are just the "practical" effects,
>> >nevermind the major emotional effects -- versus losing one date per year
>> >and a few emails.
>
>> The practical effects will be greater, yes. The emotional effects may not
>> be.
>
>If they are not, something is seriously wrong with at least one
>partner or relationship.
Excuse me, I think my partners and I get to decide whether or not that is
the
case and not you. For instance, I would see nothing wrong with being as
emotionally attached to my Absent Friend (a long distance sweetie whom I may
never meet in person because of the distance) as I am to my husband. That's
not the case at the moment, but I would not consider it necessarily *wrong*
if
matters developed that way, just different than the way things are at the
moment. I can see some ways in which it might be very *right*. My husband
offers me way more practical support, for obvious reasons, but the Absent
Friend offers me huge amounts of emotional support, and in some ways the
distance makes him a more reliable source of such support because living
together means that my husband and I tend to be ill and/or depressed
simultaneously. In other ways my husband is a more reliable source of
emotional support because he has the additional knowledge of me that comes
from living with me and knowing a lot of the same people that I interact
with,
but I see no reason why it should be *intrinsically* better for me to rely
on
him than on the Absent Friend. It's *unlikely* that the attachment will
ever
be as strong, because the bonding that comes through sex is quite a strong
factor for me and I will never have the same opportunities for sexual and
other face-to-face bonding with the Absent Friend than I do with my husband.
But I wouldn't think it was wrong, and the fact that it's unlikely, maybe
even
unusual, doesn't make it so.
>(Temporary) suicidal depression, I would consider a normal reaction
>to a divorce. It's common, and as long as it doesn't go on too long,
>it's not extreme. If not quite suicidal, some very serious depression
>for some amount of time is pretty much a given. A person who got
>anywhere *near* suicidally depressed because a long-distance partner
>they had only ever seen every year or so cut off the sexual part of
>their relationship, I would say had some serious emotional illness.
Datapoint: I have seen more divorces in which neither partner developed
depression, serious or otherwise, than in which they did.
In any case, it seems to me *any* serious depression is a serious emotional
illness, by definition.
And I disagree that it's somehow worse or a sign of more serious illness to
develop such depression as the result of the break-up of an LDR than as the
result of a divorce. It's not the absence of sex itself, it's what
withdrawing sex unilaterally would say about the health of the underlying
relationship and the value placed upon it.
>> >What constitutes "good faith?" If you ask an LDR partner to make your
>> >relationship platonic because your husband has become so uncomfortable
>> >with it that he cannot stay in the marriage as long as the LDR is
>> >romantic/sexual, and the LDR partner says "no, I don't feel that would
>> >be fair, as our relationship pre-dates your marriage. I am not willing
>> >to make that change," do you then divorce your husband?
>
>> Depends why my husband is suddenly so uncomfortable about something he knew
>> about before we got married.
[snip]
>Maybe husband has pro-life feelings and didn't know that earlier
>partner would develop a habit of having an abortion every year or
>two. I don't know. Point is, you can't discount the possibility
>that there is something that an earlier partner could do which
>could come to bother a later partner this much, while at the same
>time not bothering you enough that you'd end the earlier relation-
>ship on your own. And then it's not really fair to say that the
>later partner "knew about" the earlier partner when they started
>the relationship with you, because they *didn't* know *this*.
They could have asked. (I make a point of discussing my feelings about
abortion with my partners at a very early stage in the development of a
relationship, because I have ruled it out for myself and would find it
difficult to live with someone who used abortion regularly. This is the
sort
of life-and-death issue that I think it's reasonable to expect someone to
clarify in advance, if they feel so strongly about it).
In practice, I'd have a serious compatibility problem with a partner who
used
abortion in any case, so this would be unlikely to cause a conflict in my
other relationships.
However, trying to imagine how I would react if my feelings about abortion
were less negative, I *think* I would take the view that as long as it was
in
no sense my child that was being aborted, it was not something in which my
partner had a right to interfere, because it affects the ethical principle
that a person has the right to determine what happens to zir own body. To
an
extent, though, this is another case of trying to imagine what I would do if
I
wasn't me, so it doesn't make a great deal of sense.
>> >I use "life-entanglement" to also mean emotional attachment, time spent
>> >together, energy invested in each other, amount of future-planning done
>> >together, etc., in addition to the purely practical stuff.
>
>> We have a semantic difference here. I include amount of future-planning as
>> part of "life-entanglement", but not the other things you mention.
>
>Hm. Do you not consider emotions, time, and energy to be parts of a
>person's "life?" I think they're pretty major parts.
I do. I just find it more useful not to include those aspects in the term
"life-entanglement".
>> >Another hypothetical: Suppose you have a much-less-entangled partnership
>> >predating a marriage-type partnership. Pre-existing partner has become
>> >accustomed to borrowing sums of money from you on occasion. You now wish
>> >to enter a large financial commitment with newer partner, such as
>> >purchasing a house and/or having a child, which will necessitate your
>> >being unable to loan money to pre-existing partner any more. The new
>> >financial commitment is something you and marriage-type partner want very
>> >much, but pre-existing partner does not want to agree to the proposed
>> >change. Do you forego making the change then?
>
>> It would depend on whether the pre-existing partner had other reasonable
>> means
>> of getting the money zie needed. If not, I would forego making the change.
>> If so, I would suspect zir of bad faith (using the financial issue as an
>> excuse to avoid telling me zie had a problem with the new relationship) and
>> that issue would have to be resolved before any decision was made.
>
>What if they had other means of getting money which you considered
>reasonable -- or means of avoiding needing the money in the first
>place, or no real *need* of the money in the first place (the loans
>were to cover wants, not needs) -- and they did not consider
>reasonable?
It would depend on their reasons for not considering them reasonable.
>Saying here that you would automatically suspect them of "bad faith"
>seems to confirm that any time you don't agree with the reasonable-
>ness of their decision or request, you will find a way to see it as
>some sort of "bad faith." What if they are acting in their best
>faith, being totally honest, and just plain feel that their being
>able to keep borrowing money from you so they can buy more Magic
>cards is more important than the child you want to have with your
>husband?
Then there is a major incompatibility in our values which of itself would
justify ending the relationship. I find it hard to believe that I would be
with such a person in the first place, but if someone seriously suggested to
me that Magic cards were worth more than a child, I would be considering
leaving them even in the absence of wanting to have a child myself. It
would
go way beyond interference from a later relationship.
This is another example of why such extreme hypotheses aren't constructive,
I
think.
>> >It shouldn't. But what if the desire to have children had happened
>> >because of a change in you? What if you had previously thought you
>> >would not want children, but over time, you changed, and now felt you
>> >could not be happy if you did not at least try to have children?
>
>> Too different from my actual situation for me to be able to comment. There
>> has never been a time when I did not want children; it feels like you are
>> asking me to tell you how I would react if I wasn't me. (You had no way of
>> knowing that, of course, so that isn't intended as a criticism).
>
>Well of course, hypothetical examples are hypothetical. I don't
>know you well enough to come up with examples which would have a
>reasonable probability of actually happening for you personally.
>Besides, it seems to always be the possibilities we *don't* think
>up and prepare for ahead of time that are the most likely to
>actually happen. (smile) But that doesn't mean that something
>in many ways parallel to the given hypothetical couldn't happen
>to you.
It does mean that I can't usefully answer your question, though.
>Frex, you move in with B, with A's consent, but the move entails a
>bigger place with more expenses. As a result, you are able to
>travel to see A less often. Perhaps neither of you anticipated
>this. A then objects and asks you to move away from B, so you can
>go back to seeing A more often. What do you do? Does it make a
>difference if you have signed a lease or a mortgage with B, or that
>it would put B in financial hardship to have to move again at this
>point?
I probably would not agree to move away from B. I find it hard to
understand
why we would not have anticipated the increased expenses, but I dunno, maybe
if the government introduced a new tax or something... I think that would be
in the category of "shit happens, let's find the best possible way of
dealing
with it". Maybe A can come to visit me instead, or maybe my individual
visits
to A can be longer (so the travel cost is reduced, but the total number of
days we spend together stays the same). Maybe we can agree a temporary
solution until one of us can find a way of increasing our resources. I find
it hard to believe that this wouldn't be capable of a compromise solution.
*grin* Maybe I just filter for people that are good at compromising, without
realising it :-)
>Does it make any difference that the exact same change could have
>happened if you had simply chosen to move into a bigger place on
>your own?
If you're asking me if that hypothetical possibility would affect my
decision
as to what to do in a situation where I had in fact moved in with B,
probably
not. If you're asking me whether, if I *had* moved on my own, I would be
willing to consider moving back to a smaller place, probably yes.
>> >I don't see how you can say that you "*can't*" make changes that A isn't
>> >in agreement with. You can make any changes you want. If A isn't in
>> >agreement with staying in a relationship with you under the new circum-
>> >stances, then the relationship can end.
>
>> Well, I can say till I'm blue in the face that I want to make [X] change,
>> but
>> if A isn't there to say it to, it's a bit pointless, isn't it? By making a
>> change, I meant making the change and continuing the relationship, which
>> obviously requires A's consent.
>
>Doesn't make sense to me. You can *make* [X] change, and A can then
>leave if they want. They might leave immediately after the change,
>but that doesn't mean you can't make the change in the first place.
I think it's often going to be disingenuous to put the responsibility for
leaving on A in that situation. Effectively, I would consider myself
responsible for the breakup in that situation, assuming that A has behaved
reasonably throughout.
>So if you don't want to have sex with A, for whatever reason, then
>you do think it's ethical to end the relationship with A if they
>won't agree to the change? ...Even if the reason has something to
>do with a newer partner?
It really does depend what the reason is.
>Is there a significant difference between wanting to make a change
>like that because of something to do with a newer partner, and
>wanting to make a change like that for any other reason, to your
>mind? If so, can you quantify why?
Quantify? I'm not sure that term applies to this sort of discussion.
Disclaimers: in the following discussion, by "acceptable" I mean "things
that
I would expect a partner to be able to work around, at least in the medium
term" and by "unacceptable" I mean "things that I believe would justify a
partner in considering ending the relationship if there seemed to be no
prospect of them changing any time soon". I do not mean that any of the
"unacceptable" things would justify a partner in trying to coerce me into
having sex. Neither list is exhaustive.
I think I would consider the following to be acceptable reasons for not
wanting to have sex:
- some illness prevents me having sex
- my partner has been abusive to me
- my libido is not very high at the moment
- there is something wrong in the relationship that has upset me enough that
I
do not want sex and we haven't had a chance to fix it yet
- something in my partner's other relationship has upset me enough that I do
not want sex and we haven't had a chance to fix it yet
- another partner is upset enough to ask me not to have sex with this
partner
and we haven't had a chance to fix it yet
and I would consider the following to be unacceptable reasons:
- I'm using the withdrawal of sex to punish my partner for something that's
wrong in the relationship
- there is something wrong in the relationship that has upset me enough that
I
do not want sex and I'm not prepared to try to fix it
- something in my partner's other relationship has upset me enough that I do
not want sex and I'm not prepared to try to fix it
- another partner is upset enough to ask me not to have sex with this
partner
and zie isn't prepared to try to fix it
>> >Wow... if I didn't love someone deeply and want the relationship to
>> >continue as long as possible, I wouldn't call it a "friendship," I'd
>> >call it an "acquaintanceship."
>
>> Even if you were having sex with them?
>
>Of course. Why would that make a difference?
*shrug* I don't have sex with people who aren't at least friends, and if I
did, the way sex is for me, it would immediately create a bond that would
take
us beyond acquaintanceship. Your mileage evidently varies, which is fine, I
just wanted to be sure that I was understanding you :-)
>> >> I
>> >> gave up the third because he and my husband did not get on. I now think
>> >> this was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. [. . .]
>
>> >Even though the alternative may well have cost you what you have with
>> >your husband now?
>
>> I don't think it need have done.
>
>In that case, it probably was a mistake.
>
>But what if you could see into that alternative universe and
>learn that you really couldn't have kept both relationships, would
>you still feel it was a mistake?
Umm... I don't think that is something I should discuss with anyone other
than
my husband or the ex-partner concerned (or possibly my other partners, if it
was bothering me and I needed someone to talk to about it).
>> And I didn't fully realise
>> how much I would miss the other person (still do, every single day, and it
>> still hurts).
>
>Ouch. No chance of reviving that relationship now?
I have no way of contacting him at present, and don't know if he has kept my
contact details (most of which haven't changed). If he did get in touch and
was interested in reviving the relationship, then before I could make a
decision I would need to try to get to the bottom of the source of my
husband's discomfort with him, which I never did at the time, and I would
need
to address with my ex the factors which led to us being out of touch for
several years before.
>> >But you already have "admitted" to the heirarchy your partnerships have.
>> >You give higher weight to pre-existing partnerships than to later ones.
>> >You're clear on that. Where we are disagreeing, or where I am
questioning,
>> >is on whether that's the heirarchy which makes the most sense, and on
>> >whether you would really (and without regrets) follow that heirarchy in
>> >practice, if certain kinds of conflicts became more than hypothetical.
>
>> I'm also saying that I don't consider that to be a hierarchy.
>
>Then I wonder what your definition of "heirarchy" is.
Like I said: a structure that artificially constrains what I consider to be
the natural development of a relationship.
>> >Of course, if none of those kinds of conflicts ever does come up for you,
>> >then you can keep thinking you would act a certain way, and I can keep
>> >thinking you'd probably either surprise yourself and change your mind, or
>> >else regret it, and neither of us would ever be proven right or wrong.
>
>> I've given you no reason to think I'd act differently than I've said I
>> would.
>
>No more reason than any other person I've ever seen act differently
>than they said they would.
Then can I ask you to try to keep an open mind? It doesn't seem to me that
you *need* a working hypothesis for what I would do, since it wouldn't
affect
you either way, and your apparent assumption that I would not act as I think
I
would makes this conversation a lot more difficult for me.
Liz Williams
invitation of GAS, but as always, I'm more than happy for anything that
doesn't fit or any question that's too intrusive to be ignored :-)
Metal Fem <meta...@webone.com.au> wrote:
>We've resisted the urge to go on a recriminatory archeological dig to
>find out "what was really agreed!" and decided instead to acknowledge
>that we've changed and to try renegotiation.
I think that's a really healthy approach. Good for you (plural)!
>My sweetie didn't raise this stuff, it's because I've been feeling like
>my time, my space and my money is not my own that it's all come to a head.
Oh boy, do I ever recognise that feeling. I struggled with it a lot when we
were monogamous and immediately after we opened our marriage, when we were
renegotiating our ground rules pretty comprehensively. And my husband is
still struggling with some of it (not that I'm not prepared to negotiate
with
him over it, just that he hasn't figured out exactly what his goals are
yet).
>I feel that I've been taking on far too much responsibility for
>keeping our household running smoothly - practically, emotionally and
>financially.
When you say "too much", what standard are you using? E.g. do you mean "too
much compared to what my sweetie is taking on", or "too much compared to the
maximum I can readily cope with?"
>I'm in 17K of debt, 9K of which includes a lot of valueless credit card
>"rescue" type debt incurred as a result of my coming in to "fix" joint
>financial problems. The other 8K is covered by the value of what I
>borrowed it for - the car we both use. My sweetie has very little debt
>(>1K) and no credit cards.
I do sympathise - I've been struggling to get out of debt since I was a
student, and it's going to be at least another three years before I succeed
(and that's not counting the mortgage).
Trying to get a feel for what the options might be:
Are you able to meet the repayments comfortably at the moment?
Do either of you have savings?
Would your sweetie's current income allow zir to pay off zir debt and/or
contribute to paying off yours?
What sort of budgeting process do you (plural) use?
>I also feel overwhelmed by housework as we have different standards
>about it and as I'm not happy living in a house that isn't what I
>consider clean I tend to do most of the housework.
Again, that sounds achingly familiar.
Is the problem that you disagree on what constitues "clean", or that you
disagree on how often the house needs to be put into that condition, or that
you disagree on what degree of effort is reasonable to achieve it, or that
you
both more or less agree on what constitues "clean", but your sweetie simply
doesn't "see" that it *isn't* "clean" at the moment?
Have you considered *why* you aren't happy living somewhere that isn't
"clean", and whether that can be adjusted? For instance, I have learned
that
I cope with mess far better when I'm not also stressing about something
else,
so reducing stress levels in other areas helps enormously. I've also
learned
that a large part of my need for the place to be "clean" stemmed from
worrying
about what visitors to the house would think, so I have been helped by a
combination of tactics including sitting down and listing all the
differences
in circumstances that mean that I *can't* reasonably keep our place as clean
as some of our visitors do, telling people outright what our arrangements
are,
and changing to a mult-adult household (which to my slightly warped brain
signals to visitors that we're not a conventional household and that I as
the
wife am not necessarily responsible for the state of the house). And I've
found that being able to take regular short breaks (approximately one
weekend
a month and
one night a week) when I stay somewhere else really helps, too.
What other strategies for sharing the housework have you considered? Ones
that
my husband and I have tried or discussed at various times have included:
Each of us having specified tasks to do, allocating to my husband the ones
where we have the most similar standards.
Using a professional cleaner.
Each of us spending a specified amount of time on cleaning.
One of us having specified tasks and the other spending a specified amount
of
time on the remainder, or on anything the other had been too ill/tired/busy
to
finish.
Me writing on a whiteboard the tasks that I thought needed doing, and my
husband tackling them as and when he had time.
Agreeing that one room would be tackled each day.
(Note: several of these don't work for my husband at all, but I mention them
anyway because they all seem like workable strategies *for some people*,
even
if not for us).
>My sweetie has been dealing with depression for the last 2/3 years and
>been on a number of anti-depressants which has also been a factor in my
>slipping back into a caretaker role.
My husband also suffers from depression (possibly a form of SAD). It does
make the housework issue more difficult, because it can be genuinely
impossible for him to do something which to me appears quite
straightforward.
I find it helps in that situation for me to prioritise very clearly ("Okay,
Giles can't do the washing-up right now. I'll do it for him and I'll let
the
dusting go for a while instead"). Having an agreed target for how much time
I
spend on housework each week has really helped me with this - it has made it
much easier for me to give myself permission to leave some things undone.
It
also helps if I keep reminding myself that it's the illness that prevents
him
from doing as much as I might like, not any unwillingness on his part.
[snip]
>The sweetie is older than me, has grown children and has emigrated and
>lived in a few cities. Zie is at the "I want to buy a house, keep
>afghan hounds again and live with you for the rest of my life" stage.
>Zie does not have other sweeties.
>
>I on the other hand want to work for a while in the country where I have
>my other citizenship. And I think I want to do that alone. I also want
>to know that in the future if I want to I can live by myself for a
>while.
Have you got a clear understanding of *why* your sweetie wants what zie
wants,
and vice versa? How much of this is bound up with your sense of self for
each
of you, i.e. to what extent do you each feel that wanting to do these things
is important to your sense of "who you are"? That will have an impact on
which of you is more able to compromise and to what extent, I think, so
understanding it will be helpful. It may also help you to see whether or
not
there are other ways of achieving the same goals.
>All this has come to a head because zie will shortly be coming into enough
>money for a downpayment for a house.
Have you (plural) considered using that money to pay off your debts? If you
did, would there be enough left for a downpayment for a house (maybe
slightly
smaller or in a different location)?
>For the last 3 years we've been
>saying that we'll buy together and I've been OK with that, now that it
>seems close to being reality I'm suddenly very not OK about it.
Do you know why your feelings have changed?
>Zie still wants to buy with me knowing how I feel, but also has said
>that if I wanted to be away for more than a month at a time then zie
>would have to reconsider the r/ship. And zie is very strongly opposed
>to my living by myself. So, I dunno, it seems dangerous to me.
I agree that there are warning bells as to the wisdom of buying together at
this stage.
Has zie been able to articulate the reasons for zir opposition to your
living
by yourself?
Does "living with your sweetie" and "living by yourself" have to be an
either-or choice - could you agree to live alternate months in a joint house
and a separate home? Could you afford to?
How would each of you feel about renegotiating the relationship so that you
don't live together at all, ever? Is it possible that a "halfway house"
feels
worse to your sweetie than either extreme, or is zie really opposed to your
living on your own on principle? (Zie may be; my husband feels that way too.
But I can also imagine that for some people, especially people who like
routine, having the other person "flitting in and out" of the house might
feel
worse than not living together at all).
>If we could agree that if I wanted to go away or live by myself for a
>while that
>
>a) we would negotiate financial stuff to support the house we have
>together and
>b) work to keep the r/ship good
>
>I would be happy enough to buy a house with zir.
How does zie feel about those agreements? Does zie trust you to provide
whatever financial support you agree to and to negotiate a reasonable
agreement? Would zie be prepared to work to keep the relationship good if
you
were to live apart for a while, despite zir opposition to the idea? What
specific actions would help keep the relationship good?
>But I can't buy a house with zir if zir expectations are that I will
>stay in that house all the time, it's tricky enough to deal with my
>emotions about that in rental given the other issues we have around
>different housework values and time/space values.
You haven't talked about the time/space values (unless you mean the living
apart thing). Do you mind saying what the differences are?
> In deep mortgage I
>think I would snap.
How would the mortgage payments be divided between you? Would it be
feasible
to put the house in your sweetie's name so that there would be less comeback
on you if something went wrong, and for you to make your contribution in the
form of rent for the time being?
Where you are, are shared ownership schemes available? (In this country,
there are schemes where a housing association will pay for, say, 50% of the
value of a house and the people intending to live in it pay for the other
50%.
Then they pay a minimal rent to the housing association for the 50% that
the
association has funded. That way, the buyers don't get quite so deeply into
debt. There are maximum income restrictions, though).
>And being a cat person I don't know that the
>drivers that are making me want to live partially or wholly by myself
>are going to be impacted in a positive way by living with two afghan
>hounds.
Would it be possible to restrict the dogs to one part of the house and the
cats to another? Could you make finding a house with a layout which would
allow that one of your criteria when you start house-hunting?
>I love my sweetie a lot, and I want to be in zir life however that is
>for the rest of my life - but I want it to feel like choice, not like I'm
>there because we have a 150K mortgage. Or that b/c zie won't
>countenance my
>taking residential time away the price of being with zir is my freedom.
I agree that you shouldn't agree to anything that doesn't feel like a free
choice. That's pernicious, in my experience.
[snip]
>I am being confronted fairly heavily with my r/ship failings at the
>moment around trying to be the perfect live-in partner and I don't want
>to make the same mistakes with the LDR that I have with my sweetie.
You mean you feel you should try to be perfect, or your sweetie feels that
you
should? It's usually better to focus on trying to be "good enough", I find.
>I used to be so feral about not living with people too, and not having
>debt, and not playing mother, and I kept everything private and
>separate.
>
>Then I thought I had found something that would make it "different" with
>my sweetie and I'm feeling somewhat stupid and "bad person" about it all
>to find that I'm where I am now.
Nothing you've said makes you sound like a bad person to me. You were just
mistaken about what would make it different, by the sound of it (which
doesn't
mean that nothing ever *will* make a difference, necessarily).
Angi Long
Yes, I also think the "good faith / breach of trust" concepts are
"central." That's what I've been getting at. I think the situations
of "true conflict" (where people cannot come to agreement) which
would fall under "bad faith" or "breach of trust" are pretty much all
of them. But when someone says "I would do X unless Y," the wording
seems to imply that X would be the default, that X would be what would
usually happen, and Y would be relatively rare. So I don't think it
gives a very truthful impression to say "I would do what the pre-
existing partner wanted unless they were breaching trust or acting in
bad faith."
> In this post, Liz may not have thought you were suggesting that her
> convictions described here would be consistent with her killing her
> children. I did think so. I thought it was a truly offensive thing
> to say. On re-reading, I saw that you didn't quite say that; you just
> described that situation with the same words you used to describe
> possible interpretations of Liz' behaviour. So I guess it's just
> reductio ad absurdam. And maybe that's not a problem for Liz.
I apologize if it came across that way. No, I didn't mean to imply
that anything in this thread was anywhere near on the same "level" as
killing children. I meant to give an "extra-clear" example of the kind
of thing I was talking about bugging me -- an example that was "extreme"
enough that it would instantly show what I was talking about, because
most others would be bound to have the same opinion of it that I would.
(It also happens to be a real conversation that I did have a few years
ago, so anyone who responds with "nobody would say those things" is
wrong.) What is bugging me in this thread is the same "type" of thing,
but nowhere near the same "magnitude."
Angi Long
> > *does* "change" the relationship with the pre-existing partner, by
> > bringing in discomfort that was not there before. And you have said
> > that you would not change that relationship without that partner's
> > agreement. So on what grounds would you *not* agree to the request?
> On the grounds that no partner gets to have absolute control over what
> Liz can do with her body. In a lot of your answers, you seem to have
> the impression that Liz lives, thinks and breathes the 'earlier
> partners take precedence' rule. She doesn't. The rule comes into play
> when considering conflicts between partners to do with changing
> relationships, but it's by no means the only factor.
I believe that. I just think the language she used implied, at least to
me, that "earlier partners get their way" would be what usually happened.
Other cases would be relatively rare exceptions.
[lots of included text, because something confusing has happened here
which I am trying to sort out]
I believe that Liz would not agree to monogamy with anyone. I'm just
trying to understand what she said in the first place. And your
explanations, I'm afraid, don't make sense with regard to that. Here
is what she said in the first place:
in message news:3AAF...@MailAndNews.com
> If he asked me to return to being monogamous and was
> unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise, I would have to seriously
> consider breaking up with him rather than with my other partners.
This clearly says that he is unwilling to continue the relationship
otherwise, and that the alternatives she is seriously considering are
breaking up with him or breaking up with her other partners. The
wording of this very strongly says to me that breaking up with him
rather than the other partners would *not* be a foregone conclusion;
otherwise there would be nothing to "consider" at all. Am I alone in
that interpretation?
Then I wrote, and she responded (these are the entirety of the quotes,
she didn't snip anything from my response paragraph here, but only
split it into two parts to respond, and this followed immediately after
what she wrote above):
> >I can see that, as that's a very big issue. But I would also expect
> >that the degree of life-entanglement with him, including the presence
> >of children, would cause you to give more consideration to that
> >decision than you would with a much less life-entangled partnership
> >of a similar duration. Wouldn't you say that's true?
>
> No. I wouldn't consider it for an instant.
>
> >I mean, if,
> >rather than your husband, this was a less-entangled partner which
> >you had been with slightly longer than you've been with your husband
> >-- someone you do not live with, do not have children with, perhaps
> >do not even see very often -- then would there even be the question
> >of "seriously considering" it? Or would you, in that case, surely
> >break up with the longer-standing partner who was asking for this
> >change, rather than leaving your husband?
>
> I would break up with *any* partner who insisted on monogamy. It's not
> something I can do. But that's to do with the way I'm wired and not to do
> with my later relationships. I would break up with a partner who insisted
> on monogamy even if I had no other relationships at all.
I didn't change or reword the situation in any way; in fact I only
referred to "that decision." I was clearly talking about the exact
same situation which Liz had just brought up. Is there any question
of that, or was that less clear than it seems to me? But now, without
any change in the situation being referred to, she changes from "I
would have to seriously consider..." to "I wouldn't consider it for an
instant." Why the change? I don't understand.
Then she added "I would break up with *any* partner who insisted on
monogamy." Was she, then, changing the situation under discussion? I
don't see how. Is "...unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise"
different from "insisting," somehow? It does not look to me like she
was intending to change the question. It looks like she is still
referring to the situation where a partner asks her to be monogamous
and is unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise. But the first
time, she says only that she would "seriously consider" breaking up
with such a partner, and the second time, referring to the same
situation, she says that she *"would"* break up with such a partner.
What I'm trying to understand is what she meant in the first place by
"seriously consider." Was that just an inaccurate statement, which
she meant to correct with the later one? If so, then acknowledging
that would clear up my understanding. If not, then I am still really
confused, and would like to know what that meant.
Liz Williams
>Yes, I also think the "good faith / breach of trust" concepts are
>"central." That's what I've been getting at. I think the situations
>of "true conflict" (where people cannot come to agreement) which
>would fall under "bad faith" or "breach of trust" are pretty much all
>of them. But when someone says "I would do X unless Y," the wording
>seems to imply that X would be the default, that X would be what would
>usually happen, and Y would be relatively rare. So I don't think it
>gives a very truthful impression to say "I would do what the pre-
>existing partner wanted unless they were breaching trust or acting in
>bad faith."
That isn't what the wording implies to me. I believe *both* X and Y are
going
to be incredibly rare for me, so neither is a default. The default is that
we
find a negotiated solution that works for everyone and that everyone acts in
good faith.
For me, when I'm asked about how I would respond to a situation which
diverges
from that default, the wording is going to depend largely on the context.
If
I am asked about how I handle hierarchies or the absence thereof, I will
focus
on my ethical principle of avoiding inteference with earlier relationships
because that's the principle that's most relevant, and I will bring in other
ethical principles as and when the drift of the conversation seems to make
it
appropriate to do so. If I am asked about how I handle situations where one
partner is breaking our ground rules or abusing my trust or acting in bad
faith, I will focus on the principle that such behaviour entitles me to end
the relationship, because that's the principle that's most relevant to that
question, and again I will bring in other ethical principles as I judge it
appropriate.
I also don't think that the word "truthful" above is appropriate. I don't
think impressions are ever "truthful" or "not truthful". It seems to me
that
they're accurate or inaccurate, in varying degrees. "Truthful" and "not
truthful", to me, are categories that apply to the intention behind the
communication, not to how it was received. And my intention was certainly
to
tell the truth about my decision-making processes to the best of my ability.
Stef Maruch
Liz Williams <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
>Disclaimer: I'm partly responding to Metal Fem's subsequent express
>invitation of GAS, but as always, I'm more than happy for anything that
>doesn't fit or any question that's too intrusive to be ignored :-)
[hand to forehead and reaching for smelling salts]
Wow, Liz, what a masterful display of GAS. I hope you're around when I
need similar extra-cubic ideas.
--
Stef
** rational/scientific/philosophical/mystical/magical/kitty
** st...@cat-and-dragon.com <*> http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/~stef
**
Somewhere between anticipation and nostalgia we should have been happy.
-- Shannon Wheeler, Too Much Coffee Man
A Spondee
>"A Spondee" <pig...@panix.com> wrote:
>> Are you *positive* you understand the actions of the people around
>> you? And, if so, what has made you so sure that you understand them?
>I hear Liz saying that she would do unreasonable things for a pre-
>existing partner. I don't want to believe she is either sick or
>cruel. So I think she is simply mistaken.
And there is no possibility in your mind that perhaps you have not
understood Liz?
--
Piglet, pig...@piglet.org
47 days down
1413 to go.
Liz Williams
>"David Matthewman" <da...@matthewman.org> wrote:
>> Quoth Angi Long on Thu, 08 Mar 2001 22:57:56 GMT:
>[lots of included text, because something confusing has happened here
>which I am trying to sort out]
Left in in order to assist with that...
The options that I can see in this situation are:
break up with him
continue my other relationships and leave it to him to break up with me
continue my other relationships and work towards a compromise that will
allow
him to change his mind about being unwilling to continue ours
break up with my other partners
I would consider the first three, but not the last.
I read "that decision" as meaning "a decision to become monogamous again".
When I said "I wouldn't consider it for an instant", "it" in that sentence
was
becoming monogamous. In the earlier sentence, the thing I said I *would*
consider was breaking up with my husband (rather than either of the other
two
alternatives which I would also consider).
>Then she added "I would break up with *any* partner who insisted on
>monogamy." Was she, then, changing the situation under discussion? I
>don't see how. Is "...unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise"
>different from "insisting," somehow?
I did not intend to change the situation. I was considering that "unwilling
to continue" might be a temporary state of affairs rather than a permanent
one. By "insisting", I meant continuing that state of affairs to the point
where it appeared likely to be permanent.
>It does not look to me like she
>was intending to change the question. It looks like she is still
>referring to the situation where a partner asks her to be monogamous
>and is unwilling to continue the relationship otherwise. But the first
>time, she says only that she would "seriously consider" breaking up
>with such a partner, and the second time, referring to the same
>situation, she says that she *"would"* break up with such a partner.
>What I'm trying to understand is what she meant in the first place by
>"seriously consider." Was that just an inaccurate statement, which
>she meant to correct with the later one? If so, then acknowledging
>that would clear up my understanding. If not, then I am still really
>confused, and would like to know what that meant.
HTH.
Liz Williams
>In article <3ABB...@MailAndNews.com>,
>Liz Williams <lizw...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
>
>>Disclaimer: I'm partly responding to Metal Fem's subsequent express
>>invitation of GAS, but as always, I'm more than happy for anything that
>>doesn't fit or any question that's too intrusive to be ignored :-)
>
>[hand to forehead and reaching for smelling salts]
>
>Wow, Liz, what a masterful display of GAS. I hope you're around when I
>need similar extra-cubic ideas.
*blush* Why, thank you for the compliment. If I'm ever in a position to
suggest something you find useful, it'll be no more than a fair return for
what I've learned from your posts this past year :-)
Metal Fem
Liz Williams wrote:
> Disclaimer: I'm partly responding to Metal Fem's subsequent express
> invitation of GAS, but as always, I'm more than happy for anything that
> doesn't fit or any question that's too intrusive to be ignored :-)
I agree with Stef, this was an excellent set of things to consider.
Thanks for replying, I appreciate it. I've snipped large portions, not
because they weren't useful but more because I don't have anything to
say in reply except, "great suggestions!"
You wrote:
> And my husband is still struggling with some of it
> (not that I'm not prepared to negotiate
> with him over it, just that he hasn't figured out
> exactly what his goals are yet).
Yep, this is what I'm finding tricky too. It's hard to negotiate with
someone who hasn't figured out what they want, or isn't able to say what
zie wants. Especially if what zie does actually want is closer to what
is generally assumed by society, b/c then I find myself being "other"
and having to argue my case against existing norms, rather than being in
what feels like equitable negotiation.
> When you say "too much", what standard are you using? E.g. do you mean "too
> much compared to what my sweetie is taking on", or "too much compared to the
> maximum I can readily cope with?"
Both, but really it is the latter that drives me up a tree. For example
I don't need to see a housework model that has us both charting equal
outputs, but I don't want to feel crazy and exhausted about what I am
doing either. I thought your observation about getting stressed about
housework when you're stressed about other things was really insightful,
I tend to use a clean and tidy house as my "OK, everything's under
control" security blanket.
[..debt suggestions snipped..]
Thanks for those. I earn 30K more than my sweetie so what we're going
to do is split our finances so that we're independantly responsible for
each of our pay packets for the time at least that it takes to pay off
the debt. We had a shared arrangement previously. We'll have a kitty
for household stuff that we'll pay into equally, individual expenses
will be paid by the individual, and I'm going to use the balance of my
income to pay down the debt. Hopefully that should work and give me
back a feeling of control over the situation.
Zir contribution will be to take on a more active role with me in
managing shared expenses. Part of that is going to be about not using
money and spending as a mood-lifter, and not going out to dinner just
because there is a sinkful of dishes and cooking dinner at home is work.
> Is the problem that you disagree on what constitues "clean", or that you
> disagree on how often the house needs to be put into that condition, or that
> you disagree on what degree of effort is reasonable to achieve it, or that
> you
> both more or less agree on what constitues "clean", but your sweetie simply
> doesn't "see" that it *isn't* "clean" at the moment?
*wry smile*. Errr, all of the above? There is definitely that sense of
it not being likely to change either which is why I'm nervous about
buying together. 1 or 2 years into a r/ship you have the discussions
and you're confident things will change. 5 years in after having the
discussions a number of times that confidence in things changing rapidly
drops away to nothing. So then it becomes a matter for me of, OK, so
what are the alternatives?
My mother being overworked working shift as a nurse and doing all the
housework - and the different values around housework between her and my
(disabled) father was one of the things that ruined my parents marriage.
Housework and her exhaustion was definitely the most visible cause of
tension and anger in the house. I find things that my mother used to
say jumping into my head, and I would prefer to divert us into
alternative solutions before I start to say those things aloud.
> Have you (plural) considered using that money to pay off your debts? If you
> did, would there be enough left for a downpayment for a house (maybe
> slightly smaller or in a different location)?
That's a good question, there's a lot of emotional issues tied up in the
money. It is zir share of zir mother's estate. And I feel that the
large amount of debt that is in my name is a direct result of my taking
on a caretaker role when I should not have. So, I guess I don't want to
us to use zir inheritance for debt payment, and I do want to take
responsibility for the way I use money, hence paying it down with my own income.
> You haven't talked about the time/space values (unless you mean the living
> apart thing). Do you mind saying what the differences are?
It's the old privacy vs trust issue, and the fair vs equal stuff as well.
Zie doesn't like me closing doors, for example when I speak to my LDR,
because zie thinks that means I don't trust zir not to "listen in".
On the other hand, my reason for wanting to close the door has nothing
to do with whether I trust my sweetie, it's just that I like privacy and
quiet, and don't want to have to be distracted by keeping my voice down
if I can just shut the door.
I like to sleep alone, and I sleep much better when I sleep alone. If it
weren't a big issue I would do so a few days a week I think. Zie views
it as zie does the living separately thing, not something that is a
feature of the kind of r/ship zie wants. Zie hasn't said anything
further about why zie doesn't like it tho'.
I spend a significant amount of voice/text time with my LDR [1] tho'
that tends to drop over our winter as the timezones pull apart from 5
hours to 7 hours difference. I do this because I find that it takes
longer to establish connection and maintain it in an long term LDR than
it does in 3D. My sweetie feels that when I visit my LDR (something
which involves 2x2 week visits a year) I should spend the same about of
voice/text time with zir as I would in a typical week with my LDR when
I'm home.
I disagree with that as I see 4 weeks vs 48 weeks 3D time with me as
necessarily meaning things are going to be different.
We're wired differently too I think. I like time to myself, I don't
give a rats if my sweeties want to close their doors, or bugger off for
some alone time. I tend not to miss partners in a bad way if they go
away for days or weeks at a time, even if I'm crazy in love with them.
I just do my own thing until they come back, when it's lovely to see
them. As long as I have a cat wandering around the house and things to
do I rarely feel lonely, just happily alone.
Mf
[1] ie about 1-2 hours each weeknight and about 6-8 hours over the
weekend. In winter this drops to about 3 hours during the working week.
astral alice
>
> Switching now from fluff to riffing on the idea of not falling in love:
> I hear people say that sometimes "I don't want to fall in love with
> [particular person]" It seems so weird to me. I don't think I *do*
> anything to fall in love, or can do anything to prevent it, if I
> define falling in love differently from choosing to love, or "climbing
> in love" as David Aaron calls it in "Endless Light", my favorite
> book about love.
>
> Do you decided whether or not to fall in love?
I always used to think that I had no options at all: if I fell in love
with someone, I had to become involved with them. Then, as I got older,
I learned that I could fall in love with someone, but choose not to
become involved with them. Then, quite recently, I learned that I do
have some choice in the falling in love process too. I found myself
falling in love with somebody for the "wrong" reasons, and made an
active decision not to pursue that one.
I'm not trying to present this as a "more highly evolved" thing - it's
just that for me I've found I have more choices as I gain experience
with relationships.
alice.
--
* astral alice: bi, poly, goth | http://www.death.org.uk *
* alice on Surfers | telnet://surfers.org 4242 *
* --------------------------------------------------------------------- *
* What's the name of the word for things not being the same always? You *
* know... the thing that lets you know time is happening? - The Sandman *
piranha
<3AAAB454...@darkwave.org.uk>:
>
> I always used to think that I had no options at all: if I fell in love
> with someone, I had to become involved with them. Then, as I got older,
> I learned that I could fall in love with someone, but choose not to
> become involved with them. Then, quite recently, I learned that I do
> have some choice in the falling in love process too. I found myself
> falling in love with somebody for the "wrong" reasons, and made an
> active decision not to pursue that one.
yup, that sounds familiar. i went through pretty similar stages
starting with my first romantic relationship (which was even worse
than "if i fall in love i have to get involved, it was more like
"since i fell in love i better get involved because this is The
One Chance".
now i can definitely stop it if it's happening for bad reasons, or
in very wrong circumstances, and nothing would be gained by it.
> I'm not trying to present this as a "more highly evolved" thing - it's
> just that for me I've found I have more choices as I gain experience
> with relationships.
i don't see it as a "more highly evolved than thou" thing, but i
do see it as an evolution for myself. or better, guided growth,
because i did decide to learn to stop it, that didn't just happen
as a matter of course.
--
-piranha
For Madmen Only
Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
>"For Madmen Only" <fm...@usa.net> wrote:
>> "Angi Long" <angi...@home.com> wrote:
>> >A way of saying "I'll go along with what pre-existing partner wants if I agree
>> >it's reasonable, but if I don't agree, then I'll take this 'out'."
>
>> To me it's more like "but if I don't agree, then I'll do what seems
>> best to me." Personally I don't see anything wrong with that.
>
>To clarify: I think that doing what you believe is best is the
>reasonable thing.
okay.
>I don't think it's reasonable to think that
>what the earliest partner wants, or that which best preserves
>the earliest relationship "as is," is de facto best, regardless
>of what the circumstances might actually be.
Maybe not de facto, but what Liz seemed to be expressing is that, for
her, earlier relationships have very high value. This is true for me
also, so I would also tend to see that which best preserves the
earliest relations as highly likely to be "best." Certainly not
absolutely, regardless of the circumstances, but it would be weighted
heavily.
> I think it would
>be good to say "I'll go along with what the pre-existing partner
>wants if I agree it's reasonable, but if I don't agree, then I'll
>do what I believe is best." I don't think it's very truthful to
>say "I'll go along with what the pre-existing partner wants,
>unless they are breaching trust or not acting in good faith,"
>which to me implies that breaching trust or not acting in good
>faith would be rare and unlikely things for the partner to be
>doing in this kind of situation,
I think there's a very good likelihood that if someone has been my
partner for a while I'm going to believe that breaches of trust are
going to be rare and unlikely. Also Liz may not retain as partners
people who are likely to ask things that she would consider
unreasonable. I'm not sure I have that level of trust in anyone right
now, but I can easily imagine situations where one would feel rather
betrayed, or at least bewildered and disconcerted if someone close
asked something one thought was unreasonable. Such an experience
might well equate to "breach of trust."
> and that in fact in *most* such
>situations, she would go along with what the pre-existing partner
>wants... but then to respond to most every example with "that
>would be a breach of trust or bad faith," making it seem that in
>fact, in *most* such situations of conflict, she really would not
>go along with what the pre-existing partner wanted.
Right. Because the trust situation is such that a conflict would be a
sign of breach of trust. She trusts that partners aren't going to
ask unreasonable things. At least that's how I read it.
>> In the case of a conflict where I do not agree, or cannot come to
>> agreement with someone about our relationship, then it seems perfectly
>> appropriate and ethical to end the relationship.
>
>But what about when the two people who cannot agree are your two
>partners? Or, you can come to agreement with one or the other,
>but not with both at the same time?
I imagine I could retain both relationships during some short period
of time while seeking a resolution. Otherwise it would probably be
best to end one or both of the relationships. Furthermore I'm
extremely unlikely to stay with a partner who attempts to control my
relationships with other--that type of attempt is not going to get
agreement from me.
>> >Or, in the case that the conflict is big enough that one relationship or
>> >the other must end entirely, I don't see how ending the relationship can
>> >have less effect on the more life-entangled partner than on the less.
<snip for brevity. Apologies if you think I've snipped context. It's
not my intention>
>
>> I don't know how to explain it, but for me it doesn't weigh so easily
>> or obviously as you suggest. It looks to me like you are somehow
>> quantifying stuff that, to me is qualitative, not quantitative. For
>> example, I probably wouldn't feel that I was "losing one date per year
>> and a few emails" I'd feel I was losing a longstanding, valuable,
>> human connection.
>
>I did specify that what I was listing were only the practical effects,
>"nevermind" the emotional ones.
Yes you did. I guess what I was trying to suggest is that you can't
just "nevermind" the emotional effects, and also that emotional
effects are not necessarily proportional to practical effects (I even
believe that sometimes the practical effects are actually *greater*
than the emotional effects), and also that it's very subjective. How
can *you* know what that balance is for someone else? Not everyone
cares about the same things as someone else. Just because you can't
see how something could have less effect on one kind of relationship
than another, does not mean that is true for someone else's
relationship.
>Yes, losing a partner with whom you
>have had little contact can be rather emotional. But I don't see how,
>to a normal person without some kind of emotional illness, it can be
>anywhere near *as* emotional as going through a divorce, especially a
>divorce one didn't want or choose.
Think what you like, but recognize that some of us may very well not
fit your standard of "normal."
>> I also see you talking about the effect to the
>> partners--maybe this is appropriate within the context of the
>> discussion you are having with Liz (I'm following it, but not
>> closely), but I'll add that for me, in these kinds of scenarios you
>> are presenting, I'd be mostly considering the effect to me.
>
>Me, too. That's why I said I thought it would be self-destructive to
>choose a pre-existing LDR with little contact or entanglement and no
>potential for more over a (good) marriage. But I believe Liz's stance
>is that she would put more weight on others' desires than on her own
>-- specifically, she would put the most value on pleasing the pre-
>existing partner and the effect on that partner and that relationship.
Okay. I didn't get that impression though. Well, I got the
impression that she would place a lot of value on not negatively
affecting the existing relationship, but I didn't get the impression
that she would put more value on others' desires than her own, or even
that her goal in managing conflicts about new relationships would be
"pleasing" the pre-existing partner.
>Because, I suppose, perceiving herself as being unfair to that partner
>would affect her more than she could imagine anything else could, even
>losing her marriage or her children, or causing extreme hurt to her
>husband or her children. That's what I'm finding so hard to understand.
Diff'rent folks.
It's possible that something sorta like the above scenario could
happen to me (but since I'm not married, and don't plan to have
children it's not something I can really imagine). But you are using
extreme examples. I can imagine putting fairness to an existing
partner above the desires of a newer spouse-like partner, however if
unfairness can only be avoided by ditching a committed relationship
then something is seriously fucked to the extent that there would be
at least one of these two parties whom I wouldn't *want* a
relationship with anymore.
fmmo